Red Cross Blogs

Recovery is not enough for east Africa

By Guest
September 14, 2011 at 10:30 am

Karen Peachey is the British Red Cross’ east Africa representative, based in Nairobi.

The story of the east Africa food crisis is not just about failed rain – there are a lot of confounding factors. It’s a very diverse region. The Kenyan story is different than what’s happening in Somalia, and it’s a totally different story than what’s happening in Dadaab.

My colleague Stephen McDowell, a food security advisor for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, wrote a fantastic article called “Don’t blame it on the rain” that explains some of the problems facing pastoral communities here.

The short-term consequences of food insecurity are not just malnutrition and health problems but can also lead to conflict over natural resources. It’s already there. Violence related to cattle rustling has been a factor between some pastoralist communities for years, but in times of crisis it gets worse.

Many areas are prone to drought but over the years, for a number of reasons, communities have become less resilient to it. If we just give people food, we’ll almost inevitably go back next year and have to do the same thing over again. But if we meet their life-saving needs now as well as investing in long-term solutions then we may be able to help them change their futures.

To do this we need to invest in working with communities to see how best they can strengthen or diversify their livelihoods. But it’s not easy, and change will take time – pastoralism isn’t just a livelihood, it’s about culture and a way of life.

As the British Red Cross, we need to work closely with and support our sister Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies in the region – the National Societies which are made up of people who are from the communities they are working in and who understand the complexity of the problems and understand the opportunities that exist.

In Kenya, the British Red Cross has been supporting the Kenya Red Cross in both their food relief programme and their longer-term work with vulnerable communities. For example, donations to our East Africa Food Crisis Appeal have helped provide nutritious porridge for malnourished children in northern Kenya, but late last year we also used £70,000 from our General Funds to support the rehabilitation of some of the boreholes that pastoral communities depend on for water. We’re now working with the Kenya Red Cross to see how funds that have been recently been donated can be used to meet immediate needs and contribute towards some of these longer-term solutions.

There’s no quick fix. We need to fund and implement long-term projects that give people hope that the future will be better. Recovery’s not enough. If we just get people back to where they were before, we will have failed. We need to do better.

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Tags: Africa, drought, East Africa, food crisis, food insecurity, Kenya

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