Nairobi, Kenya, 16 March, 2026 — Across Kenya’s northern and north-eastern counties, the signs of crisis are visible: boreholes running dry, livestock dying in the dust, children growing thinner and weaker, showing the hollow cheeks of acute malnutrition. Families who depend on their herds for food, income, and survival, are watching their animals collapse after two consecutive seasons of failed or below-average rains.
A new report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) confirms that the drought gripping northern Kenya has pushed 3.3 million people into high levels of acute food insecurity. This is a 52% increase in one year. This includes 400,000 people experiencing emergency (IPC Phase 4) levels of hunger, needing life-saving assistance. The most vulnerable face a compounding burden of insufficient diets and high disease rates.
Alarmingly, the IPC’s most severe and life-threatening levels of acute malnutrition (IPC Phase 5) has been confirmed in three areas in the north: Mandera, Marsabit and Turkana South and East. In these areas, children are bearing the heaviest burden as they face famine-like levels of malnutrition. With more than 1 in 3 children affected, the risk of death from starvation, disease, and other preventable causes is only predicted to grow without urgent scale up of assistance. Children at risk of malnutrition rose from 13.1% to 16%, indicating increasing drought stress.
The situation is especially severe in Dadaab home to over 400,000 refugees, one of the largest refugee camps in the world. CARE Kenya’s own assessment in December 2025 found that 54% of refugees were experiencing severe hunger, 86% had cut the number of meals they eat each day, and over half were relying on desperate measures just to survive. Then came the cuts in 2025, which reduced food assistance to 68% and halved water daily water rations, from 20 liters per person to 10 liters per person. This is the lowest level of aid Dadaab has ever received in its 35-year history.
According to the National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) Drought Early Warning Bulletins, Garissa County remains in the Alert phase but has deteriorated between December 2025 and February 2026. Rainfall remained significantly below normal, with 29.49 mm in December (54% below average), 3.81 mm in January (69% below average), and 2.13 mm in February (64% below average). Vegetation conditions also declined, with the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) falling from 36.55 in December to 20.17 in February. Livestock trekking distances increased from 11 km to 15.1 km.
“That these thresholds are being crossed now at the outset of the lean season signals that conditions in Kenya’s Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) counties are already deeply serious. The findings from the report reflect what our teams have been documenting in Garissa and Mandera. Waiting for hunger levels to become catastrophic before acting is unconscionable. When communities have no time to recover between one drought and the next, the cumulative damage is severe,” said Getrude Misango, CARE Kenya Country Director.
The crisis follows closely on the 2021-2023 drought, one of the most devastating in recent memory. Many households have not had the time to rebuild livestock herds, replenish savings, or restore degraded land. In the ASAL counties, pastoralist communities are already speaking of the current drought in terms that reflect historic alarm.
The protocol to treat children with acute malnutrition is straightforward: CARE and our partners have deep experience reaching families with this lifesaving support. The missing piece in this case is that historic aid cuts mean that there are too few resources to reach children in need and stop mass preventable suffering.
The deterioration in Kenya is unfolding against a backdrop of declining humanitarian funding at a time when needs are exponentially escalating. Across the region, aid organizations have been forced to scale back food assistance, nutrition support, water services, and emergency health services, withdrawing the protective coverage that can help prevent crisis-level hunger from escalating. The communities least able to cope are the ones most exposed to the harm caused by this gap in support services.
The situation is especially acute for women and girls, who are typically the last to eat when food runs short and the most exposed to the risk of exploitation, including gender-based violence and early marriage, when household coping strategies collapse.
CARE Kenya and partners are calling on donors to urgently increase the volume and quality of funding to respond the drought in Kenya. Local and women-led organisations are often best placed to assist people in need, and it is vital that they receive funding directly. The 1.76 million people currently requiring humanitarian assistance across Kenya’s ASAL counties are projected to exceed 2.1 million by mid-2026. Every week of delay increases both the scale of suffering and the cost of response.
The time to act is now before the next season fails, before more children suffer from the effects of malnutrition suffer, before more families are left with nothing more to lose.
Notes to Editors
CARE Kenya, the local county governments and its partners have been working in Garissa and Mandera counties for decades and is already mobilising a response, front-loading life-saving water and nutrition interventions before peak drought months arrive. Evidence from previous pilot programs in Garissa shows that timely investment in water systems and prevention of community-level malnutrition significantly reduce both the human and financial costs of the response.
CARE Kenya’s 12-month programme delivers: emergency rehabilitation of boreholes, pipelines and solarised water systems to restore water access; community-based malnutrition screening and referral for children under five and pregnant and lactating women; and interventions to prevent exploitation of women and girls, including the adoption of measures to prevent sexual violence at water points and safe spaces for women and girls.
For media inquiries, please email usa.media@care.org, or contact Kelly Muthusi, CARE East and Central Africa, Regional Communications Associate, email: Kelly.Muthusi@care.org