Crisis response reveals governance differences in Kenya

Between intense droughts and sporadic floods, much of Kenya faces recurring or seemingly never-ending disasters. People’s vulnerability is closely connected to structural inequalities in the country, where people in areas defined as arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) suffer from lack of government services, investment and economic opportunities, with wealth concentrated in the capital, Nairobi. The ASAL Humanitarian Network (AHN) was formed to collectively address immediate humanitarian needs and the drivers of crises, including a significant focus on ensuring the state takes on greater crisis response leadership. This article examines how such aspirations play out in practice, focusing on two AHN responses, to a recent flood and ongoing drought.

Marginalised and crisis-prone: life in the ASALs

The ASALs constitute around 80% of Kenya’s landmass and 30% of its population (approximately 16 million people). Rain-fed agriculture and pastoralism are the main livelihoods, both of which are highly susceptible to drought, floods and other disasters. Consequently, between three and five million people every year are classified as requiring humanitarian assistance. International aid agencies have typically dominated crisis response efforts, including receiving nearly all US funding for Kenya through OCHA in 2026. The Kenyan state, for its part, provides insufficient financing to meet humanitarian needs and has not addressed the long-standing inequalities that exacerbate vulnerability.

AHN was formed in 2019 as a networked platform of over 30 local and national organisations working across Kenya’s ASAL counties. Rather than operating as a single implementing agency, AHN functions as a collective humanitarian architecture that combines community-rooted presence, shared early warning analysis, joint advocacy, coordinated response planning and pooled operational mobilisation. The model aims to strengthen locally led crisis response while simultaneously reinforcing state disaster governance systems. It distributes operational responsibility and risk across actors, while strengthening collective accountability through joint situation reports, shared learning and regular coordination structures.

Rapid-onset floods, slow-to-materialise response

Floods swept through Marsabit County in October 2025, wreaking havoc and revealing significant problems with Kenya’s crisis response systems. County Steering Groups are meant to trigger and coordinate crisis response, with county authorities taking a central role. As flooding risks grew, county authorities did not mount an adequate response, and AHN had to advocate for one. A key challenge is that cash incentives have become an entrenched way of working, without which authorities are deterred from taking initiative and action.

Ultimately, the County Steering Group mobilised, but it did so late and with limited effectiveness. This was particularly evident when Early Warning Systems failed to reach many communities. This led to at least one child being killed as they were swept away by flood waters, as people did not have sufficient time to prepare and evacuate.

After the alarm was raised, the response continued to face challenges. County authorities had to request response funding from the national government, which for political reasons was slow to materialise. Under-funding of sub-national authorities impedes their ability to respond. The centralisation of government resources is a long-standing problem in Kenya.

The Marsabit experience demonstrated that humanitarian effectiveness is closely linked to the strength of local governance systems. While counties are constitutionally mandated to lead disaster preparedness and response, limited fiscal autonomy and dependence on national-level financing often constrain their ability to act quickly during emergencies.

AHN faced its own challenges in mobilising response financing – a financing request was raised with international partners, but it took weeks for funding to flow. An easily accessible pooled fund would help address this issue, but this appears unlikely with recent aid cuts.

Meanwhile, many international agencies delivered their own direct responses, partly owing to the lack of county leadership. This undermined AHN’s efforts to ensure a locally led and coordinated response. Ultimately, the combination of a delayed response and lack of coordination exacerbated suffering for many people affected by the floods.

Despite the challenges, there were some improvements in the response over time, most notably in relation to gender equality. At the beginning of the floods, functional gender desks were lacking across the county. There were a small number in police stations, but they were not fully operational. As such, AHN focused on supporting gender champions during the response, including a referral system and toll-free hotline for reporting cases of gender-based violence. These were highly effective, and continue to operate across the county, opening up space for talking about gender issues.

Although the response was delayed, the floods were an important learning moment for AHN’s networked approach. The experience highlighted the importance of pre-agreed county coordination triggers, decentralised decision-making and shared operational protocols between local actors and county authorities. Without AHN’s ability to convene multiple local organisations under a shared response framework, fragmentation might have been far worse.

AHN’s ongoing engagement with county authorities aims to address the challenges encountered during the response, particularly around coordination and timeliness. This includes national-level advocacy, as resources need to shift to the county level. It is in this ongoing government engagement that local and national civil society, such as AHN, stand out. Most international aid agencies engage individually and often lack the long-term ability to exert influence, whereas AHN works collectively and continues advocating long after the crisis. AHN increasingly functions as an intermediary governance actor – bridging communities, county authorities, donors and operational agencies. This role proved particularly important where formal disaster governance systems were either weak or slow to activate. However, influencing Kenya’s centralised political power remains challenging.

These experiences suggest that localisation should not be understood simply as transferring implementation responsibilities to local actors. Meaningful localisation requires shifting decision-making authority, financing, accountability and influence closer to affected communities and local institutions.

