Acute food insecurity has reached critical levels across Kenya’s 23 Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) and surrounding areas. An estimated 3.3 million people are currently classified in IPC Acute Food Insecurity (AFI) Phase 3 or above, including 400,000 people in IPC AFI Phase 4 (Emergency) who require immediate, life-saving assistance. This marks a 52 percent increase from early 2025 (2.15 million people) and exceeds the October 2025–January 2026 projection, which had estimated 2.12 million people in IPC AFI Phase 3 or above. 

Additionally, refugee settlements in Dadaab, Kakuma, and Kalobeyei face similarly dire conditions. Approximately 429,000 people—around two-thirds of the population—are in IPC AFI Phase 3 or above, and all three settlements are in IPC AFI Phase 4 (Emergency). This is driven by sharp reductions in humanitarian assistance, limited livelihood options, and high reliance on costly markets. Without a significant increase in food, non-food, and livelihood support, conditions are expected to remain critical. 

These severe outcomes are driven by below average and erratic October–December 2025 rains, which caused widespread crop failure, poor pasture regeneration, and inadequate recovery of water sources.  

The situation in the ASAL counties is expected to worsen further between April and June 2026, with 3.7 million people projected to face IPC AFI Phase 3 or above, driven by forecasted below-average March–May long rains. Approximately 429,000 people in the refugee settlements are expected to remain in IPC AFI Phase 3 or above. 

• Provision of in-kind food assistance and targeted cash transfers, alongside the expansion of social protection mechanisms such as the Cash Transfer for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (CT-OVC)
• Feed supplementation, establishment of feed reserves, pasture reseeding and conservation, rangeland rehabilitation, and invasive species control.
• Strengthen livestock insurance support, and livestock off-take and slaughter destocking programmes. Livestock disease surveillance, vaccination, parasite control, deworming, and vector management.
• Climate-smart and nutrition-sensitive agriculture, irrigation rehabilitation, soil and water conservation technologies, improved access to farm inputs and mechanisation, pest and disease surveillance, post-harvest management, value addition, and enhanced crop insurance schemes
• Emergency water intervention including water trucking, desilting of water pans, rehabilitation and solarisation of boreholes and pipelines, fuel subsidies for strategic boreholes, rainwater harvesting initiatives, water quality testing, and provision of treatment chemicals to ensure safe drinking water.
• Maintaining and expand school meals programmes, provide school bursaries, support boarding primary schools, and improving access to education through classroom construction, recruitment of teachers, enrolment campaigns, and strengthen school WASH services.
• Monitor emerging conflict hotspots, and support community recovery efforts and integrated with multisectoral child protection responses that include case management, legal redress, alternative family care (adoption, foster care, guardianship, psychosocial support, and strengthening of the National Child Helpline 116).
• Strengthening the capacity of county-level stakeholders, alongside coordinated service delivery by the State Department of Children Services and partners, will help ensure sustained, accountable implementation.