Small milk producers, hawkers and service providers turn handsome profits as Kenya’s dairy sector continues to expand

Milk, the ‘white gold’ of Kenya (photo on Flickr by eadairy, East African Dairy Development project).

A booming market in milk in Kenya is enhancing the livelihoods of many poor people—from dairy farmers to milk processors to milk hawkers to the country’s tens of millions of daily consumers of fresh milk.

‘In recent months, milk prices have been going up in Kenya, providing an opportunity for those ready to make quick bucks out of an unfortunate situation.

‘Beatrice Wanjiku is one such Kenyan. She buys a litre of milk from farmers at 15 shillings and sells the same to New Kenya Co-operative Creameries (KCC) at 20.80 shillings.

‘“While hawked milk takes care of my expenses, the earnings from milk sold to KCC add up in my bank account boosting my savings. It is a win-win situation,” notes Wanjiku, a Murang’a based milk hawker who buys the commodity from farmers and retails it in the populated residential estates in Nairobi like Dandora and Kayole. . . .

‘An increasing number of milk hawkers have become marketing agents and brokers, earning a handsome income in the process.

Recent findings from an assessment of the impact of the Kenya dairy policy change show that changes in the sector, which incorporated small-scale milk producers and traders into the milk value chain and liberalized informal milk markets, have led to an increase in the amount of milk marketed and increased licensing of milk vendors. . . .

‘With the expanding dairy sector, the East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) Project has launched a feeding manual for dairy farmers and extension officers.

‘High demand for fresh milk as population grows and the need for value-added milk products for an expanding urban middle class has prompted farmers to acquired new skills in dairy management to be able to supply milk.

‘The manual covers information on the basic nutrients a dairy cow requires, the available feed resources that provide these nutrients and practical aspects of feeding the animals. . . .

‘The EADD is a regional program led by the Heifer International in partnership with the International Livestock Research institute, Techno Serve, the World Agroforestry Centre and the African Breeder Service Total Cattle Management. It is implemented in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

‘While farmers have benefited directly from milk sales, service providers in the dairy industry, banks and transport companies have equally raked in on the growing industry.’

Read the whole article at Xinhua/Coastweek: Milk hawker steals thunder from dairy farmers, 11–17 May 2012.

 

Milk matters are serious matters in northeastern Uganda

Karamojang woman and child in Kotido, Uganda (photo on Flickr by Courtney Chance).

An interesting report on ‘milk matters’ has been produced by the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, USA, in collaboration with Save the Children. It looks at milk in children’s diets and household livelihoods among the Karamojang, a pastoral tribe in northeastern Uganda.

The blurb for the book says that households in the Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda have seen a precipitous drop in access to and availability of animal milk in recent years. The declining milk supply affects livelihoods, food security, and markets, but has the greatest impact on the diets and nutrition of young children.

The research illustrates both how significant the loss of milk has been to diets and livelihoods and how households have responded to this loss.

The authors, Elizabeth Stites and Emily Mitchard, say that information from impact evaluations of interventions made to increase milk supply among herds in pastoral areas is limited, ‘making it difficult to recommend one intervention over another based on the likelihood of success. The context for a given intervention plays an important role. In Karamoja, the combination of politics, conflict and insecurity create an extremely complex operational environment for any intervention.

‘The tested intervention with perhaps the most promise for Karamoja is improving livestock health through veterinary or [community animal health worker] projects. . . . Importantly, pastoralists themselves are well aware of the impact of animal diseases on milk production, and are quick to point to poor health of their herds as a constraint to adequate milk supply. Such programs are already in place across Karamoja, but respondents report problems in the consistency and reach of treatment. The military policy of protected kraals, insecurity and the various policy and political impediments to livestock mobility have negative repercussions on animal health; hence even if such interventions are comprehensive in nature, it is unknown if they can counter the negative impacts of overcrowded and sedentarization of herds.

.’ . . [M]obile livestock husbandry would likely be strongly endorsed by both livestock owners (for improvements to animal health) and by programmers (for its cheap bottom line). Successful implementation of this recommendation would require a national policy that promotes and values pastoralism, the opening of district borders to allow herders to access their traditional dry season grazing areas, providing mobile security (as opposed to protected kraals) in areas where needed, careful location of any ‘resettlement’ areas or other agrarian settlements to ensure balanced interests between agricultural groups and herders in the fertile zones, and improved representation of pastoral interests at the local, regional and national political level. . . . ‘

The following are among the study’s conclusions and recommendations.

