Op-Eds
“We Have Nothing to Eat”: Further Reflections on the Famine in Turkana and the Government’s Food Security Policies
9 min read.Famine in Turkana and other Kenyan counties may not have yet caught the attention of the international media, but domestic dissatisfaction with the famine response may force the government to alter its food security policies. The more likely scenario, however, is that this government will, like most Kenyans, pray for the rains, and hope that the food crisis will go away all on its own.

Images in the Kenyan media of starving people in Turkana County have left many rich and middle class urban Kenyans as shocked as they were in 2011 when a declaration of famine prompted individuals and corporates such as Safaricom and the Kenya Commercial Bank to raise a whopping Sh700 million ($7 million) towards the famine relief effort in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid northern territories. Led by media and corporate celebrities, the Kenyans for Kenya campaign was touted as a sterling example of Kenyans’ self-help (harambee) spirit that did not rely on foreign aid to fix internal problems. (How the funds raised were used, and whether they were successful in averting future famines is debateable, and perhaps the subject of further investigation.)
Images in the Kenyan media of starving people in Turkana County have left many rich and middle class urban Kenyans as shocked as they were in 2011 when a declaration of famine prompted individuals and corporates such as Safaricom and the Kenya Commercial Bank to raise a whopping Sh700 million ($7 million) towards the famine relief effort in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid northern territories.
However, unlike in 2011, there has been no outpouring of largesse from ordinary Kenyans towards the relief effort. Moreover, government officials have been reluctant to declare a disaster, with politicians citing various reasons for the deaths reported in Turkana, ranging from sickness to climate change. When deaths were reported in Baringo County, the deputy president said they were “fake news”. Meanwhile, the head of state has not said a word about the looming catastrophe.
The recognition by some government officials that hundreds of thousands of people in the country might not have enough food has laid bare the gross inequalities that have defined the Kenyan state since independence – devolution notwithstanding – and has brought to the fore the fact that Kenya is still a deeply divided country economically and socially, a fact that Jubilee mandarins are reluctant to acknowledge
The current famine in Turkana and in several other Kenyan counties is perplexing at various levels. Firstly, it is happening at a time when the Jubilee government is congratulating itself for taking Kenya into the digital 21st century and for carrying out a very expensive Sh400 billion ($4 billion) Big Four agenda that includes improving food security.
Secondly, the recognition by some government officials that hundreds of thousands of people in the country might not have enough food has laid bare the gross inequalities that have defined the Kenyan state since independence – devolution notwithstanding – and has brought to the fore the fact that Kenya is still a deeply divided country economically and socially, a fact that Jubilee mandarins are reluctant to acknowledge. It is not lost on many people that while granaries in some parts of the country are overflowing with maize, other parts have no food to eat.
The famine has underscored the fact that there are many parts of this country where people are eking out a hand-to-mouth existence in regions where lack of infrastructure and basic services have exiled communities that are difficult to reach during a crisis
Thirdly, the famine has become evidence of yet another embarrassing scorecard of failed national and county government projects, including non-performing irrigation schemes, non-existent dams and gross neglect of the agriculture sector – all the result of theft or mismanagement of project funds.
Fourthly, the famine has underscored the fact that there are many parts of this country where people are eking out a hand-to-mouth existence in regions where lack of infrastructure and basic services have exiled communities that are difficult to reach during a crisis. After all, droughts do not automatically lead to famine; the recent droughts in the west coast of the United States, for example, did not result in people dying due to hunger. Famine usually means that people cannot afford to buy food, that the food they rely on for sustenance is not available or that the food cannot adequately reach the starving.
The government’s ambivalence towards the food insecurity situation is understandable. Declaring a famine is no easy choice for a government. It is deeply embarrassing for any government to announce a famine because it is an acknowledgement that the government has failed to make the country food secure. Essentially it says that the government not only failed to prevent the famine, but also did not prepare for it, suggesting a lack of leadership in disaster preparedness. Secondly, a declaration of famine in a poor country usually unleashes an international famine relief effort – and no self-respecting government would like to admit that foreign donors and NGOs should do what it should be doing, i.e. making sure that all its citizens have enough food to eat.
Misguided policies and poor governance
I do not know much about Turkana, having never visited the area. To me, it has always seemed like a remote part of the country that is difficult to access. Stories of three-day trips on very bad roads and scary rides to Lodwar on very tiny planes put me off visiting a place that has attracted more humanitarian workers and NGOs than government officials, thanks to the Kakuma refugee camp bordering strife-torn southern Sudan and the Lokichoggio Airport (popularly known as “Loki” among the international NGO and foreign correspondent set) that served as a logistics hub for organisations that used to support rebel movements in Sudan.
