Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Counting on El Niño


According to our old friend and colleague Tiff Harris, Kenyans are eagerly -- and anxiously -- awaiting the arrival of next month's rains following one of the worst droughts in recent memory. The problem, he writes, is likely to affect all Kenyans, both rural and urban. Harris is based in Nairobi and writes widely on the subjects of agriculture, environment and development. He can be reached at t.harris@cgiar.org.


Millions of farmers and pastoralists in Kenya are counting heavily on El Niño rains that, according to meteorologists, should arrive in October. The projected rains are desperately needed to stave off further widespread hunger in rural areas across the country, but especially in the exceedingly dry north and northeast zones where crops have failed completely and livestock have dropped to about 30% of their usual numbers. The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 10% of the country’s population – about 3.5 million Kenyans – is already at risk of starvation because of drought over the past few years.


At the beginning of 2009, the lingering effects of the persistent drought were made much worse by major social unrest caused by a disputed presidential election. Many farmers in the Rift Valley, Kenya’s traditional breadbasket, missed an entire planting season, and the government now projects that its stores of maize are sufficient to last only one more month. WFP is struggling to meet the rapidly growing needs for emergency food in the region and, if the rains fail again in Kenya, starvation could threaten as many as 6 million people in the coming months, an estimated 70% of them women and children.


Ironically, in the midst of the worst drought in decades, recent headlines in local papers are trumpeting the government’s swift actions to prepare for severe floods expected in October. Those actions are no doubt necessary, but steps to “harvest” as much rainfall as possible should complement them. Three days ago, a small article appeared in local papers alerting Nairobi residents that, if the October rains fail, they can look forward to continued water and power rationing until April of next year – at which point the reservoirs that supply the largest city in East Africa with water and hydropower will run dry.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Time For School: Must-See-TV


The award-winning documentary Time for School returns to Public Television in the United States on Wednesday, September 2 at 9 PM Eastern time with visits to classrooms in seven countries, including the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Statistics provided by the filmmaker are chilling: more than a hundred million children are currently out of school, two-thirds are girls, and one in four children does not complete five years of basic education. As a result there are nearly one billion illiterate adults - one-sixth of the world's population.