Problem with Turkana’s perennial food crisis is that government doesn’t care
Members of the public wait for their rations of relief food distribution by President William Ruto to hunger victims due to prolonged drought, at Nakaalei in Turkana on November 05, 2022.
What you need to know:
- The lack of food in Turkana reflects our failure as a nation, 59 years after independence. Had River Turkwell, which traverses the county, and the 200 billion cubic litres aquifer been tapped, the story of hunger would be a thing of the past.
Let’s talk about Turkana County because the images coming from there can make you cry. River Turkwel, one of the biggest in Kenya, flows through drought-stricken county – and our leaders seem clueless of what to do.
Visitors to Lodwar town are usually perplexed by the beauty of a river snaking its way from Mt Elgon and Cherangani Hills moving past the edges of the town before draining to the scenic Lake Turkana.
In 2013, a French hydrologist, Alain Gachet, discovered the Lotikipi aquifer in Turkana – thought to be one of the largest in Africa.
The underground lake contains some 200 billion cubic metres of water and replenishes at a rate of 1.2 billion cubic meters a year. For comparison purposes, the underground lake is the same size as Lake Turkana, and we are told it can sustain Kenya's water demands for 70 years.
Gachet has been in great demand globally after he pioneered using satellite radar to prospect for water.
When he made the Lotikipi discovery, he told The Guardian: "This discovery will transform Turkana. In 10 years time, I see no more suffering; no more dying of hunger or thirst, people will have schools, roads, farms. Life will be much better…."
Ever since the government has been dragging its feet on desalinating the 200 billion cubic metres of water, people are still hungry and dying.
So engineer Gachet, a former oil industry geologist, continues to be hired by governments to search for aquifers. His path-breaking technology has been used in Darfur, Iraq, and Afghanistan to spot underground aquatic resources.
So that story of drought in Turkana – or lack of food– reflects our failure as a nation, 59 years after independence. Had that river and aquifer been in Egypt or Israel – that story of food aid to Turkana residents would be a scandal.
Yet, most Kenyans assume that no river passes through this county with deep alluvial soils and where very healthy millet and maize crop grows. So, why has the government abandoned its people to non-governmental bodies – to the extent that families feed on wild berries? What is wrong with us, and how does a county with such water resources become a thriving centre of food aid?
Today, even with all the water running through the district, Turkana is the playground of international relief agencies. Though they have done their part, they will never offer a lasting solution.
If our country has ever had a scandal, it is this failure to harness the potential of River Turkwel's water for irrigation or get the technology to desalinate the aquifer. And let us not be duped by those piece-meal-often-failing-now-you-see-them-now-you-don't small-scale irrigation schemes akin to experimental gardens in Israel. Those are just centres of scandal and misappropriation.
And this quest for a solution is as old as independent Kenya. In 1965, one of the vocal Kenyatta-era MP J.D. Kali told the House about Turkana's potential: "If people come from Israel or from the United Arab Republic, or wherever they come from, they will just laugh at us because we have so many water resources, but we do not make use of them."
Today, Israel, a desert country, has 20 per cent more water than it needs due to a national determination to conserve the little it has. For instance, drip irrigation waters 75 per cent of Israel's crops, and it has perfected conservation and irrigation technologies. It also recycles wastewater to near-drinking levels, which is further used for irrigation – thus leaving fresh water for domestic use.
Seventeen years ago, former Sigor MP Phillip Rotino wondered why the government was spending billions of shillings every year giving relief food to the locals, yet, the county had permanent rivers. "Could we not use this water to irrigate the lower part of Turkana so that we get out of the perpetual drought?" he asked.
The government's reply was the usual 'when-funds-become-available', peppered with some blame game, which was that they had the Katilu small-scale irrigation scheme in southern Turkana, which "was destroyed "after incessant livestock raids by the Pokot neighbours. That was according to then minister for Trade Mukhisa Kituyi, to which Mr Rotino shot back and claimed that the Turkana's "also destroyed Amolem, which is in West Pokot."
