The U.N.‘s World Food Pro­gramme is ask­ing for 230 mil­lion dol­lars to help drought stricken Kenya. The WFP says that will amount to 260,000MT of food, the WFP is already dis­trib­ut­ing 32,000MT a month to 2.6 mil­lion people.

From this IRIN arti­cle that we found at Reuters Alert Net, we learn more about the other moves tak­ing place to help the people.

The gov­ern­ment is also truck­ing water to drought-affected com­mu­ni­ties and buy­ing live­stock at a cost of KSh8,000 (about $105) per live cow, sig­nif­i­cantly above pre­vail­ing mar­ket prices.

A 2009 long rains assess­ment found that “3.8 mil­lion pas­toral­ists, agro-pastoralists and mar­ginal agri­cul­tural farm house­holds require urgent human­i­tar­ian food assistance”.

The assess­ment, con­ducted by the Kenya Food Secu­rity Steer­ing Group (KFSSG) in May and July, cov­ered 30 dis­tricts, includ­ing 27 drought-prone ones and three affected by the 2008 post-election violence.

Fail­ure of the long rains in the mar­ginal agri­cul­tural low­lands and some pas­toral and agro-pastoral areas have caused a sub­stan­tial decline in both crop and live­stock pro­duc­tion, accord­ing to the Famine Early Warn­ing Sys­tems Net­work (FEWS Net).

High cereal prices have fur­ther accen­tu­ated food inse­cu­rity. The aver­age price of the main sta­ple, maize, has dou­bled over the last year.

Expected long-rains maize pro­duc­tion will be about 28 per­cent below nor­mal because of insuf­fi­cient rains — fur­ther tight­en­ing supply.

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