Empower Yourself, Ignite Sustainability
Today is World Food Day, and the theme this year is “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.” So let me ask you something. How many food innovations have you heard announced in the last year? A new app for farmers. A drone that maps soil. A smart sensor. A pilot farm with impressive numbers. Now, how many … Read more
Have you ever stood knee-deep in coastal mud, pushing a mangrove propagule into the soil while the tide creeps back in? I have. And I can tell you, it’s one of the most humbling kinds of conservation work there is. I took part in mangrove planting with a youth- and women-led organisation, the Blue Earth … Read more
Who actually grows the food on a child’s plate? Not the logo on the project banner. Not the funder’s name in the report. The actual hands. In most of the kitchen garden projects I have seen, the honest answer is a woman. Often unpaid. Often teaching someone younger how to do it too, while she … Read more
How many times this year have you read that artificial intelligence is bad for the environment? Data centres guzzling electricity. Cooling systems drinking water. Carbon emissions rising with every new model. Those concerns are real, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Back in 2019, I wrote that even our internet use has a carbon … Read more
Where does value actually disappear in African food systems? If you asked most people, they would point at the field. Poor seed. Failed rains. Pests. And yes, those are real. But the longer I report on farming, the more I think we are looking in the wrong place. The value is not usually lost in … Read more
When you hear “Garissa”, “Turkana” or “Marsabit”, what comes to mind? For most people, it’s drought. Dusty ground, thin cattle, relief trucks. But what if the drylands are actually where Kenya’s farming future is being decided? That’s the argument in a Talk Africa piece from last week. And honestly, the numbers make it hard to … Read more
Do we treat drought as an emergency, or as something we could have seen coming? When was the last time you heard the word “disaster” used for a dry season? We use it for floods. We use it for landslides and fires. But drought? Drought usually gets called “hard times” until the day someone finally … Read more
Can a country have too many elephants? And if it can, is killing some of them the answer, or a sign we’ve run out of better ideas? These questions came back to me this week when I read that Botswana has authorised the killing of 23 elephants for its 60th independence celebrations. Officials said the … Read more
Have you ever eaten something a child grew? Not something a farmer grew and a child carried home, but a sukuma wiki leaf or a tomato that a ten-year-old watered, weeded, and waited for? Do you think “innovation” has to mean an app, a drone, or a start-up pitch? And what would food security look … Read more
Should you plant a mango tree or an acacia? A fruit tree or an indigenous one? I get asked some version of this every planting season. And the honest answer is: it depends where you’re standing. Kenya needs both, planted in the right places. So with Mazingira Day falling this Saturday, let’s settle it. What … Read more
