Kenya’s livestock economy is big—as big as its drylands

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

ILRI scientist Andrew Mude leads a project introducing insurance to the pastoralist communities of Kenya’s remote northern Marsabit District, which is also where Mude is originally from (photo credit: ILRI).

Last night (24 Aug 2011), ABN’s South African correspondent Lerato Mbele interviewed Andrew Mude, leader of an Index-Based Livestock Insurance Project at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya.

Before Mude went to the studio in Nairobi to do this live television news interview, he sat down with ILRI staff to prepare what he wanted to say. Here’s a summary of what he had on his mind.

Kenya’s drylands are big; they make up 80 per cent of the Kenya’s total area, in which some 10 million people raise 70 per cent of the country’s livestock.

The value of the pastoral livestock sector, which includes meat, milk, and other products from these animals, is estimated to be worth US$800 million annually. And roughly 90 per cent of the meat consumed in East Africa comes from pastoral herds.

Research confirms that the pastoral livestock sector is not only productive and critical to Kenya’s food security, but also an optimal way to manage and maintain drylands and the livelihoods of those who live off them.

At a time when the government and donors are looking for long-term solutions to addressing food security, our research suggests that herding makes better economic sense than crop agriculture in many of these arid and semi-arid lands. Supporting semi-nomadic livestock herding communities with timely interventions before a crisis hits can help people cope the next time drought threatens.

Recommending that livestock herders switch to farming crops is simply unrealistic for most of the people inhabiting this region’s great drylands; building vast irrigation systems here is simply not feasible in both economic and ecological terms.

Droughts have always been part of life for people in drylands but these droughts are now coming more frequently and affecting many more people across rangelands that are becoming more and more fragmented. Farmers and livestock herders need options and support to cope with recurring drought, particularly in the face of other kinds of climate change. Luckily, options exist.

For example, my organization, ILRI, based here in Nairobi, is working with UAP Insurance, Equity Bank, and SwissRE to roll out an insurance program for several thousand livestock keepers in Marsabit District to protect them against drought.

Standard types of insurance are not feasible for remote livestock herders such as those in Marsabit, where throngs of officials would be needed to verify livestock deaths before insurance companies would make pay outs to the insured. So we came up with a model that makes use of satellite data showing the state of a region’s vegetation. When the satellite data show that the available forage drops below a given threshold, where one would expect most livestock to perish, all insurance policyholders are paid, whether or not their animals died. With tweaking to cater for various local conditions and lots of training to educate communities that have never before had insurance schemes available to them, these kinds of programs could be extended across the drylands of Africa.

Watch this 7-minute television news interview of ILRI’s Mude, who argues that pastoralism is a system that evolved to take advantage of arid and semi-arid lands, such as those suffering drought now in the Horn of Africa: CNBC Africa: Investing in pastoralism with Andrew Mude, 24 Aug 2011.

Kenya’s pastoral herders are being paid for conserving their wildlife-rich rangelands for livestock and wildlife alike in innovate new schemes

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Paul Karaimu

Maasai pastoral herders signing up to the Naboisho Conservancy in Mara area in 2010. Ecosystem conservation schemes are giving herders new sources of income (photo credit: ILRI/Bedelian).

Biodiversity conservation among pastoral communities is increasingly researched as an area that could hold the key to helping pastoralists deal with the challenges of climate change and land use policy changes by allowing them to diversify their incomes. In Kenya the use of payments for ecosystem services, mostly around the country’s reserves and parks—where people live close to wildlife—is providing a stable, reliable and predicable source of income to pastoralists with the double advantage of reducing poverty and protecting wildlife.

In many sites where payments for ecosystem services have be piloted successfully, local-level institutions have played a significant role in enabling communities to self-govern and are supported by flexible land-use and governance systems that respect the communal land ownership patterns that have traditionally existed in these areas.

Payments to livestock herders for the ecosystem services generated through their land uses are currently being made in lands adjacent to Kenya’s famous Masai Mara National Reserve, in the southwest of the country, and in the Kitengela wildlife dispersal area to the south of Nairobi National Park. In both areas, Maasai people have formed ‘eco-conservancies’ to protect their grazing areas for livestock and wildlife alike.

‘Findings from on-going research show that in 2009 in the Kitengela area, ecosystems payment schemes were providing a large amount of income that constituted 59 per cent of the total off-farm earnings among participating households, even though livestock keeping is still the largest and most important source of income for these pastoralists,’ said Philip Osano a student at McGill University who is affiliated to the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and is evaluating the effects of payments for ecosystems services on poverty reduction among pastoral communities in Kenyan rangelands.

‘Even though income from conservation payments is proving a valuable buffer against shocks such as tourism unpredictability and drought, creation of ‘eco-conservancies’ has displaced people and introduced new restrictions to grazing, natural resource collection and movement, increasing pressure on land in areas that border the eco-conservancies,’ says Claire Bedelian, a University College London researcher at ILRI who is accessing the impact of conservancy land leases on Maasai pastoralists in areas adjacent to the Masai Mara National Reserve

Scientists at ILRI, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, are investigating these hard trade offs to ensure that the benefits of such interventions are more equitable among members of the pastoral communities inhabiting these wildlife-rich areas.

Investments in pastoralism offer best hope for combating droughts in East Africa’s drylands–Study

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Camels walk from Somalia to Nairobi, Kenya (photo on Flickr by Matteo Angelino).

As hunger spreads among more than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa, a study by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) of the response to Kenya’s last devastating drought, in 2008–2009, finds that investments aimed at increasing the mobility of livestock herders—a way of life often viewed as ‘backward’ despite being one of the most economical and productive uses of Kenya’s drylands—could be key to averting future food crises in arid lands.

The report, An Assessment of the Response to the 2008–2009 Drought in Kenya, suggests that herding makes better economic sense than crop agriculture in many of the arid and semi-arid lands that constitute 80 per cent of the Horn of Africa, and supporting mobile livestock herding communities in advance and with timely interventions can help people cope the next time drought threatens.

The authors say that recommending that most livestock herders switch to farming crops or move to cities is simply unrealistic in this region’s great drylands, which will not support row crops without extensive irrigation, which is scarce and often impractical. An estimated 70 million people live in these drylands, and many of them are herders. In Kenya, the value of the pastoral livestock sector is estimated to be worth USD800 million. And the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in Eastern Africa, which takes a regional approach to combating drought in six countries of the Horn, estimates that over 90 per cent of the meat consumed in East Africa comes from pastoral herds.

Drylands in the Horn of Africa are too large to ignore,” says Jan de Leeuw, an ecologist at ILRI and a lead author of the drought report. “With only 20 per cent of Kenya’s land suitable for arable crop production, and with an expanding population, the country cannot continue ignoring these dry areas without hurting people’s food production and livelihoods. Some of the worst impacts of the drought can be avoided if the region’s dryland livestock systems are well regulated.”

The best way to prevent famine in arid lands is to ensure herder access to critical dry-season grazing and watering areas. All the herders interviewed in this research assessment reported that obstacles to the movement of their herds—caused by lack of roads, land conflicts and demographic pressures—constituted the largest problem they had in protecting their animals and livelihoods.

Thus, the ILRI study findings reinforce what others have found—that migratory herding is the most productive use of much of this land.

