Efforts are being made to reconcile groups competing for scarce resources as part of the United States’ response to a pastoralist crisis in famine-hit parts of Kenya, said a relief official.
Conflict-mitigation meetings are conducted regularly at Mandera market, where dwindling numbers of traders in the northeast bring their livestock, said Mr Michael Hess, an assistant administrator with the US Agency for International Development (USAid).
Similar meetings are held in other districts where fighting has flared among herders.
Despite the onset of heavy rains in some areas, Mr Hess described the overall situation in northeastern Kenya as “still pretty bad.”
He returned a few days ago from an assessment tour of parched sections of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti.
Forecasters predict the current rains would not continue much longer, he said.
Relief organisations are thus planning longer-term responses to the drought while carrying out emergency feeding operations.
Silkworm and chicken farming are being promoted as alternatives to continued reliance on herding, said Mr Hess at a Press briefing in Washington.
The World Food Programme yesterday warned that despite a good start to the long rains in Kenya, millions of nomadic herders and subsistence farmers remained desperate and in need of sustained assistance.
The WFP, which has been one of the key organisations fetching and distributing food to the famine-stricken population of the Horn of Africa, said the desperate situation would remain until the affected people can rebuild their lives.
With flooding in some areas, the WFP said getting food aid to people would only become harder and slower because roads become impassable.
The UN body lamented that it had no food stocks for this month’s distribution in the worst-affected Mandera and Wajir districts in North Eastern Province. It had a shortfall of about Sh9 billion to feed 3.5 million people until next February.
Additional reporting by Mburu Mwangi | 
