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.
by Maibo Malesu, Theme Leader, Water Management, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)
For the past month Kenya has had torrential rainfall. This followed devastating droughts in parts of the country. The Conversation Africa’s Moina Spooner asked Maimbo Malesu how the country can make better use of the rains.
What is rainwater harvesting and how does it work?
The Cherangani people of Kenya were for generations reliant on the forest for hunting, gathering and agroforestry — a way of life that was curtailed by the colonial government.
Today, Cherangani communities living on the edge of the forest have returned to their traditions, intercropping avocado, bean and coffee plants among trees that help reduce water runoff and soil erosion, and improve nutrient cycling.
The return to agroforestry has had wide-ranging benefits, from helping the communities improve their livelihoods, to minimizing human-animal conflicts by providing a buffer of fruit trees between the farms and forest.
The project has received $5 million in funding, which is expected to provide training to more than 2,000 households on forest conservation and agroforestry techniques.
Article
The Cherangani people of Kenya were for generations reliant on the forest for hunting, gathering and agroforestry — a way of life that was curtailed by the colonial government.
Today, Cherangani communities living on the edge of the forest have returned to their traditions, intercropping avocado, bean and coffee plants among trees that help reduce water runoff and soil erosion, and improve nutrient cycling.
The return to agroforestry has had wide-ranging benefits, from helping the communities improve their livelihoods, to minimizing human-animal conflicts by providing a buffer of fruit trees between the farms and forest.
The project has received $5 million in funding, which is expected to provide training to more than 2,000 households on forest conservation and agroforestry techniques.
