KENYA-FOOD: Relief Urgently Needed For People In Northeast

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Jan 17 1997 (IPS) - Pressure is mounting on the government of President Daniel Arap Moi to declare Kenya’s northeast province, which has been hit by famine, a disaster area.

Eleven legislators from the area said if the region is declared a disaster zone, then it would encourage international relief agencies to supply food to the semi-arid region on the border with Somalia.

The legislators, led by Jilo Falana, told a press conference in the Kenyan capital this week that pastoralists in the drought- affected region had already lost a “considerable number” of their livestock. “The situation is getting out of hand,” said Falana.

Michael Wamalwa, leader of the main opposition Forum for the Restoration of Democracy in Kenya (FORD-Kenya), also added his voice to the appeal. In a statement to the press, he called on the government to act quickly.

“Already, people are dying in parts of the northeastern and eastern provinces and other semi-arid regions. Food stocks are quickly running out even in traditionally secure places like central and western Kenya,” Wamalwa said.

“Many Kenyans are getting by on very limited food across the country,” the FORD-Kenya leader added.

Adding its voice to the debate, Kenya’s leading independent newspaper, the ‘Daily Nation’, Wednesday urged the government to address the issue of the famine as a matter of priority.

The newspaper said that the government should focus its agricultural policy on irrigation and other measures that would ensure food security in times of drought.

“Although about two-thirds of Kenya is either arid or semi- arid, huge tracks of this marginal land can be made productive through irrigation,” the paper said.

“The perennial food shortages in the eastern province are mainly due to inadequate rains. Instead of relying on unpredictable rains, river water should be harnessed for irrigation,” it added.

Karega Mutahi, a top official in the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock Development and Marketing told journalists on Thursday that Kenya, with an estimated population of 28 million, expects a maize deficit of more than four million bags this year.

In its report ‘Kenya Vulnerability Update’, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) here has urged the government to allow maize targetted for the “most vulnerable consumers” to enter the country duty-free.

The country’s northeast region has been hard hit by three poor rainy seasons. Also, the local population relied heavily on the relief food supplied by local and international agencies that worked in the area in 1992/93 at the height of the civil war in Somalia.

These agencies had set up camp in the northeast to assist the tide of Somalian refugees, but their recipients also included the local population.

The local people abandoned the rural areas due to insecurity and to take advantage of the relief food in towns, explains the Nairobi-based Northern Aid non-governmental organisation, which operates in the area.

The population of nearby towns soared as refugees and the locals poured in. But after the local and international relief agencies pulled out in 1994, and the refugees began to depart, nomads from the rural areas remained near the towns.

Peter Abwao, Projects Officer with Northern Aid, says that the pastoralists in the area have lost many of their survival strategies and are now being pushed into the towns or onto marginal lands to make way for agricultural development and tourism.