‘This report highlights what is obvious to those who follow the situation in Karamoja: there are no quick fixes or easy solutions to the situation in the region. And this situation—one of chronic poverty, protracted conflict, and decades of marginalization—impacts not only the prospects for economic development or sustainable peace, but also reaches into households to affect the youngest children.

A discussion of milk, therefore, is not simply a discussion of what children eat and what they do not. A discussion of milk is a conversation about processes that extend back in time and reach into the social, economic and political sphere. The absence of milk in households represents the loss of a way of life, anger with political and military systems, and desperation among parents seeking ways to provide for their children. . . .

‘For international and national actors to address the nutritional impacts of the absence of milk they will have to take on the processes and systems that contribute to the wider problems in the region. To have milk is to have health and well-being. Health and well-being are possible without milk, but are not possible without fixes at multiple levels.

‘In the meantime, organizations and agencies need to continue with those programs and projects that support local priorities—such as animal health—and also those projects that encourage greater well-being for children. School feeding remains critical in the region, as parents will send children to school so that their children can eat. . . .

‘Programs that support [community animal health workers] and veterinary outreach should continue and should be evaluated to learn what models, in the eyes of herders and livestock owners, are most effective and have the greatest impact on animal health and milk production. . . .

‘This study sought to understand how changes in livelihoods in Karamoja in recent years have affected the ability of households to provide milk for their children and how households are coping with these changes.

The overall message from this work is that milk matters, and people know it. Parents recognize the signs of under nutrition and seek means to address these problems. Milk may be scarce or even nonexistent in many households, but young children are consistently prioritized to receive milk at the expense of consumption by other family members, social norms and exchanges, and important cultural rituals.

‘By working at multiple levels to improve the policy, economic and security environment in the region, external actors should be able to improve both child nutrition and livelihood sustainability of local populations. This will require political will, continued efforts to promote national policy change, and programming that focuses on longer term and incremental improvements. In the interim, nutritional surveys and targeted interventions for young children and pregnant and lactating women will continue to be required.’

The whole report is available at the website of the Feinstein International Center, at Tufts University: Milk Matters in Karamoja: Milk in Children’s Diets and Household Livelihoods, by Elizabeth Stites and Emily Mitchard, Oct 2011.

 

New consortium to investigate environmental changes spreading diseases between animals and people in Africa

Malawi crop-and-livestock farmer (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

One of the drivers of disease in Africa, a continent with a particularly heavy disease burden, are environmental changes that help to spread infectious pathogens between animals (both wild and domestic) and people. That is why the start of a new research program, in which the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is participating, to investigate these links is good news.

‘An innovative £3.2m research programme exploring the connections between ecosystems, health and poverty in Africa has begun at the STEPS Centre and 16 other research institutes in Africa, Europe and the US.

‘The Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium (DDDAC) brings together natural and social scientists in a unique partnership to embark upon an integrated approach to understanding zoonoses—those diseases which pass from animals to humans.

‘More than 60% of emerging infectious diseases over the past few decades have been zoonotic. While some quietly decimate poor people’s lives and their livelihoods, others have the potential to create dangerous global threats. . . .

”Through fieldwork and modelling work, DDDAC researchers will generate vital new knowledge on the impacts on zoonotic disease of ecosystem change such as climate change and habitat loss, ecology, and the interactions between humans and animals. . . .

‘Funded by Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) for three and a half years, the DDDAC will see environmental, biological, social, political, and human and animal health scientists working on four zoonotic diseases, each affected in different ways by ecosystem changes and having different impacts on people’s health, wellbeing and livelihood.

