East Africa Food Crisis

East Africa is facing its worst food crisis for decades, following four years of failed harvests, erratic rainfall and rocketing global food prices. Up to 20 million people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are going hungry every day, with severe malnutrition amongst infants and young children. Local women, young people and partner organisations on the ground are leading our response, but they need urgent support to expand their life-saving activities and avert a catastrophe.

ActionAid’s is providing emergency food and livelihoods (cash transfers and animal feed), water, and long-term programs, which are building resilience in the communities, through developments like fruit and vegetable gardens and the adoption of sustainable farming practices. ActionAid also works with farmers in different industries to advocate for better working conditions and wages, so that they can be more resilient in the face of adversity, like this historic food crisis.

Across Kenya around 650,000 smallholder farmers produce 65% of the country’s tea. Smallholder farmers have a lack of power within the tea value chain and are not involved in the key decisions that impact them. Fluctuating global tea prices, a historic drought affecting yield, and rising global costs of seeds and fertilizer exacerbate the problem, with profits low and women barely able to support their families.

Approximately 300,000 workers are hired by small-scale farmers in Kenya. The majority are young women, many of whom are economic migrants from other regions who have travelled to tea growing areas in search of employment. Informal workers, especially women tea pickers, in the Kenyan tea industry, are vulnerable to low incomes, as well as poor working conditions, in part due to the informal nature of their employment and a variable wage based on the amount of tea picked. An unliveable wage and lack of access to services including healthcare, education, and safe housing for themselves and their families make the conditions even worse. Rates of domestic violence against women are high, with weak mechanisms in place for prevention and response and there are reports of child labor, with children as young as seven picking tea alongside their parents, to help pay for their school fees or food.

Through a three-year project with the Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) and its member companies, ActionAid is supporting smallholder tea farmers and workers on tea farms in three communities in Kenya. The project aims to help tea picking communities to understand and claim their rights to a positive working environment, improved living conditions, and freedom from violence. The issues of labor rights, the right to education, clean water, decent housing and healthcare, as well as rights to live free from gender-based violence and child labor are central to the project.

Patricia [name changed to protect her identity] 50, is a small-scale farmer with a strong grasp on the challenges facing tea pickers and farmers alike. She was born and raised in the tea community where she now lives with her husband and three children. Whilst Patricia acknowledges she is more fortunate than many other women in the community, she too has struggled to provide for her family and send her children to school, and her health has suffered as a result of carrying out strenuous physical work over a long period of time.

 Patricia discusses the economic challenges of tea farming, explaining that whilst the cost of production of tea is high, returns are low which means that many farmers struggle to afford seeds, fertilisers or protective clothing for spraying the crops. She talks about prevalent issues in the tea community including child labor and gender-based violence.

Patricia would like a platform where farmers and tea pickers can raise their grievances, access their rights as workers and be involved in key decisions in the tea industry which impact them all. She would make a very good women’s leader in her community.

This is just one example of the type of impactful, life-saving projects ActionAid is able to impelment around the world with the support of people like you. Together, we are making a lasting difference.

Today, I'm sharing a different kind of impact report with you. Instead of telling the story of one of our community partners and their work with ActionAid to combat the negative impacts of the climate cirisis, I'm going to share our newest global climate justice campaign, "Fund Our Future". This campaign's success relies on the voices and experiences of leaders within our East African partnering communities, who know first hand the impossible challenges that climate change has created- namely, the current historic drought and food crisis.

Please read ahead to learn more about our newest and largest campaign yet, through a short blog by Alberta, ActionAid's very own Senior Policy Analyst.

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Even the most ardent climate change denialists would have been stumped by the extraordinary weather patterns across Europe, the Americas, and Asia in July. It is now in the history books that July 2023 was the hottest month since records began. As global temperatures increase, the United Nations has warned that the years 2023 to 2027 will be the warmest five-year period ever recorded.

For millions around the world, climate disasters such as droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, flooding, and hurricanes continue to hit at an unprecedented scale, leaving behind a trail of destruction. As expected, the most affected are the poor, especially in the Global South, who have contributed the least to the climate crisis.

The time to act to reverse this dramatic trend is now.

The discourse on factors fuelling the climate crisis has mostly focused on fossil fuels, as the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the role of industrial agriculture has somehow managed to fly under the climate radar, despite it being the second largest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions.

Many people are led to believe that fossil- and chemical-intensive industrial agriculture is the panacea to food insecurity. But in fact, it is worsening climate change and causing widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, driving land grabs, threatening livelihoods, and contributing to severe health risks. Millions of people still suffer from hunger and malnutrition, as food insecurity is a problem of equitable access and distribution, rather than production. It is now clear that industrial agriculture is the problem and not the solution.

Fossil fuel and industrial agriculture corporations must stop wreaking havoc, and governments must reform energy, agriculture, and climate policies to constrain these destructive actors. But we also know that money talks. As long as massive financial flows continue to finance these climate-wrecking corporations, the problem will continue.

According to new research by ActionAid, “How the finance flows: The banks fuelling the climate crisis”, since the Paris Agreement was concluded in 2015, the world’s biggest banks have provided US$370 billion to industrial agriculture activities in the Global South. In the same timeframe, a further US$3.7 trillion has funded fossil fuel activities in the Global South. This is more financing to fossil fuels and agribusiness activities in the Global South than Global North governments have provided as climate finance to address issues of loss and damage, climate adaptation, and climate mitigation. This is absurd. This is suicidal.

The world’s money flows must move away from funding the biggest drivers of the climate crisis and destruction and move towards funding the future of our planet. It is time to call for banks to stop financing harmful agribusiness and fossil fuels. And it is time for governments to ramp up support for real and sustainable solutions such as agroecology.

One wonders why governments have delayed placing their trust in agroecology, which has proven so potent in addressing food insecurity and empowering the vulnerable, especially women and youth.

The answer lies in the notion that agroecology – in which farmers use sustainable practices to farm with nature instead of against it – cannot feed nations at the scale that industrial agriculture is believed to. However, food crisis, poverty, and malnutrition are increasing. One-third of the food produced is lost or wasted, and a big chunk of industrially produced food goes to feed animals and cars, while a few multinational corporations are increasing their profits on an unprecedented scale. Research has shown that smallholder farmers produce approximately 80 percent of the food supply in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa despite the lack of financial and political support, yet they are among the poorest in the world.

To unleash the potency of agroecology as a viable alternative, there needs to be more financial support. It is crucial to channel public financing into the development of sustainable food systems grounded in agroecology and food sovereignty. These systems prioritize the well-being of individuals, especially smallholder producers and consumers, as well as the health of our soils and the environment. This shift aims to replace harmful chemicals with sustainable alternatives.

As ActionAid launches its Global Climate Justice Campaign to defund the drivers of climate change, the world must take heed and embrace the opportunity to pursue sustainable, women-led, ecologically sound, and fair alternatives.

This is a clarion call to take a moment and reflect on the “Only One Earth” slogan from the 1972 United Nations conference on the human environment. Unless we act now, future generations will not have much left to inherit.

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Thank you for your support as we mobilize as much support as we can to push powerful corporations and governments for a just, green, and feminist transition into the future.