Publications

The Regreening Africa project, recognised as UN World Restoration Flagship in February 2024, was implemented in eight African countries from 2017 to 2023 with the financial support of the European Union. Its main objective was “to restore large areas of land for the triple benefit of people, biodiversity, and climate” (Bourne, 2024). In view of both projections and early experiences, Regreening Africa actively sought to identify sustainable scaling models that could support achieving the project targets in Kenya, and could potentially be replicated in the other project sites. In response to this challenge, the Regreening Africa and asset-based community-driven development (ABCD) teams at CIFOR-ICRAF collaborated on the so-called ‘ABCD in Regreening’ project. The project was implemented from 2021 to 2023 in Homa Bay County, one of the Regreening Africa intensification sites. ABCD builds on people’s agency and capacity. It was initially theorised and popularised by Kretzmann & McKnight (1993, 2005) at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University in Illinois, USA, and was adapted to an international development context by the Coady Institute in the early 2000s. It has been appropriated by many institutions and actors around the world. ABCD draws on and aligns with numerous theoretical and conceptual sources. Its innovation lies in providing a conceptual and operational framework for appreciating that communities have been driving their own development since time immemorial – and in providing a structured co-creation process that fosters responsive external action.

The CGIAR Agroecology Initiative (AE-I) is built around the concept and approach of Living Landscapes that promote an integrated approach to engaging with the social system and ecosystems in given spaces in support of agroecological transitions. The Kenyan Agroecological Living Landscapes (ALLs) are established in two different counties: Makueni and Kiambu. This context document provides a literature review assessment of the status of agroecology in the two counties. It summarizes the environmental, economic, social, and political context of Makueni and Kiambu counties, along with the status, opportunities, and areas of interventions along the 13 FAO principles on agroecology. The Kenyan ALLs will be hosted in CSHEP and DNRC, which are part of the Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM) association. This document provides an assessment of the status of the two centers in adopting agroecological innovations and a summary of the key ongoing activities along the 13 principles. Some of the key highlights are the current ongoing work on organic farming in the centers, which mainly focuses on composting, application of organic pesticides, water recycling and harvesting, seed saving, and agroforestry, among others. The document also provides a detailed summary of the key relevant stakeholders that are involved in promoting agroecology in Kenya.

Productivity analysis plays a pivotal role in evaluating the performance of various economic entities, especially in the context of sustainable development. Since productivity measures are based on the notion of output-input ratios, non-positive values of inputs and outputs are not permissible...