Kenya's Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua prays on Mountain Kenya slope. (Photo: NTV Kenya).

Kenya’s Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua told local media on Sunday that he is ashamed to beg for relief food from international donors amid four years of disastrous drought in the country.

Gachagua told Inooro TV that begging is despicable among his communities.

“But that is exactly what I have been reduced to… every dawn extending a begging bowl to Europeans, asking them to give me food to take to our people,” he told the local language channel.

The Deputy President who assumed power in the August 2022 elections, has been praying on the top of Mountain Kenya.

While praying for the second time on Sunday, Gachagua asked God to bring rain to the country, which has seen four successive failed rainy seasons and is predicted to have suppressed rainfall in a fifth season.

He says begging for relief food has pricked his pride “and this is why I went praying to our god who resides in Mt Kenya beseeching him to spare me more humiliation”.

Kenya and Somalia are suffering the worst drought in a decade, leaving millions of people at risk of starvation. Experts attribute the lack of rain to the adverse effects of climate change.