The fact that Turkana County attracted the second largest share of devolved funds (after Nairobi) in 2015/2016 has not increased its fortunes. The discovery of oil in the region and images of a stunningly beautiful Lake Turkana have also not made the region more attractive to the vast majority of Kenyans. For people like me, Turkana will for a long time remain the Great Unknown – like north-eastern Kenya and other parts of the country that have remained so marginalised that most Kenyans see the pastoralist people and communities living there as aliens. Our outpouring of sympathy during famines in Turkana is akin to the compassion a Londoner might feel for the emaciated African child he sees in TV commercials by organisations such as Save the Children – shock followed by a small donation. It is embarrassing to think that others might be starving while we gorge ourselves on Kentucky Fried Chicken and pizzas. Forget the fact that most famines are man-made and the result of bad politics and poor governance, not food scarcity.
Alex de Waal, author of Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa, shows that in every known case of famine across the world, a breakdown of democratic institutions and lack of freedoms – particularly the right to criticise, publish and vote – have been key reasons for large-scale deaths during a famine.
Deliberate government neglect of a region, censorship of the press and misguided policies have also exacerbated food crises. The 1958 famine in China, for instance, was the direct result of Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” that resulted in the collectivisation of agriculture. The large death toll during the 1943 famine in Bengal, India, was the direct result of the British colonial government’s reluctance to take responsibility for famine relief in its most prized colony. The recurrent famines in Somalia can also be attributed to the breakdown of governance structures and the collapse of farming communities, many of which were massacred or forcibly removed by militias during the country’s civil war.
Countries that successfully deal with a potential famine or food security crises often do so to avert a political crisis. The rising cost of food and other commodities has been the reason for protests in many countries (including in Sudan recently) and many governments respond quickly to the mounting crises in case they lead to full-blown rebellion. Keeping the cost of food low to keep citizens happy is also the reason why European countries and the United States heavily subsidise their farmers.
De Waal shows how in 1985, when the Kenyan government was facing a huge national food deficit, President Daniel arap Moi made a decision to import food commercially, reversing a 1983 policy, and thereby averting a food crisis. Although foreign donors were contributing to the relief effort, Moi took no chances; he knew that a food crisis could provoke dissent against his repressive regime, and he was not willing to risk that happening. Food insecurity is often an indicator of poor governance and can often lead to riots and political unrest. Keeping citizens fed is, after all, a primary responsibility of governments; those that fail to do so risk being overthrown, a fact that Moi was acutely aware of.
Moi then turned the crisis into an opportunity by installing a network of political patronage linked to food supply and distribution. The National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPD) became highly politicised and was used to break the power of farmers’ associations and cooperatives, especially in opposition strongholds.
“Senior government officials benefitted both politically and commercially from the monopolistic position of the NCPD,” says de Waal. Cartels in the NCPD and lack of adequate distribution networks made food distribution and supply more politicised. When people died in a famine, the government attributed it to the “backwardness” of local communities, not to the fact that food distribution had become a goody that depended on the whims of Moi’s lackeys on the board.
Moi also used the food shortage crisis as an excuse to postpone critical reforms in the agriculture sector. In his paper, “Markets, Civil Society and Democracy in Kenya”, published in 1992 by the Nordic Africa Institute, Peter Gibbon explains how Moi’s system of ethnicised politics and political patronage worked (and, sadly, continues to work to this day):
“The grain crises…were used as an excuse for appointing a large number of inefficient cooperatives in Luyha areas as agents for the NCPD to the benefit of certain Luhya populist politicians. It was also used to break the power of the Kenyan Farmers’ Association, the main base of the politicians in the Rift Valley independent of Moi. It was thirdly used to consolidate the bases of Moi’s ‘home area’ allies in Nandi by tripling the number of NCPD employees there and increasing farmgate prices to uneconomic levels. Finally, the cost of this predation was transferred to the coffee and dairy farmers in Kikuyu areas, who were forced to transfer the savings accounts of their cooperatives to the Cooperative Bank, which had run up large losses in covering the NCPD’s grain purchases.”
The Mwai Kibaki government that succeeded Moi’s did try to reverse the damage Moi had inflicted on the agriculture sector, but the sector has still not fully recovered from short-sighted policies that sacrificed productivity at the altar of loyalty to the government in power.
To their credit, all Kenyan governments have tried to avoid going the international food aid route to address food insecurity.
