Food Security

How safe is the food on our plates?  Research by the Kenya Organic Agriculture Network (KOAN), in partnership with the University of Nairobi, Route to Food Initiative, a programme of  Heinrich Böll Foundation, and the Swedish Society for  Nature Conservation, examined pesticide residues in vegetables commonly consumed in Kenya and offers fresh evidence on the state of food safety and practical household methods that can help reduce pesticide residues before consumption.

This dossier shows how disruptions in oil markets ripple through fertiliser supply chains and into agriculture, increasing production costs and exposing countries like Kenya to global instability. Because most synthetic fertilisers are derived from fossil fuels and imported, Kenya’s farming systems remain tightly linked to energy markets and geopolitical dynamics.

The Soil Atlas Kenya Edition 2025 has been adapted from the original version of the Soil Atlas 2024 published in Germany in 2024, to include facts and figures on vital resource on soil relevant to the situation in Kenya.  Its contents will locate the potential of sustainable and fair land use for climate protection and biodiversity.

Inspired by the Netflix documentary Rotten, this issue of Cha Kula by the Route to Food Initiative, highlights the absurdities in our food systems in Kenya, both historically and in the contemporary moment. Cha Kula is a bi-annual publication that gives prominence to food as a political issue in Kenya. It calls into question the power dynamics that dominate our food system, which determines who eats, what they eat and who goes hungry. 

This background paper Rethinking Agriculture: Soil Health for Sustainable Farming in Africa explores the importance of soil health and the need to a shift away from sole reliance on synthetic fertilizers remains an imperative discourse for sustainable agriculture in Africa. This paper was produced in collaboration with the Heinrich Boell Berlin Office and African offices in Nairobi, Abuja, and South Africa.

The report “Toxic Business; Highly Hazardous Pesticides in Kenya” presents analyses on actual data of pesticides used in 2020 in Kenya. It shows that immediate action is necessary to protect human health, the environment, and the right to healthy food in Kenya.

The Route to Food Initiative, a program component of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, has launched a special edition of the Chakula Magazine, a graphic novel entitled “The Blind Spot.” The Blind Spot brings to life the ways in which politics plays out in Kenya’s food system in the form of a visually compelling political drama set in a fictional future county called Kajibora. The main protagonist, Sifa, is a passionate young professor from the city who travels back to her hometown of Kajibora after the death of her grandfather, a renowned politician and leader of a famous peasant revolution. Upon her return, Sifa discovers that the post-revolutionary county is being taken over by a multinational industrial agribusiness company.