African Nation of Kenya Faces More Problems, Drought, Prospects of Renewed Riots
Posted: Monday, March 07, 2011
by Joel Hendon
http://hebronics.org/index.html
Overall, Kenya is a poor country to begin with. It has had more than it’s share of corruption in government and lack of training in agricultural interests and limited opportunity for it’s citizenry. All probably remember the massive upheaval which occurred during the election of 2007-2008 when the incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was declared winner in the December 2007 election. The opposition party headed by Raila Odinga disputed the election outcome, and after the incumbent refused to hold another election, Odinga’s supporters rampaged.
(2008 Kenya riots: Wikipedia photo with permission)
There were riots, multiple killings and general civil war. Thirty unarmed civilians were slaughtered in a church building on New Years day. There were reports of sporadic killings for several weeks, including much destruction of properties. Finally President Kibaki, under international pressure, agreed to accept Odinga as the Prime Minister and the rioting stopped. But many were left with their homes destroyed, without jobs and hungry. Others had been forced to stay hidden in their homes for fear of the rioters, for weeks. Foodstuff prices increased by as much as 150% in many cases when the people were barely able to secure enough food with the original prices.Now after 2 years, things have improved although the prices for food have never reached the level they were before the rioting according to some reports, making life difficult for the poorer areas.
Kenya is situated where the equator crosses it’s widest portion with almost one-third of the nation south of the equator and the other two thirds north of it. Most of the nation receives monsoon rains from October to December each year, but the 2010 rains fell far short of the norm, leaving much of the country hurting much of the nation with a drastic need of water.
According to a report in the Afrol News, there are already 1.6 million of their people who are receiving food aid due to droughts and poor harvests. Many crops were burned and destroyed during the early 2008 rioting. But now with the extreme drought in October and November, the government warns that this number could triple to around 5 million very soon.
Livestock deaths, acute food shortage and increased migration by pastoralist communities due to depletion of pasture and water for livestock have been reported. At least five persons have reportedly died from hunger this year. (Kenya drought could create 5 million needy: afrol News-January 19, 2011)
If there are no tears in your eyes for these people yet, read this. I have read the following information in several publications, however, the following blurb perhaps explains the impending danger best.
Absent genuine efforts to transcend ethnic politics and instill accountability for the political—and potentially criminal—acts of senior political leaders before scheduled 2012 elections, Kenya's prospects are bleak. The country is experiencing a simmering crisis that threatens to again erupt into bloody conflict that could tear it apart along ethnic lines, as nearly happened after profoundly flawed elections in December 2007. The country's ethnic divisions have been reinforced by successive generations of politicians who have used patronage to build personal and party loyalties based on ethno-regionalism. The bitterly divided, and effectively unelected, coalition government formed in April 2008 has thus far proved unable to address the many grave problems facing the nation. (Countries at the Crossroads 2010: freedomhouse.org )
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