"Organic agriculture has actually increased yields by 120% in some areas of Africa"
- UN Food Production Report, October 2008
How youth in Kenya's largest slum created an organic farm
An interview with an organic pioneer, Su Kahumbu
Kibera is one of the world's largest slums, containing over a million people and one third of Nairobi's population. With extremely crowded conditions, little sanitation, and an unemployment rate at 50 percent, residents of Kibera face not only abject poverty but also a large number of social ills, including drugs, alcoholism, rape, AIDS, water-borne diseases, and tensions between various Kenyan tribes.
However, the majority of Kibera's residents are just trying to live as well as possible under daunting circumstances. Proving that optimism and entrepreneurship are very much alive there, in July of this year the slum's only organic farm began selling its first harvest of ripe green spinach and kale, while sunflowers unfurl upward from soil that had once been a garbage dump. The idea of the farm came from boys and girls in Kibera's Youth Reform Program. They had the vision and the ambition, but in order to make their dream a reality they needed help.
 Su Kahumbu in front (Paula Kahumbu) |
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Mozambique in food crisis warning
 Thousands have been made homeless by recent flooding |
The UN has warned it is running out of funds to help the 350,000 people in Mozambique in need of food aid.
Source, BBC News Wednesday, 14 January 2009:
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