As new mothers, pregnant people, and children face heavy burdens of deadly floods, Kenyan experts outline steps forward: "The core barrier is not a lack of solutions"

At one week postpartum, a young mother living near the Ngong’ River carried her newborn up above rising waters to reach temporary shelter. Mothers displaced by recent floods throughout Kenya have shared accounts of infant illness, insufficient food, and decreased breastmilk supplies.

Officials confirmed on Tuesday that the death toll from flash floods affecting at least 21 of the country's counties in March had risen to 88. As reported by the Associated Press, over 30,000 people have been displaced in the wake of the heavy rains. 

The River Tana and Nyando River have both burst their banks in recent weeks, submerging settlements, roadways, and farms. When the River Miriu overflowed earlier this month, Yvonne Adhiambo told the Daily Nation, she had to leave behind the vegetable farm from which she fed her children and earned income. 

Sheltering at a church in Siaya County with dozens of other women and children displaced by floods, the breastfeeding mother shared with the outlet that her milk supply had dropped since evacuating and that her family's access to food depended on donations. "Whether we eat or not now depends on well-wishers," she told the paper. 

Adhiambo, in an area where malaria is endemic, also noted that she was without her mosquito net, which had been swept away by the same floodwaters well-known to spread disease, cut off access to health care, and impact local economies.

Perhaps less anticipated was exactly how flooding in mid-March impacted 18-year-old Angela Peninah and her one-week-old baby. Peninah told the Nation that she carried the baby through heavy rains and above shoulder-high floodwaters to reach a pub on higher ground, where a crowd of sheltering people took turns holding the newborn through the night.

"It was sudden," Peninah told the paper about how quickly the emergency came on. "There was no warning."

The improvement of early warning systems is among the solutions for which experts like Susan Onyango and Hellen Wanjohi-Opil have long advocated. Onyango and Wanjohi-Opil, who are based in the country's capital of Nairobi and work at the World Resources Institute, told CG via email, "'Building back better' means tackling the root causes of flood risk while reimagining development so that infrastructure, ecosystems, and communities are better equipped to live with and withstand more frequent and intense rainfall."

According to Onyango and Wanjohi-Opil, community engagement, sustained investment, infrastructural upgrades, and nature-based solutions — "such as restoring forests, wetlands and watersheds [that] can absorb floodwaters, reduce runoff, and limit soil erosion" — are needed to improve Kenya's resilience to floods that are intensifying as global temperatures rise and the effects of extreme weather events compound. Long periods of drought, for example, which the country has been experiencing for months, can make the soil less able to hold excess rainfall.

Onyango and Wanjohi-Opil also told CG that "where and how people build must change," noting that urban development and informal settlements located on floodplains and along rivers increase the risks that residents' lives may be regularly threatened by destructive waters. "Strengthening land-use planning, enforcing zoning laws, and investing in safe, affordable housing — especially for low-income communities — are critical to reducing exposure," they wrote via email. 

In line with this, Nairobi County Governor Johnson Sakaja announced at a March 19 press briefing, according to local outlet K24, that officials would move forward with the removal of certain structures along the Nairobi River. "We can live near the river, but in a proper and responsible way," he said. "We cannot live by greed or ignore nature."

Notably, as Agence France-Press reported, some have called for Sakaja to resign over the lack of improvements to drainage and other infrastructure that he had promised several years ago to realize.

As Onyango, Wanjohi-Opil, and other experts have noted, the importance of these strategies for climate-resilience — and the imperative to achieve a just transition from polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy systems — are already well-understood as necessary.

"The core barrier is not a lack of solutions — it is aligning finance, governance, enforcement, and community action to deliver them," the WRI experts told CG. "Until these gaps are closed, Kenya risks remaining trapped in a cycle of rebuild, recover, repeat, rather than achieving true resilience."

With regard to immediate needs, Fred Koga, an official in Yvonne Adhiambo's area, told the Daily Nation in mid-March, "We need a supply of mosquito nets, water treatment, and, if possible, community health promoters should randomly visit the camps offering health talks and treatment."

Authorities have also called for "extreme caution" as rescue and evacuation efforts continue.