A story this morn­ing has a grip­ping account of the sit­u­a­tion faced in Kenya. The coun­try is going through it’s worst drought in over a decade. Over 4 mil­lion Kenyans are at the point of starv­ing to death.

From The Age, reporter Jef­frey Get­tle­man Kokori pro­files one such victim.

THE sun feels closer in Kenya, more intense, more per­sonal. As Philip Lolua waits under a tree for food, heat­waves rip­ple up from the desert sur­face, blur­ring the dead ani­mal car­casses sprawled in front of him.

His green pas­ture has turned to dust, his once mighty herd of goats, sheep and camels have died of thirst, his three-year-old son recently died of hunger, and he does not look to be far from death himself.

A dev­as­tat­ing drought is sweep­ing across Kenya, stir­ring up ten­sion in the slums where the water taps have run dry, and spawn­ing eth­nic con­flict in the hin­ter­land as com­mu­ni­ties fight over the last remain­ing pieces of fer­tile graz­ing land.

The twin hearts of Kenya’s econ­omy, agri­cul­ture and tourism, are espe­cially imper­illed. The game ani­mals that safari-goers fly halfway around the world to see are keel­ing over from hunger and the savanna is lit­tered with sun-bleached bones.

Ethiopia, Sudan and Soma­lia have become almost syn­ony­mous with drought and famine. But Kenya is one of the most devel­oped coun­tries in Africa, home to a robust economy.

The aid com­mu­nity has been pre­dict­ing a dis­as­ter for months, say­ing that the rains had failed once again and that this could be the worst drought in more than a decade. But the Kenyan Gov­ern­ment, paral­ysed by infight­ing and polit­i­cal manoeu­vring, seemed to shrug off the warnings.

So far, a huge inter­na­tional aid oper­a­tion to avert mass hunger has not kicked in, or at least not to the degree needed. The United Nations World Food Pro­gram esti­mates that nearly 4 mil­lion Kenyans — about a tenth of the pop­u­la­tion — urgently need food. ”Red lights are flash­ing across the coun­try,” the agency said.