These are:

• Lassa fever in Sierra Leone
• Henipa virus in Ghana
• Rift Valley fever in Kenya
• Trypanosomiasis in Zambia and Zimbabwe

The DDDAC partners are:
In the UK: STEPS Centre; University of Cambridge; Institute of Zoology, London; University of Edinburgh; and University College, London.
In Ghana: Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission, University of Ghana.
In Kenya: International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi; Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI); and the University of Nairobi.
In Sierra Leone: Kenema Government Hospital; and Njala University.
In Zambia: the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries; and the University of Zambia.
In Zimbabwe: the Ministry of Agriculture; and the University of Zimbabwe.
The Stockholm Resilience Centre and Tulane University, US, are also DDDAC partners.

ESPA is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Read the whole article at the Institute of Development Studies website: ‘STEPS convenes multidisciplinary research team to tackle animal-to-human disease transmission’, 19 Mar 2012.

 

Devastating African disease of pigs gets new attention and funding

African Swine Fever Workshop, July 2011, Nairobi; from left: Raymond Rowland (Kansas State University), David Odongo (ILRI), Richard Bishop (ILRI), Maria-Jesus Munoz (CISA-INIA) and Jose-Manuel Vizcaino (Head of OIE ASF World Reference Centre Madrid) on a visit to the new BecA-ILRI laboratories (photo credit: ILRI/Edward Okoth).

New Agriculturist reported late last year on renewed research effort to tackle African swine fever, a devastating disease of pigs.

‘Causing up to 100 per cent mortality in previously unaffected animals, African Swine Fever (ASF) is a devastating disease of pigs. Endemic across much of Africa, the disease poses a wider threat to global food security, particularly in East Asia, where at least 50 per cent of the protein consumed is pork, much of it produced through small to medium-scale “backyard” enterprises.

‘Current control methods are by diagnosis and slaughter but this approach is difficult, expensive and often not practical for smallholder farmers. To better understand the complexities of the disease, a consortium of research and development organisations from around the world is implementing a range of approaches across Africa.

Whilst there are currently no formal economic estimates of the overall losses to ASF in Africa, an outbreak in Madagascar in 1998 killed half the country’s pig population (250,000 animals). During the last year, ASF outbreaks have also been reported in North Cameroon where over 100,000 animals may have been lost to the disease. In October 2010, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) received notification of the first ASF outbreak in Chad. . . .

‘A new injection of research funding will enable African scientists to obtain in-depth data to provide improved insight into the transmission and spread of ASF between African countries. AusAID is supporting Australia’s national science agency (CSIRO), in developing an institutional partnership with the Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) hub.

‘The research team is working to better understand modes of viral transmission, between different geographical regions. . . .

“Collaboration and awareness of biosecurity measures between agencies and across borders is essential since ASF is a transboundary disease,” explains Dr Richard Bishop, project leader. “Through BecA and other mechanisms, we now have national veterinary laboratories increasingly working together across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, to formulate joint control policies, an initiative that is critical to secure East Africa’s smallerholder pig industry,” he adds. . . .’

This work is funded by development partners including the Africa Union-Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), Centro de Investigación en Sanidad Animal-Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (CISA-INIA Spain), the Food and Agriculture Organization-Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (FAO-ECTAD) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

The BecA hub is hosted and managed by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), where the leader of this African swine fever project, Richard Bishop, is a senior scientist.

Read the whole article at New Agriculturist: Renewed research effort to tackle African swine fever, Nov 2011.

 

Multi-stakeholder innovation in Africa: Dairy and beef cases feature in new report from FARA

The Forum on Agricultural Research in Africa just published a new report on agricultural innovation in sub-Saharan Africa: experiences from multiple-stakeholder approaches.

The report draws together case experiences across Africa with an ‘integrated agriculture research for development (IAR4D) approach’ that brings together multiple actors along a commodity value chain to address challenges and identify opportunities to generate innovation.

Included in the cases are assessments of dairy development in Kenya and Uganda as well as the beef sector in Botswana.

On Kenya, the report observes: ‘The development of a successful smallholder industry requires two complimentary elements. Firstly, increased productivity requires improved livestock breeds, strong disease control and veterinary services and improved quality and quantity of feeds. Given the need to encourage many smallholder dairy producers, delivery of support services remains dependent on local institutions and their development. Secondly, expanding market institutions with facilities for milk bulking and collection, and group organisational structures are essential and can be most effectively supplied by the private sector. Although formal licensed markets based on processed milk products are important, informal markets selling raw milk, informal dairy products with low-cost processing remain an essential component of a successful dairy industry.’