A second major problem was a dearth of functioning commercial livestock markets. Destocking—where herders sell off those animals they can no longer feed or water to the government—does not work where there are no dynamic livestock markets. Thus, during droughts, it is more helpful for local government agencies to organize the slaughter of excess cattle on site—paying herders for the fresh meat, and giving the meat to the local herding communities to consume—than it is to ship large amounts of hay or other fodder to drought-struck areas, or to try to transport cattle out of such areas.

The authors found that investments such as better roads, markets, information access, agricultural outreach and schemes that pay herders for wildlife conservation and other ecological services may cost money in the short run, but in the longer term will help stabilize dryland communities and prevent famines.

In general, the ILRI report found that the response to the 2008–2009 drought, while better than that for a major drought a decade earlier, was still too little, too late.

The report was funded by the European Union to help Kenya improve its drought management system. Since 1996, with support from the World Bank and the European Union, the country has been moving to improve drought management through a national arid lands management program. Still, the 2008–2009 drought was devastating; more than half of all livestock died in many districts. The loss of livestock assets in successive droughts has had the effect of steadily impoverishing many herders in Kenya and other countries of the Horn of Africa.

To harvest the economic and other potential of Kenya’s drylands, we need new approaches and effective models for managing risk and promoting sustainable development, especially in the face of climate change and increasing droughts in many areas, said de Leeuw. Investments in pastoral livestock systems and markets, and in transportation, communication and energy infrastructure, is vital, he said.

The best way to tap into the potential of the drylands is to invest in systems that support pastoral livelihoods, rather than ignoring them and hoping they go away,’ said de Leeuw. ‘While such investments are risky, these areas support most of the animal protein consumed by the residents of the Horn countries.’

Unfortunately, however, drylands and the pastoral livelihoods they support have long borne the brunt of underdevelopment, underinvestment and ineffective government policies that have tended to encourage mobile herders to transit into more settled ways of life. Many dryland regions lack the infrastructure and services that would help people cope with the hazards of climate change, variable rainfall and droughts. These and other factors are partly responsible for the Horn’s recurrent hunger crises.

Furthermore, high population growth is putting pressure on agricultural farmland and urban centers in the Horn of Africa. More people (including non-pastoralists) are settling the drylands, as they are the frontier for agricultural expansion, said Polly Ericksen, another co-author of the ILRI paper. ‘The resulting sub-division and development of communal lands raises concerns about the management of Africa’s drylands, highlighting the need for national policies on how such lands are used.’

One successful national program, for example, helps provide income to pastoralists, while at the same time preserving the ecosystems. Kenyans herders who live near the country’s protected wildlife areas are receiving payments for managing their ecosystems, and these payments are providing a stable, reliable and predictable source of income that both reduces poverty and protects wildlife.

Such ecosystem protection efforts are going on in the Masai Mara region of southern Kenya and in the Kitengela rangelands near Nairobi, where Maasai people have formed ‘eco-conservancies’ to protect their grazing areas for livestock and wildlife alike.

Read more about the ILRI drought assessment on the ILRI News Blog: Best ways to manage responses to recurring drought in East Africa’s drylands, 7 Aug 2011.

Ongoing drought in Horn may trigger first-ever insurance payments to remote African livestock herders

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

ILRI researcher holds discussions with local pastoral herders in Marsabit, in Kenya’s northern drylands, for ILRI’s Index-based Livestock Insurance project (photo credit: ILRI/Mude).

SciDevNet reports that, due to the great drought engulfing the Horn of Africa, an ‘index-based’ livestock insurance scheme for herders in Kenya’s remote Marsabit District may make payments to those who had earlier purchased the insurance. This is the first time insurance has ever been offered Kenya’s remote livestock herders, and these would be the first payments for those who have insured their stock.

What is ‘index-based’ livestock insurance?
Index-based livestock insurance makes the risk-management benefits of insurance available to poor and remote clients. The product being piloted in Marsabit District by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and other partners, including the private sector, aims to provide compensation to insured pastoralists in the event of livestock losses due to severe forage scarcity. Incorporating remotely-sensed vegetation data in its design, delivered via mobile ICT-based transactions platforms, and with experimental extension methods used to educate the remote pastoral herders, this insurance product boasts many firsts in product development. Payments are triggered when severe drought makes forage scarce over a long period and when it can be predicted from that that more than 15 per cent of livestock in the area will have died of starvation.

SciDevNet reports the following.
‘Insurers will assess in October whether Kenyan farmers signed up to the Index-Based Livestock Insurance scheme will receive their first payment, after the worst drought in the region for 60 years.

‘The scheme, which has been piloted in northern Kenya since early 2010, uses freely-available satellite data to assess the state of pastures. When the images show that pastures have dried up, farmers can claim compensation for animals that have died as a result—without insurers having to verify the deaths in person.

‘In Kenya about 2,500 farmers have purchased the product since its inception, paying a yearly premium of up to US$100 for 6–8 animals. . . .

‘”So far, the predicted mortality [rate is] high—but we have to wait for the final tally at the end of October in order to determine whether or not there will be a payout,” said Brenda Wandera, project development manager at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Kenya, which implemented the scheme.

‘The scheme will be extended to southern Ethiopia in February 2012 to help mitigate the effects of drought. It will initially target 2,700 pastoralists.

The aim is to find a viable insurance tool that could cushion pastoralists from heavy losses experienced during droughts, according to Wandera.’

‘ILRI will partner with the Nyala Insurance s.c. company in Ethiopia, with support from the International Food Policy Research Institute, the US international development agency USAID and the World Bank. . . .’

The technical partners in this project
Cornell University
Index Insurance Innovation Initiative
Syracuse University (Maxwell School)
University of Wisconsin (BASIS Research Program)

The implementing partners
Equity Insurance Agency
UAP Insurance Limited
Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Kenya
Kenya Meteorological Department
Kenya Ministry of Development of Northen Kenya and other Arid Lands
Kenya Ministry of Livestock

The donor agencies
UK Department for International Development (DFID)
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
World Bank

Read the whole article at SciDevNet: Kenyan farmers may soon receive first drought payout, 15 Aug 2011.

For more information, visit the blog of ILRI’s Index-Based Livestock Insurance project.

What happens to pastoral children when the last goat dies: Ann’s story

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

ILRI-duckrabbit photofilm on the impacts of a 2009 drought in Kenya on Maasai children in the Kitengela rangelands, outside Nairobi (website image credit: duckrabbit).

What’s it like for a pastoral family in Africa to lose all their animals? What will the livestock peoples of the Horn do in the aftermath of this year’s devastating drought, which is sending so many into poverty?

We can get a glimpse from this 2-minute photofilm/photo-testimony of Ann Aiyaki, an adolescent Maasai schoolgirl whose family fled to Kitengela in 2009, and whose life changed when the rains failed and the animals died.

http://duckrabbit.info/2010/10/anns-story/

Similar to so many tens of thousands of Somali herding families on the march today in search of food and refuge from the ongoing drought in the Horn of Africa, many of Kenya’s pastoralists in a great, previous, drought of 2009 were forced to move. We met Ann Aiyaki and her family in the Kitengela Maasai rangelands just outside of Nairobi. This is her story of how the drought affected her life.

We used to keep livestock. Our lives were very different then.’—Ann Aiyaki

Credits
This photofilm was produced during a week-long photofilm training course led by duckrabbit’s Benjamin Chesterton and David White at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya. The audio and production was led by ILRI staff Muthoni Njiru, Julius Nyangaga and Tezira Lore. The photos are by ILRI’s Muthoni Njiru, Julius Nyangaga and Tezira Lore and duckrabbit photographer David White. With special thanks to David Chesterton for his passion and talent in helping ILRI conceptualize, make and finalize this film, and to David White for his extraordinary photographic generosity. We thank both for their uncommon ability to give others confidence in using their talents to make a bigger difference.

