Locusts and Pandemics

The East African region has been slammed in the past year by seemingly Straight-Out-Of-The-Bible plagues of locusts, floods, and now, the Global Covid19 Pandemic. It’s also been a tough year for civil society that for years, has suffered from both chronic and inappropriate funding. The sector suffers from the prioritization of project based financing over core support, the latter being the lifeblood of civil society. Funding also tends to be truncated and with fixed short term project cycles that don’t lend themselves to effective social change, or movement building which requires longer and more flexible time frames.

And while almost all NGOs are struggling to survive in a time of shrinking funding because of Covid19, local NGOs have been the clear losers in the funding for Covid response. A startling statistic from the Center for Global Development showed that only 0.07% of the US$2.5 billion allocated for Covid19 response has ended up in the hands of local non-governmental organizations.

The Covid pandemic has reinforced the need for the philanthropy sector to go back to basics. Some key concepts gaining prominence in this time include trust based grantmaking; the call to support civil society and other associational life in the form they see best; a shift from project based to core and operational support; adopting of nimble and responsive support that allows for adjustments in the external context. It has indeed been sobering for the sector to realize that for some, even a pandemic was insufficient to shift pre-agreed on log frames, and theories of change!  Other promising trends include a move to longer and collaborative partnerships as opposed to the more contractual project based financing.

Deficits:

In addition to Covid19, the Black Lives Matter Movement has caused a seismic shift in many sectors. The East African philanthropy sector is not exempt.  If we pan out, and look at the entire so-called “Development Sector”, some of the criticisms levelled against the sector are that the sector can be guilty of perpetuating post-colonial practices, or as Firoze Manji says of continuing the “Missionary position”.  This critique, mainly levelled against Western, or Western facing INGOs, is that through their work, they center (mainly) Western societies as the ideal that African societies should “develop into”. As a consequence, the work and efforts of the sector end up being an effort at panel beating African NGOs and societies from what  “isn’t” (in Africa) to what “is” (in Western Societies).  Equally sobering is the critique that INGOs also operate and reinforce specific power structures through their work, where on one side, you’ll typically have Western (or Western facing) donors/ INGOs with all the knowledge. And on the other side, you’ll have local NGOs (“grantees”) often positioned as supplicants waiting to be capacity built, funded and generally whipped into shape.  It’s this centering of development on the “white gaze”, a phrase coined by the late Toni Morrison (may she rest in perfect power), and also echoed by others like Dr Robtel Naijali, and Dr Mordecai Ogada, that we are called upon to change, if the sector is to serve the communities it was ostensibly created to serve.

Some of the work that we are urgently called upon to do includes de-racialising development, and this moment presents us an opportune time to examine our practices. The sector needs to urgently reform its practices including a shift in power, attitudes and grant making practices.

In Parting: The Parable of the Sower

Growing up, I remember my incredulity when I was told that growing crops in straight lines was something that was “brought by the white man”.  When rather skeptically I asked what we were doing before, I was told “we were planting haphazardly”.  Many years later, I came across the work of Howard Jones who had studied African polyculture, and the ‘discovery’ was that far from being haphazard, this was actually well thought out agronomy practice. And this served as a lesson, as growing up, the visually pleasing straight lines were examples of aspirational farming, and with the more complicated polyculture being something that we needed to develop from. How much soil health, and agricultural productivity have we lost as ‘modern agriculture’ tried to ‘modernize’ African agricultural practices I wonder?

And that’s a good way to end this #ShortTake.  How much are we losing as a sector as we try and ‘develop’ society on our terms, and not communities? How much NGO vibrancy is lost when we try and mold NGOs into a certain image? We truly need to find out what our True North should be, else no amount of recalibration of compasses will fix what ails the sector.

Weaponized Dress Codes and Kenyan workplaces

                          

 

"Whenever she put on a skirt not too long I would tell her, ‘Joyce, this skirt is short’,” ~ Dep Pres Ruto

The degraded quality of the citizenship of Kenyan women is clearly seen in just how gung-ho society is to restrict female autonomy, including basics like the choice of apparel.  The funeral of Gov Laboso gave us a peek into how even extremely powerful leaders, are behind the scenes, still treated as empty debes that need to be instructed on how to dress. The Deputy President reportedly ‘charmed mourners’ and ‘drew laughter from the crowd’ by this post-mortem chastisement of Gov Laboso. Less charming or funny, is that someone can be mandated to run Bomet county (latest count 900,000+ citizens), but the length of her skirt still needs supervision! 