On Uganda, the report observes: ‘A key lesson is the need for ongoing discussions and coordination efforts by stakeholders along the value chain. This includes smallholder farmers and traders, development agencies, and policymakers. Although the dairy industry and its supporting services were liberalised, there is a need to coordinate business development services, involving farmer organisations, while avoiding direct subsidies that are known to stifle markets.’

On Botswana, the report observes: ‘Understanding the role the private sector plays in facilitating change at local, regional, and national government levels is important when considering changes to the enabling environment for value chains. It is essential that the private sector is able to speak with an informed and unified voice and is able to engage with Government.’

Overall:

The case studies demonstrated that successful innovation is dependent on a wide range of factors and interventions, the most important being the existence or creation of a network of research, training and development stakeholder groups drawn from public, private and NGO sectors.

Download the report …

 

A focus on focus: Reining in an eclectic past to make a bigger difference

For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Tom Randolph, an American agricultural economist recently appointed director of a new multi-centre CGIAR Research Program (3.7: Livestock and Fish), reflects on ILRI’s longstanding strategic path toward greater disciplinary integration to achieve greater coherence and impact.

An agricultural economist who came to East Africa to work at ILRI 13 years ago, Tom Randolph started his professional career ‘on the other side’—working as a policy wonk for crop research at the West African Rice Development Association (now AfricaRice), in Senegal and Côte D’Ivoire. Before that, he had spent six years teaching English as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zaire, where he picked up French (his undergraduate degree had been, naturally, Chinese) and an understanding of why food production matters. When he returned to America, he got himself into post-graduate agricultural programs at Cornell University, doing some (award-winning) doctoral research on the impacts of agricultural commercialization on child nutrition in Malawi.

During his years at ILRI, Randolph continued his eclectic career path, moving with apparent relative ease among topics as varied as smallholder competitiveness and the (uneasy) marriage of economics and epidemiology, but making fairly regular returns to topics on nutritional and health issues—from studies of the possible nutritional household benefits of keeping dairy cows, to transmission of zoonotic diseases between farm animals and their human keepers, to food safety in traditional ‘wet’ versus modern livestock markets, to the impacts of tick-borne diseases on the poor, to the effectiveness of animal health delivery systems for African smallholders.

Randolph appears to be most at home when deliberating the pro-poor utility of what is known in development jargon as ‘interventions’, whether they be employing a vaccine against tick-transmitted East Coast fever or drugs to treat tsetse-transmitted African animal trypanosomosis, deploying tsetse-trapping baits on pastoral cattle herds, or implementing alternative (typically wildly inappropriate) methods for controlling bird flu in Africa’s rural and urban environments.

In these deliberations, Randolph tends to takes sides—typically that of the small-scale food producer or hungry consumer awkwardly positioned somewhere between a rock and a hard place.

With such an eclectic background, it may at first be perplexing to find Randolph taking up directorship of a research program restricting itself to a tight focus on the relatively old-fashioned ambition of raising levels of livestock food production in a few resource-poor countries and livestock systems. But Randolph has left himself some flexibility in the name of his new program, which proclaims its ambitions to be ‘more meat, milk and fish by and for the poor’ (that English major of his did not go to waste).

So it appears we have a scientist of unusually diverse interests, talents, expertise and experience about to rein himself in, for—he says in this 6-minute interview—greater focus for the purpose of making greater impacts. It should be an interesting journey.

Watch the 6-minute interview of Tom Randolph:

---

On 9 and 10 November 2011, the ILRI Board of Trustees hosts a 2-day ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ to discuss and reflect on livestock research for development. The event will synthesize sector and ILRI learning and help frame future livestock research for development directions.

The liveSTOCK Exchange will also mark the leadership and contributions of Dr. Carlos Seré as ILRI Director General.  See all posts in this series / Sign up for email alerts

 

‘Out of the lab and into the field–with our clients’: Phil Toye on getting the balance in animal health research right

For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Phil Toye, an Australian immunologist who leads ILRI’s animal health research on development of diagnostics and vaccines for diseases of farm animals in Africa and other developing regions, reflects on the changes he’s seen at ILRI.