About duckrabbit
Duckrabbit is an award-winning digital production company that in documentary audio, still photography and video to make compelling film and audio narratives for commercial, charity and broadcast clients. They also train photographers, videographers, journalists and communications professionals in audio-visual storytelling and online strategic communications.

duckrabbit website

duckrabbit blog

American researchers publish timely book on East African pastoralism: ‘Build on–don’t replace–the region’s livestock economies’

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Peter Little, co-author of the timely new publication, Risk and Social Change in an African Rural Economy: Livelihoods in Pastoralist Communities, and leader of a recent review of ILRI’s pastoral research (photo credit: Emory University).

Risk and Social Change in an African Rural Economy: Livelihoods in Pastoralist Communities is a new book published by research partners John McPeak and Peter Little, of a Livestock-Climate Change initiative of the Collaborative Research Support Program (Livestock-CC-CRSP).

The book summarizes the results of a multi-year interdisciplinary research project in pastoral areas of Kenya and Ethiopia. The authors describe the ecology and social context in which pastoralism takes place, with a particular focus on the risks that confront people living in these drylands, and how these risks are often triggered by highly variable rainfall conditions, a symptom of climate change.

The authors go on to describe the livelihood strategies employed by pastoralists in these areas, with a focus on how well-being is tied to access to livestock and the cash economy. They conclude that the future development activities need to be built on the foundation of the livestock economy, instead of seeking to replace it.

Those wanting expert advice on how to help pastoralists suffering from a great drought afflicting the Horn of Africa today either to rebuild their shattered lives when the next rains come or to help them prevent such a catastrophe from occurring again in this region will profit from reading this book, which concludes with how development activities ‘are assessed by people in the area and what activities they prioritize for the future.’

John McPeak is an associate professor and vice-chair in the Department of Public Administration in the Maxwell School of Syracuse University; he is a member of a Livestock-CC-CRSP project in Mali and leads another project in Senegal. Peter Little is professor of anthropology and director of a Program in Development Studies at Emory University and leads a Livestock-CC-CRSP project in Ethiopia and Kenya. This project is known as CHAINS, which stands for ‘Climate variability, pastoralism, and commodity chains in Ethiopia and Kenya.’ The CRSP initiatives are funded by the United States Agency for International Development.

Co-author Peter Little headed a recent review of pastoral research at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, Kenya, and Addis ababa, Ethiopia, two countries whose dryland pastoralists are suffering from the current drought in the Horn of Africa. Little concurs with many others when he says that, ‘The famine in Somalia is an unfortunate intersection of failed rain, politics and conflict.’

The following is a description of the book from Routledge.

‘Pastoralists’ role in contemporary Africa typically goes underappreciated and misunderstood by development agencies, external observers, and policymakers.

Yet arid and semi-arid lands, which are used predominantly for extensive livestock grazing, comprise nearly half of the continent’s land mass, while a substantial proportion of national economies are based on pastoralist activities.

‘Pastoralists use these drylands to generate income for themselves through the use of livestock and for the coffers of national trade and revenue agencies. They are frequently among the continent’s most contested and lawless regions, providing sanctuary to armed rebel groups and exposing residents to widespread insecurity and destructive violence.

The continent’s millions of pastoralists thus inhabit some of Africa’s harshest and most remote, but also most ecologically, economically, and politically important regions.

‘This study summarizes the findings of a multi-year interdisciplinary research project in pastoral areas of Kenya and Ethiopia. The cultures and ecology of these areas are described, with a particular focus on the myriad risks that confront people living in these drylands, and how these risks are often triggered by highly variable rainfall conditions. The authors examine the markets used by residents of these areas to sell livestock and livestock products and purchase consumer goods before turning to an analysis of evolving livelihood strategies. Furthermore, they focus on how well-being is conditioned upon access to livestock and access to the cash economy, gender patterns within households and the history of development activities in the area. The book concludes with a report on how these activities are assessed by people in the area and what activities they prioritize for the future.

‘Policy in pastoral areas is often formulated on the basis of assumptions and stereotypes, without adequate empirical foundations. This book provides evidence on livelihood strategies being followed in pastoral areas, and investigates patterns in decision making and well being. It indicates the importance of livestock to the livelihoods of people in these areas, and identifies the critical and widespread importance of access to the cash economy, concluding that future development activities need to be built on the foundation of the livestock economy, instead of seeking to replace it.’

Get the book—Risk and Social Change in an African Rural Economy: Livelihoods in Pastoralist Communities, by John G McPeak, Peter D Little, Cheryl R Doss, published 28 Jul 2011, by Routledge, 206 pages—from Routledge online.

The productivity of ‘nomadic farming’ over the long term

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Bao game, on loan from Gary K. Clarke, Cowabunga Safaris (photo on Flickr by Topeka and Shawnee Country Public Library).

Jan de Leeuw, a Dutch ecologist who leads research on pastoral and agro-pastoral production systems at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, likens investments in livestock herding systems to investments in the stock market.

‘Both have their ups and downs,’ he says, ‘but in spite of the current crisis many pastoralists are facing in the Horn of Africa, most of those who invest in livestock herding here as elsewhere make a good profit over the longer term.’

‘The ongoing drought and hunger and famine crisis in the Horn is a terrible “depression,” de Leeuw says, ‘but some of the worst impacts of the drought could have been avoided if the region’s dryland livestock systems had been well regulated, just as the recent financial meltdown of some rich countries could have been avoided if the stock market and sub-prime mortgage investments had been better regulated.’

This idea that pastoral livestock herding actually works well much of the time, and that that is one reason why pastoralists continue to engage in it, is echoed in an article by Curtis Abraham published in the Nairobi Star earlier this year, who reminds us that although a current drought has devastated pastoralists in Kenya’s arid Northeastern Province, ‘other herders in Kenya are fighting back by adopting new ways of dealing with issues of water management, herding strategies, livestock health, conflict resolution/ security issues and land fragmentation—due to land purchases by foreign countries and companies.

‘Additionally, new markets are opening up, helping to improve livelihoods and generate substantial new wealth for local and national economies. New technologies such as mobile phones as well as improvements in roads are opening up pastoral areas to greater movements of people, goods, and ideas.

In Kenya, mobile pastoral farming accounts for 50 per cent of the country’s annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP). According to an IUCN study “Economic Importance of Goods and Services Derived from Dryland Ecosystems in the IGAD Region”, the estimated Potential Value of Livestock in Kenya amounts to $2.5 billion (Sh212.5 billion) annually, while natural products that might be derived from dry-land ecosystems is $3.6 billion (Sh306 billion)—a total of $6.1 billion (Sh518.5 billion).

Yet pastoralism has been criticised as a backward mode of production that ties its workers to poverty as well as leading to desertification and the decline of wild animal species. But the plight of pastoralists usually stems from ineffective government policies that have tried (or are trying) to change effective and viable production systems into something inferior such as ranching or settled agriculture.

‘Recent studies have shown that nomadic farming is 20% more productive than ranching in terms of annual calf and milk production. This has been widely documented in scientific literature. In 1995, for example, Ian Scoones, of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK, published Living with Uncertainty where he demonstrated that pastoralism is not only viable, but is by far the best option for drylands, and that African livestock systems can produce more energy, protein and cash per hectare than Australian and US ranches.

