By Benadeta Mwaura - Reporter
20 November 2025 - When people hear North Eastern Kenya, what often comes to mind is a harsh landscape, plains of bare soil stretching into the horizon, thorny bushes scattered across the terrain, and pastoralists herding resilient animals: goats, camels, and the occasional cattle struggling against the odds.
But today, that image is changing.
Drive through Moyale, particularly Kinisa and its surrounding villages, and a new picture emerges: endless rows of onions being sorted into warehouses, vast fields of chillies shimmering red, and watermelon vines snaking across fertile ground. It is a transformation that feels almost unreal in a region historically defined by drought. And at the centre of this transformation are local farmers who refused to give up.
A Land Fighting Two Battles: Drought and Flash Floods
Northern Kenya sits on the frontline of climate change. The region swings violently between extremes:
Prolonged droughts
For years, communities in North Eastern Kenya have lived at the mercy of prolonged droughts that strip the land bare. The sun burns the soil until it cracks, turning once-productive grazing fields into stretches of dust and thorny shrubs. Livestock wander for days searching for pasture, ribs showing, eyes dulling with every passing week.
Families are forced to walk long distances just to find a jerrycan of water, often queuing for hours at seasonal wells that dry almost as quickly as they refill. In many households, meals shrink to one a day, or in the hardest months, none at all. These droughts do not just kill crops and animals; they erode dignity, disrupt incomes, worsen malnutrition, and rip apart the very foundation of pastoral and agro-pastoral life.
Destructive flash floods
Yet, as if the dryness is not punishment enough, the region also faces sudden, destructive flash floods, a cruel paradox in an already fragile ecosystem. These floods do not come from local rain; Moyale can go for months without a single drop.
Instead, heavy storms in the distant Ethiopian highlands unleash torrents of water that rush downstream with devastating speed. By the time the water reaches Kenyan villages, it is a violent force, sweeping away farms, drowning livestock, uprooting irrigation pipes, and flattening fields that took months of labor to cultivate.
Farmers often watch helplessly as entire seasons of work vanish in minutes, replaced by muddy debris and broken hope. The unpredictability of these floods makes planning nearly impossible: one moment, the land is thirsty, the next it is underwater.
This cruel paradox has intensified food insecurity. For years, communities in Moyale lived with a cycle of loss:
long dry spells → failed harvests → hunger → late rains → floods → destruction → hunger again.
In these cycles, livelihoods that depended solely on livestock were becoming increasingly unreliable. Malnutrition quietly crept into households, with health facilities constantly treating children with Plumpy’Nut for moderate and severe acute malnutrition. The community needed alternatives, and a few bold farmers decided to create one.
From Hope to Heartbreak: The First Attempt at Farming
Back in 2005, Ukulima Self-Help Group, made up of 20 determined members, dared to break tradition. They cleared a small piece of land in Kinisa and planted their first crops. For the first time, green vegetables sprouted where barren soil had always ruled. Then disaster struck.
Flash floods roaring from the Ethiopian highlands swept across the area and wiped out everything: crops, soil nutrients, irrigation structures, everything. “We had just begun to see hope,” said Ismail Abdi The Ukulima self help group member “And in one night, the water took all of it.” Most groups would have given up. But not them.
Borrowing Water, Borrowing Hope
With no borehole and no reliable water source, the group turned to a neighbouring farmer who had recently dug a borehole. He agreed, generously, to let them access his water. It wasn’t easy. Drip irrigation pipes were costly. The rain-fed reservoirs never lasted long enough. But slowly, season by season, the group brought their land back to life. “All these farms you see around learnt farming from us,” he said.
“But they grew faster because someone supported them. We had no one to hold our hand.”
Still, they persevered. Still, they planted. Still, they harvested.
From their produce, the group managed to buy three more plots of land, including one measuring ten acres. They had proven it was possible.
A Turning Point: The Help They Needed
Years passed, and progress was painfully slow without a reliable water source. Eventually, the group wrote a proposal requesting support for a borehole. And their breakthrough came. The Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) stepped forward, drilling a borehole that finally allowed the group to farm confidently, expand operations, and compete fairly with neighbouring farms. From borrowed water to water security, this was the moment everything changed.
A Region Awakening to Its Potential
A short walk from Ukulima’s farm leads to Ragos Farm, a sprawling landscape of productivity. Tractors roar through fields overflowing with onions. Tomatoes, sukuma, capsicum, spinach, and watermelon thrive in neat rows. Inside the massive warehouses, workers sort onions into sacks destined for markets across Kenya.
The farm manager, Terah Aburiri, said he once thought farming in Moyale was impossible.
“But now I know anything is possible,” he said.
“The market is here, local demand is high. Only when we satisfy the community can we send the rest to Nairobi.”
It is true. Moyale’s farms have become major suppliers for local households, schools, hospitals, and markets. And as agricultural skills spread, families are eating better. Malnutrition cases have dropped as fresh vegetables and fruits become part of daily diets. One mother in the farms said: “For years our children suffered during drought. Today, we harvest our own vegetables. We cook them the same day they leave the soil. Our homes have changed.”
Between Hope and Hardship: A Climate Reality That Won’t Go Away
Despite the progress, Moyale remains in a delicate balance. One season, the sun burns too hot, drying up rivers and stressing boreholes. The next, floods sweep across villages, floods caused not by local rain but intense storms from the Ethiopian highlands. This is the harsh climate reality of the region: too dry when it’s dry, too wet when it rains elsewhere. Yet, in the middle of this, communities are choosing resilience.
A New Chapter for North Eastern Kenya
The story of Moyale’s farmers is not just about agriculture. It is about: In these emerging green belts of North Eastern Kenya, dignity is slowly being restored as families regain control over their lives. Food security, once a distant dream, now feels within reach as farms produce onions, vegetables, and watermelons even in the harshest seasons.
Livelihoods that were shattered by years of drought and sudden floods are being rebuilt row by row, harvest by harvest. Most importantly, communities that were long seen only as victims of climate shocks are now rewriting their own story, refusing to remain helpless in the face of drought and choosing resilience, innovation, and collective action instead. Where there was once barren land, there are now farms.
Where there was hunger, there is now surplus sold to distant markets. Where there was dependence, there is now self-reliance. And it all began with a group of farmers who refused to stop planting, even when the floods washed everything away. This kind of transformation shows what is possible when empowerment is done with communities, but not for them.
If organisations, county governments, and national institutions came together with a shared vision, one that respects local culture while opening doors to new livelihoods, the scale of success in Northern Kenya could be extraordinary. But true, lasting change cannot be imposed.
It must rise from within the community, from people who are ready to diversify beyond pastoralism, not as a rejection of their heritage, but as a pathway to sustain it. When communities take ownership and partners walk alongside them with the right tools and resources, resilience stops being a slogan. It becomes a living reality, one harvest, one borehole, one empowered household at a time.
