Humanitarian System

Natural disasters, such as floods, landslides and recurrent droughts have increased over the years, eroding the coping mechanisms of people, contributing to displacements, destruction of livelihood assets, and increasing poverty and inequalities of marginalised people. The government, with support from donors and INGOs, has improved resilience efforts and emergency response. The National Drought Management Authority and the National Contingency Fund have been established to strengthen resilience to drought, and to improve early warning and early action. Kenya Red Cross Society has been mandated as the first responder by the government, with support from non-state actors, when needed.

Oxfam works with partners to support communities build and strengthen their resilience to natural disasters, such as floods, landslides and recurrent droughts, which have increased over the years. Oxfam in Kenya aims to have state and non state actors prepared to prevent and respond early to humanitarian crises while upholding gender equality. Over the next five years, Oxfam will increasingly focus on providing technical assistance to national/county government, and other regional and national organisations to effectively respond to crises in their different categories.

What does success look like?

1. Women and men in crisis prone areas are informed and taking preventative measures, earlier, to slow onset crises by 2030
2. National and County governments, Kenya Red Cross, and other key stakeholders demonstrate sufficient internal capacity to engage in early warning and no regrets action and to effectively respond to crises by 2030.
3. Communities become resilient and adaptive to the increasingly dynamic climate.
4. Increased community participation and leadership in projects that touch on their livelihoods.

Humanitarian assistance provides a strong entry point for catalyzing a more resilient ecosystem in which small businesses and the last mile at risk communities they serve can be more resilient and flourish. Oxfam Kenya and partner, Strategies for Northern Development (SND), with the support of the Visa Foundation are working on the integration of small businesses into humanitarian response in two high-risk countries: the Philippines and Kenya. This initiative supports inclusive economies by:

• Empowering small businesses to act on climate and disaster risks as agents of resilience
• Promoting resilience through access to financial and logistic services
• Strengthening community-level systems to withstand shocks
• Enhancing access to financial services for marginalized traders
• Strengthening market infrastructure in vulnerable communities 

Kenyan humanitarian response systems have relied heavily on market-based approaches. Oxfam has adopted market-based approaches in delivering humanitarian assistance as they are cheaper, faster, provide choice and dignity to communities and households, contribute to market strengthening, and support community engagement to address community needs among other benefits.  The two main approaches used are Multi-Purpose Cash Assistance (MPCA) and use of electronic vouchers (E-vouchers) especially in the delivery of non-food items (NFIs) to access essential Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) products. Both these modalities require functioning local market ecosystems and vendors to be effective and efficient.

Traders have been an important nexus for financial inclusion of small producer households to promote their resilience in crisis. Despite these factors being critical to the supply chain of goods (such as food) and influencing availability, access and price stability, traders are often excluded from anticipatory planning and often do not have business continuity plans in place during emergencies. This gap weakens the efficiency of disaster response, affects critical value chains and affordability for crisis-affected communities with an impact on response outcomes such as dietary diversity. Forecasting systems exist but the translation of early warnings into market-sensitive, scalable actions remains underdeveloped. Through the BREADY initiative Oxfam and partners will work with key stakeholders to identify and assess the sectors and small businesses most affected during a crisis—such as food and agricultural traders, providers of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services (including non‑food items), and other small enterprises as determined by the assessment findings. Our efforts will focus on Marsabit county, which is vulnerable to both seasonal flooding and droughts, linking early warnings to pre-agreed local market interventions that support small businesses and protect community access to essential goods during crises.

The initiative aims to develop a market-based model that leverages the role of small businesses such as food and agricultural traders, providers of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services (including non‑food items) in disaster preparedness and response. Through pre-crisis market assessments and design of activation-ready protocols, the project will enhance the efficiency of interventions using local market systems before and during humanitarian action in the Marsabit region.

The Kenya Cash Consortium (KCC) has, since 2019, continuously worked to ensure an efficient and effective locally led and life-saving response to crisis affected populations in Kenya. Between 2024-2025, the KCC through AHN members supported over 33,000 individuals in Dadaab, Kakuma and the ASAL Counties. The KCC, led by Acted, in partnership with the ASAL Humanitarian Network (AHN), Concern Worldwide, Oxfam, and IMPACT, works in complementarity with AHN members who handle direct implementation. Over 75% of the funding is directed through these 30 local NGOs, which have strong contextual knowledge and established leadership in Northern Kenya.

