The University Drop-In: The Life of Calestous Juma in His Own Words

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“It has been a pleasure and great joy reading this autobiography. I often laughed and cried. I heard CJ speaking!”

Writing in pen and ink the year before his untimely death at age 64, Calestous Juma sought to illuminate the personal path he took and to encourage others to make their own. He was always an influencer long before the term became common currency (what else would you call someone with over 100,000 Twitter followers?).

Whether as a science teacher, journalist, scholar, or policy pioneer, he sought to bring knowledge and vision to the hard work of making development sustainable.

In this very personal account, Juma takes us from his childhood in a fishing town on the shores of Lake Victoria, through his adventures in journalism, to his intellectual growth and emergence in the corridors of power in national and international environmental policymaking and academia. His trademark humor and sharing of political cartoons opened the door to frank exchanges and too many partnerships to count.

This work is published posthumously, exactly as he wrote it. Everyone who read the manuscript agreed: it must be shared with the world. We hope it will inspire you to contribute to the work ahead.

The Calestous Juma Legacy Foundation

“Calestous Juma had an exceptional talent in disseminating new ideas and helping ordinary citizens understand critical innovations. This was pure generosity coupled with a deep respect for his continent, Africa. He said “planting a tree in a desert is not duplication”—Africa needs a much higher density of disseminators. His approach to Africa’s structural transformation was through pragmatic leapfrogging using science and technology. He also believed that agricultural transformation was essential to boost industrialization and he framed the necessary mechanisms. His knowledge and recommendations have immediate utility. It is now our role to serve Africa by disseminating his ideas.”

—Dr. Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, former Prime Minister of the Republic of Niger, former Chief Executive Officer of the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) “Calestous Juma had the gift of constantly employing his time imaginatively in the conception of durable models for the enhancement of quality of life, by way of social and economic attainments. Such a bearing took considerable wisdom, as well as a most practical perception of the real challenges of society—entailing the application of science, engineering and innovation to the cause of sustainable development. In this work he leaves the bequest of a rich record of scholarship, and of ideas of social utility, entrusted to all institutions internationally.

—Hon. Justice (Prof.) Jackton B. Ojwang Supreme Court of Kenya (ret.)

The Calestous Juma Legacy Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2019 with the mission of promoting and applying science, technology, and innovation to inspire sustainable development in Africa.

To learn more and support our work: calestousjuma.org.

The African Centre for Technology Studies is an international research think tank founded in 1988 and mandated to support Africa countries and institutions to harness science and technology for sustainable development. ACTS envisions a sustainable economic, social and environmental future for Africa and uses quality policy research, policy engagement, capacity building and technology brokerage to achieve this vision. acts-net.org

The University Drop-In The Life of Calestous Juma in His Own Words

Calestous Juma

Headline Books Terra Alta, WV

The University Drop-In The Life of Calestous Juma in His Own Words

by Calestous Juma copyright ©2023 Calestous Juma Legacy Foundation All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any other form or for any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage system, without written permission from Headline Books, Inc. To order additional copies of this book or for book publishing information, or to contact the author: Headline Books, Inc. P.O. Box 52 Terra Alta, WV 26764 www.HeadlineBooks.com mybook@headlinebooks.com This book is a co-publication of the Calestous Juma Legacy Foundation and the African Centre for Technology Studies.

Cover illustration by Andrew Akhonya andrewakhonya64@gmail.com Photo credits: Back cover flap, Martha Stewart ISBN 13: 9781958914076 Library of Congress Control Number: 2022949198

P R I N T E D I N T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S O F A M E R I C A

To Roselyda Nanjala Juma

Contents Foreword by Prof. Alfred Oteng-Yeboah

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Preface by Prof. Norman Clark iii Acknowledgements v Chapter 1: Land’s End 1 Chapter 2: Expeditionary Education

11

Chapter 3: Open Curriculum

35

Chapter 4: University Drop-In

61

Chapter 5: Public Entrepreneurship

88

Chapter 6: Biodiplomacy 111 Chapter 7: Public Academic: Coming to Harvard

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Chapter 8: Science and Technology Advice

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Afterword by Alison Field-Juma 163 Selected Publications 164 Index 175

Foreword It is an honour to reflect on someone who is larger than life, a colossus, and with whom I have had the privilege of interacting directly in three separate situations. The first situation was during an international meeting organized by the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) in the early 1990s in response to global negotiations following the publication of Agenda 21 and Our Common Future. I presented a paper titled “Knowing the species composition of ecosystems is the first step in the conservation of biodiversity in Africa.”

Calestous sent journalists to interview me on the low knowledge of African plant species and how to expand this knowledge in relation to their status, trends, socio-economic uses and improvements and the associated challenges.

The second was as Ghana’s representative to the second Conference of the Parties (COP) of the U. N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1995 in Jakarta, Indonesia. He was then the Executive Secretary of the CBD. He was extremely happy when Ghana moved for the adoption of COP 2 Decision II/2 on the Publication and Distribution of Scientific and Technical Information.

This decision led to the formal documentation of all official materials for and out of the meetings of the Convention. I believe this resonated very well with his experiences as an editor and a publisher. The third was in my capacity as Ghana’s representative to the membership and later the Chair of the Governing Council of ACTS. Calestous continuously shared with me his vision on transformative actions needed to promote better policies on technology uptake and deployment for socio-economic development in Africa.

The over 50 messages of condolence received upon his death illustrated the impact that his works have had on people and societies across the world.

Condolences came from heads of state, institutions of higher learning and research in science and technological innovation, from corporate bodies including peer review journals and from respected individuals of influence i

and authority in sustainable development policy. Calestous had become an institution. One could trace the string of their thoughts: here was someone who understood the problems of underdevelopment and had, through research and documentation using his God-given talent of oratory, clear perception of facts and figures, power of persuasion and conviction, had entered the hearts of opinion leaders of our contemporary world. These leaders included funding agencies and developed country partners, African regional economic blocks of Central, East, North, South and West Africa, and those working through Africa Agenda 2063 to remove poverty, hunger, ignorance, disease and deprivation that have kept Africa in the lower rungs of the comity of nations. His desires, articulated in his writings and orations, were to free Africa from underdevelopment.

As a social scientist, he carved a niche in technology transfer and uptake and the establishment of ACTS attests to this. ACTS’ leadership today continues the vision of policy research that Calestous formulated more than 30 years ago. It is quite obvious that bringing changes to a society takes time. By understanding the African terrain very well, ACTS is able to raise awareness of many issues that are currently limiting progress and actively create technologies to support government efforts in such critical environmental issues as climate mitigation.

ACTS is firmly situated in areas to support clean energy, training of trainers in basic agricultural techniques and technologies, and also in the training of public servants in policy framework development and the use and challenges of artificial intelligence. As Calestous envisioned, ACTS has become a leading intergovernmental Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy think tank working on science, technology, innovation, economic development and environmental change, and strengthening the capacity of African countries and institutions to harness science and technology for sustainable development.

ACTS had been looking for ways to honour Calestous for his tremendous contributions to its establishment and growth and the benefits that have flowed over the years to society. It is gratifying that the ACTS Governing Council unanimously endorsed working with the Calestous Juma Legacy Foundation to achieve this.

I am therefore humbled to provide a foreword to such an auspicious, historical and important document. Anyone who reads it will surely unearth and inherit a body of knowledge which will be satisfying, stimulating and sustaining.

Professor Alfred Oteng-Yeboah Chair of the Governing Council African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) ii

Preface Unusually gifted individuals occasionally appear, often in unexpected ways.

