To learn more about this topic, join us at GLF Africa 2024: Greening the African Horizon on 17 September.
Between February and April this year, Kenya saw heavy rains that caused widespread flooding across large parts of the country.
The floods even hit areas that had never flooded before, such as the high-end Runda neighborhood of Nairobi, the country’s capital, where countless homes were lost.
In Mai Mahiu, a town in Kenya’s Rift Valley, multiple homes were washed away in a deadly deluge that claimed 48 lives.
In total, nearly 300 people died in the floods across Kenya, as well as 161 in neighboring Tanzania, with almost 1 million people affected across the wider region.
Farming communities saw their livelihoods devastated as their crops were swept away by the raging floodwaters, which also caused immense damage to the soil by washing nutrients away.
According to the latest Food Security Monitor report by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), parts of eastern Kenya are now facing crisis levels of food insecurity.
An earlier edition of the report, published in April, found that over a quarter of Kenyans do not have enough to eat, and that this figure has more than doubled in the last two years.
Floods are a recurring issue in the region and are likely to become increasingly common due to the climate crisis.
As a result, scientists are developing innovative measures to help climate-proof Africa’s food systems and alleviate food insecurity.
Collins Kipchumba owns a five-acre farm in Elementaita, Nakuru County, in the Rift Valley. He mainly grows wheat but occasionally rotates it with maize and beans.
Kipchumba has been using the Kenya Agricultural Observatory Platform (KAOP), a service that provides farmers with valuable weather and agronomic insights. He has since become an agricultural extension officer himself, providing advisory services to other farmers.
“I have used the app since 2017, and it has really helped me in terms of planning,” he says.
“The app can show you when the rain will come. You can tell when it will rain, which is important in planning for spraying and harvesting.”
While the scale of the floods caught him off guard, Kipchumba admits the app had been accurate in predicting rainfall. “When it is above 80 percent, it is an indication that it will likely rain.”
Developed by the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), the KAOP app is designed for smartphones but also supports farmers who may not own one, who can run a USSD code to receive updates via text message.
Aside from giving farmers early warning to prepare for severe weather, KALRO also provides soil data through its Kenya e-Extension Platform (KEEP), although this service has been disrupted by the floods.
“For a while, we have had a lot of soil data that informs the fertilizer system, but with the floods, all these have been destroyed,” explains Michael Okoti, assistant director for environment and climate at KALRO.
Okoti explains that KALRO is piloting an initiative to re-map the nutrient status in the county and eventually across the entire country.
“We want to develop a soil fertility map, whose endgame is to generate advisories for farmers. After the pilot, the initiative will be rolled out in 45 counties of Kenya, excluding Nairobi and Mombasa because they are urban areas.”
As part of the project, the Kenyan government will train agripreneurs to collect, package and transport samples to laboratories.
As the climate crisis makes weather patterns increasingly unpredictable across Africa, data will play a crucial role in helping communities adapt, as speakers highlighted at the OFAC Hybrid Forum on Central African forests in June.
“There is a lack of scientific data to convince individuals,” said Afy Malungu, outreach program manager for the Congo Basin at the Pulitzer Center, during the forum.
“We need to share information on a continuous basis. This can only be an asset for our well-being.”
For its part, KEEP provides farmers with information on every step of the commodity value chain, from production to marketing. It also features an interactive voice system enabling farmers to be connected directly to experts to ask questions.
Okoti says the KEEP team handles about 1,000 calls a week, offering a lifeline for farmers in a country where extension services are often overstretched: one extension worker often oversees several farmers spread over an area.
KALRO keeps track of the farmers who reach out to it for help. Wambui is one such farmer. Based in Nakuru County, she has already harvested maize and now has beans on her farm.
Wambui has been using the platform since 2021 and relies on it for weather forecasts and to track market prices. “Luckily, I was not affected by the floods as I had not planted then,” she says.
While innovations play a crucial role in ensuring food security, the rapid evolution of technology means they must be continually developed, with local communities made aware of their uses and benefits to encourage uptake.
The East African Science and Technology Commission (EASTECO) is the body mandated to oversee the development, management and application of science and technology in East Africa.
The Kigali, Rwanda-based institution is working to link innovators with industry and thus translate innovation into usable products and markets, says its executive secretary and CEO, Sylvance Okoth.
“The collaboration process has created platforms to link up all these key players so that there is a flow of scientific information from academia to the industry,” he explains.
“Information is not an end in itself. Information, innovation and technology have to be translated into useful products, processes and services for the benefit of the community, but these have to be done in a structured way in collaboration with industry.”
Okoth believes one of the top priorities for industry should be to invest in training the skilled workforce needed to encourage innovation in the region.
“Our main concern is apathy,” he says. “Most of the industries we have are not focused on long-term returns.
“Either they lack the capital or the interest, because of the long duration. This is a major impediment.”
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