Living according to one’s own weaving patterns
“I used to weave to set patterns and did the same work from morning till evening. lt was just boring.” Tabitha Mutui has left the place behind her weaving-loom and talks about the project which has fundamentally changed her life in the village of Matinyani.
lt is a good 15 years since a group of women here in eastern Kenya began putting their numerous business ideas into practice. Continue reading Matinyani Women’s Self Help Group (year 2000 text)→
Engineer Joseph Obunde, in charge of the sewerage treatment plant at Kiwasco, Kisumu Water and Sewerage Corporation
As I visited Kisumu’s Water sewerage treatment plant in 2015, it was finally being expanded. A long awaited little step to the cleansing of Lake Victoria. Apparently, according to the planners, more is being done in the industry in the area, namely the sugar cane industry. Continue reading The Kisumu Water Sewerage Treatment Plant→
Lake Victoria Environment Management Programme (LVEMP) Lake Victoria -A Sick Giant Needs Help
Iohn Speke would probably be shocked if he could see Lake Victoria today.
When the British researcher became the first European to reach the legendary source of the Nile in 1858, the lake was still a clear body of water home to many varieties of fish. Today, its slimy waters smell putrid and the lake is overgrown with algae and water plants. Continue reading Lake Victoria Environment (year 2000 text)→
The Lake Victoria Environmental Management Programme is the largest Kenyan Expo 2000 Project. Phase 1 which ran until 2003 received bad reviews in an evaluation by the World Bank: „ The overall implementation performance (outputs) is Moderately Unsatisfactory, and the achievement of the development objectives (outcomes) is Unsatisfactory. “ Continue reading Lake Victoria Environment 2015→
Smallholders pin their hopes on modern fertilizers
It is barely 4 years since Florence Apiyo first heard about the Sustainable Community-Oriented Development Programme (SCODP). Before then this farmer in the Kenyan village of Nyamwaga had barely been able to feed her family. She did have enough land, and her 5 children helped with the heavy work in the fields. But despite good rainfall the yields remained low. The soil was so leached-out after 2 crops a year that it simply yielded too little. Continue reading The Mini Pack Method (Year 2000 Text)→
Agrovet shop in Uguja, western Kenya, the SCODP organisation helped to open.
Most lot of the “Agrovet” shops in the small towns still exist. Residents who wanted to open such a shop got a credit from the agricultural organisation SCODP. Before, farmers had to travel far to buy material.
Still There
The mini packs with fertilizer for small farmers are still being sold. 20 years ago it was an innovative idea to sell small affordable packs to farmers in the countryside.
Packs getting larger
As smallholder farmers move forward and form their own buyers and marketing associations, they buy larger packs and improve their harvests and income, says SCODP staffer Vitutis Ochieng. Photo: Chrispen Sechere
Why Kenya? The author had the opportunity to travel to Kenya several times in 2014 and 2015. So why not take a complete sample of ALL the EXPO 2000 Hanover projects in that were located in this beautiful East African Country? It would have been virtually impossible to take a fair sample from the 487 projects worldwide for a “journalistic evaluation”.
It was a book that has brought me to do research in many parts of Kenya. It has over a thousand pages in two volumes. Its title: “The global projects of the Expo 2000 in Hanover”. It outlines the top 500 ‘aid projects’ across the globe as chosen by an international jury at the time.
15 years later I’ve decided it would be interesting to see how the projects are doing. Of course, I cannot visit all 500 projects. So I decided to concentrate on programmes in Kenya. I call this “the Aid Audit”, because each of the projects wants to aid the world to become better. Many of them are related to the Millenium Development Goals that were proclaimed in 2000. But have they kept their promise: to relieve misery and poverty or to drive progress forward?
Browse these pages to see and comment. And listen to the radio documentaries I have produced about the issue.
Radio Doc: THE AID AUDIT For the BBC World Service (27 minutes, English)
