Deadly flash floods set to worsen poverty and hunger in Kenya

Raging floods, which have killed 26 people and forced almost 25,000 from their homes in Kenya this month, will exacerbate hunger and poverty among herders who have already lost livestock to the worst drought in five years, charities warned.

---

Flood waters have swept away almost 9,000 cattle in northern and coastal Kenya, areas dominated by pastoralists who were hard hit by drought last year and in 2017. Refugees in north-eastern Kenya’s Dadaab camp have been up to their knees in floodwaters which have swept away thousands of homes and food supplies, the United Nations refugee agency said on its website, with the rains set to continue until late May.

“Fewer animals means less income, less food and increased poverty. If you lose 50 percent of your sheep and goat flock it takes at least 3 years to recover. If 50 percent of the cattle are lost, it can take 10 years to recover,” Piers Simpkin, a livestock expert with the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The flooding came after some livestock herding communities lost their entire herds to a prolonged drought, which the Kenyan government declared a national disaster in February.

The United Nations estimated almost three million of Kenya’s 46 million people now need humanitarian aid, along with almost eight million people in Ethiopia and seven million in Somalia.

Source: Thomas Reuters Foundation. Read full article here.
23 May, 2017