Saturday, March 26, 2011

Food Security

PMPS25th March 2011

The United States Government today launched a multimillion food security programme in Turkana, to cushion residents against the vagaries of poverty and harsh climatic conditions.

The Ksh. 850 million projects spread over a five year period under the United States African Development Foundation (USADF) which the government ratified late last year.

The project aims to economically empower vulnerable and marginalized groups in a region where at least 96 % of the population lived below the poverty line with a better fraction of people suffering from malnutrition related ailments.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga who presided over the launch at a Nairobi club was however quick to emphasize the need to develop an inbuilt mechanism that could sustain such projects after main sponsors pull out of the implementation operations.

“More importantly sustainability has been aptly recognized for decades as the single- biggest omission in some of the previous donor programmes that were implemented in Africa,” He said.

The premier underscored the need for local leadership to be fully involved in the process to understand the project concepts for any eventuality in case a donor left.

He at the same time challenged the donor community to extend their scope of coverage in the near future to reach other needy segments of the society who lacked means to meet their daily needs.

Odinga commended the US government for supporting the country in times of distress citing the Feed the Future Initiatives (FFI) and the Global Health initiative (GHI) which President Obama‘s administration rolled out recently.

He said the nation was fatigued by the vicious cycle in the distribution of relief food whenever the country lapses to the extreme weather patterns and insisted that it was time such predictable phenomena were contained and replaced with sustainable solutions.

The Premier said “Nothing pains us more than the idea that virtually every year we must distribute relief food “when we know that with technological advancement we can create food secured zones in the affected areas.

But he expressed optimism that with a constitutional dispensation in place, the government will be obligated to meet fundamental social and economic right of her citizens of which food security is a core component.


American ambassador Michael Rannebeger said Kenya receives at least Ksh 70 billion annually within the bilateral partnership between the two countries towards the achievement of global food security, which the G8 Member state had resolved to initiate.

Senior USADF officials including the President Lloyd Pierson, Chairman Jack Leslie and the Regional representative Timothy Nzioka graced the occasion.

Others were Northern Kenya Minister Mohamed Elmi and his co Operative Development counterpart Joseph Nyaga while MPs were Ekwe Ethuro, Jospahat Nanok, Alfred Khangati, Margaret Kamar, Hussein Ali and Nur Nasir.

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