Background
For most of 2008, the global food crisis seemed to have by-passed Kenya. The country was already reeling from the internal upheaval of post-election violence and displacement but populations were at least shielded from the worst effects of food price rises mainly due to two consecutive bumper harvests. The strategic grain reserves were full and for months it seemed that the country would be spared the additional shocks that characterized the global crisis.
By late 2008 though, spiraling food, fuel and commodity prices spurred food insecurity in the country that was still caught up in political instability and with a fragile coalition government. There was limited analysis and poor understanding of the compounding effects of natural hazards being overlaid on grinding poverty and intersecting with widespread economic downturn. An emergency was declared on January 16th, 2009 citing the failed short rains and post-elections displacement as main drivers of the crisis. The response, likewise, was the well-known and well understood food aid: beneficiaries of WFP's EMOP doubled nearly overnight from 1.3 million to 2.6 million people. Meanwhile, official requests for assistance targeted a much higher figure where the numbers considered to be facing famine were placed as high as 10 million. The analysis of various assessments almost immediately began pointing to a convergence of causal factors, a multiplicity of shocks and the dire possibility that the drought was actually set to get much, much worse.
Despite historical and climatic evidence to the contrary, much hope was placed on the long rains of 2009 and for the harvest that would be realized as a result. The answer, it seemed, lay in boosting food production and it was felt that with a massive injection of inputs in the agricultural sector, strategic loans to shore up the currency and to buffer the worst effects of the economic downturn, things would get better. The management of the Strategic Grain Reserve was reviewed and market interventions and trade restrictions on maize were removed or reduced. But things continued to worsen as caseloads of malnourished children doubled, then tripled; rates of global and severe acute malnutrition climbed steadily. Unseasonal disease outbreaks, water scarcities and resource based conflicts spiraled. Instability in neighbouring Somalia sent more than 50,000 people fleeing into Kenya worsening the congestion in the already overcrowded refugee camps in Dadaab. Young people also fled the scarcities and lack of employment in the rural areas to even more precarious conditions in the cities. Urban vulnerability, always poorly understood and historically a no-go zone for humanitarian action- escalated. The initial situation of unavailable food was compounded by unaffordable food and lost livelihoods. The consequences were predictable and humanitarian indicators in the cities rivaled, and in some cases topped, those in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs). Also predictable were the coping strategies employed: rationing meals, cutbacks in health care and education.
And then the rains failed…again. With the exception of coastal lowlands, rainfall in March-June was depressed in nearly all areas. Delayed onset also affected crops at critical growing periods. Maize stalks were seen withering due to late rains while in other cases, heavy rainfall late in the growth stage caused the rotting of the cobs.
The Humanitarian Situation in 2009
The current emergency is not new nor is it just a sudden peak of a chronic situation. The deterioration of the humanitarian situation could have been foreseen in the ASALs and perhaps even in the cities. The number of malnourished children is at unprecedented high levels and not just in the well known 'typical' regions but in new parts of the country where capacities have not traditionally existed or been strengthened. In Kajiado, a health center that serves a 50 km radius is trying to manage a caseload of over 200 malnourished children; the most qualified staff member is a nurse. In Mwingi, Makueni, Kitui, the situation is similar and nutritional partners are not always fully operational. The cholera outbreak in Moyale necessitated the establishment of an emergency field hospital by MSF-Belgium; the district hospital had neither the staff nor the resources to fully address the outbreak and the doctor there served populations on both Kenya and Ethiopia sides of the border. Water trucking is going into northern Kenya but also in Nairobi while school feeding is thought by some to be the main factor keeping up school attendance rates. Pastoralists have lost their livelihoods and so have marginal farmers, industrial casual laborers, and coffee and tea plantation workers. The tourism sector, Kenya's mainstay industry representing a third of GDP is also in crisis.
