Author’s Note

This work is extremely personal for me. It was a dream of mine to be able to go back to the continent I love and research something I’m very passionate about.

I spent two months working in Kibera gathering notes, and profiling the urban farmers breaking new ground.

The work I’ve done will hopefully bring awareness to the growing urban agriculture movement globally and inform policy for urban agriculture in Nairobi’s informal settlement of Kibera. I will continue to be in touch with the women whose stories have been shared in this piece. My ultimate goal is to set up an organization to help fund and support a long-term initiative for female urban farmers in Kibera.

My intention for this project was not to contribute to the dominant tropes saturating Western journalistic coverage of the African continent: disease, famine and war. Instead, I wanted to shed light on a positive story coming out of Nairobi’s informal settlement of Kibera.