One such individual was Calestous Juma. Hailing from a subsistence fishing community on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya, his career took him to a point where his contributions became widely internationally recognized. But his was no conventional academic story since he emerged to play a major role in international science, technology, and environmental events at a unique point in history: climate change had finally been recognised as the threat that dwarfs all other international concerns. He died of cancer in December 2017, but in the prior year he put together a personal autobiography that charts an extraordinary life story. He wrote it as a message to young people seeking to contribute to the sustainable development of their communities and the world in an everchallenging environment.

Indeed, this autobiography has little conventional academic content. It tells the story of educational and personal evolution based on sheer hard work and experiential learning. It started with supportive parents who faced all kinds of privations but were determined to give their children the best possible start in life. He explains how his development was influenced by the local cultural and political context of a country, Kenya, that had just gained independence from British colonial rule and where traditional prejudices and rivalries constrained all manner of possibilities. He could not follow the conventional paths to education available to young people in developed parts of the world and had to chart his own course. Throughout he was assisted by a wide range of people, initially in Western Kenya but increasingly internationally, who themselves were emerging in a globalised world that had now begun to realise how interrelated we all are.

iii

He came to see that genuine national autonomy in Africa could only be built and consolidated through institution-building that fully used modern science and technology. His first step after earning his degree was to set up an interdisciplinary research institute, the African Centre for Technology Studies, to focus exclusively on building policy-making capacity that would support sustainable development across the continent. Thus began the influential career of this unusually gifted individual.

Norman Clark Professor Emeritus (Innovation and Development) Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Open University Professor Emeritus (Economics) University of Strathclyde Business School

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Acknowledgements It is not easy to write acknowledgements for a book that someone else has penned, for at best we have just looked over the author’s shoulder and observed.

This book is itself the author’s acknowledgment and heartfelt thanks to the many people who helped to shape his life, lent a hand, shared ideas, and provided encouragement and financial support when it was most needed. We are grateful to Prof. Norman Clark for his insightful review of the manuscript and his Preface—he did far more than look over Calestous’s shoulder, Professor Clark was his academic supervisor, colleague, co-strategist of technology policy, and great friend. Special thanks to Katherine Bartel, Calestous’s assistant for many years, who transcribed hundreds of hand-written pages into a document that could be published (initially entitled “Okapiography”—clearly an inside joke) and indexed it. We are very grateful to Issa Baluch for his help with this project, and to Kamoji Wachiira for his careful reading. Lastly, to the family, friends and colleagues who came together in early 2018 and subsequently to make sure that Calestous’s ideas would stay alive and bear fruit, now as the Calestous Juma Legacy Foundation, we offer our enduring thanks: Issa Baluch, Kate Bauer, Thomas Burke, Angela Christiana, Aleke Dondo, Lisa Dreier, Garang Dut, Janine Ferretti, Alison Field-Juma, Wesley Harris, Roselyda Nanjala Juma, Eric Kwada Juma, Les Kaufman, Kenneth Kobe, Anne MacDonald, Francis Mangeni, John Ouma Mugabe, Jacqueline Mwangi, Venky Narayanamurti, Charles Newman, Tom Ogada, John Okechi, Captain Osman, Elisa Pepe, Julia Pettengill, Vin Ryan, Cynthia Ryan, Inge Skjelfjord, Dorothy Tuma, and Muhammad Zaman.

This manuscript is published as the author wrote it and any errors are his alone.

v

Chapter 1

Land’s End Providence deprived my birthplace any restraint. Port Victoria and the surrounding Bunyala location are at land’s end. It is literally at the end of nowhere. It is where two rivers (Nzoia and Yala) pour their silted waters into Lake Victoria. They often flooded twice a year, in April and August. When they did, they swept everything in their way, destroyed homes and farmlands, and took lives with them. It was unexpected, swift, and brutal.

But when the waters subsided, the same force of nature left behind abundance. It was easy to catch fish as the water receded. The silt contained nutrients that led to bumper harvests. Some sorghum varieties would grow such heavy loads that their stalks could not support them. They grew horizontally, making harvesting easy.

The true rainy seasons were followed by dry spells. This provided the sun necessary to dry the fish and crops for storage. In between there would be cultural festivals, of which the most well-known were wrestling and boat racing. The constant destruction and re-creation shaped the culture and encouraged strong social bonds across different clans. When the floods came, people temporarily relocated to stay with relatives on higher ground. There was communal access to the farms in the lowlands. These reciprocal bonds kept the Banyala together.

The region was inaccessible except for routes through forests and between hills. Its frontier was across the lake in Uganda, from where most of the inhabitants came over generations. It is this vantage point leading to Uganda that led the British to bestow on the area the lofty name of Port Victoria. It was intended to be a terminal for the Uganda Railway (later dubbed the Lunatic Express). From Port Victoria, shipping services would extend the empire to Jinja at the source of the Nile. Intead, the railways stopped at Port Florence (Kisumu) and later extended to present-day Uganda via the northern part of the lake. Port 1

Land’s End

Victoria was spared growth but it became a Catholic stronghold and an avid promoter of education. Schoolteachers arranged marriages between people who had promised to be devout Catholics and who were eager to send their children to school. That is how my father, John Juma Kwada, met my mother, Clementina Nabwire Okhubedo. The teachers that either recommended or arranged the marriages often became the godfathers of the couples, creating a generational link with education. School and church were intertwined.

Soon after I was born at Bubamba in 1953, there was a major flood. The village was turned into a small island. Two of my siblings died in quick succession. My parents declined to migrate to Port Victoria where my mother came from. Our new home was on the edge of the forest with a fantastic view overlooking the lake due west. To the east was a passage between two hill ranges. The strip of land between the lake and the hills was less than half a mile. Our new home did not work out. I lost two more siblings again. We moved to a new home closer to the Port Victoria township. It was mainly a shopping centre, police station, the church, and a primary school. I lost more siblings at the new home, but the relocation fatigue had set in. Within a short period, I moved from being the fourth born to becoming the oldest son, followed by two surviving sisters, Reginalda and Roselyda. I have little recollection of the move from our second to the third home due to the trauma of the successive losses. There was a big gap in years between myself and my two sisters, so I felt like an only child. Many of my recollections of those early days are about when things went wrong, such as being distracted with observing army ants and neglecting to keep chickens from eating our drying sorghum. Or when Roselyda wandered off and fell asleep on a drying blanket and got carried by a dust devil for 50 meters. The rest of the time I was consumed in my own thoughts.

As a kid, I was motivated by three things. All were expressions of a deep sense of curiosity. The first was my passion for novelty. The ecological drama that unfolded every April and August and the changes between the two brought new plants, animals, fish, people, and relationships. There was always something new.

Floating islands from Uganda landed at Port Victoria, and they too brought new life with them. My second passion was variety. I would spend hours observing differences in the patterns of grain crops, birds, and fish. The latter, especially cichlids (including the several tilapia species), were engrossing. The third expression was feedback. I liked to make things, but instead of bragging about them, I always sought feedback on how to improve on them. The path to the lake 2

The University Drop-In

on our side of the village passed by our house so there were ample opportunities to stop people and ask them questions. The best answers and guidance came from an uncle of mine, Mathias Malogo. He always detoured through our home on his way to the lake to bathe. He was full of good ideas on new things to make and how to improve the ones I had. He was a widely traveled person who had served in the colonial army. His wife was from Taita on the coast of Kenya, but you wouldn’t know it from her fluency in the local language.

The community was generally very supportive of any children who showed interest in learning. That was the character of Port Victoria. Those families that didn’t show much interest in taking their children to school were persuaded to do so. There were many avenues for learning new practices. Many tasks, such as building houses or clearing land for cultivation, were communal, and the children were expected to participate by playing a part in observing. Quite often, my mother would ask me to go represent her in some community tasks. I would be the only child among mothers. I felt valued by the group and trusted by my mother.

