Charlotte Simonart (in Nairobi)
modified to
07:22, October 27, 2022
Kenya is concerned about the decline in attendance at these schools in the north of the country. In question, the difficulty of schools to provide a meal to their student, while the drought affecting the country plunges millions of people into food insecurity. As a result, only 10% of students returned to class after the school holidays.
Are schools in Kenya under threat? While the rise in wheat prices due to the war in Ukraine, coupled with the drought in the region, plunges millions of Kenyans into food insecurity, the country’s press is concerned about “the absenteeism of schoolchildren in cause of hunger”. The daily The Nation is particularly alarmed at the situation in the north of the country.
In some schools, only 10% of pupils have returned to class after the school holidays because they can no longer find anything to eat there for lunch. However, for many of them, the school offered them their only meal of the day, we learn.
Millions of people plunged into food insecurity
If the situation is so dramatic, it is partly due to the absence of real rainy seasons in the area in recent years. As a result, crops are dried up and livestock die. “A school that no longer feeds, hundreds of children disappear,” explains the daily, which adds that some children sometimes have to walk 30 kilometers to find water.
The newspaper The Standard gives voice to teachers who are urging the Kenyan government to set up an emergency food programme. Dozens of schools are about to close for lack of students, alerts the daily. But the situation could still get worse, because the entire Horn of Africa is affected by the lack of water. NGOs estimate that between 40 and 50 million people suffer from food insecurity in this region of the world.