The internationalisation of famine relief
To their credit, all Kenyan governments have tried to avoid going the international food aid route to address food insecurity. Though foreign aid is welcomed, the country has generally been reluctant to be part of massive international campaigns that have accompanied famine in places like Ethiopia and Somalia – perhaps because Kenya likes to view itself as the economic powerhouse of the region, not a basket case dependent on foreign aid.
This is a good policy because when international humanitarian agencies come in to provide food to starving people, bad governments are let off the hook, and are allowed to continue with their bad policies that can lead to more famines in the future. “Internationalising” the responsibility of food security to UN institutions, international NGOs and foreign governments makes practically everyone across the globe a stakeholder in famine relief.
“The process of internationalisation is the key to the appropriation of power by international institutions and the retreat from domestic accountability in famine-vulnerable countries,” says de Waal. He says that reliance on international humanitarian organisations has led to the “internationalisation” of famine relief. Governments of poor countries are thus no longer solely responsible for the food security of their citizens; this task has been appropriated by what he calls the “disaster industry” or “humanitarianism international”.
The appropriation of what should ideally be a government’s key responsibility makes governments of aid-receiving countries less accountable to their own citizens. Moreover, when a famine strikes and large numbers of people die, governments can easily blame the lack of foreign aid for the deaths, not poor governance on their part or their failure to put in place systems and programmes that could have prevented the famine in the first place.
Officials of international and local NGOs and UN agencies, like their government counterparts, are also not immune to corruption. “Somebody always gets rich off a famine,” Michael Maren, a former food aid monitor in Somalia, told Might Magazine in 1997. When he was in charge of monitoring food aid donated by the US government to refugees fleeing the Ogaden war of 1977/78, he found that about two-thirds of the food went missing. Trucks would arrive at the Mogadishu port, collect the food and disappear, never to be found again. Even when food arrived at the refugee camps, much of it would be stolen. (Given the track record of Jubilee government officials, it is likely that some of the food donated by the government to Turkana’s starving will also disappear.)
Food aid thus becomes a profitable source of income for criminal elements. Maren believes that international aid not only sustained Siad Barre’s dictatorial regime but also facilitated the dismantling of Somali society. In his book, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity, he quotes a former civil servant working for Somalia’s National Refugee Commission who told him that traditionally Somalis never relied on food aid, even during droughts. There was a credit system: the nomads would come to urban areas and take loans that they would pay back when times were good. Nomads and agriculturalists also shared natural resources. Aid essentially destroyed a centuries-old system that built resilience and sustained communities during periods of hardship. The former civil servant blamed foreign aid for the distortions in Somali society, not the Somalis who responded to the distortions.
Moreover, the international response to famine is more often than not technical, rather than political, with a whole range of experts, from nutritionists to statisticians, brought in to assess the scale of the famine and to offer solutions. Yet, recurrent famines often require a long-term political solution, which is much harder to achieve.
As de Waal emphasises, famine is both a technical and political challenge. Effective prevention and relief measures require a long-term vision, sound planning (based on sound data and research) and good management devoid of corruption, all of which are key elements of good economic policies, which are sorely lacking in the current Kenyan government.
Famine in Turkana and other Kenyan counties may not have yet caught the attention of the international media, but domestic dissatisfaction with the famine response may force the government to alter its food security policies. The more likely scenario, however, is that this government will, like most Kenyans, pray for the rains, and hope that the food crisis will go away all on its own.
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Op-Eds
Unpacking the Disinformation Landscape in Kenya
How the misinformation community came together to collaborate and tackle the false information around the last general election.

In April 2022, I stepped up to lead the collective project, a collaborative journalism project that brought together fact-checkers, journalists, podcasters, digital media influencers, cartoonists, and the tech community to fight false information in Kenya. The year-long project changed the way countries prepare to deal with false information around elections.
The immense opportunity to lead the collective in the fight against election mis-/disinformation in Kenya in 2022 exposed both the players and the layered gaps within our sense-making processes as a country. I did end up in the mis-dis-mal-information space partly as a result of my training as a lawyer, a podcaster (by choice), and a feminist (by necessity), all of which have been crucial tools as we set our eyes on information pollution. I eventually ended up in the information integrity space through the work I was doing with the Mine is a Comment Podcast, a platform that brings minorities together to talk about how social, political and economic decisions affect their lives.
