Chapter 6 Natural Disaster Risk Management in Kenya: Prospects for Successful Implementation

Kenya is vulnerable to multiple natural hazards that lead to disasters resulting in human, economic, environmental and other losses. The promulgation and ratification of several disaster management (DM) policies, acts, conventions and the establishment of the National Disaster Management Policy Framework has placed Kenya at the international forefront. We critically analyse various Kenyan policy institutions and processes for disaster risk management (DRM), applying a mixed-methods approach. Content analysis was applied to qualitatively analyse Kenya’s DM policy and legislation documents, using Nvivo 11 Pro. Descriptive and econometric analyses were performed on empirical data from DRM key informants in Kenya using SPSS version 25.0. Only 11% of interviewees were aware of the National Disaster Policy Framework; 50% had read up to two national DM-related documents. National institutions exert highest influence in the policy formulation (78%), compared to local and international institutions (67% and 56%, respectively). Participation of local and national institutions in national DRM policy formulation was high (mean scores of 2.44/4 and 1.67/4, respectively). A weak correlation was observed between years of experience ( r = 0.115, p = 0.768), and a positive but insignificant one between experience and participation in DRM policy formulation. Based on the aforementioned, we suggest that Kenya’s disaster risk reduction (DRR) implementation benefits from the high human capacity and high level of participation. However, the performance of frontline staff needs to be improved, especially regarding their knowledge of existing national DRM frameworks.