This tweet indicates that over 800,000 people are supposedly at risk of starvation due to the drought in Turkana.
Background
20.9 million people in the Horn of Africa are food insecure according to a joint press release from humanitarian organizations. This is the effect of a two-year long ongoing drought, which according to the statement, could prolong into 2023.
Verification
In a previous fact-check debunked here, Piga Firimbi found that the tweet making the claim that 800,000 people are at risk of starvation contained an image from events that took place in 2019. The image was initially published on The Star news website here.
Piga Firimbi further found that the data cited is also from 2019, and therefore not relevant to the ongoing drought crisis in Kenya and the Horn of Africa. The article in The Star was published on July 17, 2019 and reads; “More than 805,000 people were faced by starvation and hunger that was caused by the devastating drought that led to several deaths recently.” Similarly, a tweet from NTV published similar figures on March 6, 2019.
More than 800 thousand people out of 1.2 million people are at risk of hunger in Turkana county due to persistent drought and are in urgent need of relief food. #NTVAtOne @zeynabIsmail pic.twitter.com/qZVT4g9iI5
— NTV News (@NTVnewsroom) March 6, 2019
In more recent official statements, the National Drought Management Authority notes that 4.35 million Kenyans affected by the drought are in need of humanitarian aid. The authority’s most recent drought assessment report for Turkana County in particular does not indicate the number of people affected in the county.
Verdict
The claim that more than 800,000 people are at risk of starvation in Turkana is MISLEADING.
This fact-check was produced by Africa Uncensored with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck, International Fact-Checking Network, and African Fact-Checking Alliance network.
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