Unfortunately, the Deputy President is in good company. This unwanted and unnecessary policing of women is seen in Kenyan workplaces all across the country where dress codes are used to reproduce sexism and misogyny that reinforce societal attitudes of women’s role in the workplace. It is an unfortunate truth that a woman’s worth, and the right to bodily autonomy is still determined by men.  At a recent Hivos Creative Dialogue, where the issue of dress codes and sexual harassment was discussed, it was sobering to hear just how often dress codes are used to justify and perpetuate sexual harassment.

“Dress Codes were modeled in the image of men” ~ Andrew Odete

In the words of Andrew Odete, a panelist at the Creative Session, the dress code was “modeled in the image of men”.  Truly. Further, this dress code is also modeled in the image of the ‘ideal man’ which is as close to the Western Caucasian ideal as possible. Decades into independence, these identity issues continue to play out in workspaces, where in the words of Uduak Amimo, the Kenyan media faces an identity crisis. It’s never quite reconciled itself to the fact that a typical Kenyan will have hair that grows naturally curly and bushy out of their scalp. And where hair this powerful meets dress codes that views afros, bantu knots, and dreadlocks as ‘untidy and unprofessional,’ then the recourse is to ban ‘natural hair’ in favor of weaves, relaxed hair, and other Western-looking hair. 

Beyond this existential angst of what constitutes beauty, extremely pernicious is the weaponizing of dress codes to either demonize women who dress “indecently” as well as those that commodify and hypersexualize women as a job requirement. During the Creative Dialogue, it became abundantly clear that while all industries face this issue, some sectors and some professions are more vulnerable than others. Particularly affected by hyper-sexualization, are customer-facing women (e.g. women in sales and marketing, TV anchors, hotel and restaurant workers, etc). 

What was also clear, was that hyper-sexualization continues to happen because the workplace primarily caters (and panders) to the male gaze, despite women being consumers of media and services. It is still a world where employers expect women to dress ‘sexily’ to entice customers because ‘Sex sells’. A statement that is both problematic and also assumes a world where women are neither colleagues nor customers.

 

The flip side of the coin is also a world where women are also expected to “wear decent clothes” and thus allow fragile men to work in peace unmolested by the sight of female thighs or breasts. It also creates precarity for women who dress a certain way in that that they can be sexually harassed for noncompliance to the dress code.

 

What’s the problem?

And while organizations have the right to enforce dress codes for workplaces, what should concern Kenyans are dress codes that reproduce sexism and misogyny in the workplace.  Generally, if you unpack the dress code for men, you will find that it concentrates mainly on formalities (color, description of items). Women’s dress codes on the other hand will typically be about shame and/or sexualization of women (dress "decently", "non-suggestively" etc). 

The respectability politics that infuse the dress codes continue to be perpetuated both by men and women. In Kenya, sessions on how a successful woman should dress are a growth industry, with fellow women policing each other. Under the policing is a desperate move to try and conform. It's a “Tunaomba serikali ya wanaume!” desperation to show how female dressing is close enough to male dressing to placate men into allowing women to stay in the workplace. So we distance ourselves from ‘slay queens’ and other women who choose to wear clothes that make men uncomfortable so as to ensure our continued survival in the male-dominated workplace. And while this sort of pragmatism is perhaps understandable in ‘why’ it happens, as proponents of feminist workspaces, we should constantly work to dismantle these rules that were arbitrarily created by and modeled on the white heterosexual male. We should keep railing against rules that are preserved by Kenyan society and followed religiously because that’s the way ‘decent professionals’ should dress despite the harm these rules cause women.

Because it’s wrong. And harmful.  These policies interrupt women’s productive time in the workplace. They send messages to men that how women look is more important than what they do in the workplace. They perpetuate the nonsense that women are responsible for the actions of men. They perpetuate bogus economic logic that falsely links the action of covering an extra two inches of thigh or breast to decreased labor production. They also – in the case of hyper-sexualization- perpetuate a myth that women in addition to selling widgets, are also part of the sale.

So what’s good?