Plant growth fascinated me. I thought if they grew faster, the harvest would happen sooner. I had a theory of why this wasn’t the case. It must be the leaves. I thought the leaves sapped most of the nutrients before they reached the growing tip. So I set out to be helpful by stripping the cowpea plant (Vigna unguiculata) of its leaves. The following day, the few leaves left, and the tip had withered. It wasn’t until I went to elementary school that this mystery was explained to us.

The school required every new first grader to bring a seedling, preferably of a tree growing in their home. We planted and cared for the trees until they were grown up. Part of the school routine was going to the lake about 300 meters away to fetch water for our trees. In addition to bringing home to school, we were also expected to take school home. My contribution much later was to encourage my mother to stop smoking based on information from our teachers.

She did, and I felt very influential.

Electricity became my next source of fascination. Understanding how flashlights, bicycle dynamos, radios, and gramophones worked became a major source of motivation for me to broaden my understanding of electricity.

Some older boys in the village made their own contraptions out of plywood.

Much of this information for making them was shared at the shopping center as an extension of the football playtime under the giant tamarind. My entry into electrical experiments occurred in a flash of insight. One of the older kids 3

Land’s End

demonstrated how his wooden flashlight worked while explaining the movement of current. Then he did something else. He took a five-cent coin and inserted it between the bulb and the battery, and the light went on. So did mine.

At that moment, I surmised that the coin had acted as an extension, so I wondered whether a wire would do the same. I took off at the highest speed I could run to go home and try it out. It worked, and then I understood how the dynamo at the back tire of a bicycle delivered electricity to the headlamp at the front. The following day I had a bulb hanging over my sleeping area with the batteries kept out of sight. I had power supply in my “room.” I must have been 10 at the time. I made variants of the same idea and showed them to people. I also puzzled over how dynamos worked and finally had one opened up by a cousin of mine. Inside there was just a magnet and coil. I started collecting old dynamos and any other electrical device I could find. There weren’t many options.

About a year later, a neighbor of ours who had been to see my lighting system brought a flashlight that wasn’t working and asked me if I would fix it. He hadn’t used it for long, but when he bought new batteries, it didn’t work. I looked at it and noticed rust on the negative contact point. I knew a lot about how to remove rust from metal from my father. Rust was the enemy of his tools, especially saws.

I cleaned up the rust, put the batteries back in, and his flashlight went on. He reached in his pocket and gave me some money for the work.

Word spread quickly. My home became a destination for people with broken flashlights. Most of them had rusted, largely because the owners didn’t remove old batteries. The leaking fluid and humidity in the areas facilitated the rusting.

In a few months, I had a small business repairing flashlights on weekends.

Then people started to show up with radios and record players, some with the same problem. There was enormous pressure on me as I was also missing church services. The community agreed that I was doing God’s work, and I was exempted from going to church.

The shift from flashlights was difficult. Most of the problems with radios had nothing to do with rust. Someone else in the community, Andrew Ogotti, ran a business renting out record players for public and private ceremonies. He would also fix them. He had the necessary diagnostic tools. He also ordered components from Kisumu to repair equipment. He became my source of knowledge for dealing with circuit boards. He had undergone some training and had a collection of introductory books on radio design and repair. I read them all. Then I bought the diagnostic tools for determining what was wrong 4

The University Drop-In

with dysfunctional resistors, transistors, diodes, and capacitors. Then there were dead joints. After a few months, I was able to repair more than half of the radios I received.

Ogotti continued to advise me, but his focus was on record players. I then teamed up with Faustin Masiga. His interest was in knowing how things worked, not in fixing them. I had a “workshop,” which was a good source of learning opportunities. He was two years older than me and brought a good share of his knowledge to our learning. We tested things and conducted experiments.

He discovered that loudspeakers and microphones shared the same design principles. Either could serve as an output or input device. We built our own rudimentary devices and tested them.

I went further and started using parts of radios and record players as amplifiers. I made pick-up microphones and attached them to a guitar. The sound quality was terrible, but we used them at least five times at teenage parties.

This experience fed directly into my passion for novelty, variety, and feedback.

The latter was particularly important because the results of our mistakes were instant. Identifying parts properly and verifying the initial observation became key to not blowing up parts of the radio that weren’t related to the initial problem.

This happened to me on a few occasions, and I had to explain to the owners that I may have messed up something else in the process.

Repairing radios did something else for me. I opened my mind to the international world. I was surrounded by working radios and thus spent a large part of my time listening to national and international news. At the time, U.K., German, and Russian broadcasts were the most popular. My curiosity about foreign countries got me thinking about how I could learn more about them. My friend Raphael Sibocha and I thought we could try writing to their embassies to ask for information. We got their addresses from a directory at the local post office. The floodgates opened, and I received a package from an embassy almost every week. Expectedly, much of it was brochures promoting some products from a particular region or city. From my first package, I knew what to buy and wear in Düsseldorf. Some were very informative about the culture, economy, geography, and history of the countries.

Some were not. From the Russian and Chinese embassies, I received the largest packages of them all. In a few weeks, I owned a large part of the collected works of Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Raphael, who was a political firebrand and fierce debater, said we should read it all. He could follow more of it than I could.

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Land’s End

We were selective in our reading. More ideological tracts kept coming. Then came Mao’s Little Red Book, and we got pretty much radicalized. It fed into the liberation fervor at the time. It was also the period of the heating up of the Cold War. Ghana’s president Kwame Nkrumah had just been overthrown, and Raphael was constantly bitter about it. That same year, 1966, the left-leaning vice president of Kenya, Oginga Odinga, resigned from the government to form an opposition party. The Kenya People’s Union (KPU) was predominantly ethnic.

Our community fell in the same sphere of influence, although our local MP was an assistant minister in government.

Then came the prohibition. The MP, James Osogo, came to see my mother.

They were cousins. They conferred privately, and then the news was relayed to me. I needed to burn all the books from the Chinese embassy as they had been outlawed. This was interpreted to include books from the Russian embassy as well. This event needed to be supervised. Someone from the community was assigned to oversee the destruction. It was a very slow process that took about six hours. Everything went up in smoke except Mao’s Little Red Book. It had a nice plastic jacket. I wrapped it in a plastic bag and buried it behind our house.

About three months later, I excavated it. Book burning would later haunt me. In 1988 Salman Rushdie released his provocative book, The Satanic Verses, which sparked outrage among Muslims in various parts of the world. I bought two copies in London, and upon arrival in Nairobi, I was informed that the book had been outlawed and needed to be destroyed. To abide by the government decree, we burnt them in our backyard. Burning this book was an even slower process than each of the Chinese books. It appeared that the edition I had bought was made of slow-burning paper.

It’s not clear to me whether the choice of printing paper for the book was in anticipation of fatwahs issued against the book. The whole exercise brought home a paradox in my community. Education was so highly valued and promoted. But there was a paucity of books. Those who were fired up to learn ended up reading whatever they could lay their hands on. The situation was so dire that students would break into their own schools to steal books to read ahead of exams. At school, books were shared in class and then kept away at the end of the session. Some parents, like my father, only prohibited certain books, like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Mein Kampf. From early childhood, books were my most important belongings.

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The University Drop-In

Later I received another consignment of Mao’s books, date stamped in Seychelles, which was still a British colony at the time. By then, I was off that sort of material and was spending more time reading about electricity and magnetism, which by then had become a deep passion of mine. I was balancing between my repair work and general learning about related fields. My reading material expanded to include chemistry and biology. I toyed with the idea of becoming an electrical engineer, but my interest was really in electronics. My friend Faustin pursued the same field and attended a course in Nairobi. He was posted to Mombasa, where he rose to become one of the top engineers at the local branch of the national TV, Kenya Broadcasting Corporation.

