Millions wasted as Red Cross projects are abandoned

What was to be an irrigation project by Kenya Red Cross in Naikomet, Turkana North. CHEBOITE KIGEN | NATION

When drought and famine swept across Turkana in 2011, claiming dozens of lives, Kenyans and companies, in a way never seen before, responded to the calamity by donating almost Sh1 billion to a food emergency response initiative.

The initiative, “Kenyans for Kenya”, was run by the Kenya Red Cross, the charity’s most successful fundraising project since it was founded 54 years ago.

Other than supplying relief food and water, the Kenya Red Cross launched multi-million-shilling development projects aimed at transforming the desperately poor area by providing alternative forms of farming to locals, who are pastoralists.

The Kenya Red Cross pledged to help the community by supplying them with relief food, digging boreholes and establishing food projects. In essence, the project was to provide an alternative to the over-reliance on hunting for pasture and killing each for cows and goats.

But, after eight years, the Kenya Red Cross legacy in the north, where cattle raids still continue, is a sour one.

Read the full story here.