We did men­tion this same story a cou­ple of days ago, but we wanted to do another post on the request for emer­gency assis­tance to Kenya. The U.N.‘s World Food Pro­gramme is ask­ing the world for dona­tions and food for the coun­try. Kenya is expe­ri­enc­ing their worst drought in a decade. The usual rainy sea­son through August and July did not have much any rain.

From this story from the BBC we read more about the request and a scan­dal that has made mat­ters worse,

The World Food Pro­gramme (WFP) has described the cri­sis as a “very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion” and appealed to donor coun­tries to offer funds.

Cur­rently some 2.5 mil­lion peo­ple are receiv­ing emer­gency food aid in the coun­try but the effect of the drought has meant that a fur­ther 1.3 mil­lion now also need help.

“Peo­ple are say­ing it is the worst drought since 2000,” said WFP spokes­woman Gabrielle Menezes.

The regions affected nor­mally har­vest their crops once a year, plant­ing them in April and col­lect­ing in Sep­tem­ber after the rains. But this year those rains have failed to come.

The Kenyan gov­ern­ment was sup­posed to have built up a size­able stock of maize but, fol­low­ing alle­ga­tions of a cor­rup­tion scan­dal, it only has enough to last another six weeks, says the BBC’s East Africa cor­re­spon­dent, Will Ross.

Many sub­sis­tence farm­ers are reported to be aban­don­ing rural areas — where they rely on aid — and mov­ing into already over-congested slums in the towns and cities.

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