Reflections from Agri4D – Lessons on resilient food systems

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Written by Matthew Kessler, project coordinator at TABLE, a collaboration between University of Oxford, SLU, and Wageningen University that explores the evidence and values behind global food systems debates.

African vegetable market, Assomada, Santiago Island, Cape Verde

Food is at the center of many of the intersecting challenges we face today. Nearly one in 10 people in the world are undernourished, climate change throws more instability into the already difficult job of farming, and global biodiversity is rapidly declining – so much so that some are calling this period the sixth mass extinction. These challenges are especially acute in low- and middle-income countries, which was the focus of the Agri4D 2023 conference that was I fortunate enough to co-moderate in September.

The incredibly timely theme of this year’s conference was “building resilient food systems in uncertain times.” While I won’t be able to summarize all that I learned, in this blog I’ll share two key insights I gained from this year’s conference: elevating unheard voices in food systems, and the importance of seeing each solution in the appropriate context.

Complex food systems

How do you run a conference on such a complicated topic like food systems? You’d have to explore the complex and interconnected webs that connect seeds and inputs to farms, farms which produce food that is regionally or internationally distributed across global supply chains, food that is then sold, or processed and sold, and purchased in markets, retailers, restaurants, and ultimately end up on people’s plates.

This movement of food from seed to plate does not only present logistical challenges, but also political, cultural, social and economic dilemmas. In order to facilitate an inclusive conversation about the future of food, you’d have to take the approach that Agri4D did, and engage with farmers, businesses, economists, trade experts, politicians at regional and national levels, civil society and researchers.  I was impressed with the commitment and care that each brought to improving food systems and making them more resilient, although they didn’t always agree on a solution.

Context matters

It’s a rare opportunity to be presented with a myriad of solutions and efforts to enact food systems transformation across the world. In this short period of time, it’s easier to notice the striking differences across countries and contexts. Some regions face challenges of malnutrition, the impacts of climate change, gender inequality, political instability, or a combination of these factors.

As keynote speaker Professor Appolonaire Djikeng pointed out, resilient to what? What is the exact vulnerability that we need to confront and how can we be proactive in our approach to building resilience. How can scientists, policymakers and practitioners work together to get ahead of our challenges and not only react to them. While we are connected by global challenges, and can share what we learn with each other, we must also recognize that solutions aren’t always easily translatable to other contexts.

I want to highlight one more accomplishment of this conference that really stood out to me, which was its ability to elevate unheard or marginalized voices in the food system.

Screenshot of panel recording from “Panel 12 – Indigenous knowledge production and rights in food system”

Elevating unheard voices

One of the most profound outcomes of the conference was its commitment to giving a platform to voices that are seldom heard in discussions about food systems. Those who are most vulnerable are typically being “spoken to” rather than “discussed with.” We heard a compelling keynote by Seema Kulkarni that spoke to the lived realities of the wives of Indian farmers who had taken their own lives. We learned about the immense challenges they face in continuing to run these farms while navigating economic hardships and societal pressures, and the community they found in supporting each other. Their stories were a strong reminder that the human element should never be lost in our discussions about food systems.

In addition to these personal narratives, the conference organized a panel discussion on indigenous knowledge production across Asia and Africa. These panellists shared the importance of preserving food cultures – cultivating, preparing, and sharing communal meals – to provide diverse and healthy diets to malnourished populations. Incorporating indigenous knowledge into our strategies for building resilience is an important tool to tackle some of the specific challenges that these communities face.

Conclusion

Building resilience across food systems is not a task for a single stakeholder. Nor is it strictly an ecological principle, where a resilient ecosystem can be defined as one that is better able to withstand and absorb ongoing shocks to the system. Resilience is also a social principle, where a village of people from different backgrounds, trainings and worldviews, work together to increase the resilience of local and global food systems.

We need to follow in the footprints of this conference – to bridge the gaps between science, policy, and practice, and bring a diverse array of professionals to the table. To be open about what solutions work, which don’t, and what remains uncertain. To be clear-headed about what the vulnerabilities are that we are trying to address. To apply the right interventions, whether they are trainings to build knowledge and skills, the use of appropriate seeds and technologies, or smart policy interventions and business innovations. Ultimately, we need to work together if we wish to apply and build a resilient, sustainable, and just food system in the future.