Tackling misinformation was a fortuitous experiment to fight fake news not only around elections but also in the prevalent everyday narratives. For the first time, the misinformation community came together to collaborate and tackle the false information around elections. The community has everyone in it–journalists from independent, mainstream and community media; fact-checkers; content creators like me who were doing amazing podcasts at the time; digital media influencers; cartoonists; journalism students, and even state regulators.
Mal-mis-dis-information issues in Kenya
The desire to bring all on board and address the various strands of misinformation meant we were all coming together with the lessons learned from previous elections about how false information polluted public debate in the 2013 and 2017 elections. We wanted to create public awareness about information pollution, its effect on elections and on our country’s political hygiene, and to teach people how to spot false information, how to debunk it, and how to disrupt the networks that spread these falsehoods. Besides, we needed to be creative about engagement with the media, the public, online storytellers, the government, and social media platforms. Coming together to do these things just made sense. In short, that’s how the collective came about.
We saw Fumbua (the collective) partner with organisations such as Africa Check, Google News Initiative, and the Media Council of Kenya to offer training, including digital literacy training workshops, to the general public. What the collective did was to get the players to offer joint training, not just to media professionals and journalism practitioners, but to anyone interested in fighting false information. We needed to scale that fight, recruit more people to the cause, so that we would have a reasonable number of people pushing back against false information online.
We had targeted to reach 60 people based on our budget, but we received nearly 300 applications. In the end, we retained just over 100, but many of those who applied are still on the waiting list. We hope that when funding allows, we will give them those important digital literacy skills to navigate the information ecosystem, not just during elections, but even right now, in-between elections when false information is still spreading.
The quality of false information during the elections had several waves depending on the phase of the electoral process. With the general election set to take place on 9 August 2022, from April to July, at the height of the campaign period, a lot of the false information centred on the candidates, their qualifications and their track record. The next wave of false information came very close to the elections and seemed to cast doubt on key institutions like the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission and the police, and in a way targeted the credibility of the process. The thing with this kind of dis-information is the lack of public awareness about what government institutions are doing, thus creating an information vacuum that is easily filled with false information, wild theories and dangerously unhinged opinions presented as facts.
When the results were trickling in, the electoral commission did something unprecedented. It released all the result forms from all the polling stations in the country. Anyone with an internet connection, a calculator and the patience to go through the forms, could sit down and tally the results. It is at this point that there was a surge of false information as some people declared the winners, claiming they had done a tally, even while the electoral commission was still doing the maths.
We saw verified accounts spread false information about the leading candidate. It didn’t help that media houses were doing the tallying based on their individual criteria, and so one media house would show one candidate leading, and the next media house would show the other. There was a running joke at the time that people tuned in to the station that showed that their “fifth president” was ahead.
Then, there came the useful but really ineffective advisories that social media platforms Twitter and Facebook put on posts declaring the results—they merely added a disclaimer that the official results hadn’t yet been declared. But that advisory didn’t disrupt the cycle. The falsehoods kept spreading.
We saw verified accounts spread false information about the leading candidate.
As I conclude, I must point out that what stood out for me was the relentless and consistent gender disinformation against women running for office and women with public-facing accounts like activists, political commentators and journalists. They were attacked just because of their political views. Our colleagues at Africa Check wrote about it.
How big tech handles misinformation
The collaboration with social media platforms was made possible by several of our collective members who were working with and researching the role and impact of social media platforms during the elections. These activities raised similar concerns that needed to be addressed collectively.
Meta worked with fact-checkers such as PesaCheck and Africa Check, who were part of the collective, to clean up false information on Facebook. Twitter had a partnership with Africa Check, as did Tiktok which worked with other collective members to deal with false information.
We had a lot more expectations from the platforms with regard to content moderation and taking down content spreading false information. We still need to talk.
Then we had influencers and other content creators put together very engaging content to educate the public about the risks and dangers of false information during elections. These included WOWZI, a digital marketing company and also a member of the collective. We also worked with Esther Kazungu, Njugush, Abel Mutua and Wixx Mangutha. The reason we used influencers was because, as we neared elections, politicians had recruited their army of influencers to spread false information. We had to fight fire with fire, to get influencers who were passionate about facts to help us to spread accurate information and tell the public about the dangers of false information. Our campaign with influencers was important to amplify our message about verifying messages received before sharing them.
Working collaboratively in a space such as this has its own challenges because when you work collaboratively, you have to be clear about expectations and what you bring to the table. When that is not clear, there is the risk of a member feeling underutilised. The election was also a busy period for everyone and so availability was a bit of a challenge which was understandable. There were also challenges in the form of donor funding. Donors are known to fund a lot of electoral work and this could lead to a sense of competition among members of the collective. Collaboration cures this but not with every member given that the collective was young at that point. The way forward is to cultivate trust and really build on a collaborative way to fundraise together.
