Feeding Kenya 2015 and Beyond –Whose Responsibility?

Abstract

In the world, food insecurity remains an enormous challenge. Food insecurity is still a great concern for many households in Kenya. This situation is connected to high level of poverty that exists in the country, particularly in rural areas. Each year , between one to four million people receive relief food from both the national and donor agencies such as the world food program. Unfortunately policy responses have almost always inclined towards responding to emergencies of food shortages rather than on putting in place systems responsible for feeding Kenya in 2015 and beyond. This paper highlights key paradigm shift approaches to achieving food security in Kenya. The expected quick win outputs with regard to commitment to feed Kenya and methodologies on how to increase food security in Kenya have been discussed. Kenya’s new constitution has devolved many responsibilities to the community level and therefore Kenya is  poised  to succeed in a ground up approach to boost food productivity. This is key to addressing food insecurity and feeding Kenya 2015 and beyond. This is the responsibility of national government through the ministry of Agriculture, livestock and fisheries and government through the County Agriculture docket. The arguments in this paper are informed by a number of  secondary sources  from which I gathered  information. I have no doubt in my mind that this paper will allow the researcher to work with other global leaders in food security research to tackle one of the societal grand challenges of the 21^st century: feeding a global population of 9 -10 billion people by 2015.

Keyords: Food insecurity,  household, poverty, rural areas, global, challenges.