Shame of starving nation dents Uhuru big plan

A mother feeds her malnourished baby.

As part of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Big Four agenda, he targets to raise healthcare access to 100 per cent by 2022, up from 38 per cent currently.

He also seeks to ensure that the country is food secure as his legacy when he leaves office in the next four years.

But if recent reports from the Ministry of Agriculture and the Food and Agricultural Association (FAO) are anything to go by, the country has aeons to go before it boasts of a healthy and well-fed populace capable of powering its economy.

During a recent three-day forum organised by the ministry, FAO and the American international aid organisation USAID, one of the most scary revelations by health and agricultural experts was that Kenya is one of the countries with a big number of malnourished people in the world.

This is because apart from having a serious food security issue where many Kenyans, especially those living in the arid counties starve, majority is exposed to food that has no nutritional value at all.

This includes families living in well-endowed urban areas and others confined in agriculturally rich counties.

Stunted growth

Statistics tabled by FAO and state experts show that the country has a malnourishment rate of 19.7 per cent. The figure is declining at a very slow annual rate of one per cent.

This means that for the country to kick out malnourishment among its citizens, it will need at least 20 years.

According to the statistics, 8.8 million Kenyans are malnourished, a fact that makes a mockery of Uhuru’s plan of ensuring access to affordable food by 2022.

At the same time, the statistics showed that about 26 per cent of children below five years of age are too short for their age. That means these children have stunted growth.

This is as a result of being underfed and being exposed to food with little nutritional value.

“Stunted growth, especially among children is a depiction of chronic undernourishment, which remains a serious national development concern. Stunting is considered most serious because of its irreversible consequences,” the survey notes. Stunting is highest in West Pokot and Kitui counties at 46 percent while in Kilifi, Mandera, Bomet, Tharaka Nithi, Narok and Uasin Gishu counties it is at between 31 per cent and 39 per cent.

In Kwale, Tana River, Lamu, Wajir Marsabit, Meru, Embu, Machakos Nyandarua, Samburu, Kakamega and Nairobi counties, stunting stands at between 26 and 30 per cent.

Again, only 22 per cent of children in Kenya aged between six and 23 months are adequately fed.

Lofty blueprints

Majority of women, the study further showed, are also affected by another problem - obesity.

A third of all women in the country are obese, according to the report. In Nairobi, 41 per cent of women are obese.

“It is sad that a country like Kenya is dreaming to gain meaningful economic growth – as envisaged by such lofty economic blueprints as the Vision 2030 – yet that dream is being rested on the shoulders of a malnourished population,” said Dr Romeno Kiome, an expert on nutrition, and a one-time Principal Secretary for Agriculture.

“Malnourishment affects even the brain. That is affecting someone’s cognitive abilities. That person cannot be expected to contribute much to the country’s economic fabric.”

But one of the most telling revelations during the forum came from the participants who revealed their poor dietary habits since they were children mostly because of poverty.

Esther Okoti, a teacher told this writer that she predominantly grew up on a diet of Ugali and Sukuma.

“We would eat Sukuma and ugali for supper, for lunch, for everything,” said Ms Okoti.

“We had chicken and these chicken would lay eggs, but my family would sell all the eggs. We were poor and we needed the money, especially for school. Now as a grownup that’s when I realise that I was totally underfed as a child. And poverty was the main contributor of that.”

Another participant, popular comedian-turned-state official Walter ‘Nyambane’ Monga’re, told participants that in his native area, the diet was predominantly matoke (bananas).

“We would eat roasted matoke, steamed matoke, fried matoke for every meal,” said Nyambane.

“Whatever else that was produced like carrots, eggs, was for sale.”

Cook up policies

Dr Romeno Kiome, an expert on nutrition, and a one-time Principal Secretary for Agriculture explained that in his journey of nutritional research, he had realised that even in supposedly well-to-do counties, malnourishment is prevalent because of poverty.

“In Nairobi, for example, most families, especially the low income ones, can survive on one meal a day. And that meal is not even a nutritional one. It could be ugali and sukuma. It calls for much attention when you realise that even well-to-do counties such as Meru, Embu and Nyandarau have huge malnourished populations,” Kiome said.

As the debate progressed, the gist of the matter, according to the experts present, was that it would be misleading for the Government to ‘cook up policies’ and assure all and sundry that the country will have a well-fed population by 2022 as part of its Big 4 agenda.

It would also be more foolhardy for the same government to project any meaningful economic growth under the circumstances, they argued.  

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