The United States development agency USAID on Friday agreed to give $255 million in emergency assistance to Kenya to tackle severe drought, reported The Reuters.
According to the Kenyan government, some 4.1 million people are currently facing acute food shortages in the country, while the number of cases of child malnutrition has surged almost 50% in parts of the country to 942,000 in the last three months.
USAID administrator Samantha Power said the funding commitment to the East African nation comes in addition to $65 million that the aid agency had already provided this year.
She urged other countries to step up and join the commitment, warning that the food crisis could spill over into the education sector as hungry children can’t go to school.
Margaret Kobia, the Kenyan minister responsible for special programmes, said the government has already spent 12.6 billion shillings ($106.28 million) to help drought-affected people but it has a shortfall of more than 15 billion shillings.
The USAID administrator said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was increasing drought-related suffering in Kenya and the rest of the African continent as the halt in grain supply from Ukrainian ports has hit the global food supply chain, stoking food prices to all time high.
In a joint statement released on Friday, the World Food Programme (WFP noted that more than 50 million people are expected to face acute food insecurity in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda this yeafr.
The failure of rainfall in most parts of the region had induced people’s suffering, which has been compounded by the crisis in Ukraine that has led to high prices of wheat and maize.
In related news, the World Bank on Friday announced an aid of $100 million to Africa’s main public health body, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) to help African countries prepare for, detect and respond to any disease outbreak.