Generally, a good workplace dress code should not discriminate, or penalize female employees. Some sensible guidelines /questions which borrow from this Dress Code Policy could include:-

• Does it undermine the dignity of employees?
• Does it allow for employee agency (can women choose to wear clothes that cover them up more/ less?)
• Does it impose a higher burden on women in the workplace
• Does it put women at risk and/ or does it increase their vulnerability?
• Does it hinder women’s ability to participate in the workforce by e,g, restricting movement?
• Does it impose a higher burden on women than on men to be in the workplace.

 

 "You teach your daughters how to rub poison on their skin. Remember to teach your sons how not to be serpents.” ~Ijeoma Umebinyu

If you unpack the stricture “Vaa decent!” and its variants, it is yet another limit to female autonomy. It is a continuation of what was begun in school “Don’t wear skirts that are too tempting!” - including those who attended all girls’ boarding schools! We should use every opportunity to challenge these assumptions that continue to shame women for existing in the workplace. We should work on policies that embrace, rather than reduce women’s participation in the workplace.

 

Anything less would be charming the patriarchy.

 

Formerly known as Enkare Nairobi

Despite being the birth place of Wangari Maathai, of being the current host of the UNEP, we treat our natural resources in the country the way public officials treat our hard earned money. With contempt, and as a never ending ATM. Despite being perennially squeezed for water as a water scarce country, we still mismanage the fragile ecosystems and water bodies we currently have with politicians engaging in an infantile populist chicken/ egg argument over whether forests bring rain, or rain brings forests (correct answer: forests bring rain).

The notion that we are but custodians of this land- and that we hold it in trust for future generations is a central tenet of what we say we stand for as a country. It’s enshrined in the Constitution, and with responsible planetary stewardship a corner stone of most religious belief systems.  Unfortunately, this principle didn’t survive first contact with the venal kleptocracy that is Kenya. Our rivers, rhinos, forests, elephants, beaches, sand, coral ecosystems are all under siege.

We have a penchant for constraining things that were always meant to be free. But nature has a habit of cracking down on those who thwart her. She’s resilient- “able to absorb and accommodate future events in whatever unexpected form they may take." But she’s not infinitely forgiving. She scoffs at tenderpreneur’s elastic compromises, and in the past, we’ve seen her fight back at the people who deigned to constrain her.  In a sense, nature has been fighting back as NEMA and the rest twiddled their thumbs. The current clearing of riparian land is a belated move to rectify sins of omission and commission that have been piling up over the years. While NEMA is late to the show, nature has been working on clearing this up herself and on reclaiming what was never ours to build on. We watched as developers erected buildings and homes on riparian land and in typical “shauri yako” fashion, built culverts designed to shepherding the river into other peoples’ property! Pity. 

Beyond the multiple damming and diversion of the river that’s been happening and causing flooding, the encroachment of riparian reserve has been disastrous to the urban ecology of Nairobi. The riparian reserve is more than an aesthetic requirement. Riparian zones carry out soil nitrification amongst other things,  and off balance leads to eutrophication and deoxygenation of the riverine system.  A whiff of the Kirichwa River provides ample proof that all’s not right in the Nairobi river system. Our rivers are full of trash and debris and some- like the Ngong River are nothing more than open sewers. It’s not entirely surprising because where a government connects less than half the resident households with sewer systems, waste has to go somewhere with the resultant rivers being nothing more than fetid and murky cesspools brimming with plastic bags even months after the plastic ban.

The Caveat Emptorness of it all:

Living in Kenya sometimes feels like being in the Thunderdome in Mad Max.  The utter lack of safeguards for citizens shows us that in almost all interactions, the citizen is on her own. While I applaud the demolition of property that was wilfully and deliberately built on riparain land by those who knew it was public land and perverted the system to do so, it's utterly deplorable that *some* innocent Kenyans who bought land in good faith have now been left holding the bag.  The news clip of homeowners in Green Park in Athi River whose houses were being demolished was gut wrenching. They’ve been left holding mortgages that they still need to pay for over land that was never theirs to own and my heart goes out to them. Meanwhile- the developers who bribed and built their way into this mess are still laughing all the way to the bank. It’s a situation that needs urgent rectification- the demolition of houses should be accompanied by an EACC investigation of how those multiple permits came to be issued. It also behoves NEMA to publicly publish a list of what is public land (which all riparian land is), and to show what actions have been taken against employees who participated in the creation of this unholy mess.  

