Famine as Policy: The Recurring Cost of Debt and Resource Extraction
THE CLAIM: Al Jazeera presents images and accounts of severe drought in Kenya, highlighting malnutrition, water shortages, and livestock deaths affecting over two million people in February 2026. The narrative emphasizes climate change as the primary driver of this crisis. THE EVIDENCE: While climate variability is a contributing factor, the scale of human suffering attributed to 'drought'
consistently overlooks antecedent economic policies. Historically, nations like Kenya have been subject to structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. These programs, particularly prevalent from the 1980s through the early 2000s, mandated cuts to public spending, including agricultural subsidies, and pushed for
export-oriented cash crops over staple food production. For instance, the World Bank's 1989 'Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth' report, while acknowledging food security issues, continued to advocate for market liberalization, which often undermined smallholder farmers' resilience. THE CONTRADICTIONS: The official narrative of 'climate-induced hunger' implicitly absolves
policymakers of responsibility for creating the conditions of vulnerability. If Kenya's economic structure genuinely prioritized food sovereignty, agricultural infrastructure would be more resilient to climatic shocks. Instead, chronic underinvestment in rain-fed agriculture, water harvesting, and localized food systems, coupled with persistent debt obligations (Kenya's external debt stood at