As we neared elections, politicians had recruited their army of influencers to spread false information.
But to be honest, I don’t really consider these challenges as such, they are opportunities for coming up with better communication with regard to availability, expectations on both ends and how to engage with each other to build a stronger collective for the work ahead. The challenge of false information is not going away soon; we just have to be smarter about how we fight back. We are happy to see that the collaborative model is being adopted in countries where one of our partners, Africa Check, is working in Nigeria which held elections last February.
The future of combating misinformation
There is going to be a lot more training, dialogue and creative ways to tackle the information pollution we are experiencing. We will have media and digital literacy programs, campaigns against gender(ed) disinformation, and we want to also focus on holding our leaders accountable for the promises they made, not just in the counties, but also at the national government level. There’s a lot of work to be done, and I am excited about being part of it.
The challenge of misinformation and disinformation will be around for a long time. As the economy in Kenya goes through its current challenges, more people will get desperate and anxious about the future. That fear will be preyed upon by the merchants of false information, this time in rip-offs, usually phoney investment opportunities, fake property sales, and outright scams.
As the economy in Kenya goes through its current challenges, more people will get desperate and anxious about the future.
People must always remember that not all publicly available information is accurate. They must be very cautious when consuming it. It is also possible for false information to be amplified by trusted and verified sources like the media so don’t beat yourself up when you believe the information. Don’t judge yourself too harshly. Being deceived happens even to the best of our institutions because mis/dis-information is a problem across all sectors. To be safe, just stay alert.
Op-Eds
The Blind Spot: A Graphic Novel on Food Security and Farmers’ Rights
Chief Nyamweya shines a light on the central issues of food security and the welfare of smallholder farmers in Kenya.

Some time back in May 2020, an incident occurred in Mombasa that stunned the nation. The Daily Nation reported a story of a Kisauni widow who was forced to boil stones to give her children false hope that she had some food for them. The story sent shockwaves across the country and ignited a conversation about the magnitude of the hunger plaguing Kenyan households.
The story of Peninah Kitsao is not an isolated incident. All over the country, ordinary Kenyans are struggling to put food on the table due to biting inflation that has seen commodity prices soar to nearly unaffordable levels. Failed rains and a drought of a severity never witnessed before in the history of the country, especially in northern Kenya, have worsened a dire situation.
Interventions by state and non-state actors have arguably not been enough as there have been reports from certain parts, such as Samburu, of people drinking dirty water and eating dog meat to survive. The country is essentially in a deep hole. Coupled with the drying up of the rivers and lakes that used to serve vulnerable communities, it is safe to say that the government and other agencies have had blind spots in dealing with the situation.
Route to Food Initiative’s graphic novel The Blind Spot, which is written and illustrated by Chief Nyamweya, should be read against the backdrop of some of these startling developments. The work of committed art is to expose the ills in society, not just by dropping popular catchphrases and revolutionary slogans, but by disturbing the conscience of the nation. Such works of art are expected to put us on track for what needs to be done to set things right.
That’s exactly what Nyamweya’s comic offering is all about.
Worrying policy gaps
The central issues of food security and the welfare of smallholder farmers shine throughout the slim graphic novel, bringing into sharp focus policy gaps and a lack of commitment from leaders to correct the mistakes of the past.
The visual narrative opens with a protest by Kajibora residents and farmers at the Kajibora County Hall. Chanting outside the county governor’s residence, the agitated crowd demands justice for one of their own, Karisa, who has committed suicide after auctioneers sell his land to recover an unpaid debt.
The protest also provides the space and opportunity for the residents and farmers to demand “lower prices on food, better quality food and enhanced protection of Kenya’s ecosystems [and] land reforms.” Demonstrations are not new in the country; with livelihoods threatened by forces beyond their control even as the national and county governments drag their feet to alleviate the suffering, it is inevitable that ordinary people would take such drastic measures.
The Mzee Maona-led Jembe Revolution calls on Governor Nyoni to deal with food insecurity as a human rights issue and to protect smallholder farmers from predatory multinationals. The corporations are often accused of exploitation through the introduction of harmful production methods and industrial processes that threaten biodiversity.
The fictionalised revolution echoes the vigorous pushback by various stakeholders, including farmers, politicians and ordinary Kenyans, who have questioned the government’s proposal to introduce genetically modified foods.
