In 2006, Amina Saida was only two years old when her parents moved to the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya, near the border with Somalia.
For the last twenty years, Sarah Nyaga, a smallholder farmer from Embu County in central Kenya, has farmed coffee. Like most across Kenya, she relies on the export market. A greater percentage of Kenya’s coffee ends up within the European Union market, but a new law threatens to disrupt what has been a source of income for thousands of farmers like Nyaga.
For years, smallholder farmers across Kenya have been engaged in a legal battle with the government over a law that criminalizes the practice of saving, sharing and exchanging indigenous seeds.
For years, Morris Onyango had been trying to reforest his degraded land on the shores of River Nzoia, in Siaya county, 430 kilometers from Kenya’s Capital, Nairobi. But every time he planted trees on his farm, his efforts bore little fruit, as floodwaters would not only wash away his tree seedlings but also fertile topsoil on his land.
When Jean Baremba arrived in Kenya in 2018, he looked forward to rebuilding a life shattered by war in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Deborah Adhiambo (43) has been battling mild asthma since 2022, a condition she describes as “both a health and economic burden.’’ The mother of three lives within Dandora Estate, nine miles east of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. Dandora is home to Kenya’s largest open landfill, which receives more than 2,000 metric tonnes of waste daily.