YVONNE’S TAKE: The drought cycle is here, but do we ever learn?

Tonight, I am revisiting an issue I have highlighted here on my take, not once, not twice. When I first spoke about the drought season right here on my take in 2019, the number of those facing hunger was one million; when I spoke about it again a year later, the number had doubled to two million, and now the number of those Kenyans who are food insecure is 4.35 million. If this were a company’s growth rate, it would be really good, doubling of numbers and growth year-on-year. Except it’s not. This is drought and these are people’s lives. Over 4 million Kenyans like you and I who are today food insecure, meaning they are not able to feed themselves and their families. In Kenya. Today. In 2022. Over 50 years since we got independence, we still struggle with this?

Kenya prides itself as a country of many firsts, as a bastion of the region. Oh, we have built big roads, and bridges, heck we even created M-Pesa and pioneered mobile money and financial inclusion around the world, but, we cannot feed our own people? We have remained in this never-ending cycle of inertia. We have declared drought, famine, hunger a national disaster not once, not twice. Yet the problem compounds every year, following the failure of every rain season.

With 5 consecutive failed rain seasons, our actions need to be more than just donating relief food, flagging off trucks of relief food, which we do with pomp and circumstance and smiles on our faces complete with a big wave of the national flag as if it were a great moment of pride for the nation. Our actions need to go beyond calling development partners and making appeals, extending the national begging bowl for a basic need that should be met within our borders, with our own resources. Somehow, we don’t seem to learn or successfully implement plans that will get us out of this mess. From our continued dependence on rain fed agriculture, to the livestock off take program that doesn’t seem to be as successful seeing as 2.5 million livestock have died over the last few seasons. To the dams that we have been promising to build, which have occasionally been ridden with scandal from one administration to the next, to the failed Galana Kulalu project among many other good ideas.

Folks, it is unacceptable that over 4 million of us are food insecure. This reflects poorly on us as a country, reflects poorly on our leadership, on all successive administrations we have ever had since independence, it reflects poorly on our values and our respect for human life. As you know, poverty and hunger are some of the most dehumanising things that one can ever experience in life.

As a country, we should concern ourselves with nothing else, until we sort out this issue, once and for all. What good is infrastructure, housing, new passports, digital car registration plates, and all those big shiny projects and initiatives, if we cannot eat? This is what should occupy our conversations in this country. It is what should keep our leaders awake at night. Until we fix this issue, we should all hang our heads in national shame. Out of all the promises made in their manifesto, if this administration does nothing else but to fix this issue, then they will have succeeded in my book. That’s my take!