East Africa steps up drought response

The governments of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia in partnership with United Nations agencies and other partners are ramping up response measures to drought-affected communities, including food and water provisions.

According to the World Food Program, an estimated 13 million people face acute food insecurity and severe water shortages across the eastern Horn of Africa due to drought, following three consecutive poor rainy seasons.

The most severely affected regions are the southern and southeastern pastoral areas of Ethiopia, the arid and semi-arid regions of Kenya and large swathes of south-central Somalia.

Cyrus Oguna, Kenyan government spokesperson, said the government has rolled out an emerging relief cash transfer program as well as physical food distribution to alleviate the suffering of drought-affected communities.

Oguna said the drought has affected 2.8 million Kenyans from the 23 arid and semi-arid counties currently facing food distress. He said the drought situation is critical in 14 counties and moderate in nine.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Oguna said the cash transfer program launched in December has disbursed more than $5.9 million to 225,705 households, with each receiving $26 monthly.

The government has also supplied 63,100 bags of rice and 62,000 bags of beans, each weighing 50 kilograms. This is in addition to 800 cartons of corned beef.

"Other short-term interventions include water trucking to provide water for livestock and domestic use, and the off-take program which aims to off-load very weak cattle from farmers at a fee," Oguna said. "For this program, the government had allocated $3.9 million for phase one. A similar amount is earmarked for phase two, which is to start soon."

In Ethiopia as of March 2, 1.5 million people had access to safe drinking water through emergency water trucking out of the 1.8 million target, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Additionally, 912,000 people had access to safe drinking water through durable solutions out of the 2.9 million target.

In Somalia, the extreme drought has affected at least 4.5 million people, of which almost 671,000 have been displaced from their homes in search of food, water and pasture, according to the Protection and Return Monitoring Network, a UN High Commissioner for Refugees-led project.

The Somalia Humanitarian Fund has launched an early allocation of $25 million to provide immediate assistance to communities hard-hit by the drought emergency in priority locations.

The UN Children's Fund is working with partners to provide water trucking to displaced populations to ensure sustained access to safe water and to help prevent the spread of diseases.

The UN agency is also providing therapeutic foods to treat acute malnutrition and micronutrients to tackle deficiencies, as well as counseling to encourage families to adopt practical nutrition and health practices at home.