It is un-African to welcome a visitor with a chore, yet that is what a looming increase in maize prices might portend for the incoming Government

 Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration will find its to-do list overflowing with the impending maize crisis top of the ladder. Maize is Kenya’s staple food and anything that puts it out of the reach of the ordinary citizen is a danger to national security.

 Some stakeholders in the agricultural industry raised the alarm about an unprecedented rise in the price of the commodity in the past two weeks.

They say if the trend is not checked in good time, the situation could degenerate to catastrophic levels.

 Indications are that all the past increases in maize price are nothing compared to what is happening right now. At Sh3300, poor Kenyans have been forced to purchase their staple food above world market prices.

 It means the country’s food market is heading into serious trouble, which should be a cause for concern all round.

Crops destroyed

 The long rains are here and farmers are planting. Ordinarily, this should be a joyous occasion unfortunately several Kenyans are calling for help because their homes are submerged in flood-waters.

Swathes of farms in many parts of the country are also under water due to the floods. This erodes prospects of better future harvests.

 This is nothing new because destruction of crops by flood-waters and fluctuations in food prices have now become cyclical. They are evils that successive governments have found necessary to condone. We can only speculate the reasons why.

 Knowing the impending crisis is one, but being prepared to face it is another. We would have loved to tirade the Government, but Kenya is in transition.

In this case, the only option is to advise the incoming Government to find ways of filling in the policy gaps that have left Kenyans buying food expensively.

 With the prices of essential staples shooting up well before the floods, it’s only plausible to wonder if the predicted food crisis was a result of the floods or a long-term result of misguided policies.