Kenya President William Ruto has appointed a National Steering Committee on Drought Response to lead a private sector effort to mitigate the drought situation in the country.
The Committee will be chaired by Safaricom Chief Executive Officer, Peter Ndegwa, and its members include; CEOs James Mwangi (Equity), Jane Karuku (EABL) and Diamond Trust Bank’s Nasim Devji.
It will establish an appeal fund under the auspices of the Red Cross and report to the Deputy President who is co-ordinating the Government response.
Other Members include; KCB head Paul Russo, Rebecca Mbithi of Family Bank, Joshua Chepkwony of Jamii Telecom and Shamaz Savani of the African Banking Corporation.
The President also appointed Red Cross Secretary General Dr Asha Mohammed, Patricia Mugambi of Impact Africa Philanthropy and Krishma Jitesh Chavda of the ISHA foundation to the steering committee.
Lt Colonel Hared Hassan of the National Disaster Management Authority is also a member while Murimi Murage from the Office of the Deputy President will be the secretary.
Alarming phase
The drought has affected 20 counties across the nation with eleven of those in the alarm phase and the remaining nine in the alert phase. The committee serves for a year.
In an October 5, 2022, joint statement, ASAL Humanitarian Network (AHN) said the ASAL region of Kenya has endured three severe droughts in the last decade (2010-2011, 2016-2017 and 2020-2022).
The current drought (2020 – 2022) has been the most severe and longest with widespread livelihood losses and massive displacement of populations.
Currently, more than 4.2 million people representing 24% of the ASAL population are facing high levels of acute food insecurity with about 2.7 million people in the Crisis phase and 785,000 people in the Emergency state.
This is a 10% increase from the same period in 2021 when 2.1 million people were categorized in emergency and crisis state.
The latest IPC report (July to September 2022) on the drought situation in Kenya indicates that; in the ten ASAL counties, where AHN members work, more than 40% of the population is facing high levels of food insecurity compared to 24% in all ASAL counties of Kenya and this figure is projected to increase to 47.5% in the period October to December 2022 and will continue to worsen over time.
The increasing intensity and the shorter cycles between droughts is amplifying the vulnerability of the communities and their ability to cope.
Due to the prolonged drought, farmers have been unable to get any substantive crop production for five consecutive seasons and pastoralist communities have lost their livestock.
More than 2.4 million livestock, which pastoralist families rely upon for nourishment and livelihood, have died in Kenya. For example, in Marsabit County, the communities have lost more than 121,000 sheep and goats, 35,000 camels and 38,000 cattle in the last few months.
The organisation called upon the national and county governments to release available funding to scale up the response, urge the Government of Kenya and the wider humanitarian community to scale up the response beyond December 2022 and appealed for a special focus on the needs of women and young girls who are disproportionately affected by the adverse effects of the drought and put at greater risk, for example, risk of sexual and gender-based violence and early marriage.
