"My customers are buying less and less; now I find that goods like vegetables do not sell out, they go into the next day. People’s ability to buy these goods has really dropped," Agolla, a mother of five, told IRIN. Agolla managed to put her children through primary school but never earned enough to pay for secondary education.
"If I could afford to join a savings club [where members’ regular contributions are distributed on a rotational basis], I’d buy a variety of food to improve my stock and I would probably be selling more, and perhaps some of my children could go back to school," she said.
Pamela Anyango Odhiambo, 25, and a mother of five, says making ends meet gets harder and harder in Mathare. "I think food prices have more than doubled within a short time; for example, with 300 shillings [US$4] I could feed my family for days. Now it is not even enough for one day," said Odhiambo, nursing two-month-old twins.
"Humanitarian crisis"
Slum-dwellers are among the Kenyans worst hit by high food prices, yet they receive far less humanitarian attention than other demographic groups. The poorest urbanites spend up to two-thirds of their income on staple foods alone.
"There is a humanitarian crisis in deprived informal settlements around the world, and one of the regions where this dynamic is playing out is in
Source: Allafrica