Dancliff Mbura is the advocacy and communications manager at Action Against Hunger Kenya. He works to influence policy and resource allocation and is an expert on multisectoral nutrition interventions.

Just four years since the last devastating drought, when five consecutive rainy seasons failed, 3.3 million people in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid counties are facing acute hunger as yet another drought crisis deepens. It is visible everywhere – in the parched riverbeds, weakened animals, and the children, who are too quiet.

Six months ago, the number of people facing acute hunger was 1.8 million. If nothing changes, by August, it will climb to 3.7 million, underscoring the need for urgent aid.

We know the answers. Cash transfers allow families to purchase food in markets that are still functioning. Mobile health and nutrition outreach teams must meet communities where they are, not where facilities happen to be located, which could make them inaccessible. Emergency water provision is essential.

But the resources are not there to address the growing needs. A coalition of humanitarian organisations working across Kenya’s drought-hit regions with the government has estimated the drought response would cost more than 30 billion Kenyan shillings ($232 million). Kenya’s government has released just 6 billion shillings so far.

Reducing the damage

Beyond the immediate response, however, we need to invest in systems that reduce the damage of future drought cycles in this climate-vulnerable region.

Kenya has systems that support the generation of early-warning systems, such as the National Drought Management Authority’s monthly county and national early-warning bulletins with detailed early-warning data. What we need is a means to ensure that information reaches communities in time for them to act on it and make sure they have the resources they need to do that.

One approach could be the establishment of village-level climate change and disaster hubs. These hubs would provide communities with simplified, actionable information, sometimes via dashboards on weather patterns and forecasts, and support them in generating locally relevant, cost-effective early actions.

By engaging communities in this process, the government and development partners can complement these efforts with additional resources where needed. This approach fosters community ownership while simultaneously enhancing resilience to climate-related risks.

With better technology, including AI-assisted climate modeling, we can generate precise early-warning information. When shared in a timely manner with communities and accompanied by support for early or anticipatory actions, this can help build resilience to frequent droughts and other crises.

For example, with access to early-warning information, vulnerable communities could store water ahead of droughts, switch to short-maturity crops when reduced rainfall is forecast, and move livestock and food stocks to higher ground before floods hit. They could also apply preventative treatments to protect crops and animals from pest or disease outbreaks, and make smarter market decisions, such as selling livestock early before prices drop, to safeguard their income.

Different in scale

I have spent 15 years working on humanitarian response in Kenya. I have seen drought cycles come and go. But what is happening right now across our arid and semi-arid lands – the ASAL counties that cover nearly 80% of the country – is different in scale and in the depth of suffering it is causing.

The October-December 2025 short rains delivered only 30 to 60% of the long-term average, making it one of the driest seasons since 1981. In some areas, rainfall failed almost entirely. More than 90% of open water sources have dried up in most parts of ASAL counties. Families are walking up to 20 km (12 miles) or more just to find water.

Now, as we approach Kenya’s more reliable rainy season from March to May, projections are well below average across the hardest-hit northern counties, and we may be heading into a fourth consecutive poor season. For communities who have already exhausted every coping mechanism they have, another failed season could be catastrophic.

More than 810,000 children between the ages of six months and five years are acutely malnourished. Nearly 117,000 pregnant and breastfeeding mothers are also acutely malnourished. The cycle of nutrition that healthy communities depend on is breaking down.

And yet approximately half of severe acute malnutrition cases are going untreated. Only 24% of the nutrition and health outreach sites mapped across the arid and semi-arid counties are currently functioning.

Impossible choices

The economic devastation compounds everything. Livestock is the backbone of life in these pastoral lands. But in Marsabit county alone, more than 50,000 sheep and goats have died. Mandera has lost nearly 30,000 animals. Milk production has plummeted by 55%. As animals grow weaker, families receive less and less when they sell them. Livelihoods are collapsing in slow motion, and families are running out of options.

That can lead to desperate decisions: more daughters are married off early in exchange for dowry like livestock, a practice that rises sharply in times of crisis. Girls are subjected to female genital mutilation so they can be considered ready for marriage. Children drop out of school as families are forced to move in search of better land.

Every week that passes without a scaled-up response is a week in which children go hungry, animals die, and families make impossible choices. We are at a point where, if we do not act, lives will be lost – preventably.

Not because we lacked the knowledge, not because we lacked the warning, but because we were not able to move fast enough.

The post We must invest in early-warning systems to tackle crises like Kenya’s drought appeared first on Climate Home News.

https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/03/10/we-must-invest-in-early-warning-systems-to-tackle-crises-like-kenyas-drought/

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