CA4SH at the 2023 World Water Week: Innovative solutions for promoting healthy rangelands under a changing climate

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This blog post is written by Aida BarguĂ©s Tobella, researcher at SLU and Hanna North, communications officer, CA4SH. This blog post was first published at CA4SH’s website.

Rangelands cover about half of the Earth’s land surface, store between 10 and 30% of terrestrial carbon, and support over 2 billion people, yet they are under-recognized and under-valued and have been largely ignored in sustainable development agendas and climate negotiations. 

 

Typically, we have our heads in the trees when it comes to thinking about carbon sequestration, as we can see their carbon-storing biomass right in front of our eyes. In a 2022 study of over 6000 peer-reviewed and gray literature, 78% focused on forests while only 6% focused on grasslands and 3% on drylands.

But if we look beneath our feet in rangelands, we can see that they store 70% of their carbon belowground and support 80% of agriculturally productive land, globally, making them a critical focal point for addressing the global challenges of biodiversity loss, land degradation, climate change, water and food insecurity. Restoring degraded rangelands is urgently needed to address these interlinked crises and enhance human well-being.

 

On 21 August 2023, CA4SH joined CIFOR-ICRAF, Focali, IGAD, SIWI, SLU, University of Nairobi, and WWF at the 2023 World Water Week organized by Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) in a virtual session to discuss water-smart rangeland restoration.

The theme of this year’s World Water Week was Seeds of Change: Innovative Solutions for a Water-Wise World, facilitating conversations about how we manage water through the nexus of innovation, governance, and science. Moderator Malin Lundberg Ingemarsson (SIWI) opened the joint session by inviting participants to challenge the status quo of under-valuing rangelands in targeted investments for innovation.

Keynote speaker Leigh Ann Winowiecki (CA4SH co-Lead and CIFOR-ICRAF Soil and Land Health Global Research Lead) issued a call to action in advance of the upcoming 2026 Year of Rangelands, stressing that “now is our opportunity to convince the community to come together on rangeland health.” To do this, she underscored the importance of investing in rangeland restoration and rangeland health monitoring, scaling innovations, filling research gaps, and providing scientific evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of restoration efforts over time. She also highlighted the key role of community engagement and the importance of encouraging farmer and pastoral-led innovations.

 

A soil profile shared by Winowiecki shows how far the deep roots of a grassland in Kenya reach. (C: Kelvin Trautman)

Monitoring rangeland health, understanding drivers of land degradation, and tracking restoration progress is entirely within our reach using the innovative Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (LDSF) coupled with Earth Observation (EO) and citizen science. Leigh Winowiecki described the systematic, landscape-level framework which measures a variety of land health indicators including soil infiltration capacity. She shared an example study from the Drylands Transform project in Kenya and Uganda which identified key determinants of water infiltration into the soil, including soil carbon content. Soil infiltration capacity is a critical indicator of land health as it determines the maximum rate at which water can enter the soil, controlling the generation of surface runoff and erosion, which are key drivers of land degradation. Leigh Winowiecki shared that the LDSF is inexpensive and accessible, and called for increased investment in capacity building for farmers and pastoralists to monitor the health of their land and contribute to filling data gaps through citizen science.

 

While the LDSF is a global initiative, case studies showed session participants innovative solutions being implemented in Kenya, Uganda, and Burkina Faso. Margeret Nyaga, PhD student at the Department of Land Resource Management and Agricultural Technology at the University of Nairobi, shared her research within the Drylands Transform project led by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). Margeret is investigating landscape restoration through Livestock Cafes – knowledge-sharing hubs and experimental sites where the project engages with local communities, extension workers, NGO practitioners, and authorities to test and demonstrate innovative land restoration and water management options – in the Karamoja region between Kenya and Uganda. Water-smart innovations like water harvesting with half moons, rock check dams, vetiver grass planted along contour lines, and reseeding of rangeland grasses and legumes showed evident results after just one year of implementation.

