When 100 small-scale farmers banded together in Kenya’s Central Province to win a USD$240,000 contract supplying potatoes to a processing company, hopes were high. The rains were strong and weekly deliveries began in October 2014 and proceeded through November. Then the rains stopped, and so did the harvesting. Unable to fulfill the required weekly deliveries, the farmers lost the contract.
But the story doesn’t end there, for Kenya, or for Africa. When the rains started again, they came as a deluge. It lasted days, then weeks. In Kenya, as with much of the continent this year, excessive rains swamped fields, turned streets into rivers, inundated houses and businesses.