Some 45,000 Somalis have arrived to Dadaab in 2022 and more are expected to arrive in the coming months, but resources to receive them are stretched. 

Back home in Somalia, Dekow Derow Ali, a father of four children, relied on his crops and his livestock to sustain his family. But three years without rain destroyed his livelihood.

“You just plant crops but there is nothing to harvest,” he said. “My cows died at the onset of the drought. I lost some goats as well.”  

Dekow sold his remaining goats to pay for transport for him and his family to cross into neighbouring Kenya and reach the refugee camps in Dadaab where they could receive some assistance.

“I came with nothing except my children,” he said.

Famine is looming in Somalia as the country reels from its worst drought in four decades. The failure of four rainy seasons in the last two years, exacerbated by the effects of climate change, has resulted in unprecedented levels of hunger and displaced nearly 1 million people inside the country since last January.

The prolonged drought, combined with ongoing conflict, has sent more than 80,000 Somalis across the border to Dadaab in the past two years, with some 45,00 of them arriving in the last year. As the situation deteriorates, with predictions of yet another failed rainy season, more families are expected to arrive in the coming months.

“More and more people are on the way. When we came, we were many, even yesterday more people arrived,” said Khadija Ahmed Osman, 36, who arrived in October with her eight children after being forced to shut down the small restaurant she owned in Salagle town in Somalia’s middle Jubba region.

“Businesses closed down as people fled due to the drought and insecurity,” she said. “I wanted to protect my young boys from being recruited by armed groups, so I decided to come here.”