Kenya Wildlife Service rangers inspect the carcass of a baby elephant that died from the prolonged drought. (Thomas Mukoya / Reuters)

By Tristan McConnell in Mwingi “The last time I had a good harvest was 2003 — there has been nothing at all for the last three years,” said Mutindi Maithya, 36, a widow who lives with her six children on a four- acre plot of sun-baked land. Sitting beneath a thorny acacia tree, she picks up ochre lumps of dried mud from the ground and crushes them to dust between her fingers. “It is hard to cope,” she said. A four-year drought has pushed as many as 23 million people to the brink of starvation across East Africa, making it the worst in a decade or more. Close to four million of those at risk are in Kenya, where one person in ten survives on emergency rations. Last week clouds gathered over much of the country, but the rains have come too late to bring much relief. Aid agencies have warned that with them will come flooding, cholera, malaria and hypothermia. In the arid north, pastoralists have watched as their cattle collapsed from exhaustion and thirst, and those that survive now face floods. The people are scarcely holding on and the number of armed skirmishes over water and livestock is rising. Even in usually greener regions the drought has taken its toll. Four consecutive harvests have failed in the southeast while the Rift Valley, Kenya’s breadbasket, is a wasteland of withered crops. There are fears that heavy rains will wash away the topsoil, taking with it precious maize seeds. In Nairobi emaciated cattle led by desperate Masai herdsmen graze by the roadside. The economy is also threatened by plummeting tea and coffee production, while tourists who visit the country’s money-spinning safari parks return with tales of landscapes littered with carcasses. Drought is nothing new to this part of Africa, but what is different is the frequency with which it hits. The cycle of drought used to come around every ten years but now it is almost constant. Many attribute the changing patterns to climate change. …

Four-year drought pushes 23 million Africans to brink of starvation via Apocadocs