In Parched Nairobi, Politicians Blamed For Drought Crisis

Alix Albright
September 2, 2009

Across the Eastern Plains of Africa a horrific drought is leaving a greater amount of the population hungry, thirsty, and close to 100% dependent of food aid. Water taps are running dry thus leading to wide spread crop failures, which then leads to high rise in food costs. The low level of water in dams have led to electricity cuts/ rations forcing business (mainly small businesses) to shut down.
Drought in this part of Africa however is hardly new, but instead, this time people are blaming the government for the crisis, not nature. Despite repeated warnings by various environmental agencies, governmental agencies and people have continued to cut down and deforest multiple parts of the land. As a result the whole flow of rivers into great lakes are drying up. As well as farms and hydro electrical. The African government has pledged to stop the great amount of deforestation but they have not stayed true to their word. Instead they have begun rationing resources to people causing increase of poverty and hunger.

I understand there are issues and great expenses, especially in more rural countries, when it comes to dealing with environmental issues. However, when these environmental issues start effecting a countries natural dependency on human necessities, thats when problems need to be dealt with. Many would state that the East African government is dealing with it by placing restrictions or rationing water/food, but in my opinion they are just sweeping the problem under the rug. Yes, the rationing will help equally feed the needy and deplete some of the continual damage done to the land, but why do the people have to pay for the governments mistakes? " The government currently has 500,000 metric tons of maize in strategic reserves, for instance, but the monthly requirement to feed the population is 300,000 tons, and the crisis is expected to continue for at least two months." (Washington Post) The government isn't even properly prepared to deal with these kind of issues. They stated they were going to place in wind mills and other "green energy" sources, but they didn't decide on this plan until these different environmental problems became an issue. So, even though it's never to late to fix a problem, in this case the damage has already been done.