While those in support of the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the country have a valid argument that Kenya and the continent at large are dealing with a serious food crisis that needs never-before-tested solutions, those against them argue that farmers and consumers are likely to suffer. This is because there are growing fears that the multinationals that distribute GM seeds will have the monopoly to dictate to farmers which seeds to use, and the scenario is likely to deny them the agency to produce food on their own terms and according to their preferences.
Putting Western interests first
In other words, the prioritisation of Western interests, as it often emerges in Nyamweya’s narrative, where the governor is accused of focusing on “the large scale production of a few food crops and protecting the interests of big agribusiness”, is a reality that policymakers will have to contend with to effectively address the issue of food security in the country.
A DW documentary titled Africa, GMOs and Western Interests, which aired two months ago, revealed the hidden hand of philanthropists such as Bill Gates, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in pushing for the introduction of GMOs in select African countries to benefit private businesses in the West. Therefore, when Kajibora farmers and residents, through their Chama cha Wakulima (CCW) party, wave a placard reading SAVE OUR SEEDS, they are not expressing a grievance coming from without but a genuine fear born out of the reality that, on the one hand, the forces of globalisation are unavoidable (food production systems and the overall supply chain can never only be local) and on the other, the reality of the weak political system that hardly prioritises the interests of its citizens, least of all smallholder farmers.
To give credit where it is due, President William Ruto’s introduction of the fertiliser subsidy is likely to be a game changer for a majority of farmers who are unable to afford the essential commodity. The subsidised fertiliser is retailing at KSh3,500 for a 50kg bag, down from KSh6,000. The use of technology for registration (farmers use their phones) will also help eliminate red tape and corruption and thus improve efficiency in distribution, which is key to the timely use of the fertiliser to boost yields.
The cries and anxieties of the Kajibora farmers take a dramatic twist following the death of Mzee Maona when CCW is wracked by fissures as various members pull in different directions. As is characteristic of Kenyan political parties not founded on a solid vision and ideology, the core issues—such as sustainable agriculture for the farmers—that define the party’s agenda become a footnote. Instead, the so-called ideological differences (a euphemism for selfish interests) erupt during the requiem mass for Maona when party members engage in a vicious fistfight before the bereaved mourners.
Enter the scions of Mzee Maona, Sifa and Yona—highly educated, exposed and polished but with contrastingly opposing views on how to reimagine the patriarch’s vision of putting the farmers’ agenda first—and the narrative is set for a fascinating climax.
What emerges from the troubled relationship between Sifa, a professor, and Yona, now an aspiring Kajibora governor, are the intra-generational tensions of how to approach the pressures and complicated issues that have become synonymous with modern living. This is especially true when it comes to championing the rights of ordinary people such as farmers.
As is characteristic of Kenyan political parties not founded on a solid vision and ideology, the core issues that defined the party’s agenda become a footnote.
Sifa is distrustful of the political process for fixing societal issues. She is an advocate of fighting for human rights from outside the political process since, in politics, you “promise the people paradise while only delivering paperwork”. While her worldview is sometimes abstract and detached and elitist, she deserves credit for not losing focus on the immediate priorities that should be urgently addressed to make life better for small-scale farmers.
Yona, on the other hand, styles himself as a pragmatist and realist who is in touch with what is happening on the ground but comes across as vain, selfish and arrogant. He is a perfect representative of Kenya’s political class for whom governance is about foreign investment, rather than the people. He says that “a key part [of his] job as governor will be to attract investment to Kajibora”. This includes doing the bidding of multinationals like Green Shots Corporation, which is accused of controlling the food prices and the supply chains that are vital to farmers and consumers.
The role of the youth
However, what is poignant in the clash between Mzee Maona’s two grandchildren is the involvement of the youth—whether for good or bad—in debating the issues of food security and fair agricultural policies. While their approaches are often different, there is a genuine concern and passion that, in real life, should be encouraged and even rewarded.
Statistics indicate that the average age of the Kenyan farmer is 61 years. A revival of the 4K Clubs that were the craze in the 1990s under the 8-4-4 education system has been mooted as a way to entice young people to return to the soil. These are noble interventions that are likely to boost agricultural output since the youthful population is not just energetic enough to take up the challenge but also because modern farming involves access to the right information which a tech-savvy generation can exploit in this digital age.
When Dalili, a member of the CCW and a former close ally of Mzee Maona, encourages Sifa to join them on the anniversary of Jembe Day commemorating the revolt of Kajibora farmers and residents, she is essentially signalling a new way of addressing food insecurity. She tells Sifa that “our youth need to see where it all started”. The statement is profound because it acknowledges both the complexity and enormity of the task of streamlining food systems and the urgent need to bring diverse groups of people on board.
