Decrypting the Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic on Food and Nutrition Security in Kenya

Abstract

Globally, there has been tremendous effort towards ending hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by the year 2030. These efforts have not realized the desired results due to conflicts within and without countries, climate variability and extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns. In Kenya, food and nutrition insecurity existed even before the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic. With the occurrence of the pandemic, food systems and food supply chains relied upon by the population to access sufficient and affordable food of high nutritional value further worsened the already unfavorable situation. The gradual shocks and interruptions on food systems and food supply chains by the climate change, high poverty levels, income inequality, high cost of healthy diets, labor shortages coupled with global recession and pandemic containment measures required urgent attention and timely interventions to protect the vulnerable population. This view point paper provides an insight of the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on food and nutrition security, and the trends affecting food systems. The paper adopted descriptive approach which utilized an array of contemporary scholarly views and their research outputs on food and nutrition security which resonated with the Kenyan situation. The study findings emphasized on the need to adopt a multidisciplinary and multifaceted approach when addressing food and nutrition security even at the time of a pandemic in order to achieve the intent for the realization of the right to food of high nutritional value. The study revealed that Kenya should adopt diverse strategies for enhancing food and nutrition security, thus including crop diversification, crop bio-fortification, research on genomics and precision breeding, agroecology technique application, capacity building of extension workers, investing in climate smart agriculture and adoption of human centered design model to enhance resilient food systems. The findings will be vital to policy and decision-makers responsible for food and nutrition security.