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Hundreds of people, and tens of thousands of livestock have already died, destroying lives and livelihoods.
East African droughts to continue until April

Severe droughts that are affecting large swathes of East Africa are expected to continue until at least the beginning of April, the United Nations has warned.

The continuing droughts are expected to bring further hardship to people living in the affected regions, which include parts of Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tanzania and Burundi.

More than 100 people have died and tens of thousands of cattle and other animals have perished as a result of the droughts, which have persisted in some areas since 2005.

"Drought conditions throughout the Greater Horn of Africa are likely to continue in most of the areas between February until at least the beginning of April," a spokesman for the World Meteorological Office told a news conference.

"The strong negative impacts include loss of life, livestock, livelihoods, property, as well as dwindling supplies of pasture, water and food, and a heavy dependence on aid relief."

He added that some countries were experiencing their driest start to the year for 45 years.

ActionAid is warning that the next five months will be crucial to tackling the effects of the drought in the areas where we are operational.

ActionAid’s response:

  • ActionAid is responding to the crisis wherever operational on the ground focusing on relief the suffering from the communities particularly women and children.
  • In the district of Takabadi, in Kenya, 16,300 people are receiving water. Plans are underway to supply soya milk and rice to the most vulnerable members of these communities.
  • In the district of Sericho, also in Kenya, ActionAid is responding with targeted food aid, water and diesel to support a water pump run by the government.
  • Rice, cooking oil, sugar, tea-leaves and salt have been channelled to the communities through Muslim organisations in Isiolo Central. In addition, ActionAid collaborated with the government in the transport of 730 metric tones of cereals, beans, cooking oil and powder milk.
  • Aid and technical support is also being provided in Merti, where diesel and other lubricants will enable the activation of drought reserve zone boreholes as well as supporting the active ones.

Our long term plans:

  • ActionAid is planning to implement a £2.09m programme covering 11 districts and reaching over 422,000 people -almost a third of them children- over 12 months. The programme will focus on immediate relief and long-term livelihood recovery. Food aid for both children and adults will be delivered through primary schools.
  • We aim to provided food to affected communities in the 11 districts targeting 422,416 thousand people and water  to affected communities in at least 6 districts (Ijara, Mandera, Marsabit, Kwale, Kajiado and Isiolo)
  • We plan to support logistics for relief assistance to reach affected communities in all the 11 affected districts.
  • We plan to implement a programme of livestock restocking to pastoral communities who have lost their stock from the drought in addition to planting seeds during both the long and short rains.
  • We also want to construct dams to develop water reservoirs, introduce rain water harvesting and develop irrigation schemes for agriculture production.

We also plan to support conflict mitigation workshops using Participatory Vulnerability Analysis (PVA) in the areas affected by drought to prevent potential conflicts.



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