Toye first came to ILRI’s Nairobi campus in 1986, when it was then the International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases (ILRAD). He left ILRAD in 1994 to join a medium-sized biotech  company in Australia. The Nairobi  institute he left behind was focused almost exclusively on developing vaccines against two devastating cattle diseases of Africa.

When Toye returned to the Nairobi campus in 2006, he experienced at first hand the ‘dramatic’ changes that had occurred in the intervening years. He came to an institute ‘with a much broader range of expertise, going well beyond molecular biologists and immunologists, to sociologists and economists, and to people who study and understand market dynamics and market access by the poor.

‘I think this gives ILRI a unique potential to look at the problems affecting small livestock owners, poor livestock owners, and developing practical solutions for their livestock problems,’ says Toye.

Among the achievements his team has made over the last five years, Toye cites that of building a much more balanced portfolio of activities. ‘Five years ago, our major activities concerned East Coast fever, in particular development of a vaccine against this disease, with a few smaller activities. Now we also work on African swine fever and contagious bovine pleuro-pneumonia. What’s important is that we’re developing these technologies while looking beyond them; we’re looking at the social aspects of the livestock owners that these diseases affect, looking at the ability of these technologies to meet end-user needs, and at how the technologies could be effectively rolled out.

‘The other balance we brought to ILRI’s animal health portfolio was to increase the number of projects focused on more immediate impacts. An example is our work underpinning the roll out of an infection-and-treatment method of  vaccination against East Coast fever, a vaccine that is protecting the lives of cattle, particularly in northern Tanzania and also in Kenya and Uganda.

‘The development of a pen-side test for pig tapeworm is another more recent outcome of ours. And more recently still is the development of a thermo-stable vaccine—one that remains stable without the need for refrigeration—for a disease of sheep and goats known by its French name ‘peste des petite ruminants’.

‘A third achievement of our group is development of field-based activities. In the last five years, we initiated a project in Busia, in western Kenya, called ‘IDEAL,’ which is funded by the Wellcome Trust and led by the University of Edinburgh. For this project, we established a field laboratory in Busia. That laboratory has since been used by another Wellcome Trust-funded project, ‘People, Animals and Zoonoses’ Project, or PAZ for short, led by Eric Fevre, and more recently by a team doing substantial work on African swine fever led by Richard Bishop.

‘Such work is getting people out of the laboratory and interacting with our clients—poor livestock owners.

‘In future, we need to get the balance right between the amount of applied research we do, which has more immediate impacts, and undertaking more basic research to solve the more intractable problems. The latter work of course carries higher risk but also can have higher returns if we manage to develop solutions. That’s versus spreading ourselves too thin over several projects, where we don’t really have traction.

Our moving into the CGIAR Research Programs should give us even more focus and impacts in future.’

Watch a 5-minute filmed interview of Phil Toye:

---

On 9 and 10 November 2011, the ILRI Board of Trustees hosts a 2-day ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ to discuss and reflect on livestock research for development. The event will synthesize sector and ILRI learning and help frame future livestock research for development directions.

The liveSTOCK Exchange will also mark the leadership and contributions of Dr. Carlos Seré as ILRI Director General.  See all posts in this series / Sign up for email alerts

 

It takes months to prepare properly for a disaster, and long-term development to prevent one–John Vidal

John Vidal in the Guardian argues that ‘to pin this crisis on drought or climate change is wrong. This is an entirely predictable, traditional, man-made disaster, with little new about it except the numbers of people on the move and perhaps the numbers of children dying near the cameras. . . .

‘Aid agencies and governments have known for almost a year that food would run out by now. But it is only now . . . that the global humanitarian machine has moved in . . . . [I]t takes months to prepare properly for a disaster.

‘Just as in 2008, the war in Somalia is primarily responsible for the worst that is happening. . . .

‘But another, more insidious war has also been taking place across the region. This one is being waged by governments and businesses against the pastoralists. Over the years, they have been steadily marginalised and discriminated against by Ugandan, Kenyan and Ethiopian governments, and now they are further jeopardised by large-scale farming, the expansion of national parks, and game reserves and conservation.

The politicians think little of taking away their dry season grazing grounds or blocking their traditional routes to pasture land. However, as seen in major international studies, the pastoralists produce more and better quality meat and generate more cash per hectare than “modern” Australian and US ranches.