Crippling drought, coherent locally led response

Following the floods in Marsabit County, an intense drought unfolded to the east in Mandera County. Here the response proved far more effective. Across the county, 90% of surface water was gone and many people were in integrated food security phase classification (IPC) levels 3 (crisis) and 4 (emergency), with livestock perishing and insecurity high. As the situation deteriorated, AHN issued a drought alert that triggered multiple funding streams for a response. The response was led by AHN members RACIDA, NAPAD and Mandera Women for Peace. All three have long-standing relationships and trust with local communities.

The most striking difference to Marsabit was the role of the County Steering Group. In Mandera, it was chaired by the County Governor, which ensured county government buy-in and authority to ensure effective response coordination. This meant a unified registry and distribution of response teams across the county, ensuring coherence and minimising overlap. Situation reports (sitreps) were shared fortnightly, and there were monthly coordination meetings.

Unlike fragmented agency-led responses, the Mandera response used shared coordination systems across AHN members and county authorities, including common sitreps, harmonised targeting discussions and coordinated geographic coverage. This reduced duplication and improved accountability to affected communities. The networked structure enabled different organisations to operate through a common response architecture while retaining their individual comparative advantages.

Since AHN members were already embedded within affected communities, assessments and response mobilisation began before many external actors arrived. This reduced verification delays and enabled quicker identification of priority households. It also enabled simultaneous engagement with county authorities, donors and frontline responders, compressing coordination timelines that are often sequential in conventional humanitarian responses.

A key challenge related to assistance targeting. County authorities wanted smaller cash distributions ($45), in order to reach more affected people, whereas AHN’s approach is to provide $90, which is 50% of the minimum county-level household expenditure basket of $180 that will more substantively alleviate crisis needs for a household, with the benefit tending to be more sustainable. The county approach was understandable considering the widespread need, but AHN provided the higher amount, with communities deciding on household targeting. AHN members’ trust and relationships with affected populations were critical to making this possible. Many international agencies do not have this trust and are thus less effective, particularly when clan dynamics can lead to significant community-level tensions and conflict, particularly over issues such as targeting.

In contexts where clan dynamics and political sensitivities strongly influence aid distribution, AHN members’ long-standing relationships with communities functioned as a form of operational infrastructure. Trust enabled faster verification, reduced conflict around targeting and improved acceptance of assistance decisions.

The Mandera drought response was much more effective than the flood response in Marsabit. Although the drought was a slower-onset disaster, that was not the primary reason for the difference. The County Steering Group functioned better, which was critical, including politically important backing from the County Governor. Timely release of funding enabled a more effective response before the situation deteriorated further.

Final reflections: ensuring state leadership

Like many countries, Kenya is grappling with major aid cuts despite high ongoing humanitarian needs and a lack of state-led response. Deep, structural inequalities are a key factor exacerbating vulnerability, yet they are never sufficiently addressed. The state is critical to shifting from repeated responses to substantive community resilience to shocks. Mandera showed what state leadership can look like and the importance of sub-national authorities, yet in Kenya, and elsewhere globally, power and resources are often concentrated with national government in capital cities. This must change.

AHN’s experience suggests that, at the county level, local humanitarian networks can achieve significant influence with authorities, which can improve disaster preparedness and response. Relationship-building with authorities is important, including identifying likely allies. However, influencing the national government and ministries is far more difficult. It is also hampered by international agencies occupying much of the space at national level, where AHN must compete with them for influence. International agencies are far less focused on long-term governance issues, which can lead to government preferring to engage with them rather than AHN, which can be perceived as agitating. AHN has seen that, when the state is leading coordination and civil society plays a complementary delivery and accountability role, responses are far more effective. There are also longer-term gender benefits, as seen in Marsabit.

As Kenya has dealt with further floods and intensifying drought in 2026, we must change our ways of working. Localisation and locally led action should not be viewed primarily as mechanisms for delivering aid more efficiently. Rather, they represent an opportunity to strengthen the governance, accountability and community participation that underpin resilience. The lessons from Marsabit and Mandera show that sustainable humanitarian outcomes depend on empowered local actors, capable county institutions, equitable financing and meaningful power-sharing. The experiences also suggest that locally led humanitarian action is most effective when organised through durable networked structures that combine community legitimacy, operational coordination and sustained engagement with public authorities. Localisation is as much a governance agenda as it is a humanitarian one.

Joan Tarei is a communications strategist with over seven years’ experience translating complex organisational goals into human stories. Currently leading communications for AHN, she manages high-impact visibility for global development partners and ensures local voices are heard on the world stage.

Chris Shimba Ochieng is the Advocacy Lead at AHN, where he leads policy advocacy, localisation and humanitarian systems strengthening initiatives across Kenya’s ASALs. With over 15 years of experience in public policy, governance, research and development, he works to advance locally led humanitarian action, strengthen disaster governance systems and promote evidence-based policy reforms that enhance resilience and accountability.