If the warnings are heeded and all resources optimally used, Kenya would not have to relive the harsh experiences of drought and famine.
BY ALEXANDER OPICHO
Last month, the conventional media was awash with photos of Kenyans in Turkana on the brinks of death due to lack of food and water. Mass starvation, droughts, famine, disastrous floods and environmental degradation are not new in Kenya and very many other countries in the East African region. Official statistics about famine in Kenya published by Oxfam (2018) shows that there was a famine in Kenya in 1984, in 1987, in 1994 and 2017. And then it happens again in 2019.
Predicted famine
Tellingly, The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (2019) predicted that below-average seasonal rainfall will cause an increase in food insecurity in early 2019. This organisation ascribed its prediction to recurring droughts in Kenya which had made it difficult for farmers and herders in pastoralist communities to produce enough crops. The droughts also made it difficult for the farmers to feed the livestock.
Underused infrastructure
The World Vision Famine warning report (2018) had warned that the recurring drought, conflict, and communal instability would possibly lead to severe food shortages. This does not mean that Kenya does not have institutional infrastructures that can predict and prevent mass starvation. The ministry of devolution has a department of special programs which is concerned with famine, droughts and disaster. This department has the full machinery to collect data to be used in monitoring and evaluating the signals that indicate the possibility of mass starvation among the communities living in the semi-arid areas of Kenya. The County Governments are also structured to fit the social and economic challenges of the pertinent regions. Thus, it looks so piffling to find out that both National government and respective County governments are not in any position to predict and forestall a looming drought, famine and mass starvation.
Kenya is blessed with very many modern and semi-modern Universities and Research institutions that are capable to research and come up with a working policy on dryland farming, pastoralist economy, as well as famine disaster prediction and response. The national government and devolved government in Kenya are also in position to out-source advisory services from seasoned semi-arid economies like Israel, India and Malaysia on how to manage the pastoralist economies and livelihoods within the semi-arid regions.
Counter-productive pastoralism in Kenya
In his book the Poor are Not Us, Anderson (2005) argues that the Kenyan model of pastoralism has no future. He points out that pastoralism economies as practiced among the Turkana, the Samburu and the Maasai is not value additive in a macro-economic sense. It only perpetrates land degradation, droughts, famine and accumulated drought. These are the same sentiments and observations that Anderson makes in his other book the Extinguishing Commons (2013) in which he predicts that the forest living communities of Baringo County will soon be eliminated away by the negative consequences of climate change that have led to reduction in the biodiversity in the natural forests, reduced rain, insects, honey, roots and herbs that used to support the forest dwelling communities like the Ongiek. Above all, Anderson points out that the pastoralist communities feed their children on the low protein content diets leading to poor academic performance among the children of the leading pastoralist communities like the Ongiek, Maasai and the Samburu.
Such academic observations must not be ignored, they need to be borrowed in developing policies that can be adopted in management of the pastoralist economies in Kenya. The logic here is that, there is no need of having our people stick on the economic culture that exposes them to recurrent cattle rustling related insecurity, degraded environments, droughts, instantaneous floods, famine and mass starvation. That is why Bishop Mahon of the Turkana Education centre commented that it is very difficult to run a modern education policy in a pastoralist economic set up like that of Turkana, where insecurity, famines and harsh environment blend to clash with the good intentions inherent in implementation process of the modern education policy.
What to do?
After making all the blames and fault-finding statements, one must go back to the Oxfam (2017) recommendations on how to deal with droughts and famine in Kenya. It observed that famines and other disasters must be dealt with through a proactive model that aims at prevention. But not through a reactionary model that relies on distributing of relief foods to over emaciated, half-starved and semi dead old women and children. I, personally, do buy the ideas inherent in the Oxfam model of disaster response. There is no humanitarian logic in rushing to give relief food in form of rice and maize to an old person that has already gone for days without eating and drinking clean water. This is equivalent to the government of the day perfecting violation of constitutional and fundamental human rights of its people through negligence of duty. And hence, the buck in this matter stops at the table of the powers that be.
Alexander Opicho is a freelance writer based in Lodwar, Kenya. Email-opichoalexander@gmail.com
