Meeting Two Crises—Hunger and Climate Change—With Lake Turkana Fish

The promise of ice broke the ice with semi-nomadic pastoralists living in the harsh, arid desert around Kenya’s Lake Turkana.

Traditionally, the pastoralists relocate their homes two or three times a year, chasing the short rains in November and the long rains from April to June with their cattle, sheep, goats, and camels.

But recurring drought has left their pasturelands hardened and bare. By mid-2022, the current drought, which began in 2020, had killed an estimated 439,400 livestock in Turkana, and triggered a hunger crisis that has led to conflicts over scarce resources.

Some 60 percent of the region’s population is acutely food insecure. Many live on the shores of the world’s largest desert lake.

When a team from Nairobi arrived with an offer to help, though, “they were skeptical—actually, hostile,” said Francis Nderitu, Managing Director and co-founder of the business Keep IT Cool. “And they have a right to be suspicious. First urbanization displaced them. Now, climate change. And we are outsiders.”

Nderitu and his team persevered.

“When we offered to give them cooling services like ice and solar-powered freezers, that’s when they were convinced,” Nderitu said. “Only then could we sign an MOU.”