Kenya's Rural Women: Sustainability, Climate Change and Arid Lands Challenges

A lecture by Dr. Agnes Wakesho Mwang’ombe
Director of the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands Foundation Nairobi, Kenya

Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 4 p.m.

Co-sponsored by Wheelock College and the Colleges of the Fenway Environmental Science Program

• Lecture Home | 
• Dr. Mwang’ombe Biography | 
• ASALFO Objectives & Programs

Arid and Semi-Arid Lands Foundation (ASALFO)
Nairobi, Kenya

ASALFO is a Kenyan NGO formed in 2000 that targets the needs of the people in arid and semi-arid lands—an environment that cover 80 percent of the country. ASALFO focuses on agriculture and natural resource management, education and health.

Overall Goal
To identify and promote projects that will specifically reduce food insecurity, eliminate famine and poverty through sustainable agricultural and environmental strategies and in the process eliminate gender bias in education through promotion of girl child education in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL).

Specific Objectives
1. To promote agricultural strategies for sustainable food production so as to ensure that the current trends in the loss of environmental resources in Arid and Semi- Arid Lands are effectively reversed.
2. To actively promote the growing and utilization of drought tolerant crops among the rural women groups as women form the family backbone.
3. To promote market oriented farming with aim of economic empowerment of women.
4. To promote the cultivation of plants with products (fruits, medicinal properties) traditionally utilized by local communities thus preventing loss of such plant species.
5. To incorporate growing of fast growing multipurpose trees for provision of fuel and fodder to reduce tree cutting.
6. To promote food preservation for use during dry season.
7. To conduct training programs, targeting women’s groups, on land use in a sustainable way to produce food while preventing desertification.
8. To promote girl child education as a basic human right.
9. To promote gender equality and the empowerment of women by eliminating gender disparity in primary, secondary and tertiary education.
10. To conduct education campaign in primary schools and involve young girls and boys, educators and parents in addressing the problem of early pregnancies among girls at upper primary school.

Programs Implemented Under ASALFO:
1. Through working with women groups, ASALFO raised local funds to initiate a merry go round for resource poor women farmers in Taita and purchased a maize mill for the women group as an income generating activity for the women. This activity was initiated in 2000.

2. The tertiary education program was started in 2000 with seven students from resource poor or economically challenged families from Coast and Rift Valley provinces. The program was funded from anonymous single donor based in Holland and ended in 2004. There were two boys and five girls pursuing different tertiary programs. The programs included 4 students pursuing education, one student pursuing nursing, one student pursuing Bachelor of Commerce, one student pursuing food production.  Currently the program has 16 students, from resource poor families, pursuing tertiary education at University levels.

3. In 2004, ASALFO wrote a proposal and secured funds for women groups in Taita and Malindi to start cultivation of indigenous vegetable for HIV/AIDS infected and affected families. The project focused on food nutrition and income generation through sales of indigenous vegetables. This project was implemented through collaboration with CDA and ASALFO which provided technical backup and group mobilization and cohesiveness at grassroots levels. The project was funded by MATF.