Kibaki declares famine National Disaster (Kenya)

President Mwai Kibaki on Friday declared the current food shortage facing the country a National Disaster and launched a campaign to raise over 37 billion shillings required to address the situation.

“Our national assessment is that 10 million people are food insecure and require emergency support. These people will not be able to meet their minimum food requirements between now and the end of August 2009 without emergency measures,” said the President.

…The President said the government in collaboration with the World Food Programme was feeding 1.4 people under the emergency operation programme while the government was also feeding another 1 million people through direct interventions.

“However, these ongoing programmes cannot absorb the sharp increase in numbers of needy people requiring relief food without additional resources,” he said.

…President Kibaki attributed the current food crisis to severe drought facing the country plus other non-drought factors particularly the post-election violence that heavily disrupted the season in the country’s breadbasket region of Rift valley as well as the global energy crisis.

He said that the country’s economy faced high inflation worsened by the effects of the post election events as well as by the international food crisis and the oil crisis.

“The global energy crisis resulted in our producers facing high fertilizer prices, which in turn led to lower levels of use. The global food crisis led to high commodity prices, which made imported grains very expensive,” he said.

Already the government has indicated that 10 million persons are highly food insecure and face starvation. The number includes a provisional estimate of 3.2 million drought-affected marginal farmers, agropastoralists, and pastoralists; about 150,000 IDPs; 850,000 school children; 3.5 million poor, urban dwellers, and about 2.2 million persons affected by HIV and AIDS, including orphans.

KBC