'Perfect storm' brewing among Kenya's urban poor

IRIN: The food crisis that is devastating lives and killing children throughout the Horn of Africa is not restricted to the arid lands where media attention and donor dollars are now focused. In informal urban settlements, malnutrition affects thousands of children but remains largely overlooked. Over the past five months, Concern Worldwide has recorded a 62 percent increase in cases of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) at clinics it supports in Nairobi slum areas.



"Since we are only reaching 33 percent of the slum population we know there are likely to be lots more people not getting help," said communications manager Elizabeth Wright. “Everything is sort of combining for a perfect storm,” Wright told IRIN. “We’re going to be seeing a full-scale nutritional emergency in the urban context. It will be too late.”



Peter Hailey from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) concurred: “The food crisis, the fuel crisis, and so on are probably affecting people in urban areas more than in the north.”



While the 2.3 percent global acute malnutrition (GAM) rate Concern found in many of Nairobi's slums falls well below the emergency threshold of 15 percent, more than 8,600 children under five are acutely malnourished in these areas. By contrast, because of its sparser population, northern Isiolo district's 15.7 percent GAM rate equates to fewer than 3,000 children under five who are acutely malnourished. “This is not as visible as cattle and goats dying,” said Amina Abdulla, programme manager for urban livelihoods and social protection at Concern. “But the crisis is as severe.” …



A view of Nairobi's Mathare Valley slum, a striking photo by Claudio Allia, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Lime improves Kenya's maize harvest

Isaiah Esipisu in IPS: As the world’s worst food security crisis continues across the Horn of Africa, including in Kenya, some smallholder farmers in the western part of the country are still feeding their families with last year’s abundant harvest. This is thanks to an agricultural programme focusing on reviving the fertility of the soil in the region.



According to David Mbakaya, a soil scientist at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), early findings from on going research established that the soil in Western Province was too acidic for maize production due to climatic factors and the overuse of nitrogenous fertilisers. "From field trials we have discovered that the average Potential of Hydrogen (pH) levels in soil within the region stands at 4.5 – meaning that such soil can hardly support growing maize," said Mbakaya.



Scientifically, the neutral pH level, where it is neither acidic nor alkaline, is seven. Anything below seven is acidic, and above that is alkaline. However, maize can withstand mild acidity ranging from 5.5 to 6.5. Research scientists at KARI – Kakamega branch, with funding from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, encouraged farmers to neutralise their soil using lime - a soil additive made from pulverised limestone or chalk. It is cheaply available in Kenya.



"I tried liming my land for two seasons, and the results are astounding," said Isaac Ochieng Okwanyi, a 29-year-old father of two who began farming after he was evicted from Nairobi’s Mathare slum in 2008 following the country’s post election violence….



Maize on a Mount Kenya farm, shot by CIAT, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Small seed packets, big policies tackle Horn of Africa drought

Alina Paul-Bossuet in AlertNet: The Horn of Africa is facing its worst drought in 60 years destroying crops, killing livestock and causing hunger and famine across parts of Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya and Uganda. Governments and humanitarian organizations are responding to the crisis, distributing food as well as agricultural inputs such as seeds.



Given that drought regularly strikes this region – and researchers say climate change will bring more extreme weather - we need to use the current emergency operations to support longer term agricultural recovery and development. In the coming weeks, we must involve the affected farmers and the existing local economy (such as the village shopkeepers, mostly agro-dealers selling seeds) wherever possible to find durable solutions to make communities more resilient when the next drought comes.



This concept is not new. Back in 2000, a UN task force on food security in the Horn of Africa highlighted the need for farmers to adopt drought-tolerant crop varieties. The challenge is to get these seeds to farmers and encourage them to grow these crops on a large scale.



Eunice Makenga is part of the answer. She runs a small shop in Kenya’s Nzaui district selling seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. She is one of only a few agro-dealers to sell drought-tolerant seeds of sorghum, pigeon pea, cowpea and beans which she buys as small ‘trial packs’ from Janey Leakey’s farm in Nakuru. Leakey’s seed business is the first in Kenya to specialise in these “neglected crops” and to supply them in small packs designed especially for the small holder farmer.



“I can afford to stock them because they are cheap,” Makenga says. “This is also a good way to get farmers to try these seeds. But there is not much demand. Farmers need more incentives to buy them,” she adds. The reality in the field is that the demand for and supply of such drought-resistant crops is poor in this region. Farmers grow some for their household consumption but mostly focus on growing marketable crops like maize that suffer in dry areas....



Cabbages growing on a farm in the Kibirichia area of Mount Kenya. Pictures from the Mount Kenya region for a project examining the impact of climate change on agriculture. Shot by CIAT, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license