Nairobi, Feb 11 (IANS): The UN with the support of national and international partners has provided 900,000 Kenyans with food safety nets to tackle hunger that is affecting the East African nation, an official said.

United Nations Resident Coordinator in Kenya, Stephen Jackson told a forum in Nairobi, Kenya's capital, on Friday that the safety nets have been complemented with investments that have set up nerarly 2,000 village saving and loan associations enabling around 44,000 people to improve their savings and investment capacities, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Because of the climate emergency's devastating impacts, without transformative change, Kenya's food systems will fail to deliver food security, leading to further rise in people needing humanitarian assistance," Jackson said during the launch of the Global Hunger Index Report.

Jackson observed that Kenya's fragile food systems are highly vulnerable to the shocks of a climate emergency.

He revealed that an unprecedented four consecutive failed rainfall seasons, which is now entering the fifth, has led to the worst drought in 40 years, with suffering amplified by the global food crisis caused by the Russia-Ukraine war.

"Kenya's smallholder producers and agro-pastoral and pastoral communities are particularly affected as they depend on rain-fed agriculture and sufficient pastures for their livestock. They are also affected by fuel and fertiliser price shocks," he added.

He said that urban populations in informal settlements across the country are at high risk of experiencing hunger especially due to increased living costs.