‘“The trouble has always been that administrators and service providers don’t like mobility, and in many cases neither do neighbouring communities,” says Dr Jonathan Davies, regional drylands co-ordinator for Eastern and Southern Africa at the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Nairobi, Kenya. “So everything possible has been tried to settle pastoralists. This restricts the opportunistic strategy of pastoralism and undermines its viability, leading to the images that sometimes appear on TV.”

What the colonial and post-independence African governments failed to understand was that pastoralist communities have from time immemorial depended on their natural surroundings for survival and, precisely for that reason; they have devised ways of sustaining their environment in the long run. . . .

Read the whole article at the Nairobi Star: Pastoralists innovate in the face of adversity, 19 May 2011.

Best ways to manage responses to recurring drought in Kenya’s drylands

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

The carcass of a cow that died of starvation in the Kitengela rangelands, near Nairobi National Park, in the great drought of 2009 (photo on Flickr by Jeff Haskins).

Those working to mitigate the impacts of the current drought in the Horn of Africa and to help prevent severe hunger and starvation from occurring here in future will profit from a close reading of a 2010 report by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). This report—An Assessment of the Response to the 2008–2009 Drought in Kenya: A Report commissioned by the European Delegation to the Republic of Kenya—reviews the effectiveness of livestock-based drought response interventions during Kenya’s devastating 2008–2009 drought and suggests ways to improve the current drought management system and to incorporate climate change adaptation strategies into the country’s drought management policies.

Major findings of the report

The overriding importance of mobility
Without a single exception, all pastoralist groups interviewed consider mobility and access to natural resources as the most potent mechanism for coping with drought. Ironically, this is also the activity that is increasingly the most impeded. Interventions that facilitate and/or maintain critical migratory movement and/or allow access to unused grazing areas will continue to serve as the most powerful way to mitigate livestock losses during a drought. Often the funds required to achieve this are minimal compared to other interventions and as such it is also the most cost-effective intervention. Interventions targeting the removal of restrictions to mobility and access should be considered as prime activities during preparedness.

The importance of functioning livestock markets
Participants of a one-day workshop on commercial destocking in Marsabit District said that a successful commercial de-stocking intervention is next to impossible if the district does not already have a functioning, fully fledged, dynamic livestock trade as an ongoing activity during ‘normal’ times. ‘Emergency’ commercial de-stocking, they said, should in that case not be necessary because the commercial sector, if functioning, should be capable to up-scale its activity if and when there appeared a drought-related market surplus of stock.

Drought responses are falling behind
Although the drought responses presented here appear to be more effective and timely than responses to earlier droughts, these recent responses are not keeping up with an ongoing decline in many pastoral households in livestock assets and coping capacities. Furthermore, poor governance, lack of political will and mismanagement of funds plague efforts to move from relief responses to longer term development interventions. And conflicts over land, closely linked to a rapid population growth in Kenya, remain largely unresolved, with indications that these conflicts are only increasing and severely restricting pastoral mobility.

Lack of involvement of local communities
Local communities were not involved in the design and implementation of most interventions to help them cope with the drought. The single community to be consulted was in Laikipia, and that consultation was restricted to just one topic: livestock off-take. A Kajiado Naserian community that wanted support with finding alternative livelihoods so that it could stop relying on relief food actually found a goat distribution project that involved the community to be more successful than any relief interventions. Another community, in Isiolo’s Merti location, prefers a viable livestock market to any government-funded livestock off-take program and sees investments in pasture management as one way to solve the feed problems during drought.

Lessons learned
The good news
Increased semi-permanent presence of key non-governmental organizations in critical areas that are able to encompass a realistic drought management cycle approach has substantially improved information and speed of response. This, in combination with improved collaboration between agencies, together with improved coordination has at face value improved both the quality and timeliness of responses to droughts. The continued implementation of a basket of suitable preparedness activities remains the most cost-effective approach to reduce the impact of shocks. Activities such as those implemented by a regional ‘Drought Preparedness’ program of the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) and a project on ‘Enhanced Livelihoods in the Mandera Triangle’ funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are beginning to show a marked impact.

The bad news
But this good news is largely negated by other factors, such as reduced line ministry capacity, administrative/institutional changes such as the relentless creation of new districts, and conflicts. In some arid districts and in overall humanitarian terms, drought emergencies are no longer caused solely by prolonged periods of rainfall deficit; rather, such emergencies are increasingly provoked by many factors acting in concert, with the most important contributing factor being reduced access to high-potential grazing lands. This situation is itself caused, and heavily exacerbated, by a relentlessly increasing demographic pressure that is creating whole populations with scarce access to any animal resources at all. These dryland communities are left highly vulnerable to shocks.

Other major findings

• The problems underlying dryland livestock-based livelihoods cannot be solved by relief interventions alone; their solutions require long-term research and development strategies and programs that build on and strengthen rather than undermine local institution, livelihood strategies and coping strategies.

• Population growth and the continued and unplanned creation of settlements without access to permanent water continue to put a huge burden on humanitarian sources during a drought.

• Communities found corruption and mismanagement to be bigger problems than ineffective interventions.

• A Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards (LEGS, 2009) handbook, summarizing livestock-specific interventions, is an excellent toolkit supporting relief practitioners, but much remains to be improved regarding the appropriate timing of such interventions.

• The lack of a coordinated approach in, and access to, reliable livestock statistics, both numerical and distribution wise, remains a huge constraint in the overall management of Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands.

• To prevent delays in the release of emergency funds, drought contingency plans should be regularly updated and contain agreed-upon quantitative triggers for the release of funds to implement interventions and creation of a sufficiently endowed national drought contingency fund deserves the highest priority.

About the report
In late 2009, at the conclusion of Kenya’s 2008–2009 drought, the European Union delegation funded this review of responses to the drought to help Kenya improve its drought management system by recommending more appropriate, effective and timely livestock-based interventions. The report begins by characterizing the severity of the two-year drought and assessing how well its impacts were forecasted. It then reviews 474 livestock-based interventions carried out during the 2008–2009 drought in six arid and semi-arid districts in Kenya. It recommends which livestock-related interventions to implement during drought (including specific advice on commercial destocking) and provides a checklist of advised livestock-based interventions for different scenarios. It offers guidelines for effective monitoring and evaluation. And it identifies where the drought response intervention cycle is hampered by policy constraints and how these might be addressed.

About drought in Kenya
Drought is the prime recurrent natural disaster in Kenya. It affects 10 million, mostly livestock-dependent, people in the country’s arid and semi-arid lands; remarkably, these non-arable lands cover more than 80 per cent of the country’s land mass. While reducing the country’s economic performance, recurring droughts particularly erode the assets of the poor, who herd cattle, camels, sheep, goats over the more marginal drylands. This regular erosion of animal assets is undermining the livelihoods of Kenya’s pastoral herding communities, provoking many households into a downward spiral of chronic hunger and severe poverty.

About Kenya’s drought management system
Since 1996, the Office of the President in Kenya, supported by the World Bank, has been implementing an Arid Lands Resource Management Project (ALRMP) in the country’s drought-prone and marginalized communities. The ALRMP, further supported by the European Union, funded a Drought Management Initiative and consolidated a national drought management system with structures at the national (Kenya Food Security Meeting, Kenya Food Security Steering Group), district (District Steering Group) and community levels. This drought management system includes policies and strategies, an early warning system, a funded contingency plan and an overall drought coordination and response structure. The main stakeholders involved, in addition to the Government of Kenya and its line ministries, are various development partners and non-governmental organizations. The most far-reaching changes to Kenya’s drought management system since its inception are now under way and include major institutional changes through the creation of a Drought Management Authority and a National Drought Contingency Fund.

