A future free from hunger

Mohamed Bilala, ActionAid Kenya’s Warehouse Supervisor, is showing me around ActionAid’s food warehouse in Isiolo town.  It is a familiar sight.  In the first room is bag after bag of maize.  Stacked floor to ceiling – a lifeline to thousands all in one room. The next room is exactly the same, only these bags are full of pulses.

The contents of the next room however are what Mohamed calls the ‘non-food items’, and what I would call gardening tools. With endless rows of shovels and piles of pick axes, this looks less like an emergency distribution warehouse and more like a DIY centre. In reality though, this is a room with a long-term answer to Kenya’s current food shortages.

This is the main warehouse for ActionAid’s food distribution in Isiolo – which, in partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP), is providing food relief to communities who are currently unable to provide enough food for themselves. It is also the centre of ActionAid’s Food for Assets programme.

Under the Food for Assets programme, food supplies are being distributed to families affected by the drought who are not able to grow, or cannot afford, their own food.  But here food relief is not an end in itself.  In exchange for staple foods people are working on projects which will build ‘assets’ for their community.

The work communities are involved in takes many shapes and forms.  Michael Thiauri, ActionAid Technical Advisor, explains that communities decide what best suits their area and which will yield the biggest results.  In areas that receive erratic rainfall, for instance, they may work on structures like irrigation channels or zai pits (pictured), that enable them to collect run off rain water. These simple structures mean farmers can store precious rain water and channel it to their farms or home gardens.

Elsewhere, communities may choose to work on surfacing a road so they are better able to transport their produce to a nearby market.  Or they may plant trees to provide pasture for their livestock and help to regenerate a piece of land which has been overused.  Whatever the project, and however their working day is spent, communities are investing their time in specific projects that address the challenges they face today.

Mike tells me how vulnerable people living in North East Kenya are living day to day.  They have families to feed so they rely on work that gives them immediate sources of income to buy food and water.  As a result, they spend most of their time working on the farms of rich landowners or doing casual labour in order to survive often leaving their own farms unattended and leaving them dependent on others. Investing time and resources into their own land is a luxury that most farmers can’t afford - tilling land or digging a water dam won’t put food on the table.

Food for Assets is as important today as it ever was. Since 2009 we have supported vulnerable people to work on their own land, make farming more efficient and feed themselves and reduced the distance women have to go to find water.

Drought will happen again in Kenya, but aid agencies like ActionAid intervening with food relief is not the only answer. There are simple, cheap and practical solutions which farmers can use to increase their productivity.  They just need the support, the tools and resources to make them happen.

Alongside the WFP, ActionAid is reaching more than 60,000 people in Mwingi and Isiolo through the Food for Assets scheme.

Donate now and support communities in Kenya secure a future free from hunger.