KENYA
The United Nations describes the droughts of 2017 across the Eastern and Southern regions and Horn of Africa as the worst in decades. 2018 was as severe and after some short rainy interruptions, 2017 and 2018 were disastrous for most of Africa. 2019 looks likely to be marginally better but estimates of the populations at risk of death from starvation and disease are as high as 45 million.
The ricocheting impacts of the drought are shown in Kenya’s tea industry. Reports in April 2019 state that growers sent half their workers home on unpaid leave or assigned them to non-core work. Production had halved. The c.e.o. of the Kenya Tea Growers Association stated that its member estates are operating three days a week because “there is no crop to pluck.”
Ironically, this loss of harvest has not led to an increase in producer prices since there are excess inventories in the pipeline. The average auction price has dropped by 2% to $1.93 which is just $0.50 above operating costs. (In 2017, the average was $2.93.) The Association employs around 55,000 workers at full capacity. There are also 600,000 smallholder growers. Mid-year estimates are that in this primarily agricultural nation, 2.5 million people are “severely food insecure.”
The estimates for Malawi are 2.8 million in the next category of severity: “crisis” and another 450,000 at the emergency level. South Africa is facing a drought “the likes of which have not been seen in 23 years”, threatening the viability of rooibos farming. And in Rwanda, over 200,000 are “food insecure.”
The human costs are immense and so too are the economic ones. They feed into each. Loss of income pushes families to becoming food “needy,” and beyond while the same loss of work and harvest increases food prices and scarcity. The “famine” is technically defined by aid agencies as when loss of income reaches loss of home and the possessions essential to survival. The general economic impact of the loss of crops seems to be a decline in GNP of 1-2% and loss of foreign exchange earnings of as much as 20%. India’s growers have benefited from the decline in output of Kenya, the world’s largest exporter in most normal years.
It’s a bleak picture. Both the short- and long-term scenarios are unpredictable. Agencies are adding to their emergency aid an emphasis on improved alerting and forecasting systems, longer-term investment in hydropower and biofuels and reforestation. Meanwhile, the human tragedy is spreading.