About the drought of 2008–2009
The results of this study confirm that the 2008–2009 drought was extreme not only in meteorological and rangeland production terms, but also in terms of its devastating impacts on livestock resources. It is estimated that some 57 per cent of cattle and 65 per cent of sheep, for example, perished in Samburu Central District in 2009; in Laikipia North District, it is reported that 64 per cent of the cattle and 62 per cent of the sheep died over the 2008–2009 period. (Note that these estimates, being mostly subjective, give more of an impression than a reliable estimate of the impacts of the drought on Kenya’s livestock populations.)

What’s in this report?
Chapter 3 provides a general characterization of Kenya’s 2008/2009 drought. Chapter 4, assesses the drought responses in six arid and semi-arid districts of Kenya (Kajiado, Isiolo, Samburu, Laikipia, Turkana and Marsabit), incorporating feedback from a variety of stakeholders at district and national levels. Chapter 5 provides a checklist for drought-response scenarios; Chapter 6, guidelines for monitoring and evaluating responses to drought; and Chapter 7, a plan for commercial destocking in one of these districts. Chapter 8 summarizes climate change forecasts for Kenya and assesses the need for incorporating climate change adaptation policies into the country’s drought management strategies. Chapter 9 discusses the implications of the findings and makes recommendations. Chapter 10 distils lessons learned. This report is similar to an evaluation of responses to the 2000/2001 drought in Kenya (by Y Aklilu and M Wekesa) and reviews to what extent their recommendations were effectively implemented.

The report’s findings in a nutshell
The number of livestock interventions made increased dramatically between the 2000/2001 and 2008/2009 droughts. The total expenditure was also greater in 2008/2009 (USD4.6 million for 6 districts) than in 2000/20001 (USD4 million in 10 districts). ALRMP and the Kenya Government were the main funders of the efforts. Unfortunately, most livestock-related interventions began very late, in early to mid 2009, well past the optimal timing closer to the onset of the drought, in mid-2008. The ALRMP interventions started earliest, reportedly because it was the only organization with funds readily available through its Drought Contingency mode, when the drought became apparent to all. A total of more than 1.5 million people benefited directly from the interventions made in 2008/2009. The cost per individual reached was Kshs3,362, ranging from Kshs163 for water trucking to Kshs8,652 for emergency destocking. An estimated 15,873 tropical livestock units were purchased as part of emergency off-take. Over 5.7 million animals were reached by health interventions between July 2008 and December 2009. Over 1.5 million people were reached by interventions, 413,802 with traditional livestock interventions (destocking, animal health and feeds).

Practical lessons learned

Lesson 1
The most effective interventions were those that facilitated access to under-utilized grazing and watering resources. Those districts in Kenya with little new access to these natural resources are the most vulnerable.

Lesson 2
So-called ‘commercial de-stocking’ remains the least cost-effective drought intervention in Kenya. Long distances to markets, poor timing of interventions and lack of economies of scale all play important roles in making this kind of de-stocking unviable. But more than anything else, lack of an existing dynamic marketing system virtually precludes a commercial de-stocking operation from being cost-effective.

Lesson 3
‘Livestock-fodder-aid’ comes a close second in terms of poor cost-effectiveness. Shipping substantial quantities of bulky commodities such as hay to remote locations is extremely costly and moreover has had little if any measurable impact.

Lesson 4
Slaughter off-take, preferably carried out on the spot, with the meat distributed rapidly to needy families, is a popular intervention with beneficiaries and can provide substantial benefits. Those that sell a live animal often benefit also from the distribution of its meat. And the availability of this high-protein food can benefit household nutrition while allowing the selling households to maintain a little purchasing power a little longer.

More specific findings

• The number of livestock-related interventions and the funding associated with these both increased considerably over the interventions carried out during the last drought in Kenya, in 2000/2001.

• Once established, risk management systems tend to become static, but effective risk-management systems need to be adaptive and to build in mechanisms for people to ‘learn’.

• Few interventions were made by mid-2008, when the drought was already apparent. Early interventions are preferable as they are more effective. Yet 63 per cent of all interventions, and all destocking programs, were conducted after June 2009, when the drought was at its peak.

• Centrally managed interventions from Nairobi, such as the provision of fodder and the Ministry of Livestock Development-funded market off-take through the Kenya Meat Commission, had little impact and would have been many times more effective if funds had been made available through Drought Management Structures. (Considerable harm was done when publicized sales of stock never materialized, with large numbers of the animals herded to specified collection points suffering horribly and dying for lack of water and fodder.)

• Unmanaged resource-related conflicts among ethnic groups were reported to be a major constraint to an equitable use of the diminishing natural resource base.

• Bringing in water with tankers, maintaining and developing boreholes and destocking by slaughter in the affected areas were generally considered to be the most effective interventions. Most ‘other water’ and animal feeding interventions were considered ineffective.

• Being more effective is not simply a question of spending more money; significant gains can be made by improving the way current resources are spent. (Across all types of interventions, no significant relationship was found between the effectiveness of a given intervention and its cost per individual reached.)

• The problems of many unsuccessful interventions, such as animal feed and health, were due largely to inefficiency of implementation and/or poor timing.

• A third more animals were moved in 2008/2009 than in 2000/2001. As disease killed many of the animals that migrated, animal health interventions should be included in future migration strategies.

• Hay provisioning, which when well done might be an appropriate intervention, was generally too late and too little to have any significant impact on supporting animal herds through the drought.

• Apart from Turkana and Samburu districts, no information on livestock marketing was disseminated or off-take exercises publicized, resulting in late off-takes and a greater expenditure of resources for off-take during the emergency stage than during the alert/alarm stage.

• Bulletins put out by EWS (Early Warning Systems) provide overly generalized information, with no specific livestock focus, making the information inappropriate for livestock interventions. The information also often appears late, is too generic for district-specific interventions, and defines no thresholds for the release of contingency funds.

• A lack of publicly available near-real-time and historic rainfall data hampered the real time analysis of rainfall anomalies. From a timeliness perspective, rainfall data is the most appropriate source of information for early warning, as it allows the longest response time to scale up relief operations. A number of organizational issues in the hands of government could improve this situation.

• Analysis of monthly vegetation greenness anomalies does not appropriately reveal rangeland drought conditions relevant for livestock, as livestock manages to cope with shorter periods of reduced forage availability. A twelve-month running average of NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) detected historic droughts much more precisely, indicating the usefulness of running average techniques for rangeland early warning purposes.

• Satellite imagery allows near real time to screen opportunities for migration and identify for remedial conflict resolution in areas of high insecurity.

• The reporting on livestock body condition, milk production and productivity proved to be inconsistent across districts, frequently incomplete and with units of measurement unspecified, indicating the need to harmonize the collection of livestock statistics.

Read ILRI’s whole report: An assessment of the response to the 2008–2009 drought in Kenya: A report to the European Union Delegation to the Republic of Kenya, 2010, by Lammert Zwaagstra, Zahra Sharif, Ayago Wambile, Jan de Leeuw, Mohamed Said, Nancy Johnson, Jemimah Njuki, Polly Ericksen and Mario Herrero.

* * *

Read an earlier ILRI News blog on this report: Livestock-based research recommendations for better managing drought in Kenya, 18 Jul 2011.