More importantly, sustainable agriculture has the potential to create jobs for thousands of jobless youth unable to secure the increasingly elusive white-collar jobs. According to the November 2022 Agriculture Sector Survey, the industry “employs over 40 percent of the total population and more than 70 percent of the rural populace”. This is a significant figure that is likely to increase even more if the youth are given the incentive to join forces in the overall agricultural production process.
Missing voices
Nyamweya’s only shortcoming is the exclusion of the voices of ordinary farmers from the entire narrative. As is characteristic of top-down policies, and unlike the bottom-up approach, there is a tendency to speak on behalf of the masses, to pretend to know what is best for them. A majority of the characters in the text speak of the “right” agricultural policies and approaches that need to be adopted to boost yields and food security. However, ironically, they behave like the multinationals that often impose their decisions on farmers without taking their views.
The approach is fraught with its own blind spots, not just because it is condescending to the farmers—those who are directly affected—but also because it poses the risk of aggravating an already bad situation. Talking about revolutions and uprisings is not enough to effectively transform the agricultural sector, even if the calls are to rid it of the cartels and the brokers present along the production chain.
Also, an erudite knowledge of the politics of food and the manipulation by multinationals cannot replace the basic principle that the farmer has to, first and foremost, speak for himself or herself. Does the farmer want to experiment with other seeds? Is the farmer only interested in the large-scale cultivation of staple foods? Is the farmer comfortable with the multinationals? What exactly is in the farmer’s mind? It is not always necessary that all foreign players that intervene in formulating agricultural policies have ulterior motives. One Acre Fund, an organisation founded by a non-Kenyan, has significantly helped smallholder farmers in western Kenya boost their farm output through the use of the right seeds and agricultural techniques and methods. I have seen this first-hand.
The statement is profound because it acknowledges both the complexity and enormity of the task of streamlining food systems and the urgent need to bring diverse groups of people on board.
However, despite the aforementioned shortcomings, Nyamweya’s artistic intervention cannot be downplayed. The issue of food security cannot be left to politicians and policymakers alone. This is not just because food is a basic need, but because a healthy and productive nation has the potential to improve the life expectancy and of children afflicted by malnutrition.
More importantly, a visual narrative approach is a welcome addition to a radical way of acknowledging the enormous capacity of art to surprise and reimagine how to deal with the existential anxieties of our time, such as food insecurity, climate change-induced drought and destruction of biodiversity. It is also a wake-up call to leaders, policymakers and other stakeholders that the conventional way of dealing with the challenges affecting farmers might have to change. Nyamweya’s book is a must-read for everyone who cares deeply about the future of our country and the coming generations.
Op-Eds
Queer Lawfare in Africa – Legal Strategies in Contexts of LGBTIQ+ Criminalisation and Politicisation
The concept of lawfare, describes long-term battles over heated social and political issues, where actors on different sides employ strategies using rights, law and courts as tools and arenas.

The Supreme Court of India is anticipated to conduct hearings and deliver judgments in some important issues concerning the LGBTQIA+ community- ranging from the constitutionality of the blood donation guidelines that discriminate persons based on sexual orientation and gender identity to petitions on marriage equality (under both the Special Marriage Act and the Hindu Marriage Act). In this context, the book Queer Lawfare in Africa, edited by Adrian Jjuuko, Siri Gloppen, Alan Msosa and Frans Viljoen makes for a relevant and compelling read.
Queer Lawfare, according to the authors, is a strategy where rights and/ or laws are tactically employed to advance politically contested goals with regards to the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community. In the words of Siri Gloppen, Adrian Jjuuko, Frans Viljoen, Alan Msosa, the term “lawfare” used in the book describes the following:
The concept of lawfare, as used in this book, describes long-term battles over heated social and political issues, where actors on different sides employ strategies using rights, law and courts as tools and arenas. While sometimes associated with the misuse of law for political ends, ‘lawfare’ is here used as a descriptive, analytical term, de-linked from (the perceived) worthy-ness of the goal. The association with warfare is intentional and important: these are ongoing ‘wars’, with hard ideological cleavages and iterative battles. They are typically fought on several fronts and the contestants on each side have long term goals that they seek to advance by way of incremental tactics, often responding to, or anticipating their opponents’ moves, as well as other aspects of their (always potentially shifting) opportunity structure.
