’Going Green’ seems to Dr Jacquline Kisato's favorite catchphrase as she passionately explains her eco-friendly sanitary towel, a product she expects will help empower women and young girls while also putting money into farmers’ pockets.
According to a family planning brief, more than 370 million women in middle and low-income countries were finally embracing modern contraception to help curb unintended pregnancies.
This statistic suggests that one in every three women from middle and low-income countries use contraceptives today.
Kenya’s fight for food security may have just gone ‘Old School’ as Egerton University dons win a grant to help bring back a pre-colonial delicacy that was gradually sliding its way off consumers’ plates.
Their project, dubbed ‘Exploring Potential of Togotia (
Erucastrum arabicum), a forgotten African leafy vegetable for nutritional security and climate adaptation in Kenya,’ won the grant in October last year in a bid to help farmers and consumers realise the importance of the crop that many, today, term as a weed.
East African international students could soon easily study in neighbouring countries after the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) proposed a new qualification framework to mitigate the difficulties faced when seeking education across borders.
While leaving one’s country and becoming a refugee is a last resort, it is a decision that many, like Steve Kitsa, have had to make. As conflict becomes increasingly protracted in many African countries, many others will take this step.
Plastic bags were a part and parcel of life in Kenya. More than 100 million plastic bags were used annually in Kenyan supermarkets alone, with at least 24 million plastic bags discarded every month. Kenya was choking under the weight of plastic bags.
The Climate Change envoy to the President of Kenya has asked Kenya’s and, by extension Africa’s negotiators at the ongoing climate conference in Bonn, Germany, not to put much emphasis on financing the Loss and Damage kitty but instead calls for fairness and equity.
Snails and slime are usually followed by the thought ‘EEW!’ from most people … some might even scream at seeing a snail near them.
For Dr Paul Kinoti, however, these slimy creatures could earn him international recognition because his research on snails landed his institution, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), a Ksh. 127 million (USD 1 million) grant.[related_articles]
Along coastal Kenya, historical sites and monuments are threatened due to the impacts of climate change—structures along the Indian Ocean are falling to ruin or collapsing into the ocean because of high tides.
‘Urban’ Kenya has been alerted because new mosquito species, Anopheles stephensi, threatens to derail decades of effort made in the fight against malaria.
The disease burden and distribution of mycetoma—a neglected tropical disease—are not very well understood. However, it is known to affect people in Sudan, Senegal, Mauritania, Kenya, and Niger, as well as people in Nigeria, Ethiopia, India, and Cameroon. Cases have also been reported in Djibouti, Somalia, and Yemen.
Elizabeth Njoroge recounts her poverty-stricken upbringing in Ting’ang’a village in the Central part of Kenya, growing up on a diet heavy on Amaranth and pumpkin.
Using naturally occurring microbes, a Kenyan entrepreneur has developed a molasses-based supplement that pre-ferments animal feeds to unlock all the necessary nutrients that would otherwise find a way out of the animal through cow dung, and dairy farmers have fallen in love with the product.
Up until 2019, nurses in three health facilities located in the semi-arid south-eastern Kenya region of Makueni County struggled to bring critical health services closer to a hard-to-reach population scattered across three remote, far-flung villages.
Low literacy levels, a high prevalence of outlawed Female Genital Mutilation, early marriages, forced marriages, low contraceptive usage, multiple births, as well as high maternal, infant and child deaths, define the life of a woman in Kenya’s vast North Eastern region.
Damaris Anyango* was recently discharged from Kenyatta National Hospital, battling the twin challenge of cervical cancer and HIV. She is 50 years old and was diagnosed with HIV nearly ten years ago.
When Mara Siana Conservancy came into operation in 2016, there was a single zebra and a topi (antelope) in the valley just outside the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. The valley was also host to fewer than 150 elephants and 200 buffalos.
The sight of children begging for water from motorists along the Garissa highway in the northeastern part of Kenya signals that all is not well. Unable to go to school on an empty stomach, drought-affected children wait for good Samaritans along the road, begging for water and food.
A two-year-old child cries hysterically as his mother attends to customers standing in front of her stall to buy vegetables on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital Nairobi. The mother, 25-year-old Esther, who refuses to give her surname for fear her husband will know that she has spoken to strangers about family issues, sells spinach, onion, tomato, garlic, and green pepper at a street corner to supplement her husband’s “meager” construction wage. It has been four years since she started the business, and she says it is beginning to feel like an eternity.
Hannah Sakamo is worried. She is about to lose yet another goat in less than a month. A pastoralist in Eldepe village, Marigat Sub-County, Baringo County in Kenya’s Rift Valley region, her household’s lifeline is at stake.
The goat in question, whose days are now numbered, has consumed pods, or the fruits of the invasive species,
Prosopis juliflora, locally known as
mathenge.
New telemedicine technology, Daktari Smart, aims to mitigate the gap between child patients and medical specialists in rural Kenya.
Officially launched in November 2021, the system was built to help sick children have easy access to medical specialists minus the cost of being physically present (remote/digital access). According to them, this will help optimise the delivery of healthcare systems.