In 2026 the ECHO funded KCC hopes to contribute to the achievement of the following results:

• Enhanced Coordination for an effective and harmonised Cash response
• Alert Based System – Localised early response through MPCA to disaster-affected communities across Kenya 
• Improved access to food and other basic needs for cross-sectoral referrals in refugee settings 
• Crisis-affected refugee households have access to basic needs through emergency multi-purpose cash assistance through activation of the Crisis Modifier in the camps and across the ASALs

This is being done through several interconnected activities that include the provision of Multi-Purpose Cash Assistance (MPCA) to respond to the basic needs of disaster and crisis-affected communities, across Kenya, focusing particularly in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) and in the Refugee Camps.

The initiative will continue to support the Joint Market Monitoring Initiative (JMMI) to monitor market trends, the cost of the Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB), and analysis of market functionality in Camps and across the ASALs, with such coordination efforts to benefit 73 organisations. The KCC members also working towards the integration of Kenya’s enhanced Single Registry (ESR) by conducting advocacy sessions and building partner capacity at county level as well other concrete contributions to key forums such as the Kenya Cash Working Group, the Kenya (I)NGO Forum, and the OCHA Regional Office for Southern and Eastern Africa’s (OCHA ROSEA) Kenya Humanitarian Partnership Team (KHPT). 

The KCC monitors needs and applies the Alert-Based System to support households from crisis affected communities across arid and semi-arid counties. We continue to strengthen local humanitarian action by building partner capacity to conduct Rapid Needs Assessments (RNAs) and deploy Rapid Response Teams in any county affected crisis after an alert activation. 

To respond to the gaps of assistance to vulnerable refugees, the KCC will provide four cycles of MPCA to 2,087 cross-sectoral referral HHs, mainly protection and nutrition identified by the relevant actors in both refugee camps and urban centres.   KCC has also set aside an envelope for a Crisis Modifier which will allow AHN partners to provide two cycles of MPCA to 840 HHs in the camps and across the counties in case of sudden crisis. Across all results, the KCC INGOs will work on strengthening the technical, organisational and advocacy capacities of the AHN partners to ensure a more localised response.

The project addresses severe vulnerability of low-income, households in Kenya's Tana River County to frequent and catastrophic floods. The current average income level for these households is USD 4 per day per household. These communities, reliant on small enterprises and subsistence agriculture and livestock farming, face significant economic losses and disruptions due to the escalating impacts of climate change. Traditional post disaster aid is insufficient for building long-term resilience, and no tailored insurance products existed until recently. The project aims to enhance resilience through an index-based flood insurance solution and a mobile early warning system, providing financial protection and enabling proactive risk mitigation for these vulnerable households.

Kenya's insurance market has traditionally focused on conventional products, with low uptake in rural areas like Tana River County due to affordability and lack of tailored solutions. Before 2023, there was no flood-specific insurance despite the region's high vulnerability. The project built on the successful pilot of index-based flood insurance in partnership with Britam insurance, Risk shield and ALDEF expanding coverage to more households and integrating a mobile early warning system. By leveraging local partnerships and existing infrastructure, the project aims to scale the insurance solution and enhance resilience in flood-prone communities.

The overall project objectives are to enhance the resilience of 20,000 vulnerable households

through:

• Scaling the Index-Based Flood Insurance: Expanding coverage to protect more households against flood-related losses, ensuring swift financial recovery and reducing dependency on humanitarian aid.
• Implementing a Mobile-Based Early Warning System: Providing timely flood risk alerts to empower communities to take proactive measures, thereby minimizing the impact of floods.
• Building Long-Term Resilience: Collaborating with local governments, humanitarian organizations, and community groups to create a sustainable, scalable insurance solution that strengthens flood preparedness and resilience at the community level.

A flood index product has been devised to operate at a micro level, focusing on individual households, facilitated through collaboration with aggregators tasked with consolidating households. The indexing mechanism of this product relies on two key parameters: satellite-based rainfall data and river-gauge measurements.