KENYA: Demo Hassan, “For 40 years, food aid has been routine”

The humanitarian response to Kenya’s current food crisis may be unusual in its scale and media attention but there is nothing new about food aid in northern Kenya, where lack of development, insecurity, population growth and recurrent drought have long combined to undermine self-sufficiency. Several million people there receive food aid as a matter of course. Demo Hassan, 66, a livestock trader in Garbatulla, gives voice to the dependency problem theory, the idea that such largesse feeds a vicious cycle.