Top stories
Marketing & MediaAfrica's first dedicated creator intercontinental network launches in Kenya
15 hours
Marketing & MediaThailand–South Africa Business Matching Forum brings new business opportunities to South Africa
Catalyze 3 Aug 2026
Why keeping your customers is now the smartest growth strategy
Cristelle Snyman
Your customers know when you’re faking it
Cristelle Snyman
Trending
Show more
Subscribe & Follow
Advertise your job vacancies
Kenya: Massive crop failure in "grain basket"
NJORO: Two months before harvest time, the maize in Kenya's Rift Valley should be tall, lush and green, bursting with life. Instead, crops in the province's Lare division are stunted, barren fields of parched browns and pallid yellows.
A crop production officer from the Ministry of Agriculture examines stunted maize at a farm in Njoro district in the Rift Valley Province. The district has experienced over 90 percent maize crop failure following poor and erratic long rains between March and June 2009 © Jane Some/IRIN
The area, local farmers say, has experienced three years of erratic rainfall. This year, however, has been "a nightmare", Samuel Karanja told IRIN on 17 August 2009 at his farm in Njururi village.
"I do not expect to harvest anything, yet I used a lot of money to prepare my land and plant maize and beans earlier this year," the 70-year-old farmer said.
