Urban hunger rises as harsh economy bites
Dorothy Akinyi 39 during the interview at her home in Mukuru Kwa Njenga, Nairobi County on Sunday, December 10, 2023.
On a normal day at Mukuru Kwa Njenga, the roads are squeezed on both sides by hawkers, grocery vendors, street food cooks and slow mikokoteni (handcart) owners eking out a living. Here, driving fast is impossible, and no matter how many times you honk, the best you will get is a side glance, sometimes a sneer, and a little jump to the side to allow you to pass.
Beside the roads are streams of stinking green sewage, home to a thousand flies, plastics, diapers and human waste. Dorothy Akinyi’s stall sits amply on the roadside, with biscuits, sweets and a few non-food items. About 100 metres away is her house, which she can only access by crossing a sewage stream, atop a makeshift bridge with gaping holes.
Her single house, built with iron sheets on one side and machine-cut stones on the other, is the third in a long, dark and slippery corridor. It is split along the middle by a bedsheet, an orange plastic table in the middle, and an old blanket for a carpet. Seven children call this place home and are dependent on 39-year-old Akinyi.
On a good day, she makes a profit of at least Sh200, which assures her that her children will have supper. Out of this, she pays Sh20 for M-Gas, buys a kilogramme of maize flour, Sh20 vegetables and a packet of milk for her toddler. Whatever remains will serve as the baby’s lunch the next day.
“I am an orphan and a widow. I lost my husband in 2010. I have three biological children, and four nephews that I adopted when my only sister died. We often take strong tea for breakfast, while my toddler gets a glass of milk that is sold for Sh20. On a good day, we purchase githeri for lunch, and maize flour and vegetables for supper. On bad days, we skip all meals, and prepare strong tea for the baby for supper,” she says.
“My husband used to be a security officer but was shot and died on the spot. By last year, when the economy was better, I would offer laundry services, which allowed us to afford at least two meals a day. Now, it’s difficult to find such a business, and I either have to borrow or sleep hungry with the children,” she explains.
Two meals per day
Within the neighbourhood, Rose Ogutu and her five children face the same predicament. Her third-born son, Samuel Oduor, says in the recent past, they have gone from being assured of two meals per day, to having one meal on a good day.
“We would afford a plate of porridge in the morning, and even though we would often skip lunch, supper was a guarantee. Nowadays, with the high cost of living, we skip both breakfast and lunch. If our mother is lucky to get a client who needs laundry services, we will be assured of having something to eat for supper,” says Oduor.
He explains that his mother is a member of a group of women who usually visit estates looking for clients who need laundry services.
“On a good day, we eat one meal a day, usually supper. Today, we haven’t eaten anything since morning. The last meal I had was yester night, when we had ugali and vegetables. Our mother often struggles with paying fees, and her only refuge is in bursaries,” says Oduor.
“We never look forward to Christmas celebrations because there is nothing to celebrate. Last Christmas, we boiled some beans but dumped them eventually because they wouldn’t soften. We only recognise the day as per the calendar, since there will be no gifts, food or new clothing. Our situation is similar to many others here, who often sleep hungry,” he adds.
As a paralegal, his mother’s passion for advocating for gender-based violence survivors is mainly voluntary and brings her no income. Since May, her clothes business, which she relies on to feed her children, has seen dwindling profits, so much that she has been forced to dig into her pockets to pay the shop’s rent.
“People would now rather buy food than clothes,” she says.
As Kenya celebrates 60 years after gaining independence, experts weigh in on Kenya’s ability and progress in fighting hunger, disease and poverty, as dreamed by Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s founding father.
Timothy Njagi, a research fellow at Tegemeo Institute of Agriculture Policy and Development, explains that there is still a large number of people who are food-poor in urban areas. The number, he says, has increased in the last couple of years, because of shocks such as Covid-19, droughts and now, food inflation, where the prices of food commodities have gone up, while people’s income remains the same. People are, therefore, forced to buy less food.
Food-poor people
However, the exact number of food-poor people in urban centres currently is unavailable, as there has been no recent survey.
“The problem also stems from the fact that people living in urban centres do not produce their own food. And so, when they cannot afford it, the common strategy is to skip meals. In other countries, people substitute with less and cheaper sources of food items, but Kenyans would rather skip meals and have whatever they desire once a day,” says Njagi.
“In terms of fighting malnutrition diseases that result from hunger, we haven’t made the progress we would have liked. According to the KDHS survey, we were able to reduce stunting and underweight nutrition indicators, but we are still not where we ought to be,” he adds.
Njagi explains that Kenya’s food challenge has been brought about by her population growing faster than she can produce food, leading to a level of dependence on food imports such as cereals.
Besides, Kenya has been slow in adopting agricultural technology that would have lowered the cost of agricultural production. The situation is exacerbated by climate change, which has altered weather patterns and caused food losses.
“If Jomo Kenyatta were to come back today, he would be very disappointed. 60 years ago, in rural areas, nobody knew hunger, and if you stole food from someone’s farm, nobody bothered as much. People had a lot to eat. Right now things are tough. Arable land is declining, and farmers have also focused on commoditising food products,” says Njagi.
He says that if a survey were to be done today in urban centres, the number of children suffering from malnutrition will be found to have gone up because people can’t afford food and the government has no welfare kitty for them. This is despite the Constitution stating that food is a basic right.
Cash transfers
During Covid-19 period, the government provided cash transfers for food, because people relied on a daily wage.
However, the programmes are expensive, and not easy to run especially when you have a broke government.
“We are looking at a population hitting more than 60 million by 2030. We have to accelerate our agricultural production as fast as our population rises. We need to stop the construction of residences in arable land and incentivise settlement in marginal areas to avoid reducing arable land. We then must create a lot of value for agriculture to create employment and income, lower the cost of living and find a way to use marginalised lands for agricultural production,” Njagi says.
According to the Kenya Poverty Report 2021 by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, an average Kenyan adult spends a total of Sh7,393 per month on food and non-food items. The report also details that rural households spend more than half of their income on food while households in urban areas spend less than half of their income on food.
The report defines a food-poor person as an adult who consumes food worth less than Sh2,905 per month in urban areas. A food-poor household, on the other hand, refers to households that consume food worth less than Sh7,193 in a month in an urban area.
The report classifies a household as extremely food-poor if they cannot afford to meet their basic food requirements, even if they spend all they have on food.
The report states that 80 out of 100 people in the country purchased the food they consumed. In urban areas, the figure rose to 94 people out of 100, while the figure dropped to 20 people out of 100 in rural areas, where most people took to producing their own food.
