Production of maize, Kenya’s staple food, is projected to decline by 50% in the affected regions due to low acreage under cultivation, while some areas will see total crop failure. The disruption of supplies of staple food items and livestock has led to increased price volatility, it added. The NDMA said social distancing measures had “restricted the communal performance of agricultural activities and availability of casual labour opportunities, reducing the amount of land cultivated and projected crop production”. The coronavirus pandemic has added to food insecurity by reducing available workforce in a country whose subsistence farming relies heavily on communal labour. “There is some food reaching the urban areas within these counties but there is little purchasing power because many have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic,” she said. She said it was not only farmers who had been affected by the drought, but also people in urban areas who had been forced to pay higher prices for the little available food.
That is the making of a disaster,” said Mohammed.Ī child tries to chase away a swarm of desert locusts near the town of Rumuruti, Laikipia, Kenya, January 2021. “You have two seasons of depressed rains, desert locusts ravaging farmlands in the same counties and people fighting over the few resources available. In July, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Kenya said the country needed 9.4bn Kenyan shillings (£62m) to mitigate the effects of the drought between July and November.Īsha Mohammed, secretary general of the Kenya Red Cross, said most of the affected counties had already had to deal with desert locust invasions, flash floods and tribal conflicts driven by diminishing resources. Last week, President Uhuru Kenyatta declared the drought a national disaster promising “comprehensive drought mitigation measures”. The affected regions are usually the most food-insecure in Kenya due to high levels of poverty. The crisis has been compounded by Covid-19 and previous poor rains, it said, predicting the situation will get worse by the end of the year, as October to December rains are expected to be below normal levels.
The National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) said people living in 23 counties across the arid north, northeastern and coastal parts of the country will be in “urgent need” of food aid over the next six months, after poor rains between March and May this year. An estimated 2.1 million Kenyans face starvation due to a drought in half the country, which is affecting harvests.
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