Gauging the urban appetite

The agendas that are set so solemnly for international (or global) food and hunger problems cannot be used at the sub-national or local administrative level, which must analyse its own problems and find practical solutions, All too often, catering sensibly to the food needs of urban populations is ignored by policy makers, while economic ‘development’ (more infrastructure, more financing, more consumption, more personal mobility at the cost of public transport) is welcomed. The provisioning of food and the planning for shortening and localising food supply chains is usually abandoned by public administrators to the ruthless methods of the market

Kenya: what next?

A few weeks before I left, John Michael Greer published a fictional story about America losing its hegemonic grip entitled How it could Happen. The opening…focused on a proxy war between China and the US in east Africa over oil rights following a discovery in Tanzania…I was on the lookout for evidence of its feasibility when I visited Kenya. I didn’t have to look far.