By LeeAnne Lang, Bechtel Group Foundation operations manager
Blog
In Kenya, a partnership between business leaders and a local social enterprise organization is creating affordable, re-useable masks for the country’s fight against COVID-19.
The Kenyan government began requiring face coverings in April, but the high cost of masks was a hurdle for many in the East African nation. In addition, most masks were designed for one-time use, an approach that didn’t mesh with the country’s sustainability goals.
Technology companies Arrow Electronics and Analog Devices Inc. launched a mission to Kenya this fall to help social enterprise Close the Gap train a new generation of IT workers and support young tech entrepreneurs.
The program, known as Silicon Savanna, reflects Kenya’s promise as a new technology hub.
by Zoe So, Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa
Blog
We are excited to introduce Bidhaa Sasa, Whole Planet Foundation’s newest microfinance partner in Kenya. Bidhaa Sasa sells, delivers, and finances beneficial products to low income populations in rural areas. Our team likes their client-centric approach to affordable credit, responsive customer service, and attention to internal systems.
Growing up in Kenya, the Ruto brothers couldn’t recall ever having a consistent water supply. Ken and Denis would often go days and weeks without running water, as over 50% of Kenya’s water resources are lost to theft, corruption, or leakage in the aging analog systems. Like other families, they’d buy water from unscreened sources, which was not only expensive but potentially dangerous.
TOKYO, October 22, 2018 /3BL Media/ – LIXIL, maker of pioneering water and housing products, is accelerating access to basic sanitation in East Africa by transferring proprietary sustainable sanitation technology to Kenyan company, ACE Environmental Consultancy (ACE). The Green Toilet System (GTS) has been nearly a decade in development and has the ability to transform thousands of lives through improved access to toilets.
In the US, we hear a lot about how technology is disrupting inefficient, entrenched systems. Usually, this conjures up images of mature, large businesses being taken by surprise by new, agile startups.
The state of the earth’s biodiversity – the world’s variety of living organisms – is in crisis. About one third of the world’s land has been severely degraded from its natural state. Some of the worst forms of degradation include deforestation, soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, declining water quality and pollution.
One of Close the Gap’s DigiTrucks (the one sponsored by Arrow Electronics) is currently traveling through Kenya. Two of Close the Gap’s local partner organisations, who are also the operators of this DigiTruck, Computers for Schools Kenya (CFSK) and the WEEE Centre, are touring through different Kenyan (sub)counties the next few weeks. The first visit of the DigiTruck is Mlolongo, Machakos county.
In Kenya, floods and landslides killed around 100 people and displaced nearly 300,000 between March and May 2018. Smallholder farmers along the Upper Tana River basin are now investing in bamboo trees to curb floods.
Article
Many of the Kenyan communities affected by floods and landslides this year were already struggling to recover from the 2017 drought - a result of a failed rainy season in 2016 and unusually high temperatures.
"The rainfall patterns have completely shifted. We are receiving more torrential rains of high intensity, accompanied by flooding," Catherine Muthuri, a research scientist at the World Agroforestry Center in Nairobi, told DW.
