Thriving in Dry Times

Kenya has been enduring severe drought since 2016.

In recent years, rain in Kenya has often come in the form of intense rainfalls that give rise to additional problems—flash flooding and desert locust outbreaks—rather than providing relief. The drought years have led to an estimated 4.2 million Kenyans in need of humanitarian assistance between 2019 and 2022.

As the climate crisis escalates, Kenyans are taking action to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

In 2015, the Kenyan government launched the country’s first national adaptation plan (NAP), which set out a vision for building a climate-resilient future. The NAP is delivered through 5-year National Climate Change Action Plans (NCCAPs), with recent plans including priority adaptation actions that aim to reduce risks from drought, increase food security, and ensure access to water. Kenyan communities have an established track record on implementing measures to adapt to climate risk, including drought. Under the NAP process, the country is taking a coordinated approach to scaling up adaptation efforts and initiatives to address vulnerability and build resilience to climate change.

Restoring the Njoro Kubwa Canal in Taita–Taveta

Njoro Kubwa Canal is a 12-kilometre irrigation canal in Taveta, Taita–Taveta County. Originally built in 2007, the canal transformed the lives of residents in the area, turning a semi-arid area into one of the most fertile regions in the country. Between 40,000 and 50,000 households rely on the canal for farming, boosting the local economy and making Taveta a rich food-producing region.

However, in recent years, the canal fell into disrepair. Cracks in some of the constructed canal walls were leading to water loss, reduced water flow, and blockages within the canal.

To address these and other challenges, the Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture Project (KCSAP) 2017–2023 was implemented by the Kenyan government through a World Bank concessional loan. It is a flagship national project for improving food security and agriculture.

Under the KCSAP, the government invested KES 11 million (USD 75,000) in 2019 to restore the Njoro Kubwa Canal. The rehabilitation works improved the resilience of the canal to extreme rainfall events while ensuring the community continued to have access to water for irrigation and household use.

The canal restoration is an important example of the progress made under the NAP process toward the NCCAP’s priority action on food security to “increase crop productivity through improved irrigation.”

Cattle, Dairy, and Aquaculture in Nyeri

In Nyeri County, the KCSAP provided critical support toward the NAP’s and NCCAP’s objectives to support small-scale subsistence farmers, including livestock farmers, to improve food security.

The Aberdare Welfare group accessed support under KCSAP for training on approaches—like adopting a “Zero Grazing” method where grass is cut fresh and fed to cattle.  The new approaches enable farmers to keep livestock when drought destroys pastures, while increasing their cattle’s production of milk—the group saw production grow from 6 litres per day to 20 litres per day. The training also provided methods for keeping their cattle healthier, for using manure to boost crop yields, and for using manure to produce biogas as an alternative source of energy in a community that had relied on firewood, often illegally cut from local forests.  The NCCAP 2018–2022 aimed to encourage 80,000 households to adopt biogas technology as a climate-smart agricultural approach that helps combat deforestation (a further priority under the NAP process). The Nyeri projects are helping to achieve this goal.

Members of the Nyeri-based Kiagi Self Help Group also accessed KCSAP funding to create a biogas unit. Biogas is now providing community members with an alternative to using illegally cut firewood for fuel. The use of biogas has also reduced indoor pollution that presents a health risks to the families. While modest, this achievement will add to other similar initiatives across Kenya in the achievement of the adaptation targets under the NAP and NCCAP. They have also accessed training on farming practices like crop rotation and dam building to harvest water to deal with inconsistent rainfall.