Extreme drought: millions of Kenyans going hungry

Like its neighbours in the horn of Africa, Kenya is experiencing extreme drought conditions. Some 3.5 million people are suffering from starvation.

A UN humanitarian official went to the northerwest region of Turkana and insisted on the need to support the population. "The world's attention is elsewhere and we know that. And the world's misery has not left Turkana, and the world's rains have not come to Turkana. And we have seen four successive failures of the rains, we fear a fifth. And the result is that these families, who have been kind enough to talk to us today, have nothing left, said Martin Griffiths, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, They have no animals. They try to get food by making brooms that can't sell. The only food available for their children is sometimes for the schools, but to send a child to school you have to go six kilometers to get water so that the child can take water to the school."

In September last year, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta declared the drought a national disaster.

According the UN, over 15 million people are facing severe water shortages and acute food insecurity in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, a number which could reach 20 million if these conditions persist.