Peter Lam remembers what the taps in Kalobeyei looked like when he visited in 2023. Water flowed freely, he recalls, with hardly anyone around to collect it.
This year, the picture is starkly different.
“All the taps are very dry,” he says. Residents now walk to dried-up riverbeds and dig for water, often finding supplies that are unsafe to drink.
Lam, who has lived in Kakuma since 2011, has witnessed the worsening situation first-hand. While surveying people with disabilities for United Disabled Persons of Kenya, he met a man who walks four kilometres to a water point, taking two hours each way, to collect water used only for cooking.
Government drought monitors have recorded round trips of six to eight kilometres for water in Turkana during drought seasons, with some journeys exceeding 20 kilometres.
Now, the county faces another test, with the threat of drought and flooding arriving from two directions.
In June, the Kenya Meteorological Department placed the likelihood of El Niño developing this year at between 80 and 82 per cent. Its October-to-December rainfall outlook indicated that Turkana could receive near-average to above-average rainfall, even as drought conditions were expected to range from poor to fair.
For Lominito Tomaru, Plan International’s project manager in Turkana, the two threats are already intertwined. Rainfall upstream, including in Sudan, can trigger flash floods that travel down the Tarach River into Turkana West.
“It’s ironical that we are in the midst of drought with a water crisis, but flash floods also happen,” Tomaru says.
Yet, as the climate risks intensify, the financial resources available to address them appear to be moving in the opposite direction.
Turkana Deputy Governor John Erus has warned that declining international funding could reverse years of progress in Kakuma and Kalobeyei.
Speaking at a Private Sector for WASH (PS4WASH) forum themed Beyond Direct Provision: Unlocking Sustainable, Private Sector-Led WASH Markets in Turkana, Dr Erus raised the question of whether businesses could shoulder part of the responsibility.
The more difficult question, however, is whether the infrastructure they build will remain operational during the driest month of the next drought.
Godfrey Akolong, the director of the Kalobeyei Integrated Socio-Economic Development Plan (KISEDP) at the Turkana County government, explained how the county’s water supply system comes under pressure during drought.
Boreholes are the primary source of water for many communities. When drought intensifies, he says, “communities and livestock concentrate around fewer functional water sources”, while “vulnerability increases significantly when drought coincides with infrastructure breakdowns”.
Such breakdowns are far from unusual.
A county audit of approximately 1,800 boreholes in 2022 found that 40 per cent were non-functional, largely because routine maintenance had been neglected.
The National Drought Management Authority’s February 2026 bulletin, drawing on data from the county water department, found that 68.7 per cent of Turkana’s boreholes were operational.
Functionality varied across the county, ranging from 56 per cent in Kibish to 81 per cent in Turkana South. Broken equipment, abandonment, burnt-out pumps and vandalism were among the reasons cited for non-functionality.
A separate UNICEF-led assessment in August found an even lower rate in a more limited geographical area. Of 395 boreholes assessed across six wards in Turkana North and Kibish, only 228, or 58 per cent, were fully functional. The assessment covered 512 water sources in total.
Akolong says the county’s priority is to secure “predictable long-term financing for both infrastructure and its maintenance”.
The funding required, he adds, is “far beyond what the county can finance alone”.
He identifies responsible private investment as one of the avenues being pursued, alongside county budget allocations, national government funding and development partners.
The county’s 2025/26 financial year budget allocated Sh650 million to Water Services, including Sh319.6 million for water supply and storage and Sh40.4 million for emergency response and drought mitigation.
For the 2026/27 financial year, county projections show Sh65.1 million under the Water Services vote, while Sh517 million is projected under the Financing Locally-Led and Departmental Programmes Climate Actions (FLLoCA) programme.
George Emase, the county’s Director of Climate Change, has been involved in climate-action planning and assessments of FLLoCA projects. By September, the county was preparing a multi-agency contingency plan for the anticipated El Niño rains.