Three other recent ILRI research reports, published since that above, also assess the effectiveness of past drought interventions in Kenya’s northern drylands and offer tools for better management of the region’s drought cycles.

(1) ILRI research charts ways to better livestock-related drought interventions in Kenya’s drylands. ILRI Policy Brief (this is a distillation of recommendations in the report above), Jul 2011, by Jan de Leeuw, Polly Ericksen, Jane Gitau, Lammert Zwaagstra and Susan MacMillan

(2) The impacts of the Arid Lands Resource Management Project (ALRMPII) on livelihoods and vulnerability in the arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya. ILRI Research Report 25, 2011, edited by Nancy Johnson and Ayago Wambile.

This study assesses the impacts of the Arid Lands Resource Management Project (ALRMPII), a community-based drought management initiative implemented in 28 arid and semi-arid districts in Kenya from 2003 to 2010 to improve the effectiveness of emergency drought response while at the same time reducing vulnerability, empowering local communities, and raising the profile of ASALs in national policies and institutions.

(3) Livestock drought management tool. Final report for a project submitted by ILRI to the FAO Sub-Regional Emergency and Rehabilitation Officer for East and Central Africa, 10 Dec 2010, by Polly Ericksen, Jan de Leeuw and Carlos Quiros.

In August 2010, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) sub-Regional Emergency Office for Eastern and Central Africa contracted ILRI to develop a prototype livestock drought management decision support tool for use by a range of emergency and relief planners and practitioners throughout the region. The tool, which is still conceptual rather than operational, links the concepts of ‘drought cycle management’ with best practice in livestock-related interventions throughout all phases of a drought, from normal through the alert and emergency stages to recovery. The tool uses data to indicate the severity of the drought (hazard) and the ability of livestock to survive the drought (sensitivity). The hazard data has currently been parameterized for Kenya, but can be used in any countries of East and Central Africa. The tool still lacks good-quality data for sensitivity and requires pilot testing in a few local areas before it can be rolled out.

Predicted impacts of climate change on Kenya: Definitely hotter–expect less productive cropping, more livestock herding

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Why climate change matters in Kenya: This figure shows the close relationship between drought events and GDP growth in Kenya over two decades (figure by IFPRI 2006).

As a prolonged drought bites harder in northern Kenya and other regions of the Horn of Africa, it may be useful to review a report on a ‘Kenya Smallholder Climate Change Adaptation’ project, published in October 2010, which gives an overview of Kenya’s climate variability and change and the impacts of both on the country’s agriculture.

The project was conducted by scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the International Food Policy Research Institute and funded by the World Bank and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

ILRI agricultural systems analyst Mario Herrero is the lead author of a note on the project, some of the main findings of which are summarized below.

With agriculture accounting for about 26 percent of Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 75 percent of its jobs, the Kenyan economy is highly sensitive to variations in rainfall.
Arid and semi-arid areas, which comprise 80 per cent of Kenya’s total land area, are prone to floods despite their low levels of rainfall (between 300 and 500 millimeters annually).
Kenya experiences major droughts every decade and minor ones every three to four years.
The negative effects of these droughts are spreading among the increasingly dense population and fragile arid and semi-arid lands.
Intensification and transition to mixed agro-pastoralist systems are increasingly marginalizing Kenya’s nomadic and pastoralist systems.
Rainfed agriculture is, and will remain, the dominant source of staple food production and the livelihood foundation of most of the rural poor in Kenya.
We need to better understand and cope with Kenya’s existing climate variability.
We need to plan for future climate variability on this continent: Climate model simulations under a range of possible greenhouse gas emission scenarios suggest that the median temperature increase for Africa is 3–4°C by the end of the 21st century, which is roughly 1.5 times the global mean response.

Rising monthly means of temperatures in Kenya from 1907 to 1998 in the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem (graphic by ILRI’s Joseph Ogutu, 2001).

Predictions about future levels of precipitation in Kenya are complicated both because precipitation in the country is highly variable across space and time and because we have few data available for analysis, but some total annual precipitation projections for Kenya suggest increases by about 0.2 to 0.4 per cent per year.
Although the projected increases in rainfall might appear to be good news for Kenya’s arid and semi-arid districts, increased evapo-transpiration due to rising temperatures means few if any increases in the length of growing periods and rangeland or crop productivity.
Extreme rainfall events are likely to become more intense over much of northern East Africa.
An increase in climate variability in Kenya, leading to more than one drought every five years, is likely to cause significant and irreversible decreases in livestock numbers in the country’s arid and semi-arid lands, with severe impacts on pastoralists whose food security and livelihood depend solely on livestock.
Climate change will likely lead to increased food imports by Kenya, which will dampen demand for food, as the affordability of nearly all agricultural commodities—including basic staples and livestock products—declines, leading to increases in malnutrition, especially of young children in the country’s highly vulnerable arid and semi-arid lands.
As a result of climate change, Kenya could see significant areas where cropping is no longer possible and the role of livestock as a livelihood option increases.

Read the whole note: Climate Variability and Climate Change: Impacts on Kenyan Agriculture, Note on a Kenya Smallholder Climate Adaptation Project, by Mario Herrero, Claudia Ringler, Jeannette van de Steeg, Philip Thornton, Tingju Zhu, Elizabeth Bryan, Abisalom Omolo, Jawoo Koo and An Notenbaert, October 2010.

Pastoral mobility is not a problem to be eliminated–It’s a trump card to be strengthened–CAPRi

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Above and below: Illustrations from a chapter on ‘Managing Mobility in African Rangelands,’ in a book, Resources, Rights and Cooperation: A Sourcebook on Property Rights and Collective Action for Sustainable Development, published in 2010 by the International Food Policy Research Institute for the CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi); ILRI scientist Nancy Johnson was one of four members of the production team for this book (illustration credit: IFPRI).

In a commentary in Today Online, the American economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals, argues for policies that support rather than hamper the movements of livestock herders in the drought- and hunger-stricken Horn of Africa.

‘The rains have failed for two years running in the dry regions of East Africa. These are places where water is so scarce year after year that crop production is marginal at best. Millions of households, with tens of millions of nomadic or semi-nomadic people, tend camels, sheep, goats and other livestock, which they move large distances to reach rain-fed pasturelands. . . . The location of life-supporting pasturelands is determined by the unstable and largely unpredictable rains, rather than by political boundaries. Yet we live in an era when political boundaries, not the lives of nomadic pastoralists, are sacrosanct. These boundaries, together with growing populations of sedentary farmers, have hemmed in pastoralist communities. . . .’

Nancy Johnson, a scientist with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Maryam Niamir-Fuller and other authors explore the merits of pastoral mobility in a chapter of a book, Resources, Rights and Cooperation, which is a sourcebook on property rights and collective action for sustainable development. The source for their material is a CAPRi research brief published in 2005 by Maryam Niamir-Fuller (see below).

As this chapter reports:

‘In arid and semi-arid lands in Africa, pastoralists manage uncertainty and risk and access a range of markets through livestock mobility. Mobility enables opportunistic use of resources and helps minimize the effects of droughts. . . .

‘Undergrazing of remote pastures or in protected areas can lead to the invasion of unpalatable plants, lower vegetation cover, and lower diversity of plants, and can sometimes be a more serious problem than overgrazing. . . .

‘The scale and magnitude of persistent environmental decline in dryland Africa—and how livestock grazing has affected such changes—appear to have been overestimated. . . .

