On any given day in Machakos, if you walk past Pauline’s homestead, you might find a neighbour or two visiting. Some are friends, and others strangers, but all of them have heard about the woman who grows vegetables in vertical bags, never seems to run out, and has not only stopped buying them from the […]

Jugaad: the art of figuring it out In Hindi, there is a word that has no exact equivalent in English, ‘Jugaad’. Roughly, it describes a mindset of applying hack solutions when solving problems using scarce resources, like a farmer building a makeshift irrigation pump from discarded bicycle parts. Simply put, it is “the art of […]

How listening guides our work In Wamunyu, Machakos, the rains are increasingly failing, with major consequences for smallholder farmers. A poor season means inadequate food for the household, inadequate school fees to educate children, and no saved income for many farmers. This is the reality that Itanya Africa Group has been working in since we […]