 

Aubin Ouedraogo (Terre Verte) shared the results of promoting Bocage Perimeters (wégoubri in the Mooré language) in Burkina Faso. These are integrated systems with trees, livestock, and crops working together to fight land degradation by controlling livestock grazing and promoting agroecological best practices. The first vocation of the bocage is to keep water where it falls by creating bunds, ponds, and living hedges, in order to mitigate the erosive action of monsoon waters and maintain the biodiversity of the area. Surface runoff is collected in harvesting ponds to recharge groundwater and the bocage perimeters are subdivided into fields that are managed by local families for increased food security.

 

Following the presentations, Margeret Nyaga and Aubin Ouedraogo joined an interactive panel with Dominic Kathiya (IGAD, ICPALD), Melissa D.Ho (WWF-US), and Aida Bargués-Tobella (SLU). Panelists were asked about the role of rangelands in biodiversity conservation and climate, the key aspects of water-smart restoration in rangelands, as well as barriers to upscaling restoration and soil health interventions and the tools we need to do it.

“Grasslands have intrinsic value [but] we forget that half of our land mass is grasslands!”

— Melissa D. Ho (WWF-US)

The panelists echoed the message that rangelands have been overlooked for too long, and that it’s time for a shift in focus when it comes to climate and biodiversity conversations and investments. Melissa D. Ho pointed to the Cerrado savanna in Brazil, neighbor to the Amazon rainforest, which covers 21% of the country’s land cover but which is nowhere near a household name like the Amazon is. Aida BarguĂ©s-Tobella highlighted the dichotomy between water as both a driver of erosion and a source of life and resilience and therefore the cornerstone for restoration in the changing global climate. The key? Healthy soil captures water, making it reliably available for plants to thrive while reducing water-related risks and disasters such as floods and droughts.

 

These points were well-rounded by Dominic Kathiya who discussed the important role of harmonizing policy and practice to scale implementation of water-smart rangeland restoration. He also reminded session participants that rangelands are important sources of livelihood and that restoration activities must address sustainable use by humans, including support for the extension of resources and management programmes. In closing the session, Stephen Mureithi reiterated the multiple benefits of rangeland restoration including enhancing food and nutrition security, water security, resilience building against climate change, reversing land degradation, and halting biodiversity loss. He called on governments, agencies, and non-governmental organizations to co-work with communities to enable them to achieve restoration in landscape scales.

 

This session at the 2023 World Water Week marks a pivotal moment for rangelands, and came at the timing couldn’t have been better to complement some exciting news received the week prior. The Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development, Formas, announced grant funding for the research project Scaling rangeland restoration in drylands through synergies in the biodiversity – water- climate nexus (Restore4More) led by SLU in partnership with CIFOR-ICRAF, the University of Nairobi, Makerere University, Stockholm University, Linköping University, IGAD-ICPALD, SIWI, and Vi Agroforestry. The long-term goal of Restore4More is to generate knowledge on the biodiversity-water-climate nexus that can contribute to large-scale, long-lasting, and effective rangeland restoration in the drylands of East Africa for increased climate change adaptation and mitigation, enhanced biodiversity, and water and food security.

Webpage CA4SH: https://www.coalitionforsoilhealth.org/ 

 

Development research funding is vital to tackle global challenges and needs to stay – in one form or another

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Picture of pastoralists from southwest Uganda. Photo: Erika Chenais, SVA.

There is no doubt that international development cooperation funding has to tend to many different needs, including humanitarian emergencies in Ukraine. However, there are good reasons to look closer at the benefits of the now cut Swedish development research funding, and start considering different possibilities to enable these benefits moving forward.

The precise ramifications of last week’s governmental decision to terminate Development Research funding from the Swedish Research Council, VetenskapsrĂ„det (VR), remain to be seen. What is already clear, however, it that loss of this vital funding stream for Swedish research comes at a time when other opportunities for international research cooperation have also radically changed.

Since 2022 this has included the pause of Minor Field Studies for Swedish undergraduate students, indefinite suspension of the Linnaeus-Palme programme for teacher-student exchange, and most significantly, the 54% decrease in the research cooperation budget of Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency). Within the latter, the partnerships where Swedish researchers serve as supervisors and partners have contributed significantly to strengthening Swedish researchers’ networks and understanding of global challenges.

