Makokha's Memo

Hunger’s in the slums and not the dry areas

Most of the 10 million Kenyans threatened with starvation are not where you thought they would be.

They are not in the drought-stricken rural areas. They are, instead, in the country’s urban centres, huddled in the informal settlements famously known as slums.

A new official report lays bare the reasons for Kenya’s hunger— and they go well beyond rain failure. Drought is only one of a growing number of causes of the hunger threatening nearly 10 million people in the country.

The Kenya Food Security Update — released early this week — says that the highest number of people who are likely to starve are low-income earners who live in urban informal settlements.

According to the February 2009 survey, 4.1 million people in Nairobi and Mombasa slums are threatened with starvation because of reduced earnings resulting from the loss of employment after the elections violence.

Matters have been made a lot worse by rising food prices. In the slums, 37 per cent – or nearly four in every 10 — of the households reported having only one meal a day.

And adults are required to be of good behaviour by restricting the food portions they consume. People are running into debt, moving elsewhere or selling whatever belongings they have to survive, according to the survey.

Ironically, this population is receiving the least help from the government, aid workers and Good Samaritans who are lining up to give donations everywhere.

“The unfortunate reality is that intervening organisations tend to respond to emergencies fairly quickly and have less enthusiasm for funding and implementing non-food interventions that are, at the minimum, mitigative in nature,” says the report.

It is jointly published by the government, the World Food Programme, the United States Agency for International Development and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

As the global economic crisis bites and its effects are felt at home, it is unlikely that the rains – in whatever quantity – will alleviate the suffering of the urban hungry. The army of manual workers, domestic and office support staff, security guards and idlers is hungry.

If they are not fed – and urgently, too — Kenya’s urban middle class can expect a spike in larceny and other petty crimes, all to their detriment.

Not to forget the public face of the famine, those affected by the extended drought season are only 2.5 million — and they have among their number some 850,000 school-age children.

Another 1.9 million people are faced with starvation because they are affected by HIV and Aids — either directly or have lost a breadwinner to the condition.