Chronic drought places 2 million Kenyans at risk of starvation, UN agency says

Even though parts of Kenya have seen patchy rainfall in recent months, a devastating, years-long drought means that there is still a chance that 2 million people may starve without food assistance through August, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said.

The debilitating impact of a prolonged dry spell, compounded by chronic poverty, means that in many regions of the country – particularly in the arid and semi-arid north and east – thousands of families are too poor to have enough to eat. Between May and August, WFP plans to provide 83,000 tons of food aid to 1.6 million drought-affected people. It will also ramp up its school meal programme, adding another 420,000 pupils to the one million students it already provides with nutritious daily meals.

The agency said it will adjust various levels of assistance according to needs, with some 1 million people in severely-hit regions receiving general food rations and some 600,000 in less affected areas receiving aid through a combination of food-for-aid work projects aimed at rebuilding infrastructure, or through assistance target at the most vulnerable elements of the community.

But WFP warned that it is still short 52,000 tons – a $28 million shortfall representing some 63 per cent of the food required for the four-month period.

“The November-December rainy season was very mixed across the country,” said Tesema Negash, WFP’s Country Director for Kenya. “In some areas it rained more than normal, so the crops are good and livestock is recovering from the drought. In others, rains were either worse that the previous season or came at the wrong time.” He added that in other parts of the country, the rains once again failed to come at all.

In Kajiado – the worst-affected district – the cumulative effect of the total failure of rains last year and two poor rainy seasons in 2003 is now life threatening. Most of the crops have failed, livestock have died and calves are being killed to preserve the cows. “Fortunately, there are also areas which have seen a clear recovery with good agricultural production and pasture, and where food aid is no longer necessary. We must therefore concentrate on the regions suffering persistent drought,” he said.