Over this period, I also improved my football skills significantly. I was part of the local Port Victoria team. We played other village teams across in a location league. I played No. 5, which made me the last person before the goalkeeper. It was a demanding position that took stamina, speed, and care not to commit fouls in the penalty box as well as a lot of anticipation. I became very good at it. When I was 15, we played a visiting team made up of top players from various parts of the country. It was a recruitment tour. At the end of the game, my visiting opposite number came to commend me for my play. He gave me his pair of cleats. They were painted bright yellow to make them waterproof. They had aluminum studs that developed sharp edges when used on rough ground.

As most teams we played were barefoot, I was prohibited from wearing them.

We restricted our game to familiar territory. When we were invited to venture to Sigulu Island in Uganda, things didn’t go well. The inhabitants of Sigulu were mainly from Bunyala, so they were considered to be an extension of our location. They offered to bring boats to transport us and return us after the game. They promised they would provide us with meals, so we didn’t need to bring our own food. The game turned ugly right at the outset and the referee lost control. In the first 15 minutes one of the other team’s players fractured his leg in a violent collision. We scored the only goal. At the end of the game everyone dispersed, leaving us behind. There were no boats to take us back and nothing to eat. After hours of talking to different fishermen, we found boats that were willing to ferry us back. In the confusion we lost some of our jerseys. That was the end of our distant football forays.

A remarkable culture of candor and openness governed social interactions in Bunyala. People were always open with sharing new ideas. But they also expected spirited rebuttals. Tensions between creativity and maintenance of 7

Land’s End

tradition were always in the air. Floods swept away tradition, which then had to be recreated. But 1963 was different. It rained very heavily. The lake level rose and the shoreline advanced by 100 meters. The shoreline vegetation, including bamboo forests, died because the water didn’t recede as expected. Spawning grounds were destroyed. The historical cycle of disaster and abundance was disrupted. The lowlands that fed the region with grain were under permanent water. Many families migrated to higher grounds and others parts of Kenya.

Large populations moved to Mombasa and others settled in Kitale in the Rift Valley.

The land available for agriculture had shrunk significantly. The political timing was not great. Kenya was just about to become independent by the end of that year. The celebratory mood of the people was muted, and they concerned themselves with survival. People discussed switching crops. My father had a brother in Uganda who was a coffee farmer. He had good connections with the crop breeding establishment. In fact, we already had bananas that my father had brought from Uganda on one of his visits.

He left for Uganda to scout for new crops. He came back with a few cassava cuttings and planted them. He gave a few relatives some of them. In their second year, they became the crop of choice of the wild pigs. My father was accused of being the one who had brought this scourge. Suggestions that the pigs had moved uphill because their lowland habitats and sources of food had been destroyed by the permanent flood just didn’t wash. People wanted to grow their traditional crops , but the times had changed. There wasn’t enough land for it. Their concerns were understandable. The cereals they grew had multiple purposes. They included brewing beer. Cassava was not useful for that.

But the debate centered on my father’s role in introducing wild pigs. A few people joined him in hunting them at night. A combination of the wider adoption of cassava and hunting reduced the impact of the menace. So, at that early age I became acutely aware both of the risks of doing nothing and those of doing something new. I learned about the benefits of sharing both the risks and rewards of innovation. I also learned to look deeper at the real reasons people used to oppose new ideas. Only the ecological drama of the time could have brought into such sharp focus the clash between innovation and continuity. A similar debate ensued later with the spread of the recently-introduced carnivorous nile perch and the associated decline in other kinds of fish, especially the native cichlids like tilapia. At first many people refused to eat Nile perch. But soon it was the 8

The University Drop-In

only cheap source of protein available. The opposition waned. In any case there was no single person people could point to as the source of the introduction of Nile perch. It spread to the Kenyan waters from Uganda and rapidly took hold.

I was lucky to have two parents who not only valued education but also encouraged creativity. They imbued in me the importance of hard work and autonomy. My father was the innovator, and my mother was the entrepreneur.

I picked up both in equal measure. For my mother, there was a sure way to know whether something worked or not: trying it out. But she also maintained that I was responsible for my actions. My father was always trying out new things from crops to house design. But he was also the person people came to whenever they needed guidance on local traditions. My mother didn’t care much about tradition. When my father passed away in 1992, she made it clear that she was not going to participate in any practices that had even the most nominal semblance with wife inheritance practices. Guidance from the church played a part in her decision.

As the only son, I always felt the need to be the heir to my father’s place as a custodian of traditions. This also came with his hope that one day the water in his birthplace would recede and he would return to live there. He held this view so strongly that he refused suggestions to buy the land we were living on, which belonged to my mother’s cousin. When he died, the owners of the land refused to allow him to be buried there in fear that we might claim it as our own. A neighbor allowed us to bury him on his side of the land. It was a painful end for our stay in a place we considered home. My father had always carried the pain of not being able to return to his ancestral home, Mugasa. There was a really dry year and a large part of the area resurfaced. He took me with him so I could meet my remaining relatives there. He also brought seedlings of mangoes and oranges, which we planted. He was truly happy.

On the way back, we noticed that a puppy was following us. It was dusk. We stopped and walked in back. We saw it disappear around the corner. About a mile later, the puppy caught up with us. We took it home. The following day my father went back to ask who the owner was. He came back and said he had found the owner, who said we could keep it. He treated this as a good omen. It was also my first pet. As fate would have it, two years later there was another flood and the land went under water. That same year the dog disappeared. We didn’t talk very much about the events but the resigned look on my father’s face started to become a permanent feature.

9

Land’s End

He tried coming to terms with the reality that his ancestral land might never come back in his lifetime. He put a lot of time and energy in building a new house. Its roof was made of traditional reeds but had a lot of new design features that included rainwater capture, breeze flow, and mosquito barriers. It was a big project at his age. He died before completing it. I know he would have liked me to play a role in the community as a source of cultural continuity. But he and my mother had prepared me well to pursue my own path. That path led away from Port Victoria into the wider world. In that respect, they succeeded.

10

Chapter 2

Expeditionary Education For many people, going to elementary school is either a right or a privilege.

For others, it is a challenge to leave the comfort of the family setting. For me, going to school was an expedition and an illicit one. I must have been five when my mother, Clementina, mentioned that on Monday, she would send me to play at school. She farmed halfway between home and school, so on the way to the farm she would drop me off at school and would pick me up after work. I was told that another boy, Mbaga Mahaga, would be there too so we could play together.

All this had been arranged with a distant aunt, Maria Osogo, who taught in the middle school. Maria was married to John Osogo, who was my mother’s cousin.

The passion for education at Port Victoria was very strong. The school was sponsored by the local Catholic church and the two were fully intertwined. The elder in the community would often visit families urging them to take their children to school. This passion also extended to encouraging people to consider becoming teachers and of course, attending and contributing to the church.

There were a few powerful role models, all of whom had been teachers in their early careers. Everyone knew about my maternal cousin, Theresa Makokha.

Theresa was the firstborn of Lucia Ogalia, my mother’s sister. When Theresa was finishing school, a marriage was arranged with the son of one of the richest families in Bunyala. This was billed at the equivalent of a local royal marriage.

My maternal aunt, my mother’s youngest sister, Sister Celestine, was a Catholic nun and a strong supporter of education, especially for women.

All preparations were made and many people came to Port Victoria from afar to witness the wedding. Theresa was nowhere to be seen. Search parties were sent out to look for her. By around noon, the search ended, and a sense of panic gripped the community as news of the disaster spread. It emerged later that the church had helped transfer Theresa to Nangina, 20 miles away, 11

Expeditionary Education

under the cover of darkness. From there, she proceeded to the U.K. to register as a nursing student. She finished her studies and practiced in Bradford. She regularly wrote back and on a few occasions visited. She married a U.K. citizen and had two sons.