‘Instead of starving the region’s people of funds and then picking up the pieces in the bad years—as governments must do now—Britain, the EU, the US and Japan must help people adapt to the hotter, drier conditions they face. With better pumps and boreholes, better vaccination of cattle, help with education, food storage and transport, people can live well again.

‘This emergency will cost the west around $400m. If this money was put into long-term development instead of emergency aid and feeding programmes that keep people just above starvation, this tragedy could have been avoided. Instead, the world is almost certain to be here again in one or two years’ time.’

Read the whole article at the Guardian‘s Comment Is Free Blog: Famine we could avoid, 21 Jul 2011.

 

Early famine warnings in Horn not enough: Early action also needed–Economist

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) reports on emerging food security conditions related to drought and other climate crises (image on the ReliefWeb website by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the United States Agency for International Development Famine Early Warning Systems).

The first food to arrive in famine-struck Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, arrived two days ago (27 Jul 2011). An article in this week’s Economist describes why that food aid was 8 months late in coming.

‘. . . After the 1985 Ethiopian famine America’s aid agency set up a Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) to give warning of disasters. It has been forecasting a threat of famine in Somalia since November.

‘. . . FEWS Net conducted surveys across southern Somalia this month and found that malnutrition exceeded 38% in most areas—a catastrophic rate. Famine is likely to spread all over the south in the next few months (see map). About 2.8m people are thought to need immediate life-saving help.

‘Yet famine was not declared until July, eight months after the first FEWS Net forecast. . . .

‘Outsiders’ caution is linked to the role of the Shabab, an Islamist militia which controls much of southern Somalia and is locked in battle with the internationally recognised but feeble government. The Shabab has banned food aid in most of southern Somalia since 2009, branding Western aid agencies anti-Muslim. . . .

‘The Islamists are not the only local rulers ambivalent about the onset of famine. Ethiopia’s government will never admit there is famine in the country: to do so would be to say it had failed since 1985. Both it and Kenya’s government have responded to public pressure slowly.

Most of those affected are ethnic Somalis, nomadic herders and Muslims: marginal groups in both countries, with little political clout.

‘. . . FEWS Net may have predicted famine but nothing happened until television cameras showed up, beaming out pictures of fragile children arriving at the huge Kenyan refugee camp at Dadaab in large numbers. Aid officers worry about being criticised by the public and their own bosses if they spend scarce resources before there is an outcry. The result is that donors often ignore their own early warnings. . . .’

Read the whole article at the Economist: Chronicle of a famine foretold, 30 Jul 2011.

View an Economist infographic about the East African drought and famine, 21 Jul 2011.

 

Long-term ‘food aid-plus’ has helped avert famine in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda–Economist

Children in Kenya’s Watamu District with milk (photo on Flickr by Thomas Blower).

An article in this week’s Economist describes the value of helping communities in the Horn of Africa’s to build resilience to recurrent drought. It is this ‘Food Aid-Plus,’ argues the Economist, that has helped avert famine in southern Ethiopia (seeds), northeastern Kenya (school milk programs) and the Karamoja region of northern Uganda.

‘. . . If the famine lasts until the next rains, that means 100,000-200,000 could be at risk there: a dreadful toll. But 1m people died in the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85. The difference does not lie in the severity of the drought. It lies in what local governments and aid agencies have done to bolster people’s resilience to it.

‘For the past few years the Ethiopian government, the WFP [World Food Programme] and others have been running hunger-relief programmes which give out not only food aid but seeds and help to turn wasteland into productive acres. The result, says Josette Sheeran, the WFP’s boss, is that “we have one-third the number of people suffering from the emergency than we might have done [in Ethiopia].” Kenya has kept its school-meal programme running in the drought-stricken areas, so families know their children will get at least a meal a day. . . Karamoja has had a lot of “food aid-plus” projects and so far is not on the WFP’s list of places in emergency need. Ungoverned Somalia has few such projects. . . .’

Read the whole article at the Economist: Chronicle of a famine foretold, 30 Jul 2011.

Read recommendations by scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, Kenya, on the most practical livestock-based interventions to make in East Africa’s drought cycles.