Themes

Call for Participants: Challenging Patriarchy Virtual Book Club

Agriculture is one of the most hazardous occupations in Kenya. Farmers are exposed to many toxic chemicals such as pesticides. While pesticides are designed to be used for pests, they have ingredients that are highly toxic to human health. 

For the highly indebted developing countries, the corona pandemic accelerates the debt crisis. An interview with Barbara Unmüßig from the Board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation about the latest developments.

For the highly indebted developing countries, the corona pandemic accelerates the debt crisis. An interview with Barbara Unmüßig from the Board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation about the latest developments.

On 25 March 2020, President Uhuru Kenyatta issued a nationwide dusk-to-dawn curfew (7pm-5am), exempting 13 groups of workers offering essential services in order to contain the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya. Incidences of  police brutality  while enforcing the curfew were reported across Kenya.

Prof. Wangari Maathai would have celebrated her 80th Birthday today, April 1, 2020. Together with the global social and “green” movements, we remember one of our Heroines and pay tribute to our Green Icon, the Kenyan 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate and winner of the Petra-Kelly Prize of Heinrich Boell Foundation.

In May last year, the Africa Centre for Open Governance (AfriCOG) published State Capture – Inside Kenya’s Inability to Fight Corruption, a report that hit the country like a meteor. Perspectives spoke to Gladwell Otieno, AfriCOG’s director and long-time anti-corruption campaigner, about what motivated them to take a fresh view in the analysis of corruption, and what this means for civil-society action.

This edition was compiled by Heinrich Böll Foundation’s North Africa and the Transform Africa project. It is dedicated to the emerging conversation of alternative approaches that challenge the historical bias towards the industrialisation of agriculture and the food system as the main strategy to address food insecurity while preparing for a +2°C world.    

A world without plastic pollution is a vision worth fighting for. The Plastic Atlas provides facts and figures about a world full of plastics. 

Agriculture accounts for about 24% of Kenya’s GDP with an estimated 75% of the population working in the sector either directly or indirectly. As an agricultural economy and while promoting mainly conventional agriculture, Kenya’s demand for pesticides is relatively high and steadily increasing. In 2018 Kenya imported 17,803 tonnes valued at 128 Mill $. These pesticides are an assortment of insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, fumigants, rodenticides, growth regulators, defoliators, proteins, surfactants and wetting agents. Of the total pesticide imports, insecticides, fungicides and herbicides account for about 87% in terms of volume and 88% of the total cost of pesticide imports.