The book looks into queer lawfare in thirteen African nations- South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya, Botswana, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Zambia, Ghana, Senegal, Gambia, Ethiopia and Sudan. Much like India, a lot of the nations discussed in the book had a criminal provision very similar to section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (before it was read down by the Supreme Court in Navtej Johar v. Union of India). Thereby, in many of these nations decriminalisation of sexual intercourse between consenting adults- irrespective of their sexual orientation or gender identity became (and in some countries still is) one of the first major goals of queer lawfare.
In some of the countries discussed in the book (particularly in those where queer lawfare has led to realisation of substantial legal gains for the LGBTQIA+ community), the movement started with seemingly neutral rights battles which intersected with discrimination law for instance, the right to association. The right to association cases in queer lawfare majorly consist of organisations or coalitions- established with the aim of further LGBTQIA+ rights- challenging the decision of the government to disallow their registration (set in a legal context where homosexuality is criminalised). In Botswana, such a challenge was decided in favour of the LGBT organisation, Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LEGABIBO) by the Court of Appeal (see also, the recent judgment of the Supreme Court of Kenya). In Mozambique on the other hand, the Mozambican Association for the Defence of Sexual Minorities (LAMBDA) operates under a feminist umbrella organisation since it is not legally registered and as a natural corollary, the queer lawfare is influenced much by the strategies used by the feminist movement.
The book also refreshingly looks into the social contexts of each nation and discusses how despite LGBTQ+ movements sharing the same vision of emancipation, the means employed to achieve the end varies depending on social and political contexts in different countries. It also subtly gets across the point that there is ‘no one size fits all’ solution when it comes to queer lawfare. It discusses the different stages at which queer lawfare is in and how it varies from country to country- from South Africa where giant strides have been made in the judicial sphere to Ethiopia where ‘online lawfare’ is more prevalent due to which there is an absence of a significant progressive legal change.
As the marriage equality petition is listed for hearing before the Supreme Court of India is being heard by the Supreme Court of India, the chapter on queer lawfare in South Africa becomes particularly relevant. The landmark judgment of the Constitutional Court of South Africa in Minister of Home Affairs v. Fourie that recognised marriage equality notably held that the constitutional rights of persons cannot be undermined or be determined by the religious beliefs of some persons. In this judgment, Justice Albie Sachs read the words “or spouse” after the words “husband” and “wife”, into certain provisions of the Marriage Equality Act, 1961. As has been articulated by Jayna Kothari in this piece, the adoption of a similar strategy in the marriage equality proceedings before the Supreme Court of India is central to making the provisions of the Special Marriage Act (“SMA”) more inclusive. Reading in the words “of spouse” after the words “wife” and “husband” used in various provisions of the Special Marriage Act in India would allow persons irrespective of their sexual orientation or gender identity to get the reliefs conferred by the SMA ranging from solemnization of marriage to provision of alimony.
The chapter also confronts the challenge of limited judicial imagination while dealing with marriage equality and states that the judgment delivered by the Constitutional Court of South Africa (which was hailed as progressive) still caters to the gender binary vision- one where the institution of marriage is valourised and idea of a ‘permanent same-sex life partnership’ essentially contains the characteristics of a typical heterosexual marriage. The chapter also highlights how the ‘good homosexual’ visualised by the Constitutional Court is generally ‘a partnered middle class, if not upper middle class, man or woman who, in a country like South Africa where class continues to follow race, is almost invariably white’ thereby bringing to light the class and racial undertones underlying the legal recognition of such unions. In India, given that the institution of marriage is intrinsically tied into caste, property and patriarchy, it will remain to be seen how the Supreme Court will navigate through complex questions of intersectionality while adjudicating this case.
The book also makes a passing reference to the transnational impact of judgments on queer rights delivered by the Indian Supreme Court. For example, where submissions made before the Kenyan High Court in EG v. Attorney General and the high court decision in Botswana in Letsweletse Motshidiemang v Attorney General were influenced by the judgment of the Supreme Court of India in Navtej Johar v. Union of India. This also points out to the butterfly effect in progressive queer jurisprudence and the important role the constitutional courts in India have to fulfill in the days ahead.
Another important feature is that none of the chapters miss an opportunity to inform the readers about the perseverance and resilience of LGBTQIA+ organizations, coalitions and activists. It does the important work of documenting their role in shaping the legal destiny despite facing legal setbacks and risks of coercive action by the state. It is a fitting tribute to the indomitable spirit of the queer rights movement across the said nations in Africa to challenge the legal and political system, despite it being designed to fail them.
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