Majority of the current food security intervention efforts are focused on the arid and semi-arid counties and little or no support is being given to the poor in the urban slums.
Something must be done and needs to be done to resolve this. Increased political will, policy innovation and outright commitment are key to reversing the fatal downward spiral caused by food insecurity.
Food security is one of the most discussed topics in Kenya and Africa today. This is because agriculture supports the livelihoods of over 80 per cent of the continent’s population and provides employment for over 60 per cent of the economically active population – mostly the youth.
The topic is discussed as a broad subject and is often sparked by disasters such as drought in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel and how governments and other stakeholders should respond to such crises.
However these discussions are silent on how food security manifests in the urban areas, especially the informal settlements (or slums), and what this means for national security.
Let us begin by describing the state of food insecurity in a typical city context.
In Nairobi, about two million people (60 per cent of the city’s population) live in the slums. Most of these people rely on low-wage casual labour in city industries to survive. They buy food from informal markets to feed their families.
But when food crises hit (food scarcity leading to increased food prices), their ability to provide food for their families are overstretched and they resort to other means of survival different from those used in rural areas:
Currently, half of the country is facing a devastating drought situation and the Ministry of Health has estimated that 52,158 children under five years in Nairobi require treatment for acute malnutrition.
Majority of the current food security intervention efforts are focused on the arid and semi-arid counties and little or no support is being given to the poor in the urban slums.
Something must be done and needs to be done to resolve this. Increased political will, policy innovation and outright commitment are key to reversing the fatal downward spiral caused by food insecurity. There have been some positive steps, but much more needs to be done.
The Kenyan government has policies on social protection, food nutrition and security, agriculture sector development, disasters and emergencies management and the like.
Kenya has also signed up to progressive international treaties and protocols that aim to promote agricultural development and food security for its citizens.
But despite this rich legal and policy framework, most children in urban areas in Kenya still face acute malnutrition.
Kenya is also yet to fulfill key obligations of the crucial African Union agricultural law it signed up to (the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme) which requires member states to allocate at least 10 per cent of their budgetary allocations to agriculture: The country allocated about six per cent of this in 2016.
The current legal framework both at the national and county levels in Kenya does not link food insecurity in urban areas to disasters and emergencies, meaning there is no guide to responding to food insecurity emergencies in a timely manner.
This state of affairs calls for concerted efforts by various actors, especially national and county governments in urban areas to establish early warning indicators for predicting food insecurity crisis and accompany these with appropriate response mechanisms to avoid related negative consequences.
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