Theresa became a role model for young women aspiring to higher learning instead of early marriage. But she was also a source of family discord. Theresa’s mother, Lucia, was not treated very well by her husband’s close relatives for her complicity in the grand escape. One of her paternal uncles blamed her and the local priest. At one point, he got into a physical confrontation with the priest and withdrew from the church. The tensions arising from the episode affected Lucia’s marriage. Lucia moved out with all the children and went to stay with her mother, Lucia Ofwete. This was an unusual move at the time. She was the first person in anyone’s memory to break with tradition. At first it looked like a temporary separation, but over time it became permanent. I used to spend a lot of my time with Lucia’s two sons, Peter and Mathias Makokha. Mathias was my age, so he became one of my closest friends. Eventually, Lucia was given a piece of land by her relatives to live on. She moved out of her parents’ home and became the first woman in the community to set up her own home as a single mother. All this drama can be traced back to how strongly our family felt about education, even when it so violently clashed with tradition.

My father, John Juma Kwada, was another important role model for me. He had gone to Makunda Primary School and completed four years of elementary school as one of the top students. He was selected to join the Maseno Technical School and later qualified to join the Kabete Carpentry School. After graduating from Kabete he moved to Mombasa to establish his own carpentry business.

He was well-known for being a meticulous designer and builder who made no compromises on quality. Our family heirloom is a bed that he built while working in Mombasa. The legend goes that in the early 1950s he was invited to compete in a contest to build a bed for Princess Elizabeth who was to visit Kenya in 1952. The Princess was in Kenya at Treetops Hotel on 6 February 1952, when she became Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth on the death of her father, George VI. He built two prototypes which he submitted to the selection committee. We do not know whether he won, but he brought his prototype bed back when he permanently returned to Bunyala. The bed became a source of attraction, with people from the community coming to our house to admire it. I sometimes felt 12

The University Drop-In

that his magnificent work had turned his bedroom into a public exhibit. One of my own earliest personal yearnings was to someday be allowed to sleep in his bed. There was joy and excitement when he finally allowed me to do so. It turned out that the bed was a little too small for the two of us. We knew this because each night I would fall out of the bed at least twice.

My father’s instinct for design extended beyond carpentry. He would be contracted to design, and in some cases help build, new houses that were specifically adapted to local conditions. He would add new functional features to help collect rainwater. He believed that every homestead should have an orchard like he did. His impact on the community through acts such as training young carpenters and redesigning houses to be more ecologically oriented earned him great respect in the community, but it also cast him as a rebel who changed the character and the look of the community. For this he was engaged in a wide range of controversies surrounding his designs.

Wrestling was the local sport, and my father was also known for being an agile wrestler, which demonstrated his sporting capabilities and creative thinking. His nickname translated to “the floating one.” He wrote beautifully in cursive script. He was remarkably versatile and participated in various creative community activities, including dance, music, boat racing, basket-making, and the construction of fish traps. Just like in house design, he also conceived new fish traps based on observing the ecological characteristics of specific locations.

His talents complemented the lessons that I learned from my mother.

Every evening my father would sit out facing the sunset and read. He would also pretend to be smoking, which was aimed at making fun of my mother, who smoked then. I was always curious about what he read, but the two books were always at the bottom of his toolbox, which was about two feet deep. I was prohibited for safety reasons from using his tools, for the box was a no-go area.

In fact, on the few occasions I opened the toolbox, my father would know, but I never figured out how he knew it. He had a workshop under a big tree at one of our neighbors’ houses. He drew a safety line in the sand, and Raphael Sibocha— two years my senior—and I would watch him work or train the next generation of carpenters.

The people he trained didn’t have tools, so they couldn’t work. So my father started to give them his tools in the hope that they would join him to create a business. My mother was opposed to the idea from the outset. The people simply disappeared with the tools. When he confronted them, they would say the tools 13

Expeditionary Education

had been stolen. As the fullness of his toolbox diminished, it became easier to get in and see what he was reading. There at the bottom of the box were two books prohibited under the British Empire: Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Mein Kampf. They didn’t interest me, as they had no pictures. It was only years later that I started to wonder about his book collection in light of his own views. He had had a role in the British Army with the Kenyan contingent that served in Burma. I heard a lot of stories as a child about how horrible life in the military service was. He was a strong pacifist. His toolbox also included military items such as a bayonet, metallic water bottle, and a belt. We will never know how and why he possessed only banned books, especially when he deeply resented one of the authors.

It was against this background that my early education started. When Mbaga and I arrived at school, we were received by the teachers who told us that in the morning we would stand at the end of the line of first-graders since we were too young to join in the lessons. As they marched into their classrooms, we would veer off and go and sit at the back of the classroom. We did as we were told. At the back of class sat various packages of food belonging to the students. We had our own food but needed to take care of the rest of the food. We were specifically asked to watch out for dogs. But our learning task was to listen through the window. During recess we would mingle with the rest of the pupils and return to our station after the break.

Our kindergarten time involved a lot of listening and feeling the mood in the classroom. It was a mix of repeating what the teacher said, answering questions, clapping, and receiving the occasional caning. Mbaga and I would wander from one level to another sampling the classes. We could hardly follow what was going on, but life outside the third grade classroom was intriguing.

That was when kids were being introduced to English. This really piqued our curiosity. There were occasional visits by dogs. We had rocks for that.

One day, Auntie Maria came over, grabbed our hands, and hurriedly stuffed us under a bush outside the live Euphorbia fence of the school compound. We were told to stay there until someone came to fetch us. As she walked back, we heard the sound of a motorcycle entering the compound. Later we learned that the guest was the regional education inspector. His duties included ensuring that students who hadn’t paid school fees were not attending classes.

Technically, that was us. Keeping away stray dogs from the food of other students couldn’t be written off as fees for kindergarten classes that didn’t exist.

14

The University Drop-In

My first schooling was essentially illegal, but we did learn a lot just listening and taking time to play together.

We created some games that were inspired by life in the classrooms. We knew a lot by the time we formally joined the first grade. Auntie Maria would occasionally check in on how we were doing. She also separately asked about our progress with the teachers. It turned out that she had been the architect of our “kindergarten project” and was a strong believer in getting kids started early in a play setting. She also advocated boarding facilities for students who had to travel long distances to school. Some trekked to school daily from as far away as five miles. These students didn’t attend school when the rains and flooding made it difficult to travel. Others stayed with relatives closer to the school.

The entry age to elementary school was seven years and the upper limit was flexible. Repeating classes was common, so there were large age variations in classes. Mbaga and I were on the younger end of the class. We were among the best performers despite our young age. This turned out to be a trigger for resentment, and we started to be bullied during recess by bigger and much older students. Mbaga and I had another disadvantage. We were of modest stature, so it didn’t look like we belonged in that class setting despite our early preparation and performance. Things got worse in second grade. The teachers had intervened and put a stop to the bullying at recess, but then there was the dreaded walk home. The bullies would waylay us and start tormenting us, beating us and hurling insults at us. It was very unpleasant. Our first response was to try to outwit them by using a different route, but the geography of the area didn’t allow for much flexibility. The school sat between a hill and Lake Victoria. There were only two ways out: either along the hill or the lake. The lower path was the best exit, but the sloping terrain made us easy to spot.

My mother seemed to have a different view. She didn’t think the bullying would end if we didn’t find a way to fight and win. By then, things were so bad that our class performance was starting to be affected. Our strategy was to be armed. So we would stockpile stones along the path and use them against the bullies. We practiced hard, including the use of fake throws, which would send the bullies ducking, and we would get them when they raised their heads. Our intent was to inflict proportionate damage. This strategy worked miracles, and we were pleased to see that the bullies were capable of pretty rapid flight.

