Shakwei Mbindyo's Blog – March 2010 Archive (31)

The minimum amount of water required to meet basic needs vary depending upon what is included as "basic needs". The figures vary from 20 to 50 litres per person per day. The average distance a person in rural Africa must walk to a water source is 5 miles, a burden borne mainly by women…

I have followed with interest (and a lot of disbelief) the various reactions (losing spark, disillusioned, resignations) of various Agents following actions taken by EVOKE administrators against some Agents.

Why…

In 2006, the United Nations said it expected Africa to be the continent most affected by climate change, not because it produces a large amount of greenhouse gases - quite the opposite - but because it is the least equipped to cope with change.



2007-2009

The rains have failed in Kenya since 2007 resulting in a prolonged drought with over 10 million people needing food aid. Drought is a normal, recurring feature of the climate in most parts of the world. It…

Haba na haba hujaza kibaba is a Swahili saying that means little by little we will fill the pot. As I researched and pondered on how I will live to this Quest, I thought of Agent Anick-Marie's blog titled Downsizing your life helps you focus on…

As the mission brief summarized, the 3 most urgent consequences of the water crisis are water-related disease and death, lost time and potential and wasted resources. Clearly then when addressing water issues, one needs to look not only at access to clean water but also issues of proximity to the water source as well as sanitation. This is an area that AMREF has been working on and perhaps I am (just a tad) biased in choosing…

In 2020, we are doing a Rain Dance, one of Africa’s oldest traditions, a celebration that brings life sustaining rains. It is now midday in the Samburu savannah where we started our community farming, re-forestation, water harvesting project in 2010. At the time, the land was dry and parched, the river reduced to a wide bed of…

As I have shared in a previous blog, I came into Mission 3 with little information on the global energy crisis. I have spent the past couple of days bringing myself up to speed and what I have read so far has totally scared me. Energy resources are depleting at a rate much faster than the mother Earth can replace. So, if 2005 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2030 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2030 will be both much…

Mission 3 has really given me a kick in the teeth. From what other Evoke Agents have shared there are clearly many silos of activity in the area of sustainable power generation.

I found my social innovator in my own backyard. As I shared with Agent Joanna Chaplin following her Call to Action, Kenya is coming out of a 3 year…

So week 3 is here and with it comes a new mission. Mission 2 was all about food security. We had the GREAT food miles debate. Arguments…

'This blog is inspired by an email sent to me by Agent Hayden Darrell Linders. In this email he shared a link to http://embraceglobal.org/.…

The international (and sometime local) press has made Africa to be a continent riddled with hunger, war, corruption, HIV etc... What most people don't know is that Africa is also a continent full of ingenuity, many times in areas that you least expect to see it. There are incredible innovation every day in thousands of villages, godowns, roadside shops and homes throughout Africa. This creativity and ingenuity is brough about by the need to survive.…

Indigenous foods have always had a special place in many African cultures. In 2010 when Alchemy first came calling, indigenous crops were under siege from exotic crops. Irish…

Dear fellow Agents, for the past week or so we have been discussing different ways we can grow enough food to feed the globe sustainably and affordably.

In many developing countries smallholder export horticulture is aleady proving to be a powerful new engine for growth in rural economies. My country Kenya has been one of the quickest to develop as a supplier of air-freighted fresh vegetables from…

1.02 billion people across the world are hungry. Hunger is the most extreme form of poverty, where individuals or families cannot afford to meet their most basic need for food

Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes - 1 child every 5 seconds.

In 2005, almost 1.4 billion people lived below the international poverty line, earning less than $1.25 per day.

Among this group of poor people, many…

Scouring the globe for information on food insecurity, I came across 14-year-old John Beck, American student at an international school in Rome. John recently recieved the the grand prize for the Under-18 category of WFPs “hunger bytes!” contest.

John’s video, titled "Dinner is Served" is a call for action against hunger and challenges people to rethink the concept of a full meal. Please watch the video - proof that age…

#1 Population growth hampers development in Africa - Fact or Fiction?

This is a follow up to my blog One Bead at a Time which looked at the relationship between growing population and food security as well as…

Food security is intrinsically connected to population explosion. Today, more than 850 million people worldwide are classified as undernourished. Rapid population growth has intensified food insecurity in parts of the developing world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where some countries’ populations are doubling and tripling every 30-50 years. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the population growth rate is the highest of any major region in the world, one-third of the…

I can't believe 10 years have already passed since I started my first greenhouse. It is March 2020 and I am sitting on the porch at my farm having a baraza (meeting) with my neighbours who are fellow farmers.

Just 10 years ago we did not know each other. Now we are not just neighbours, we are also friends living true to the african proverb "to go quickly go alone, to go far go together".

We came together…

As the 3rd of 3 girls in my family, I am used to get "hand me downs" from my siblings. I did not appreciate this system when I was younger but today I love it! My sisters are so used to handing stuff down to me such that all I have to do is stare at my sisters shoes for a couple of seconds and they will offer them to me - lucky…