While the communal wrangling – thanks to political mischief and commercialisation of cattle rustling – is part of the famine story – it only forms the excuse and not the whole story.
As the playground for NGOs and UN agencies, Turkana and some of its neighbouring counties had some dangerous environmental experiments conducted with the connivance of government officials.
For instance, at one point, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), together with the Ministry of Environment – and other NGOs – imported a noxious weed, Prosopis juriflora, from Argentina to ostensibly green the area.
But the noxious weed, locally known as Mathenge, spread over the Kerio Delta towards Ferguson Gulf and colonised thousands of hectares besides interfering with grazing grounds and destroying the local vegetation.
Vets say that goats that feed on Mathenge seeds become toothless – and we all recall the case when Baringo residents presented a toothless goat in court as evidence. Moreover, the plant's thorns are poisonous, so once an animal is pricked, the solution is to cut off the affected area.
Turkana could also be caught in the global dumping of food surplus – which the US does through the World Food Program. The US uses food as part of its foreign aid, and this is traced to the 1954 Food for Peace programme, known as Public Law 480, which was to solve the US food surplus resulting from generous subsidies that the farmers got from the government. Thus, most of the food sent to the "needy" via WFP had its genesis in President Eisenhower's Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 195. This policy has been criticised as a food dumping strategy and is tied to other US interest demands.
Thus, and for many years, the US government still purchases food under this programme and uses the same for diplomatic bargains worldwide – either during drought or other emergencies.
For starters, WFP has been operating in Turkana for eons. Its critics allege that the body has created a dependency culture, and its presence has slowed down investments in areas the government should have developed to sustain local populations.
Food aid, it has been alleged, gives the government an excuse to sit back and not invest in large-scale projects. The other problem with US food aid is that it drives down the local market and producer prices, as Oxfam, the British charity, has always said.
Since independence, billions of shillings have been used to supply food aid. Yet, we need to see similar incentives and initiatives to mobilise local investors to grow food for the community.
In 1965, parliament passed a motion calling for an accelerated programme for Turkana, including dam construction, boreholes, and livestock development. That matter ended in the Hansard.
There are lessons that Kenya needs to learn faster. Having learnt the lessons of food aid, Ethiopia has opened up irrigation projects and started with massive dams to address its food security. Soon, we might be importing wheat from Ethiopia.
Once upon a time, experts predicted that India would never feed its growing population. In 1967, some US State Department official, Paul Paddock, and his brother William, an agronomist, wrote a best seller, Famine 1975! They argued that it would be a mistake to give food aid to India because it would only keep people alive and not solve the long-term problem. India embarked on its green revolution with improved seeds and fertilisers; by 1975, it had terminated all food aid. Today, it is a major exporter of rice.
Green revolution critics, backed by powerful PR agencies, have managed to scuttle efforts to promote seed distribution and access to chemical fertilisers, especially in the 1980s.
But, according to Robert Paarlberg in his book, Food Politics," this withdrawal of donor support had little effect on Latin America and Asia, where agricultural modernisation was already successfully underway.
Still, it left the aid-dependent governments in Africa without enough external support to begin a confident move down a green revolution path." And this was backed by Al Gore, whose best-selling book Earth in the Balance depicts the green revolution as dangerous.
He argued that "the much-heralded green revolution …turns out to be wildly inappropriate for the culture or ecology or the region in which they are placed" and that they often "allow a wealthy elite to control a huge percentage of the productive land." As such, power personalities led by Al Gore now push for small farms with "low input agricultural methods”.
While small farms can feed the family, they are hard to mechanise. Egypt grew its agriculture by creating well-mapped estates and supplying them with water. Unless we have mega projects to harness the waters in Turkana, we shall continue to be scandalised yearly by seeing women and children feeding wild berries. We have an aquifer and a permanent river. Shame on us.
