Africa relies on rain fed agriculture to feed its people and millions of others around the world. Rain, however, isn’t always the most reliable partner in this endeavour. Realisation of agricultural transformation in Africa will need the continent to make…
‘Pessimism around poor agricultural performance coupled with optimism about its potential and its necessity as an engine of growth and development combine to inform many of the most popular agriculture centred policy recommendations for Africa’ (Oya, 2010:85). Indeed as Oya…
Located within the drought-prone Sahel region, Senegal is heavily reliant on rain fed agriculture despite the irregular rainfall that characterizes the region making resilience building a priority. The reliance on rain fed agriculture, only 5% of agricultural land is under…
China was the most disaster-affected country in 2014, with drought, storms and flooding affecting more than 58 million people and economic damages of 23.17 billion US $. Between July 2011 and mid-2012, a severe drought was experienced in the horn…
The challenge of food security is one that successive Kenyan government administrations have grappled with since independence. With only 10.2% of arable land in Kenya, discussions on food security are a norm in the country. These deliberations fall within the greater African…
The first National Forum on Harnessing the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development, or “Data Forum” as it has come to be known, was held at the Laico Regency Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya on 28th and 29th August, 2015. The inaugural event…
Over the past few weeks, we have explored key elements of Resilience in Disaster Risk Reduction. The vital role played by data and information was the first in this series and it illustrated the importance of awareness in resilience building because, as Judith Rodin explains in…
In our first post of the series, we established our compound working definition for ‘developmental state’ as we explore the context within which a data revolution would play out in Africa; “A developmental state is one whose ideological underpinnings enable…
“Because everything is interconnected-a massive system of systems-a single disruption often triggers another, which exacerbates the effects of the first, so that the original shock becomes a cascade of crises.” Judith Rodin, The Resilience Dividend Over a 5 part…
According to the World Bank, the African continent is home to some of the fastest growing economies in the world. However in the same breath, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) asserts that disasters in sub-Saharan Africa are…