‘Mobile pastoral systems also appear to be more economically efficient than their sedentary counterparts or commercial ranching. . . .

Government policies have upset the economic balance between crops and livestock by favoring crops and agricultural encroachment onto rangelands. Governments have discouraged investments in the range and livestock sector and claimed “vacant” pastoral land for national parks and government-owned farms.

‘Projects in Africa have long sought to develop livestock productivity rather than enhance livelihoods. Drawing on the classical ranching model from the United States, interventions encouraged sedentarization, destocking, and water development. However, they did not increase livestock productivity, and some were very destructive. . . .

In the 1990s . . . mobility was still seen as a problem to be eliminated, not a trump card to be strengthened.

‘Livestock needs to be seen as an integral part of conservation and development in Africa, since transhumance may even be a necessary precondition to sustainable development in arid lands.

Recommendations

• Mobile pastoralism is not a “backward” means of livelihood—laws, policies and procedures should be considered backward, since they do not recognize the ecological and economic value of mobile pastoralism.

• A clearer understanding of common property regimes and a holistic analytical framework for pastoral development activities are also required . . . .

• The fundamental design principles related to managing institutions for mobility are nested property rights, fluid boundaries, inclusivity, flexibility, reciprocity, negotiation, and priority of use. . . .

• Resource holders need to retain authority to grant temporary use rights to secondary and tertiary users. . . .

• There has been strong momentum toward “co-management,” or systems of common property regimes that combine government decentralization with community participation. Though the approach is far better suited than any other to mobile pastoralism, it needs to deal with large-scale management of contiguous land.

• Management of livestock mobility also requires multiple institutions working at multiple spatial scales, authorities, and functions. To modify or create the institutional structure for a legitimate, locally controllable transhumance, the function—not just the structure—of new institutions must be addressed.’

Read the CAPRi policy brief on which this chapter is based: Niamir-Fuller, M. 2005. Managing Mobility in African Rangelands. In: Mwangi, E. (ed). Collective Action and Property Rights for Sustainable Rangeland Management. CAPRi Research Brief, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, D.C.

Read the whole CAPRi sourcebook: Resources, Rights and Cooperation: A Sourcebook on Property Rights and Collective Action for Sustainable Development, International Food Policy Research Institute for the CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi), 2010.

Read the whole news commentary by Jeffrey Sachs in Today Online: Famine and hope in the Horn of Africa, 2 Aug 2011.

Kenyans mobilize phone/web technologies to end famine: But can m- and e-philanthropy rescue the starving nomads in the north?

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

Mobile phone with money in Kenya (photo on Flicker by whiteafrican).

Kenya, which in recent years has built a reputation as an innovation hub—a nerve centre for young mobile and web developers—is making use of its new media technologies and platforms for dealing with an age-old problem of biblical proportions and resonance: a current drought and starvation now ravaging the Horn of Africa, including Kenya’s northern frontier districts of Turkana, Marsabit, Wajir and Mandera.

With its vibrant cell phone infrastructure and use, Kenya is home to illustrious tech start ups such as Ushahidi, a ‘disruptive’ non-profit tech company (‘ushahidi’ means ‘testimony’ in Swahili) offering open-source software and crowd-sourcing tools to better inform responses to crises; the iHub, a new nerve centre for mobile and web developers; M-PESA, a mobile money transfer system readily available to the poor and initiated by Kenya’s big mobile company Safaricom; Virtual City, which is producing software for small business in this poor country; and iCow, a mobile application that allows farmers to monitor the fertility cycles of their animals and pinpoint breeding windows.

Kenya’s new generation of tech luminaries includes Erik Herman, creator of Ushahidi who was raised and is now living in Kenya and writes the popular White African blog; Ory Okolloh, Kenyan lawyer activist and Ted talker and Ushahidi co-founder and new Google Africa policy and government relations manager; John Waibochi of Virtual City, a Kenyan mobile mega-entrepreneur whose company is pioneering mobile business management solutions for small traders and won the 2010 Nokia Innovation Challenge Award; Su Kahumbu Stephanou, of Green Dreams Ltd., who won first prize in an Apps4Africa Competition in 2010 and invented iCow; and Andrew Mude, a Kenyan from the country’s pastoral Marsabit District who is leading research on the first livestock insurance product made readily available to, and affordable by, Kenya’s remote livestock herders and who this year won Kenya’s inaugural Vision 2030 ICT Innovation Award.

But can Kenyans really use their new m- and e-philanthropy platforms to help rescue starving desert nomads in the northern frontier? Watch this space.

Below is some of the news coming out this week on how regular, tech-savvy, Kenyans are making use of the new mobile and web technologies to help their countrymen and women in Kenya’s remote northern drylands feed themselves in a great multi-year drought that has desiccated the pastoral lands, withering crops, finishing forage and killing camels, donkeys, goats, sheep and cattle alike.

Safaricom Foundation press release, 27 Jul 2011
‘The Safaricom Foundation and KCB [Kenya Commercial Bank] Foundation today led a coalition of corporate Kenya and media in launching a massive fund-raising effort aimed at reversing the suffering of an estimated 3.5 million Kenyans faced with starvation. Dubbed KENYANS for KENYA and intended to raise over Sh500 million, in four weeks. The initiative has brought together a number of organizations among them Safaricom Foundation, KCB Foundation and the country’s leading media houses operating under the umbrella of the Media Owners Association (MOA). The effort will be administered by relief agency Kenya Red Cross Society. . . . KENYANS for KENYA, touted as the biggest such effort ever mounted in Kenya, shall be co-ordinated on several fronts, including pledges from corporate society that will be made public during a meeting set for next Friday, August 5 at Serena Hotel. Also key to the campaign is the use of M-PESA, Safaricom’s money transfer service to receive donations. This will ensure that even the smallest donation (as low as Sh10) is harnessed, as this will go a long way in improving the situation of millions of Kenyans currently staring starvation and death in the eye. Donations can be sent to the M-PESA PayBill number 111111 at no charge as this has been waived. Donations can also be sent to account number 11 33 33 33 38 at KCB.

Capital FM News, 28 Jul 2011
‘The Kenyan media has already joined hands with the corporate sector to raise Sh500 million in the next four weeks for drought stricken Kenyans. The initiative dubbed Kenyans4Kenya which was launched on Wednesday has brought together Media Owners Association, Safaricom and KCB foundations among other organisations. Kenya Red Cross Society will manage the fund that will be used to purchase food relief to the drought stricken Kenyans. Donations can be sent through the M-PESA Pay Bill number 111 111 at no charge or account number 11 33 33 33 38 at KCB.’

Mashable, 30 Jul 2011
‘Like most major international crises today, Twitter is the go-to forum for Africans to discuss the situation on the ground. Users are asking for the international community to send aid to the starving region of the world’s poorest continent. The International Business Times reported twenty tweets per minute relate to the famine in East Africa, using the hashtags #HornOfAfrica, #Famine, #Drought, #Somalia, #Kenya and #Ethiopia. Groups such as Kenyans4Kenya, a campaign of Kenyans helping other Kenyans, have started to respond to calls.’

‘Kenyans4Kenya’ initiative on Facebook, noon 30 Jul 2011
As at 10:00am ksh we are at 47,502,973 can we hit the 50M mark before noon? yes we can. let’s do it.
about an hour ago via Facebook Mobile
Gladys Kamau Nimehesabika! BN78KK393! GO KENYANS!
I knew we could do without the politiians….infact they are an expense to us!
Polly Mbugua Now they must be scared – all attention has shifted to this noble act…..Can we continue giving them a black out? Media houses you can be again of great help.’