Together, this combination of changes has significantly altered the landscape of possibilities for Swedish research to tackle the global challenges the world faces today – and especially so for young Swedish researchers. Past funding from Swedish Development Research (from 2013 through VR, and earlier through Sida/SAREC) has often led to ground breaking knowledge with extensive scientific and policy impact – for instance contributing to knowledge on how trees make soil more fertile and improve ground water levels. Such knowledge has also been widely used, for example by FAO and practitioner agencies.

While on the face of it this decision on VR funding comes as a blow to Swedish research cooperation on poverty reduction and sustainable development in low-income contexts, there are also several long-term impacts – some of which relate to Sweden’s own interests and competitivity – to consider:

1) Development research equips Swedish researchers with skillsets that are otherwise unobtainable. Many, if not most, development researchers in Sweden and at SLU are also active in domestic research in one form or another. Knowledge, skills, and other benefits gained from development research thus tend to flow back to Sweden, and have helped to reinforce Swedish agricultural competitiveness and food security; a little considered side-benefit that is henceforth set to decrease. This is exemplified, for instance, by a series of SLU projects funded by VR Development Research that pioneered new heat-resistant wheat for West Africa. This experience is now being leveraged to breed climate-resilient wheat for Sweden together with industry partners LantmĂ€nnen. Similarly, the vital experience gained by SLU and the Swedish National Veterinary Institute (SVA) on control of African Swine Fever, and enabling policies to support this, has also been of direct benefit to Sweden. The risk of introducing this highly contagious and deadly viral disease to Sweden is great, and with support from VR Development Research this team has come to function as an internationally recognised expert group, including for Swedish preparedness planning. Another perspective is that several Swedish world leading experts have been trained through Swedish Development Research funding. An example is PhD training on agricultural water management in dry areas in East Africa that was funded by the Swedish Development Research – evolving into decades of research in dry areas in Africa and Asia – building expertise that is now not only contributing to policies internationally but is crucial in Sweden’s management of our increasingly intensive droughts at home.

2) Development research can stimulate Swedish priorities abroad. Research cooperation with low- and middle-income countries is a form of ‘soft diplomacy’ that is unique, building on scientific relations and fora. An example is the long-term engagement by SLU researchers on global efforts to prevent antimicrobial resistance (AMR); a high priority by the Swedish government. This knowledge (example here) is used extensively by normative agencies such as FAO (example here). Development research at SLU of course extends well beyond only agricultural processes, in which Swedish Development Research funded collaborations on good governance, decent working conditions, human rights and democratic architectures (e.g. of project outputs here, here, here, and here) – amongst others – have served to promote Swedish priorities and core values abroad. We see many cases where SLU development projects have incorporated a strong focus on innovation, technology development, or science-policy engagement with ‘buy-in’ from industry and governmental stakeholders. The ‘Social benefits from carbon forestry’ project is one such example; a Formas funded initiative that built on knowledge generated from Swedish Development Research funding (example here), and produced innovative guidelines on socially-responsible carbon investments for consumers, companies, and public agencies.

3) Development research renders Swedish research more internationally competitive. It is well established that internationalisation can improve the quality of research and higher education; a point that is also highlighted within the Swedish Higher Education Act. One widely accepted indicator of scientific quality is the bibliometric “percentile profile”. This is used to identify the percent share of a specific group of scientific publications that are among the most cited. Looking at SLU’s scientific publications jointly published with researchers based in low- or middle income countries, it is clear that more (13%) are among the top 5% most cited publications than SLU publications overall (8%, which is however also excellent). This high standing of SLU development publications in international terms is one major reason why the university has climbed in THE’s Impact Rankings for sustainability. Furthermore, national funding for development research supports Swedish researchers in developing their own capacities and networks, a great benefit when competing for international research funding from for example EU Horizon.

It is thus vital that funding possibilities for Swedish development research remain, from one source or another. In any case, it is important that the funder has the procedures and capacity specifically designed for reviewing development research initiatives with a transdisciplinary perspective, and competence to review the particular challenges of low-income contexts.

Given the above perspectives – that development research creates high-in-demand knowledge and unique skillsets, and furthermore can stimulate Swedish priorities abroad and render Swedish research more internationally competitive – it is clear that we cannot afford to lose the only dedicated funding stream for development research. Both for the sake of Swedish domestic interests, those in partner countries, and for tackling the global challenges that affect us all.

