Drought Dynamics From Meteorological Stress to Agricultural Impacts Using Physically‐Based Remote Sensing Indices in the Horn of Africa

Drought significantly affects agriculture and ecology in the Horn of Africa (HOA), whereby livelihoods largely depend on rainfed farming. This study aims to analyze drought propagation and its impacts on vegetation and crop productivity, with a specific focus on recovery dynamics. Over the period 2000–2022, we developed and integrated a suite of physically based remote sensing indices, including the Drought Propagation Index (DPI), Crop Stress Index (CSI), Soil Moisture Deficit (SMD), Water Deficit Index (WDI), and Drought Recovery and Rate Index (DRRI), into a novel framework. The performance of this integrated framework was further evaluated against the conventional Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) to validate its ability for capturing drought propagation and agricultural impacts. The findings identify the eastern and southeastern HOA as major drought hotspots, experiencing severe droughts 70%–100% of the time and exhibiting worsening temporal trends. SPI was strongly correlated with DPI ( r = 0.67, p < 0.05), thus proving to be reliable. Vegetation indices showed significant reductions during droughts, while DPI positively correlated with NDVI at 0.56 and EVI at 0.54. Crop production was reduced by 30%–35% in Somalia, especially for maize and sorghum, whereas Ethiopia showed more resistance because of irrigation. The mean recovery time exceeded 2 months during the 2010 and 2016 droughts in southeastern HOA, indicating low resilience, whereas northern areas recovered faster. This framework offers practical recommendations for drought mitigation, drought‐resistant crops, and adaptive resource management to deal with vulnerabilities.