Citing security concerns, the government of Kenya recently announced their intent to close the world’s largest refugee complex, Dadaab, after almost 25 years. [Video Below]

In principle, development organizations and donors have known that gender dynamics affect the success or failure of their efforts for some time. In practice, overturning cultural mores while at the same time improving health outcomes, incomes, or food security can be difficult. [Video Below]

Drought in Ethiopia, exacerbated by El Niño, has put more than 10 million people in a position of being unsure how long they will have food and where it will come from next. Inevitably, the drought has been compared to the infamous drought of 1983-1984 that led to the worst famine in the country’s history, making millions destitute, and contributing to the deaths of 400,000. But Ethiopia is in a very different place today than it was in 1983.

A four-part video series produced by the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) and supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism gives an update on the beleaguered communities of Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake that supplies vital ecosystem services and livelihoods to 300,000 people in northwestern Kenya. The lake is fed entirely by the Omo River, flowing south from Ethiopia, but a newly completed upstream dam has raised questions about the future.

The booming geothermal industry in Kenya illustrates how rapid transitions to renewable energy systems can risk generating conflicts if they are not done with sensitivity to the impact of transition on marginalized populations and to local ethnic and political dynamics.

“Clean energy has gone from being the ‘right thing to do’ in combating climate change, to being the most cost-effective option for many energy-insecure countries,” said Carrie Thompson, deputy director of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Regional Development Mission for Asia, during a day-long conference on renewable energy at the Wilson Center on October 27 (read part one of our coverage here).

The renewable energy sector has reached a critical inflection point where costs are competitive with fossil fuels and investment is ramping up in a big way, said more than a dozen experts at a day-long conference co-hosted by ECSP and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Global Climate Change on October 27.