Brussels, 26/09/2000 (Agence Europe) - Given the food shortage caused by the drought in Kenya, the European Commission has decided to grant 25,000 tonnes of cereals to this country. Funded by ECHO (the European Community's Humanitarian Aid Office), this additional food aid will be delivered via the World Food Programme and will bring to 45,000 tonnes (equivalent to EUR 17.7 million) the total food aid that ECHO has supplied to Kenya this year. This comes in addition to the EUR 3 million already reserved for the funding of small scale food security projects to help local populations to improve their food self-sufficiency. In addition, the Commission recently allocated EUR 2 million in emergency humanitarian aid to this country in order to finance nutritional aid, water supplies and health care projects as well as support to stock farming. Such assistance is administered by ECHO's partner NGOs (Unicef, Action contre la Faim, Vétérinaires sans frontières) in the north eastern part of the country, which is the worst hit by drought).
Poul Nielson, European Humanitarian Aid Commissioner, will himself be in Kenya on 3 and 4 October to assess the situation in the field, in the context of a mission in the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia on 5 and 6 October, Djibouti on 7 October and Eritrea on 8 and 9 October).