This information asymmetry in a perennially corrupt environment lends itself to a situation where the innocent are hoodwinked, and the corrupt find safe harbour for their pillage and robbery of public land. It’s an untenable state of affairs. Ultimately, for longer lasting and more just solutions, we need more safeguards and constancy from the Government.

#SwitchOffKLPC Hashtags and social movements

KOT is characterised by many things. It’s rambunctious, boisterous and decidedly disorderly. It’s sometimes funny and whimsical.  It’s also on occasion misogynistic and homophobic. And every so often, we have woke KOT.  And while “twitter activism” has been dismissed in many places (think Peter Kenneth’s presidential  “twitter votes”), its mobilising and rallying power has definitely changed how online Kenyans think and interact with the state and authority. Twitter’s ability to democratise information has forged commonalities in Kenyans where through the hyper-connectedness of Twitter, common outrage against inflated power bills has led to Kenyans mobilising around the #SwitchOffKPLC hashtag.

Hashtag  activism isn’t new in Kenya. There have been some successful hashtags e.g. the #MyDressMyChoice which was able to halt the noxious trend by  PSV operators of assaulting women for “dressing indecently” and also translated to offline prosecutions and convictions. Some of these hashtags were short lived and ephemeral e.g.  #SomeoneTellCNN, the #UhuruChallenge or even the #DeportKoffiOlomide that faded off KOT radar after objectives were met (and perhaps also due to an admittedly short KOT attention span!). Some e.g. #WhatIsARoad #OverlapKE have morphed into longer lasting hashtags that are still being used to call attention to two of the biggest aggravations facing Kenyan commuters- the deplorable state of our roads, and overlapping menaces who make commuting a daily nightmare.

Kenya Power and power

By all accounts, KPLC is the piggy-bank of choice for government regimes, officials and connected Kenyans. It’s a feeding trough that is fed by hard earned Kenyan cash- much of this non disposable income for Kenyans that are barely making it.

The #SwitchOffKPLC campaign has also given Kenyans a small peek behind the curtains at the corruption machine that runs and controls most of industry and politics in Kenya. “KOT police” have been instrumental in providing information that answer Eric Wainaina’s question of who is to blame for the rot in our country. What’s clearly obvious through some of the information that is coming through is that this corruption machine neither sleeps nor slumbers. Like a perverse virtue, this looting machine is patient, and unkind. It always protects the benefactors, and unless something changes, will probably always persevere. It’s also proven to be very innovative - see e.g. the third party token vendors who saw an opportunity to make money through alternative paybills and were able to capture 35% of the token market.

What we should however never lose sight of is that these staggering fortunes made through bribery of KPLC officials, creation of fake fuel shortages, and  siphoning of money are crimes that have very real victims behind them. If you trawl the lead campaigners/ founders of the movement @apollomboya  @jerotichSeei and supporters’ twitter timelines, tweets tell stories of predation by an uncaring, indifferent corporation that has used its position as a monopoly to brutalise and bilk Kenyans of their hard earned and scarce coins regardless of the human cost. They have shown zero compunction in over billing widows and grannies, and businesses on the edge. 

Social Movements & Social Media

For Kenyan civil society- especially those working in transparency/ accountability and energy sector, the campaign offers an opportunity to make change in the notoriously corrupt energy sector. And while I don’t think that online campaigning will (or even should) replace traditional civil society, supporting the #SwitchOffKPLC campaign would bolster the efforts of the movement and their own work in energy justice. There are perhaps lessons to be learned from how the #BLM movement has been able to grow from a twitter hashtag to one that has galvanised (and some say rescued) the civil rights movement in the US. From all accounts, it was able to morph into a social movement because of its ability to tap into grassroots organisations, NGOs and other associational life to leverage its online popularity into offline work in the judiciary, churches, schools etc. Mr Mboya’s public interest litigation, online research and activism by Ms Seii   and others has translated to offline gains where consumers have earned a reprieve from inflated bills through the court system.  For civil society activists, the campaign could serve to connect energy justice, anti corruption and transparency and accountability work. 