Kenya Red Cross Society on Facebook: 29 Jul 2011
‘HI GOOD PEOPLE, THANK YOU FOR CONTRIBUTING TOWARDS KENYANS FOR KENYA & FEEDKENYA INITIATIVES. . . . THERE ARE ONLY TWO INITIATIVES THAT KRCS IS RUNNING- THE MPESA NO FOR K4K IS 111111 AND FEEDKE IS 10000. THE KCB ACCOUNT IS 1133333338 ANY BRANCH. BY KRCS PR AND COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER, NELLY MULUKA. LET US CONTINUE ALLEVIATE HUMAN SUFFERING.’

Blog by Ahmed Salim: #FEEDKE social media campaign, 10 DAYS and Counting, 29 Jul 2011
After 10 days of full dedication to an initiative I started off with just one tweet has taught me a lot. . . . A campaign that is ongoing for more than a week with no offline help makes me proud to say Social Media is our future. . . . Do you realize for the 1st time Kenyans Online all over the world are doing something as ONE with ONE common goal?? The support im getting online on all social platforms just boosts my energy to ask for one more tweet – and you know what? WE WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN. I am NOT stopping as yet – together we will Feed Kenya. . . . Till date of this post we have raised Kshs.624,602.20/= from 1130 donors via Online, Mpesa and Airtel. We are all Kenyans and let’s keep everything else behind us today and stand proud to do something for this country – lets Unite and speak one language. . . . Kenyans WE can DO this together – We can show our strength as ONE – We can make a difference just as an individual. Your say counts, your participation counts, your heart counts and more your ACTION counts.
Sacrifice A Meal Today; Take pride, stand for Kenya and support FeedKE:
M-Pesa Paybill to ‘10,000’ Acc ‘feedke’
On Airtel nickname ‘REDCROSS’ reference ‘feedke’
Online: www.kenyaredcross.org
Ps: all funds are collected directly by the Kenya Red Cross Society and a report is available on request. . . .
My name is Ahmed Salim and I’m a Kenyan!!
May God Bless YOU and GOD BLESS KENYA!!!!

Magu Ngumo in an opinion piece in Kenya’s Saturday Nation newspaper, 30 Jul 2011
‘. . . Politics has overtaken agriculture as the mainstay of our national life. Even MPs from the famine-stricken parts of Kenya are not coming out boldly to rally support from the entire nation for their dying kith and kin. As recently observed by the world respected Special Adviser to the United Nations, Prof Jeffrey Sachs, Kenya has all the time ignored the early warning signs for its recurrent drought and resultant famine. How can the nation abdicate its cardinal responsibility of feeding its people and wait for the rest of the world to feed it? . . . The time for saving Kenyans who are dying of hunger is now. The war to save Kenyans from hunger should not just be left to the Government. It is every Kenyan’s war. . . .’

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If you’d like to donate to the famine victims through international organizations, here are eight of the bigger humanitarian agencies collecting money online:
CARE
Concern
International Rescue Committee
Oxfam
Save the Children
UNICEF
World Food Programme
World Vision

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A video production of Kenyan musician Eric Wainaina and children singing his popular Kenyan song Daima, is making new rounds in the social media. ‘Eric chose to work with Shangilia kids to make this video soon after Kenya’s post-election violence of 2007. The voices of the kids are mixed in with Eric’s original track. This patriotic song was used extensively to bring back sanity to a beautiful land that was rapidly consuming itself after the 2007 elections. The video is on Eric’s music video DVD called ‘Daima: The Music Videos’ that has been on sale for some time now.’ The Swahili lyrics and English translation of the chorus of Daima follow.

Lyrics of the chorus of Eric Wainian’s ‘Daima’ (‘Always’)
Naishi, Natumaini,
Najitolea daima Kenya,
Hakika ya bendera
Ni uthabiti wangu
Nyeusi ya wananchi na nyekundu ni ya damu
Kijani ni ya ardhi, nyeupe ya amani
Daima mimi mkenya
Mwananchi mzalendo

English translation
I live, I hope, I give myself for Kenya.
The certainty of the flag is my steadfast support.
The black is the people, the red is the blood,
The green is the soil,
The white is peace.
Forever I am a Kenyan,
A patriotic citizen.

La Nina, not climate change, probable cause of East Africa’s drought–ILRI livestock scientists

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Susan MacMillan

One of thousands of dead cattle in the southern Somali Region of Ethiopia five years ago, in an earlier drought in the same region of the Horn of Africa (photo on Flickr by Andrew Heavens).

Scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, are saying that the current drought cycle in East Africa’s Horn, which has already led to famine in southern Somalia, cannot be ascribed to climate change, although there is evidence that La Niña is a probable cause.

Interviews by IRIN of ILRI scientists Phil Thornton, a systems analyst specializing in climate change in developing countries, and Jan de Leeuw, an environmental scientist leading ILRI’s rangelands research, were published in the Guardian‘s Development Network Blog.

‘. . . Philip Thornton, a senior scientist who works part-time with the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the University of Edinburgh-based Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, has done some pioneering work on projections of climate-change impact in eastern and southern Africa.

‘He told IRIN via email that projections of the climate change impact in east Africa were “a problem” as the authoritative inter-governmental panel on climate change’s (the IPCC) fourth assessment report “indicated that there was good consensus among the climate models that rainfall was likely to increase during the current century.

‘”But work by other climate scientists since then suggests that . . . certain Indian Ocean effects in east Africa may not actually occur.

‘”Some people think that east Africa is drying, and has dried over recent years; currently there is no hard, general evidence of this, and it is very difficult as yet to see where the statistical trends of rainfall in the region are heading, but these will of course become apparent in time.”

‘The IPCC’s fifth assessment report will be released in 2014.

‘Jan de Leeuw is the operating project leader in the vulnerability and sustainability in pastoral and agro-pastoral systems within ILRI’s people, livestock and environment theme. He points out that this La Niña event is one of the strongest since the 1970s. But he says La Niña, along with El Niño, appear in cycles that “we don’t understand”.

‘What we do know is that La Niña started to develop in August 2010. It cools surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, while allowing warmer water to build in the eastern Pacific. “The pool of warm water in the east intensifies rains in Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Domino-style, this pattern also increases the intensity of westerly winds over the Indian Ocean, pulling moisture away from east Africa toward Indonesia and Australia. The result? Drought over most of east Africa and floods and lush vegetation in Australia and other parts of Southeast Asia,” according to the US government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

‘De Leeuw writes: “La Niña events were common from 1950 till 1976. Since then we had two decades [until about 1996] with fewer events of lesser depth. This has changed since then and over the last 15 years or so we have had more frequent La Niña events.”

‘Events as deep as the current La Niña occur once in 20 or 30 years, writes De Leeuw. “We are in a period now of more frequent La Niña events, but such a situation was there from 1950 till 1976 also.”

‘Thornton has the last word when he says research attention must focus on developing effective early warning systems and ways to help people affected by these events, who have no use for “academic” consideration of the linkages with climate change to cope better with the current levels of weather variability, “whatever happens in the future”.’

Read the whole article by IRIN on the Guardian‘s Development Network Blog: La Niña blamed for east African drought: Environmentalists call for the development of early warning systems to help countries prepare for adverse weather, 14 Jul 2011.

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