Nearly 75 percent of the 500,000 people living around Lake Turkana, near Kenya's border with Sudan and Ethiopia, rely upon food aid.
NAIROBI (AlertNet) - The United States is spending $10 million in a five-year programme to try to combat dependency on food aid in Kenya’s arid north, officials announced on Friday.
Nearly 75 percent of the 500,000 people living around Lake Turkana, near Kenya’s border with Sudan and Ethiopia, rely upon food aid, according to U.S. figures.
The Turkana Food Security Programme, funded by the U.S. government’s African Development Foundation, will focus on irrigation, livestock and fisheries projects. These aim to make more food available locally, as well as producing goods for market.
“It is possible to grow vegetables, grow even grains, in Turkana. And the people are beginning to adapt to this new way of life,” said Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga at the programme launch.
In this remote region, few people are educated and jobs are scarce. They have traditionally relied on pastoralism but this way of life is under threat due to extreme weather conditions brought by climate change, population growth and governmental neglect.
“We live these days between two twin disasters: floods and drought,” Odinga said. “Last year, there were floods in Turkana. Now we have got drought ... visiting a lot of suffering upon our people.”
Conflicts over water, pasture and cattle have entrenched poverty. Nine out of 10 people in Turkana live on less than $2 a day. Malnutrition rates in Turkana have fallen below emergency thresholds twice in the last decade.
“The lack of economic opportunities is a direct cause of these conflicts,” U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger said at the launch.
Kenya is experiencing drought with 2.4 million people receiving food aid.
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