But there were limits to our strategy: weapon mobility. When confronted, we ran in the direction of our stockpiles. The bullies had caught on and had thrown 15

Expeditionary Education

away our stockpiles. We needed a different approach—a concealed weapon. I came up with an idea: to add sharp metal in my belt and use it to strike them. I needed material and tools for this. We had just what we needed.

Mbaga’s father owned a shop where they sold nails by the pound. We didn’t need that much. My father had tools, but I didn’t have access. I didn’t want to ask for permission because I knew what the answer would be. I got the chance one afternoon when my father was away checking on his fish traps. I carefully embedded half-inch nails and pins in my leather belt, effectively turning it into a weapon. I tested its efficacy on a banana tree. It inflicted discernable damage.

It was illegal to bring any type of weapon to school. My belt was weaponized.

The bullying was unpredictable and hard for the school to handle as it was happening outside the grounds. We were on our own. I hid it in a new location to ensure the bullies didn’t find it. As expected, they followed me. They closed in on me just at the right location. I was the first to attack. At the first strike, I saw blood come out of one of their arms. It was clearly painful enough that he didn’t advance. His partner saw the blood, and the two pulled back. When I advanced, they fled. The next day I came to school wearing a similar belt. I played with it to make it look weaponized with a bulge. That day I could tell that the two boys maintained a studious distance from me. They were also spreading the word about the bulge in my belt. The word didn’t get to the class prefect, but it started to earn respect. I could concentrate on my studies without the fear of being targeted for my performance. The respect spread to my bullies, too, who started to act friendly toward me.

By the end of second grade, my grades had risen, and I was back among the top three students in class. I had also learned important lessons about being able to rely on defending myself. The school could protect us on campus but not outside. It wasn’t uncommon then for students to stop coming to school because of bullying. I became a source of advice for many others, including those in upper classes. My reputation as a technologically enabled fighter and for my good aim spread. Soon I noticed that some students would walk home with me. We became a bully-free squadron. I didn’t have to wear a fake belt anymore because I had numbers with me.

In third grade, the team morphed into a study group where on the way home we would stop over, usually under a tree, and exchange recollections of what we had learned. This started with English and extended to other subjects. We continued this study group, with changing membership, all the way through 16

The University Drop-In

middle school. We essentially created a learning community that helped all of us to improve in areas where we were weak. It was a self-selected group.

Students joined because they thought they were strong in a particular subject. I recall one student who had crammed the entire English dictionary. We gave him an eponymous name. He knew more than we needed to learn, which included synonyms and antonyms. Our sessions lasted about 90 minutes as we had to get home and finish our homework. Later the school would allow us to stay late and also finish our homework.

Our study group also provided me with emotional support. In the first semester of third grade, one of my sisters, who was about two years younger, had fallen ill. She and I were very close. We struggled through the illness, but she didn’t make it. I missed much of the semester and fell into depression. I was particularly upset when at her funeral, I overheard some women say that my survival was the cause of my sister’s death. They described it in diabolical terms. After I heard this conversation, I was so upset that I just shut down. I felt both guilty and humiliated. I had a hard time looking into people’s eyes in the community. I didn’t respond to greetings and didn’t extend any, which was expected. At the end of the year, my grade dipped to being among the lowest ten, a position that further affected my morale and self-esteem. I heavily relied on our study group just to keep up my spirits. My situation was visible, and Auntie Maria would talk to me regularly to help me open up.

The accusation that I was somehow responsible for my sister, whom I loved so deeply, was unbearable. I struggled with this problem for years. It affected my performance, which oscillated widely. I didn’t do well in the final exams of middle school. I had to repeat that grade, which put me in a grade with more of my own age-mates. The exam results were posted on a noticeboard on the school’s exterior wall. As I approached the noticeboard, I saw Auntie Maria vigorously dancing and ululating, “My nephew is through! My nephew is through!” I had come top of my class. This success turned me around emotionally and got me thinking most positively about my future in high school. I also thought hard about leaving home to go to high school. The most important consideration was not being able to pursue my passion in repairing things and doing electrical experiments. My parents had also been worrying a lot about how they would pay for my school fees, in addition to those of my two remaining sisters. My father had been trying to find more stable jobs. He traveled to a lot of different places that had construction projects. His offers were limited to short-term assignments of construction of churches, schools, and occasionally private homes.

17

Expeditionary Education

Fishing was in decline and farming wasn’t a paying option. I recall how dejected he was after an interview at Busia, which was built as the new district headquarters. He intimated that those being selected were from the area. This was very hard for him, given his reputation as the best carpenter in the area. His skills also extended to other aspects of construction. He felt that those doing the selection didn’t appreciate his talents and versatility. After this trip he effectively gave up and started to spend more time away from home drinking with his friends.

My father’s inability to find a job affected us very much. Like many other young people of my age, I had also struggled in my middle school with the purpose of investing in academic work without the guarantee that I would proceed to high school. There were many negative role models among top students who stayed in the village because their parents couldn’t afford to send them to school. I was driven largely by the community ethos that being a good student was a good thing in itself, irrespective of whether you went further than middle school. For this, there were other role models as well. There were many people who held leadership and other positions in the community because they were respected for having been good students. The community valued excellence in its own right. These community values were regularly reinforced. Our school performance was always public knowledge, and we received encouragement from the community.

By then, my mother had stopped farming and had become a trader in foodstuffs. This was new and tough. Many of the buyers rode down on bicycles from as far away as 20 miles. Many of them came from a different ethnic group, the Luo. Their language was Nilotic, whereas ours was Bantu. My mother had to do business in the language of the buyer, so she started learning to speak Dholuo. The energy and enthusiasm she put into speaking the language were truly inspirational. She was in her early 40s. At that time, I didn’t think older people could learn a new language that quickly. But I was also acutely aware that she was doing this so we could continue our education. She had had only two years of schooling and believed strongly in our ability to advance. There were other tensions in the community about education. Success in school always meant outmigration. Some families argued strongly against education, especially of girls, as it deprived them of cheap labor. This was particularly acute as urban jobs didn’t pay very much, and in many cases, food would be shipped to urban areas to support family members. Despite this, there was 18

The University Drop-In

strong support for education, reinforced by the local Catholic church. The local Member of Parliament, James Osogo, the brother-in-law of Auntie Maria, had been a teacher before joining politics in the pre-independence era. His family was strongly allied with the church.

My mother shifted from waiting for traders to come to her. She joined a small group of other women who smoked fish and took them by bus to Funyula market, 25 miles away. This shift involved a lot of time and energy. I could help out in the preparation of the fish for smoking, and on one occasion, I took the fish to the market. I learned there that people bought their fish from sellers they knew. I also learned that they waited until the last minute when the bus to Port Victoria was about to leave before they made their purchases. At that point, the seller would accept any price. This business wasn’t making us any profit, so my mother reluctantly abandoned it. She switched to selling wholesale grain, but this market was also highly seasonal. From this experience, I learned a lot about the risks involved in business. My youngest sister, Roselyda Nanjala, who was 10 years younger than me, spent her time with my mother at the marketplace.

She absorbed all those lessons and later became the businessperson in our family.

My mother had learned some tough lessons even earlier while trying to make money to pay for my school fees. Before I was ready to go to first grade, she discussed with us how she planned to pay for it. She said she needed us to contribute. I didn’t know how. Her plan was to make and sell mandazi, a bun similar to donuts that originated on the Swahili coast of East Africa and spread throughout the Great Lakes region. The plan was to borrow flour from a local shopkeeper, make the mandazi for him to sell, and then she would be paid for her labor. We were all excited about this new activity. She did her part for a month and went to ask to be paid. She was shocked when she was blatantly told she couldn’t be paid because they hadn’t agreed on the terms of the payment at the outset. My mother had been operating on the basis of trust, while the shopkeeper wanted her to function as a businesswoman. She felt betrayed but learned this lesson, although she didn’t continue under a new arrangement.

