More than 2.6 million livestock deaths have been reported in the country as a result of the ongoing prolonged drought, the National Drought Management Authority has said.
NDMA chief executive officer Hared Hassan said the livestock sector suffers huge losses from recurrent droughts with the losses from deaths being estimated to be Sh226 billion.
“Moreover, low milk production has contributed to high malnutrition rates in Asal counties,” he said.
Hassan spoke on Tuesday when he gave an overview of the impact of the 2022 short rains on food and nutrition security to the governors in Mombasa.
This was during a sensitisation forum of governors from Asal counties on the De-risking, Inclusion and Value Enhancement of Pastoral Economies in the Horn of Africa (DRIVE) project.
The project seeks to cushion pastoralists against drought risks and contribute to resilience building.
It builds on the work of previous index-based insurance - Kenya Livestock Insurance Programme.
The meeting was organised by the State Department for Livestock and officially opened by Livestock PS Harry Kimutai.
Also present were Devolution PS Teresiah Mbaika, Mary Mwiti from the Council of Governors and senior officials from the project implementing agencies.
According to IGAD, At least 36.1 million people in the IGAD region have been affected by drought and are facing heightened levels of food insecurity.
The drought has wiped out an estimated 4.2 million livestock, shattering the livelihoods of pastoralist communities and crippling them economically across the region.
The region hosts almost 50 per cent of the livestock in sub-Saharan Africa and livestock accounts for almost 15 per cent of the region’s GDP.
“But the bad news is that it is possible that our region could rapidly change from severe drought to severe floods as the ones experienced in 1996, 2016 and 2019,” Igad executive secretary Workneh Gebeyehu said.
The prolonged drought has also triggered large-scale population displacement, with close to two million people becoming internally displaced and increasing the refugee burden in the region.