It’s proving that it can help counter sponsored disinformation and provide alternative narratives that amplify universally recognisable truths- that the kleptocracy that rules Kenya is literally and metaphorically killing us. It also offers an already beleaguered civil society a chance to re-moblise its base, and work to chip away at the age old corruption looting machine we’ve been fighting for a long time. 

xxx

Biting the hand that feeds you. A Kenyan Story

Mwana wa nyoka…

The Kenyan food system is broken. It’s a venal and extremely predatory system that is both child and acolyte of the society that produced it, including our system of governance. In that way, one could say that it functions exactly like it’s supposed to function. It’s a dysfunctional system that is built on legacies of colonial and post-colonial occupation, extremely contentious, bloody and contested clashes over land use, unresolved rights of occupancy, and the right to resources.  It’s characterised by regional inequality, corruption, deep and normalised gender inequality, and a fundamentally broken land tenure system amongst others. Global politics around access rights to seeds, fertiliser and other farm inputs play out in how we produce and consume our food with the agro-food oligopolies being winners in an increasingly winner takes all global system. Kenya, like many African countries, is also finding itself increasingly less able to weather the volatility in food geopolitics. As a result of all the above, the food we eat is often contaminated, unsustainably farmed and improperly regulated. Food security is a dream for many of our citizens, and our birthrights- including seeds passed down from our ancestors- are being sold out from under us as ‘leaders’ loot and plunder from the very system that feeds us.  

It’s a system where schismatic inequities translate to the right to food being enjoyed on a regional basis. The privileging of dominant cultures means that agrarian production methods, systems of land tenure, labour and access to foods dominate. And that poverty and marginalisation for non-agrarian populations (e.g. pastoralists and low income urban dwellers) remain the primary cause of hunger in Kenya. It’s a problem that has regional dimensions where e.g. food poverty is endemic in the North Eastern region with a wasting rate of close to 20% as opposed to a 7% national average.

That the system is fundamentally not fit for purpose is seen in that the food that we are consuming is not always fit for human consumption. Recent reports in the media remind us that the food we eat is unhealthy, sometimes carcinogenic and poisonous. It is certainly not from a lack of agencies to oversee food safety in the country. There are at least 22 MDAs that are charged with overseeing our food and at last count, at least over a dozen acts and ordinances that regulate our food system. Despite this, the food on our table- especially for the low income urban consumer remains unsafe, and at times dangerous to health.

In addition to the food being down right unhealthy, citizens are also not getting enough food. Including farmers! Over half of farmers are buying food, and close to 75% of small holder income goes towards food. And while the right to food is enshrined in the Kenyan constitution, it’s clear that we are quite far from fulfilling our obligations to our citizens on this front.

Like clockwork, Kenya experiences drought every three years. And like clockwork, people face hunger and malnutrition. Over a third of Kenya’s population is chronically food insecure. And hunger and malnutrition, is the diabolical gift that keeps on giving. The impact of under-nutrition on lactating mothers and children is devastating and sometimes irreversible where children who’ve experienced stunting display poor mental development and slower brain development. They’re smaller and less able to concentrate in class than their counterparts. Malnourished mothers have malnourished babies- and as part of a twisted legacy, stunted children will in all likelihood give birth to malnourished babies. Rinse, wash, repeat. In a twisted, vicious cycle.

A look at just two of the major pathologies that give rise to the broken food system- gender injustice and corruption shows that if we are serious about creating a food system that is capable of producing safe, healthy and sustainably produced food- we need to correct the underlying conditions that give rise to this unequal and predatory food system that we find ourselves with.

Gender Injustice...

The food system is rife with many contradictions that defy any sense and reason. I’m still unable to parse the fact that Kenyan women & girls produce most of our food and that most of Kenya’s hungry are women and girls. If we are serious about broader social and political reform in Kenya, a good point to start would be here. As Gloria Steinem says, if we accept in the homestead that there are those who cook (or farm), and those that eat, we internalise and accept that in the larger society, there will be those that produce, and those that eat.

Traditional gendered subordination of women means that women have less land ownership (‘marry it, or inherit it’) and they have less access to inputs of production. While the Kenyan constitution corrected a long standing injustice that allowed customary law to dictate inheritance and land ownership rights of women, and it is now possible for women to inherit family land, the reality on the ground is slow to change where e.g. Kenyan women run over 80% of our farms, but women held land titles are only at 1%. 

This matters. Where women don’t own the land, they consequentially have less access to loans and other agricultural inputs. As a result, women farms will have lower than expected yields. The FAO estimates that we could easily increase agricultural production by 25-30% if women had equal access to agricultural inputs.

