A British minister on Tuesday called for a ”concerted effort” by the Kenyan government to tackle poverty as he pledged £3-million in aid to help feed starving people in the north of the country. The worst drought in 22 years has destroyed crops and withered pastures, turning swathes of the country into a landscape of yellow dust and threatening the livelihoods of 3,5-million subsistence farmers and herdsmen.
But the crisis is a consequence of misrule, not lack of rain. Kenya grows enough to feed all its people, and last year’s national harvest was above average. The north-east has been neglected by the government for decades and the cattle and camel-herding communities who live there are too poor to buy food in the marketplace when their herds are decimated by drought. Across the region there is a desperate shortage of decent roads, schools and health clinics.
Visiting the town of Wajir, Britain’s Development Secretary, Hilary Benn, urged Kenyan leaders to deal with ”the underlying causes of hunger in Kenya”.
”If poor people are to escape from poverty and hunger, they need a concerted effort by government to invest in these areas,” he said. ”They need investment in basic infrastructure, particularly roads, and they need investment in basic services such as health, water, education.”
Britain’s £3-million donation will pay for food transport, hiring water tankers and drilling boreholes. The minister also announced funding of £55-million over five years for education. ”Food aid can help poor people survive day to day, but it is not the right kind of assistance to help poor families to escape the poverty trap,” he said. ”Without significant investment in development, we will see a continuation of dependency on food aid.”
Food shortages have been predicted since the ”short rains” failed in October. But the Kenyan government was slow to respond until the crisis was picked up by newspapers and television over Christmas, prompting the public to raise money.
Since the election of President Mwai Kibaki three years ago, Kenyan ministers have been preoccupied with political infighting rather than practical steps such as improving the country’s potholed roads or building classrooms to ease overcrowded primary schools.
Oxfam said the government had failed to distribute food efficiently. In some places, sacks of food had simply been thrown off the back of trucks.
Hundreds of children in the Wajir area are not getting access to food distributions, according to a survey by aid agency Merlin, which also showed 27% of children in four districts were malnourished.
The UN’s World Food Programme is appealing for donations, fearing it will run out of food supplies by the end of next month if there are no new funds.
”What is a very limited window of opportunity to avert mass suffering in Kenya is closing very fast,” said spokesperson Peter Smerdon. – Guardian Unlimited Â