We can stop food insecurity if we have the courage to set our priorities right

The grim annual hunger statistics have been posted once again. About 10 million Kenyans face food shortages at any given time. Currently, about two million people face chronic food scarcity. 

These are bare statistics: the grim reality behind them will soon hit us in the form of images of emaciated children, women, and men. 

Ironically, this sad commentary comes hot on the heels of an array of “positive” ratings on Kenya — best beaches in the world, most “intelligent” capital city in Africa, the best infrastructural growth rate in the region. We are even one of the cheapest countries to retire to, but we face worsening food security.

While we are doing well in some sectors, we are retrogressing in others.

Our development agenda is contradictory: recurrent hunger has been in the background of 15 years of pumping trillions of shillings in infrastructural expansion, yet strategies meant to ensure food security, such as the one million acre Galana-Kalalu irrigation programme, are handicapped by lack of funds.

Of what use is 5,000 kilometres of paved roads, nuclear energy, or standard gauge railway if some Kenyans have nothing to eat? What could be done to remedy this?

NO URGENCY

Our biggest hindrance to food security is lack of political will to fully implement policies. There is no urgency to ground the National Food Security and Nutrition Policy (NFSNP) and the Strategy for Revitalising Agriculture.

The NFSNP document states where intervention is needed most. Several things need re-emphasising: First, interventions should primarily stabilise incomes at the household and individual levels.

Livelihood shocks affect individuals, communities, and economies. Households with strong diversified assets and social networks are better placed to survive shocks. 

For greater impact, vulnerability strategies should be permanent, guaranteed, predictable, reliable, and scalable programmes that are rapidly adjustable to address the ever-changing food security needs.

Kenya’s problem is its inability to fully grasp the precariousness of livelihoods, which is the source of vulnerability to food insecurity.

Secondly, solving the food insecurity problem requires multi-faceted, multi-sectored, institutional, and policy support.

This could be directed at social protection systems such as food-for-work and cash transfers. However, such mitigating strategies are fine for people with disabilities or old people without stable incomes but are not helpful in improving real household incomes.

Strategies such as food aid should be a last resort, to be used only in cases of dire emergencies. 

Third, easy financial access is necessary to enable the development of local cottage industries dealing with food production.

Using local resources in value-addition requires institutional financial flexibility, especially to enable the establishing of agribusiness units and the use of information technology.

CONCRETE MEASURES

Fourth, setting up concrete measures on post-harvest management especially at household level. Production is often not the problem. Reports say pest and poor storage destroy about a third of the food produced in Kenya.

Fifth, farmers, especially small scale holders, should be trained in climate-smart farming. Conventional approaches have failed to improve food security and protect farmers from ever-rising ravages of climate change.

This implies investing in applied research to develop locally adapted varieties that are also drought-tolerant.

Sixth, eliminating regional barriers, especially the not-so-obvious non-tariff ones that restrict trade across borders. It is still difficult to buy food from surplus countries in the East African Community for reasons ranging from poor infrastructure to food cartels.

Seventh, empower women and the youth. We critically need young people to revitalise the agricultural enterprise. The sector desperately needs more labour as more parents exit through natural attrition.

Unfortunately, hunger, like many problems affecting the poor in Kenya, is politically irrelevant. Had it been important, no one would go hungry 50 years after independence. 

Lasting food security is about social justice and radically tackling the structural basis of poverty by transforming the social and political conditions that cause it.

Dr Mbataru teaches at Kenyatta University. ([email protected])