Women also face atrocious working conditions in the agricultural sector. They occupy the lowest rung of the workforce and get lower wages and also have more vulnerable work (e.g. seasonal work that comes with no social benefits).  Sexual harassment in the farms is rife and endemic. In a study by Labour Rights, over 90% of people reported that they'd witnessed or been victim to a sexual harassment. Women in the farms also report cases of sexual assault not only against them- but also against their young daughters. Children that they had to take to work due to the absence of social protection like acceptable child care facilities. A staggering 70% of men interviewed viewed sexual harassment as normal and acceptable. A truly deplorable and shameful state of affairs.

Women are underrepresented in decision making structures in our food system with e.g. 17% of women being represented in agricultural cooperative boards. Membership and leadership is also gendered when it comes to type of crop with membership & leadership in ‘cash crop’ cooperatives being mainly male (coffee, tea, tobacco) and women are found more in ‘food crops’ cooperatives (spices, cereals, dairy etc.).

Kenya has a billion dollar agricultural export market. And this is built on the backs of women. The system calls for urgent and radical reformation that is fair and equitable to women if this is to be a tenable and functional food system.

Corruption....

Reading the Auditor General reports on the steady looting of resources meant for assuring food access makes for very, very depressing reading.  Kenya relies almost predominantly on rain-fed agriculture and the systematic loss of resources meant for building dams and irrigation systems has consigned farmers to praying  and watching anxiously for the rain. This situation is made even more fraught by the utterly short sighted and mindless gobbling up of land in the main water towers that produce the rain we (still) rely on for the food we eat.

Corruption is without a doubt the termite that’s eating away at the very fabric of our agricultural system. We lose billions every year paying for a fertiliser company that doesn’t exist. The systematic looting of state corporations and assets meant means that cronyism replaced vital and needed research and investments in our agricultural sector.  It’s a system where a state corporation that owns over 80% of our seeds was “secretly sold’ and ownership of our seeds- the commons- irregularly passed into private hands. A story as old as independent Kenya is the one of the fraud and mismanagement of our strategic maize reserve which has the dubious distinction of being independent Kenya’s first mega scandal. 

That corruption is truly hurtful to farmers is seen for instance in the coffee industry.  Despite Kenyan coffee being the second most lucrative global commodity, coffee farmers are still impoverished due to the predatory and profit seeking nature of the global commodities market and its local minions. It's a situation that is then compounded by the shenanigans in and around the Nairobi Coffee Exchange where up to a hundred dollars per bag are routinely skimmed off the top of what farmers should receive for premium coffee.

While corruption exists in every human society in the globe, we need a new name for the type of corruption that ails us. It’s a system that in its utterly soulless nature was perhaps last seen during colonialism. It’s an extractive, predatory and society destroying system that will lead to the guaranteed and total destruction of Kenya unless we make urgent steps to curb it.

The Fix…

If the agricultural system serves as the canary in the coal mine, it’s becoming obvious that we may have reached the tipping point, and that we have systematically cannibalised the very system that feeds us. It’s clear that our system needs urgent transformation- and not just reform. We need urgent solutions that shall transform the underlying systems that reproduce this unjust and unsustainable ways of food production, distribution, procurement, consumption and disposal of food.  As such, merely addressing the economics or tackling the issue as a problem of one of yields means that we fail to tackle the interlinked and mutually reinforcing systems means that give rise to the problems. If we attempt to apply a market based solution to the food system without addressing the underlying food justice issues, we apply a Band-Aid solution at best.

Equally problematic is the pitching of Kenya’s food problem as a technological or logistics problem that requires us to increase yields, decrease post-harvest losses etc. This so-called Green Revolution is a fix that will in all likelihood spawn even larger problems as this approach fails to take into account the even greater consolidation of power into commercial hands. The private sector remains a key and integral part of the agricultural system, but taking a neo liberal approach promises to entrench labour practices that will continue to disadvantage the small holder farmers- especially peasant women farmers in the country.

Fixing the food system requires that we address the social justice issues that underlie it. This is a call to arms for all of us working to fix the food system be it in food sovereignty, food security and food justice movements. We need redistributive land justice to be effected- years after the Ndung’u report made its findings. Urgent systematic changes in the lands department need to be made- and the current leadership of this ministry suggests that this is unlikely to happen. We need to review social protection for informal and ‘casual’ labourers especially women. We need to protect our inputs from predatory intellectual property rights. We need to be serious about curbing the excesses of corruption and we need to dismantle the systems that lead to perennially food insecure low income urban dwellers. All else is doomed to fail.