Double shock: El Niño and rising global commodity prices in Kenya

By Emerta Aragie, Shadrack Mwatu, Adan Shibia, and Chris HillbrunerOctober 9, 2026

Key takeaways

• Kenya faces significant economic and food security risks from overlapping El Niño impacts and fuel and fertilizer price shocks associated with the war in Iran, a model shows.
• Potential impacts include slower economic growth, particularly lower agricultural production, and higher food prices, although the magnitude and distribution of these effects remain uncertain.
• Food security could deteriorate sharply following the shocks. Under one scenario, nearly 756,000 additional people could fall into poverty, while approximately 4.9 million more people could become undernourished.

Third in a series. Read the first post here and the second here.

El Niño events are extended periods of warmer-than-usual sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific that alter global atmospheric circulation, affecting seasonal rainfall patterns in many parts of the world. Currently, El Niño is strengthening rapidly. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center forecasts a greater than 90% chance of a very strong El Niño in 2026-27 and a nearly 70% chance that its peak strength will exceed that of all previous El Niño events since 1950. Meanwhile, the Iran war and disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz have driven up prices of fuel and fertilizers.

Together, these overlapping shocks pose potentially serious threats to food production and food security, though the specific impacts vary by geography and timing. This is the second in a series of blog posts focused on impacts in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, and India and on the global food system as a whole. These posts reflect a combination of economic modeling and policy research and inform an October 8 policy seminar.

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