Kenyans for Kenya can feed 40,000 for six months

 By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

07 August 2011

In August 2004, we were in the middle of famine and approximately three million Kenyans faced starvation. At the time, there were about 2.5 million mobile phone connections in the country and I proposed in this column that we could raise funds to feed the hungry using the an SMS system – there was no cell-phone cash transfer services then. Assuming that ten percent of subscribers contributed only Sh20 daily for six months, it turned out that we could have raised about Sh900 million.

Almost exactly seven years later, we are in a similar position in August 2011… but the numbers have grown. The starving population is now four million and the telephone subscribers have reached over 20 million. The good news is that we now have cash transfer services and so raising money through the mobile phone is easy…and it has been implemented.

The Kenyans for Kenya initiative aims at raising Sh500 million in four weeks to buy and deliver food to the hungry. Within seven days, over 250,000 people had contributed a total of about Sh80 million. This works to an average of Sh320 per contributor and about 36,000 contributors per day.

However only about Sh40m was raised on the eighth day alone! If this trend continues, we will raise about Sh800m in the remaining three weeks of the initiative making a total of about Sh900m. Curiously, this is the same amount I had projected seven years ago!

But this estimate is made using data for contributions from individual persons only. When donations from corporate bodies are added, I will not be surprised to hear that we have raised one billion shillings. Already, Safaricom Ltd has committed to give Sh10m out the proceeds from their “Nguruma Ibambe” marketing promotion.

On Sunday 31st July 2011, 150 tonnes of food worth Sh18m was dispatched from Nairobi’s Uhuru park destined for Turkana North. This means that the food cost about Sh120,000 per tonne.

Thus if we raise one billion shillings, it will be enough to purchase about 8,300 tonnes. So how many people will this feed?

First of all, we need this food to last for the next six months after which the drought is expected to have ended; that is, about 200 days. Therefore, we shall allocate about 40 tonnes per day.

The average adult consumes about 300g per meal and three meals per day. That comes to about one kilogram daily. Since 40 tonnes is equal to 40,000kg, it turns out that the Kenyans for Kenya initiative can provide 40,000 people with three full portions of food daily for the next six months.

There is another way of looking at these numbers: suppose a contributor wishes to feed just one person for the duration of the famine. How much money would they need to contribute?

Sh120,000 per tonne comes to Sh120 per kilo of food. This is also the daily amount require and it works to Sh24,000 for 200 days of continuous supply.