UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Another important component to my work in Kenya was the time I spent with the street youth at Tumaini Day Center. Their resilience, tenacity, and curiosity are traits that can be found anywhere, but the way they exhibited those qualities while simultaneously surviving through their own unique life challenges, is something I have never witnessed before. The young men were so anxious to learn everything that was presented to them. They had a ferocity to acquire education and experience-they wanted to absorb everything possible. These boys are unlike any young person I have ever encountered. During the workshop I helped present on integrated pest management, I was only able to communicate about half of the concepts in Swahili, but that did not keep them from inquiring further into aspects of the talk they did not understand. Through team efforts of the boys who understood different parts of my presentation and my own broken Swahili, we were able to piece together the majority of what ...

My daily life in Kenya was roughly split between working and activities with the array of people I lived with. If I was not working at Turbo Farm or Tumaini Day Center, planning logistics at AMPATH, or in town gathering supplies, then I was with groups of medical, dental, pharmaceutical, and psychology students or practicing surgeons and doctors. Living at the Indiana University House was an integral part of my success in Kenya. After a long day of working in the field and attempting to converse primarily in Swahili or traveling far outside of Eldoret on a makeshift road, it was this group of people that kept me level. They were crucial in making Eldoret more than just a quick summer project. This group of people enabled me to call this small town my home, no matter how short my time there was.             I also had the incredible opportunity to take several weekend trips with the students from the IU House. Although th...

             My name is Emily Kovar and I spent two of my summer months in the beautiful country of Kenya in the rising town of Eldoret. I am an International Agricultural Development major at UC Davis, so my project “Improving Nutrition Through Indigenous Vegetables” was a perfect fit for my interests. The overarching goals of this project   are increasing access to seed markets, facilitating better connections between farmers and sellers, and encouraging a culture of green vegetable consumption. Although I did not see the results of these long-term goals, I did see the fruit of my participation in the immediate targets of the project. I focused on growing the vegetables, marketing them to the community, organizing Eldoret youth for farm management workshops, and monitoring the progress of our homemade solar drier.        In the two months I spent in Eldoret, I witnessed the life cycle o...

As my last two weeks in Kenya came to a close, I not only worked to finish my assignment but also learned about how the production process at Bright Green. As part of my assignment, I needed to understand the many efforts that go into making the charcoal briquettes. This first began with site visits to charcoal vendors where Bright Green gets waste material to make their product. The charcoal vendors were located in different parts of town, so Rebecca and I used our favorite mode of transport, the matatus, to go meet them.   When we got to the site, we were met with towers of giant sacks or guneas stacked on top of each other all filled to the brim with charcoal. Scattered all over the ground beneath these sacs lay charcoal dust, the waste material which constitutes the main ingredient of Bright Green’s MOTO briquettes. We talked with the charcoal vendors who were leaning against the sacks, asking them about their delivery process and following up on past orders of charcoal du...

It’s been two weeks into my time in Kenya and I’m still loving the cool Nairobi weather. What a relief from the Davis heat! I started off my second week with a brainstorm session for the customer questionnaire at the office. It was an iterative discussion between Chebet and myself on what topics to address in the survey and how to go about framing the questions. Utilizing the business concepts of customer segmentation and targeting, we developed a list of characteristics for our product’s target users and their anticipated needs as relates to energy and cooking fuels. I was then able to synthesize this information with Bright Green’s own objectives for the briquettes into developing the first set of survey questions. Following our brainstorming session, I led a discussion on strategies to avoid bias in our survey. Prior to starting the project, I had done some research on survey bias and learned about how aspects such as the structure of questions or environment where a surve...

I had the opportunity to attend the Ashoka Changemaker Summit in Arusha. Some great businessmen and innovators were in attendance. Ashoka is a collaborative group that seeks to bring innovators together with business people.   The focus of this summit was the future of work in Africa. We kicked things off with an icebreaker, and then went into a panel discussion about where East Africa is headed. “ By 2035, Africa's labour force will be more than China, with 41% of the world's youth being African and 40% of East Africans under 15 years of age. What does this mean for the future of work in East Africa?” Conference Icebreaker We broke into workshop groups, and I went the workshop all about talent. There were four panelists, mostly Kenyan, that were all young “intrepreneurs.” I found this to be a funny concept—instead of focusing on developing peoples’ independent skills, they focused on retaining people within a company. But, the panelists had some interesting thin...

Nane-Nane I’ve been working at the Twende Innovation Center in Arusha, Tanzania. The center is located in an area dubbed “nane-nane,” which means 8-8. An agricultural festival takes place here every August, and there are lots of ag-business ventures located here. The grounds are very well kept, and little shops line the main street. It’s a short walk to Twende from the house I’m staying at, and we pass through many garden plots on our way there. It’s all very picture-esque. The innovation center is a hub for social innovation and simple technology solutions. They lead local innovative projects like drip irrigation kits and a bicycle powered maize-sheller while supporting other projects like the crop thresher that I have been researching. It’s quite a busy place to be in; my first day here an eco-tour group stopped in to check out all the projects happening there. Twende Every Wednesday they have a “happy-hour” where they do a team building activity. This is help foster...