The clash between reciprocity and contractual arrangements was a major source of conflict in the community. Just before independence, these were among the most common cases brought to traditional courts. There was one that regularly sat under a big tamarind tree at the Port Victoria shopping center that was open to the public. Kids were encouraged to attend. The few that I 19

Expeditionary Education

viewed included cases that reminded me of my mother’s experience. Later my mother tried brewing and selling beer as well as distilling Nubian gin. This was an even tougher business. The task of managing drunken customers was more demanding than the full production cycle. She experimented with a wide range of business activities to get us through school. Our part of the bargain was to work hard at school. She and my father would regularly invite my teachers home for a social visit. On those occasions, I would also get general feedback on how to do better. It was no different from what they were telling us at school, but it carried a lot of weight when told before my parents. The gist of the advice was to do homework, which was tough for three reasons. First, we had home chores to do. Second, we couldn’t bring books home from school to refer to. In school, we usually shared books. We used to joke that we shared books but did not share grades. The third barrier was social life, especially hanging out at the shopping center, which was the hub for all types of social activities and new information.

The deal that my part was to work hard was very empowering for me. I felt trusted to be allocated a role of which I was in full control. My parents couldn’t help me with homework but believed that learning was a collective effort, so I was encouraged from an early age to be friends with others who worked hard. I was also encouraged to be friends with students whose parents valued education as we did. This is something my father took very seriously to a point of wanting to vet whom I associated with. He dropped hints about his perception of the different values of various families.

Probably the most important lesson I learned from my parents was that nothing was worth doing if I didn’t do it to the best of my ability. It often came through as an appeal to excellence, but it was really about realizing my full potential. It was always left to me how I achieved this, but the expectation was that improving myself was the best measure for reaching and expanding my potential. I was energized by the knowledge that I had no limit on what I could learn. But even moreso that I had the autonomy to try out different ways and figure out what worked best for me. Learning from others was a priority for my parents. This primarily entailed having friends among students in higher grades.

The school also encouraged it by allowing top students to take exams in higher grades. Those who did very well were allowed to skip classes based on their emotional maturity.

I was encouraged to learn deliberately by being aware of the lessons emanating from every situation I was involved in. The question, “What did 20

The University Drop-In

you learn today?” often referred to my encounters outside the classroom. Upon reflection, I quickly realized that playing football provided me with so many lessons that I could apply to schoolwork. This cross-learning would become a key tool in my self-education for the rest of my life. Central to this was learning to think by analogy, a practice that was also deeply cultural. Many descriptions of people and things in my local language relied heavily on analogy, which also made insults very colorful and often effective by being wrapped in humor.

Finishing high school was a stressful period. On the one hand, I was happy that I finished at the top of my graduating class. On the other hand, I was deeply worried that I would be admitted to a school that my family could not afford to pay for. But I also hoped that I could be admitted to a technical school that would help me advance my interests. The letter came that said I had been admitted to Sigalame Secondary School, about 18 miles away. It catered to day and boarding students. I knew I could not afford to attend a full boarding school, but I understood that they also offered half-board arrangements that allowed students to stay on campus for some days. This option looked possible because I thought I could stay with my paternal aunt at Ganjala and ride to school and back, except for the boarding days. It seemed far to ride every day but possibly manageable. The problem was that the paths were impassable whenever it rained, which was often. That option faded quickly, and we started to explore other ways that could enable me to advance.

It just so happened that my community had built a self-help high school half a mile away from my home. It offered the same flexible arrangements, but I didn’t have to worry about my bicycle getting stuck in the mud. My parents approached the local Member of Parliament, James Osogo, to help facilitate a transfer. Osogo sponsored the effort and was very proud of having brought the first high school in the area. But there was a catch that would end up defining my life for good. The community had built only the first classroom. The deal was that the pioneering students would be responsible for helping to build every subsequent classroom until they graduated. Osogo offered to use his influence to get the government to send teachers to the school as it grew. He also offered to secure international support for constructing the classrooms and houses for the teachers.

The school was a DIY project in every respect. At least once a week we spent part of the day working on building our next classroom. This turned out to be a highly inspirational activity. We proudly called ourselves pioneers. We also 21

Expeditionary Education

learned a lot about planning and construction. The practical experience created a strong sense of community that substituted for the limited facilities and inadequate teachers to teach all the required courses. I started to buy my own books, especially for science subjects. Our library collection was very minimal, and we had no lab facilities. We held out hope that over the coming year, we would get more support, especially from additional teachers.

Then news came that in 1969, our second year, we would get a Peace Corps teacher from the United States. There was great excitement. We felt that our optimism and hard work had paid off. This took our minds off the material we didn’t fully cover in the first year. Then arrived Kenneth Kobe from Cincinnati, Ohio. We all felt very positive about our future. The idea that someone had come all the way from the United States to spend two years at our start-up school was very motivating. This was a place even Kenyans from other counties dreaded to stay. This was not because of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. It was land’s end in the literal sense of the word. There was no other route out except back out.

Kobe was 22 when he arrived at our school. There was news about American involvement in Vietnam. The Cold War was in full swing, and James Brown was on Kenyan radio a lot. It was three years after Kenya became a de facto oneparty state. Kenya’s economic planning minister Tom Mboya was assassinated that year. Kobe taught us history, and we all endeavored to make connections between what was happening in Kenya and in the rest of the world. We were so thrilled with Kobe’s arrival that we imitated his accent in private and even practiced how to walk like him. He was slightly bowlegged and walked pretty fast. He was of slight build and looked almost our age. He was very open and engaging. He interacted with us freely and didn’t carry the typical air of authority that shrouded other high school teachers. We got a little too relaxed around him.

I was one of the first students to get in trouble with him. We had been practicing his accent a lot. One day he walked into the classroom and told us to go to page 22 of our history books. I repeated his words, “page 22,” imitating his accent, which got the whole class laughing. He seemed not to be too bothered until, at the end of class he came over to my desk. Inside my desk, I had scribbled the popular slogan of the left, “Down with Imperialism.” There wasn’t enough room to add “and all their running dogs.” This wasn’t because of him but because of my early exposure to Marxist literature. I had a full collection of Mao’s writings that I was compelled to burn when Kenya outlawed the books. The burning was supervised, but I had buried Mao’s Red Book in our backyard. I seemed to relish 22

The University Drop-In

spitting out the slogans and Mao’s quotes for no particular purpose except that I could.

Kobe seemed to be aware of the existence of the writing inside my desk, so he asked me to open it. By that time, I hadn’t been able to explain my outburst earlier in class. The punishment was subtle but long-lasting. He wrote in my notebook a sentence and asked me to copy it 200 times. It read, “Insubordination is inconsistent with strong disciplinary education,” in his elegant cursive handwriting. There wasn’t a better way to commit the lesson from my action to memory forever. At the end of it, my handwriting had also improved a lot.

When I took it to him, he told me that he was confident I would behave myself better and be a guide for others. I wondered whether he had genuinely forgiven me. The truth didn’t take long to emerge. He called me and a few other students and asked us to help serve as the editorial team of a new school magazine. We called it the Lakeview Magazine. I served as its editor. The entire production was done by hand using a portable printing unit he had brought with him. I spent a lot of time working with him and learning about publishing.

In our first edition, I revived my elementary school passion for creative writing and wrote a poem praising our sponsor, Osogo. We presented a copy to him, and he surprised me with a cash prize for the poem. In middle school, I took poetry so seriously that I would write about everything in sight. I enjoyed the act of combining words to give meaning. I had a large collection of notebooks with my poems. I had always wanted to be an author one day from the time my father would sit out in the evening and read his small collection of books to himself.

