Oxfam has appealed for Sh15 billion to support Kenyans in need of food aid.
Oxfam International (Horn, East and Central Africa) interim director Parvin Ngala said five million Kenyans are in a hunger crisis.
She said 10 million Kenyans are in need of humanitarian assistance in terms of food, cash and water.
Ngala also said the number could increase if no action is taken immediately .
She spoke Wednesday during a press briefing on the hunger crisis facing East Africa.
Oxfam warned with the unfolding crisis in Ukraine taking their attention, there is a danger that the international community will not respond adequately to the escalating hunger crisis in East Africa until it is too late.
Oxfam executive director Gabriela Bucher said as many as 28 million people across East Africa could face severe hunger if the March rains fail.
She said about Sh15 billion ($136 million) is needed to support Kenyans who are in dire need of food aid.
The UN appealed for Sh687.3 billion ($6 billion) to support hungry people in Ethiopia, Somali and South Sudan.
Bucher said, despite alarming need, the humanitarian response is grossly underfunded.
Only three percent of the total $6billion UN 2022 humanitarian appeal for Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan has been funded to date.
Kenya only secured 11 per cent of its UN flash appeal to date.
She said East Africa faces a profoundly alarming hunger crisis, and that Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and beyond are experiencing an unfolding full-scale catastrophe.
“Even if the rains do arrive this month, full recovery will be near impossible unless urgent action is taken today," Bucher said.
"The repercussions of the Ukrainian conflict on the global food system will reverberate around the globe, but it is the poorest and most vulnerable people who will be among those hit hardest and fastest.
'Rising food prices are a hammer blow to millions of people who are already suffering multiple crises and make the huge shortfall in aid potentially lethal.”
She also said Covid-related hikes in global food and commodity prices were already undermining the options available to heavily indebted African governments to resolve the mass hunger facing their people.
However, the crisis in Ukraine will have catastrophic new consequences as it already pushes up food and commodity prices beyond what East African governments can afford.
Ahmed Mohamud, 70, a pastoralist from Wajir county said donkeys have perished and the ones remaining are too weak to pull carts due to the droughts.
“My only tuktuk is now parked because I can’t afford its fuel. I no longer have my camels or goats," he said.
"I think about what will my family eat, where will their next meal come from, whether I will get the daily jerrycan of water.”
Department for Children’s Services in Kenya coordinator Jilo Roba said there is a family that married off their young daughter.
“The father was sick so he borrowed money to go to hospital and when he couldn’t repay it, they had to let their daughter go,” Roba said.
Diyaara Ibrahim from Wajir county said they now have to skip meals and resort to one meal a day.
“The hunger crisis fuelled by changes in our climate and Covid-19 is worsening by the day," Bucher said.
"Oxfam is calling on all donors to urgently fill the UN humanitarian appeal funding gap and to get funds as quickly as possible to local humanitarian organisations.
“We call upon the governments, especially from grain exporting countries to do all they can to find suitable alternatives to the imminent disruption in the supply chain from Ukraine towards low-income, food-import dependent countries."
(edited by Amol Awuor)
