Floods have thrown us a curveball but we must prepare for the future

 

Motorists stuck in a traffic sanal-up in a section of the road between Duka Moja Trading Center and Suswa Girls High School that was blocked by heavy mud and debris from Mt Suswa. [George Sagie, Standard]

Only a handful of Kenyans have a recollection of floods worse than the current ones. It is as though floodgates have been opened and a deluge of epic proportions unleashed.

In a country embroiled in intractable political polarisation, it has become de rigueur to blame the government of the day. Yet this is clearly a force majeure event that could not have been anticipated for its sheer size and fury nor adequately prepared for.

Because of El Nino warnings last year, Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja’s administration employed a team of 3,500 youths. Dubbed the Green Nairobi Team, they were tasked with unclogging and cleaning of drainages and garbage collection. But their best efforts have come a cropper. 

Evidently, existing infrastructure, even functioning at its optimal, is woefully inadequate in dealing with stormwaters of the magnitude currently being experienced. It is therefore infantile and contemptible to attempt to lay blame, after decades of gross neglect and arrant planning incompetence, on a single administration.

But such are the vicissitudes of life; that even the best laid plans can unravel when curveballs are thrown at us. Still, disasters of this sort should not preclude us from making plans. If anything, they should enable us to anticipate what the future portends and to preempt or at least ameliorate the repercussions. There are a number of issues that will need attention in the coming days.

The most obvious is the settlement of displaced Kenyans. There are areas in the country that are perennial floodplains. Dykes have been built in such areas to obviate the need to keep moving settlements to higher ground.

But the scale of current floods, spread across the country, means hundreds of thousands will have to be provided for even as efforts are made to resettle them on safer grounds. It may call for a nationwide operation the scale of which may be unprecedented.

Lunar landscapes

Second, the floods have wreaked havoc on the country’s infrastructure. Roads and railway lines have been washed away even as bridges have collapsed. The surfaces of many urban areas bear resemblance to lunar landscapes. It will take copious amounts of resources to restore this.

For a country struggling with debt, it may mean taking on yet more debt to deal with these national emergencies. For citizens, it means relief from the arduous tax regime may not be forthcoming this year.

Third, the floods may have thrown a spanner in the works regarding the government’s effort to attain food self-sufficiency. Most of the nation’s farmland is now under water. It is doubtful that a bumper harvest may obtain this year.

Whilst the Central Bank of Kenya has controlled inflation through the tightening of monetary policy, it may face challenges in containing supply side inflation. It is probable that food prices will rise resulting in headline inflation.

Further, it had been hoped that the US Federal Reserve would institute rate cuts by the start of this month. It has instead continued to hold the line on interest rates with no clear timelines on when the rate cuts may begin. For this reason, it may be expedient for the CBK to also follow suit and maintain the current high rate.

Mr Khafafa is a public policy analyst