 

Paul Egan and Sara GrĂ€slund – SLU Global

SASUF Research and Innovation Week through a student’s eyes leading towards a sustainable future

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This blog post is written by Ana Reverter Perdiz, Master’s student at the programme Conservation and Management of Fish and Wildlife, Dept. of Wildlife, Fish, and Environmental Studies.

Caption:  South African and Sweden Student Representatives at the entrance of the University of the Western Cape during the second day of the Conference. 

SASUF (South Africa University Forum) is a transformative project uniting 40 universities from Sweden and South Africa. The goal is to bring researchers, teachers, students, university leaders and stakeholders together to develop joint solutions to meet the challenges posed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Agenda 2030.

Within the SASUF network, there is the SASUF Student Network, a group of student representatives from each partner university. The student network is an innovative, international and multidisciplinary group formed by students from both undergraduate and postgraduate level. The goal of this project is to strengthen the academic relationship between both countries and work towards the SASUF goals of the SDGs and Agenda 2030.

In my role as a student representative from SLU, I travelled to Cape Town in late March to meet my colleagues for the SASUF Research and Innovation Week 2023 as well as the Student Network Summit 2023. During an entire week, researchers and students from across the world linked to Swedish and South African universities assisted in hybrid and in-person side events at the University of Western Cape, the venue for the meeting.

The Student Network hosted two Satellite Events in ‘Decolonising Education – Africanisation of Higher Education Institutions’ and ‘Student Participation in Internationalisation – How Can We Empower Students?’ and a full 3-day Student Summit. During the Student Summit, the representative students hosted their own sessions about Gender Equality, Food Security, Student Empowerment, Decolonisation of Education and Mental Health, attended workshops, held a session for the Vice Chancellors on the topic of Science Diplomacy and Sustainable Student Networks, participated in a discussion hosted by the Swedish Embassy and presented in the closing ceremony.

The Research and Innovation Week 2023 worked as the perfect occasion for the South African and Swedish representatives to meet and strengthen the ties already created during months and years of meetings. The student network was created in 2019, and due to the pandemic, many of them had never had the opportunity to meet in person. The engagement from the students at the conference was proof that they are willing to take the baton from previous generations of researchers and learn and work with them, in an environment where each person’s opinion is respected.

In addition to attending the conference and getting to know the world of academia, the students valued the opportunity to get to know the life in the city and the context beyond the walls of the university. Knowing the reality of the local population is a key aspect to create projects adapted to the future needs of people in South Africa and Sweden.

The Student Network will continue working towards its goals of increasing and enable student influence in SASUF and research, facilitate students’ empowerment and inspiration and adding social value to the communities by working with cultural sensitivity and international collaborations.

Caption: Traditional African music performance. 

As written in our document ‘Action Points and Highlights – SASUF Student Summit 2023’, on behalf of all the students, we want to extend our gratitude for a great week. But – let us not stop here. Let us continue to jointly create sustainable, prosperous, and equal societies now, as well as in the future. Student influence is vital for a fair and just higher education system, where students work with – and not against – the universities. We hope to continue making this a reality together with all of you.

See you in Sweden next year for the SASUF Research and Innovation Week 2024, co-hosted by SLU! SASUF will continue working every day for a sustainable future.

 

1. Act Local, Think Global; an exchange of ideas with JKUAT Nairobi

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This blog post is written by Professor Emily Wade, Landscape architect Nupur Prothi and Associate Professor Maria Kylin, Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management in Alnarp.

Kenyan teachers visiting Alnarp. Photo: Emily Wade

An ongoing, unique collaboration between Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) Alnarp and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) Nairobi started out as an exploration of student’s innovative ideas related to spatial design/solutions addressing global challenges with local site specific actions.

A collaborative model between the departments of Landscape architecture in Alnarp and Nairobi was created with an aim to contribute to the Student competition set up in affiliation with the World Congress of International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) to be held simultaneously in Stockholm and Nairobi in September 2023. The Swedish part of the course is now well on its way into the final stretch. In this Blog mini-series we want to share some of the insights and highlights of this unique collaboration, as faculty and students of SLU.

