11th August, 2011
Drought: Now affecting Kenya's urban poor
Nairobi’s Dagoretti District is home to Kenyan immigrants who leave rural areas in search of employment. Most live in extreme poverty, in informal settlements, and rely on casual labour to try and make a living. Due to the ongoing drought, soaring inflation and food shortages, communities there are finding it even harder to survive.
Agnes Ndanu was living in Nairobi’s Kibera slum until she and her family were kicked out during the post-election violence that rocked Kenya in 2007/2008. During that time, hundreds of families lost their homes and livelihoods and ended up at camps for internally displaced people (IDPs).
Agnes, fondly known as Mama Sande, and her family of seven children lost their home, livelihood and all their possessions. During the chaos, Agnes was separated from her husband and neither she, nor her children, have set eyes on him since. Agnes and her family moved to a camp for IDPs in Dagoretti. Her son, Sande, was enrolled into the AMREF Dagoretti Child in Need Project, which works at rescuing, rehabilitating, re-integrating and re-socialising children from the streets and other difficult circumstances back to their society, families and schools.
In the past few months, the drought, leading to food shortages, coupled with rising inflation (now at 15.3 per cent), means that many families in Dagoretti are greatly affected. Agnes’s family has spent several nights on empty stomachs.
“My children and I have not eaten fruit in such a long time,” she says sadly. “We have not bought any new clothes since we left the camp; the clothes we wear are those we were given at the IDP camp. We just can’t afford these things.”
AMREF is helping women like Agnes support herself and her children at this difficult time.
To help AMREF's efforts, please support our Horn of Africa appeal
As well as providing food supplements to vulnerable mothers and children and improved access to safe water, AMREF will work with the Ministry of Agriculture to strengthen urban agriculture. This will involve building a greenhouse at the Children’s Centre, which will provide food for the children and serve as a sustainable home-based nutrition model farm for replication, on a smaller scale, within the community. It is expected that this support will benefit more than 14,000 children in primary schools, 5,000 community members through kitchen gardening and 2,000 poverty-stricken families with food baskets.