A letter from the Arid North - by Ibrahim Rashid The above set of harsh climate coupled with recurrent droughts and famine have brought repeated suffering to the local community as their means of livelihood have repeatedly been threatened by the encroaching natural hazards, many families have lost their source of income and their livelihoods disrupted as a result of these recurrent natural hazards. Many families have been forced to live in destitution as a result of the loss of most of their livestock holdings in recent years and most are now working as daily laborers and porters in the main towns of the Arid Zone districts like Garissa, Habaswein, Wajir, Mandera, Moyale and Ijara. The province suffers political, social and economic marginalization in addition to droughts and famine. The economic lifeline of the inhabitants of NEP is mainly livestock production. Due to harsh climatic conditions, erratic rainfall patterns and famine poor infrastructure and lack of proper markets for their products, livestock production which is a source of livelihood for the people of NEP is constantly undergoing strains and obstacles. The fragile ecosystem of the province due the recurrent droughts is experiencing difficulties in sustaining the pastoralist inhabitants whose economic and social life depends on it. All social development indicators of the province i.e living condition, labour force participation, inequality in education and health clearly shows that NEP is much below normal and is in fact the lowest and the least developed provinces in the country when compared to the other provinces of Kenya. Education which will have been an engine for future development of the province in terms of skilled labour production and producing future intellectuals and leaders is the worst affected sector. The province has the lowest primary and secondary school enrolment of 9.8% and 4.8% respectively, due to the government’s failure to invest in the education sector of the province and the use of unsuitable curriculum, poverty, recurrent droughts and very poor infrastructure that has retarded development in all the other sectors, in addition the region has one of the poorest Adult Education rates of 64.2%. Although inequality in all social sectors is huge between NEP and the rest of the country, when gender is considered these inequalities become even more staggering and alarming. According to, the geographic Dimensions of well-being in Kenya report (2005), only 22% of women have access to reasonable near water supplies, while the rest have to walk long distance to fetch it. On education, 93% of women in NEP have no education at all compared to the Central Province where only 2.6% of women have not gone to school. Unemployment rate in the province is one of the highest in the country surpassing other regions, the direct result of the long years of stagnation of the Kenyan economy during the Moi era and in particular the top down approach the centralized system the Kenyan government uses to recruit the civil service and for posts in the national parastatals like KenGen, Post and Telecommunication, Kenyan wildlife, Railways and The national tourism board among others, the only time the residents get recruited to government jobs is when the Kenyan Police, Prison Department, Army and the Administration police are conducting recruitment exercise in the province, a job that requires no particular talent other than physical fitness, but since un-employment rate is so high, college and university students have to pay a bribe to the recruiting officers just to get employed and support their families who have been using all their resources to educate them. Other graduates, especially teachers have to wait five years before an appointment or a recruitment is secured from the Kenyan teachers service commission, for the simple reason that they have to wait those who graduated before them to get employed and hence should not think of having a decent salary immediately after graduation as a reward for their toil and tolerance of the many years of educational hardships and personal sacrifices. Other cadres of other professions like laboratory technicians, community nurses and engineers among others have no prospect of government employment and other alternative sources of livelihoods and income is limited due to the unavailability of access to credit facilities and the absence of micro-projects that will have provided employment to hundreds of educated youths. The problems facing the region are many and diverse in nature some are man made due to poor planning or lack of it and displaced prioritization of projects and program’s that fail even during the initial pilot stages, due to poor planning and corrupt government officials that are ready to steal public funds and property in the slightest chance that avails itself. Programms such as constituency development fund (CDF) is changing the lives of the resident in a positive way however it’s increasing being used to siphon money out of the government covers and enrich those within the committee and not necessarily the residents except in paying school fees of the needy secondary and university students. In any case these programs are nation wide programs, and hence are not tailored to meet the many challenges facing the community in the arid NEP. The infrastructure of the region is under developed and way behind all the other provinces and the few that stand today are in a dilapidated state and in disuse a case in point being Farmers training centers (FTC’s) that stand idle in Garissa and in the other towns of what the government came to call “Arid land region” creating a negative impression to the would be donors and international civil society groups. NEP does not have a single tarmac ked road from Garissa to Mandera one travels in a seasonal road whose condition gets worse years after year and is totally impassable during the rainy seasons. Irrigation, housing, tap water, electricity supply and health facilities are just an example of the sectors which are totally under-developed and needs an urgent attention. Natural hazards have repeatedly struck the region, destroying entire farmlands, crop yields and livestock holding thus exposing many families to poverty and forcing many to relocate to town centers where the prospects of daily labor is high, however many have failed to understand that the township people depend on the product of the pastoralist like meat and milk to survive and vice versa and that if an appropriate action is not taken, then in the long run the food security situation of the arid north might get out of hand and starvation will be a common occurrence. The occurrence of flooding, drought and famine can not be predicted even with the best modern tools, however the ability of the people to withstand such adverse effects can be increased with trainings and capacity buildings and with such programs as integrated development programs (IDP) and other rural development programs (RDP) Initiatives to overcome the above problems should be multi-sectoral and above all be bottom up approach with active local community participation. Areas that will need intervention among others include; road construction, health and education investment, natural resource rehabilitations, small scale irrigation, rainwater harvesting, natural pond and water reservoirs construction, development of livestock markets and the extension of electricity from the national grid to over come electricity black-outs or lack of it to stimulate local businesses. By: Ibrahim Rashid Hassan |