How do we understand the scales of “Global” and “Local”?

Our action within our local communities and context eventually impacts resilience at a global scale. For example, the resources we use, and our daily lifestyle ultimately have global consequences. These lifestyles are conditioned by, as well as impacted by landscape design and solutions, which in different ways can enable or constrain ways of living. At the same time, global and transnational political agendas such as Agenda 2030 or the UN Convention of Children’s Rights (CCR) affect the local practice of landscape planning and design. How we empower the young generation, will most likely effect their decisions in the future. The inter-dependencies between the local and global becomes tangible when we collaborate on a sites shrouded in similar challenges. To create a resilient and sustainable future for all life on earth, planning and design of landscapes requires to embed local site-specific knowledge within a larger understanding of their global effects.

How do we concretize this in a course?

To demonstrate this through the course we constructed a possibility for the students to work with and compare two sites, one in Kenya and one in Sweden. Both sites face challenges related to water management but in distinct social, political, and climatological contexts. How do we interact with local context, understand spatial processes and handle local politics? These are a few of the challenges that are addressed in this course preparing the students for working cross-equatorially in their future career.

The sites chosen are Nyhamnen in Malmö and Nairobi dam. Nyhamnen is a former harbour area claimed from the sea with vast areas of hardscape and quays. This has been a place of departure and arrival, still harbouring structures for connecting the land and the ocean. The city of Malmö is now planning to extend the city on to the site, embracing the diversity of Malmö and making space for social and biological processes that will colonize the area.  Nairobi dam, is an artificially constructed reservoir to capture water for the urban elite also offering this strata, recreational opportunities of sailing etc. A few decades later, the expansion of an urban marginalized settlement on one of its banks has transformed Kibera into the second largest slum in Africa. Devoid of water this space today is used for urban agriculture with peripheral areas collecting solid waste and sewage form the informal settlements as well as from other parts of the city conveyed by a network of three rivers.

Kenyan colleagues Caleb Toroitich, Hilda Omuhindi, Victor Odiwa and Caroline Ofafa during their visit to Nyhamnen. Photo: Alexia Moulin

How do we solve the logistics and cooperation in the courses?

Due to the different university terms, the JKUAT course started in January ending in April, where the students began with the Swedish site of Nyhamnen. The SLU course began in March and ends in June. During the courses, zoom lectures and reviews between the two universities has been held frequently. These digital meetings was complemented with IRL tutoring when two teachers from Sweden, Emily Wade and Nupur Prothi visited Kenya in March. They were able to meet the students at JKUAT and discuss their inspiring work on the Swedish site. This was also an opportunity to connect with JKUAT faculty and visit the site and meet Landscape Architects who were working within Kibera.

The Swedish part of the Master’s course started in the middle of March with a week’s visit from two Kenyan faculty members Caleb Toroitich and Caroline Ofafa, and two students Hilda Omuhindi and Victors Odiwa. In an extremely intense week we got to know the Kenyan site through lectures and movies from the site delivered by our Kenyan colleagues. We were able to take them to visit the Nyhamnen site in Malmö. Our Swedish students got to discuss and give feedback to the visiting Kenyan students on their proposals for Nyhamnen. Most importantly, the conversations and discussions strengthened mutual respect, laying the foundation for future collaborations.

What are the insights so far?

One of the important insights is that the education system in both countries have many similarities with a similar manner of teaching, design and practice of the landscape architecture profession. Early in our digital interactions, where we as SLU tutors reviewed the JKUAT students’ work in progress, we discovered that their analysis, sketches and proposals follow similar methodology and focus as our students. Our educational systems are also structured similarly at bachelor’s level even though the Kenyan education is younger than the Swedish program, which recently celebrated 50 years.

We do talk about the same global challenges, but site specific tangible problems are mostly very different. Multiplicity of cultures, dense urban populations, economic divides and a vibrant equatorial culture contrast somewhat with a Nordic population in a temperate and arctic landscape with low population pressure, abundance of open public space and ample natural resources.

This blog post is the first one in a series of four blog posts from the Master’s course Act Local, Think Global given by SLU and JKUAT Nairobi.