I was never sure whether I wanted to be an author because I felt sorry for his diminutive collection or whether that would be my way to get his attention. He always looked happy reading those books. When I learned later that they had been outlawed, I started to wonder whether his joy was coming from the act of defiance. I suspect it was about defiance more than anything else.

In addition to the magazine, I started to take on other responsibilities. I became the school football captain. It was always a heroic effort when we played other schools. We were such a small community that we didn’t have a large pool to draw from. But our self-belief carried us through defeats. Many of us had to play a variety of sports to be able to fully represent our school, so sport was quite demanding. We were building character and community rather than playing to win. Because we were so small a school, we learned to play in different positions.

The advantage of increased responsibilities for me was that I had to establish 23

Expeditionary Education

disciplined work routinely, which included speedy completion of any school work or tests that came before the football practice. I was responsible for the key to the sports equipment storage room.

I also had a strong interest in ensuring that we got our mailbag regularly. We didn’t have a post office at Port Victoria. Once a week, we would put our mail in a locked bag and put it on a bus to Funyula, 25 miles away. There would be a return trip where the bag would be dropped off. I wrote regularly to foreign embassies and international organizations to ask for reading material, so I was not too pleased that we got mail delivery only once a week. So I offered to ride to Funyula and get our mail on Saturdays, which meant that we would get our mailbag twice a week. The ride to Funyula and back would essentially take most of the day. I would leave around 6 a.m. and be back at 3:00 p.m. on days I didn’t get tire punctures.

These responsibilities didn’t keep me out of trouble completely. We got a new head of school who thought that our uniform was incomplete without a bright red necktie. First, I didn’t like having anything around my neck. Second, Port Victoria was 5 degrees north of the Equator, so it didn’t make sense to wear a necktie. So I took it upon myself to consult widely among students on some civil action. I got a lot of support but for a different reason: the students were too poor to spend any money on neckties when they were struggling to buy their own textbooks. A day of action was picked, but sadly that day found me sick at home, so I did not participate in the strike. I wasn’t included on the list of ring leaders as the hunt concentrated on boarding students. This was my first and only student activity against authority. I didn’t wear or own a necktie until 1989, when Prof. J.B. Ojwang lent me one and taught me how to use it just ahead of a meeting with senior government officials.

Over time, the school expanded, and in our second-to-last year, we got a lab built. Normal safety rules applied and included not being in the lab without supervision by the chemistry teacher. I enjoyed chemistry and had a book with a set of experiments. They were different from the ones in our syllabus. I liked to find alternative ways of learning new material, so I needed access to the lab. I knew where the key was kept, next to the one for the sports facilities. Saturdays were generally quiet, as most students were away visiting their families or hanging out at the town center with the hope of meeting girls from Namenya Girls High School. I would go to the lab and set myself up for my experiments.

Everything went well for weeks. I had a few tests left. This time things didn’t 24

The University Drop-In

go well. I heard an explosion and fled the lab in the direction of the dormitory.

The next thing I sensed was the school guard pulling me from under a bed. At a hearing before a disciplinary committee, he said I was running so fast that it looked like my heels were hitting the back of my head. This imagery got the committee to smile a little bit. I was let off the hook.

At the end, I asked if I could do anything to help with the repairs. My intent was to be able to go back and finish the remaining experiments. But at the time I could only go to the lab during prescribed times. Later, in 2006, I decided to contribute to the lab. I arranged to write a weekly column for the Nation for payment to support the purchase of scientific equipment for the school.

The equipment was delivered, and I felt good that I had finally made up for my conduct. A year later I visited the school to see how the equipment was being used. To my dismay the supplies were still sitting in a box in a corner and hadn’t been used at all. I learned that the shipment was not part of an authorized donation. This was part of the political control of the school. Teachers were afraid that accepting unauthorized donations could be viewed as a political act by those in office. Donating to educational institutes is one of the ways aspiring politicians start to build a following. Usually, the governing bodies of schools tend to be political leaders, some of whom rose to power using the same tactics.

The fact that I went to the school taught me lessons I could never have learned anywhere else. Probably the most important lesson was feeling comfortable with doing something for the first time. Everything we did was new and we owned the success and errors. The school also taught me how to deal with uncertainty.

From the outset, we didn’t know how things were going to turn out. But it was clear that nothing would happen if we didn’t act in time. We worried more about not acting than we did about making mistakes. If we did nothing, harm to our future was guaranteed. Those lessons became a huge part of my worldview.

The uncertainty of whether and when we would get the right teachers also had a character-building effect on us. We were expected at some point to pick science or arts streams for our final exams. But we couldn’t guarantee what support we would get so we ended up keeping our options open and resisting the temptation to specialize too early. We didn’t learn with the necessary depth, but we ended up concentrating more on connections between different disciplines.

It didn’t prepare us well for exams, but it gave us a richer learning experience.

It was a tough environment for teachers too. Kobe, for example, could not

25

Expeditionary Education

find a barber close by. Every few months he would travel to Kisumu, 80 miles away, just to get a haircut. Not to mention that he was on antimalarial drugs for the two years he was with us. Such sacrifices helped to strengthen my own inner resolve. I learned that not everything comes easily and quickly. Later I started to reflect on some lost opportunities as well. I wished there had been a way to connect our practical experience with our academic work. The lessons we were learning from construction projects could have naturally fed into a course on project planning or architecture. In fact, the school could have been set up with a focus on experiential learning from the outset.

It turned out that this view was shared by teachers as well. When I visited to see what had happened to the scientific equipment I had sent to the school, I met teachers who felt that they could play a bigger role in defining the school as part of the community. They in fact felt that schools had become the community, given the increase in school attendance. But the role of teachers had not changed to accommodate this reality. This conversation led me to the idea of creating the Victoria Institute of Science and Technology (VIST) many years later, whose aim was to train young people in creating enterprises. The institute did not take off for reasons I will explain later.

I look back and realize that despite our limitations, the school helped those with ambitions to pursue their dreams. Our prefect was Nicodemus Diffu. His father had worked in the colonial police. His dream was to become a police commander. His desk was at the back left corner of the class. The idea was that from that vantage point he could see everyone and maintain orderly conduct in the chaos that followed any teacher’s absence. He was a big guy, so his presence was always felt. But that location gave him the opportunity to read what he liked most without anyone behind him noticing: police comics. After graduating, Diffu joined the Kenya Police and rose to the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police, having served in various roles including crime scenes and forensics.

When I reconnected with him in the latter role, he wanted to reduce corruption in the police force by digitizing fingerprint records. He told me of a case of the miscarriage of justice because people would bribe clerks in the department to misfile fingerprint records. He displayed the same dedication to duty that he did as our prefect. He was also our DJ, so he was also in charge of dispensing fun.

Those Saturday dance nights seemed to coincide with my catching up on my extra reading, so I didn’t benefit much from this aspect of his commitment to social welfare.

26

The University Drop-In

By the end of high school, I knew what I wanted to do. I had discussed it extensively with my parents and mentors. I wanted to go to a teacher training college. There were several considerations. The first was to earn money and support my sisters through school. The second reason was to have professional training in a relatively stable field. The idea of being a science teacher was particularly attractive. But above all, the curriculum for my level of training was equivalent to the two pre-university years I would have had to do anyway.

The promise was that after graduating from college, I could start sitting for preuniversity exams and join when I had enough accumulated grades. This was a common path for people in my situation or those who didn’t qualify for preuniversity admission.

I was very excited when I received my admission letter from Egoji Teachers College. The college was located north of Mt. Kenya, so the easiest way to get there was through Nairobi. I had never been to the city, so I decided to stop over for a few days. I nearly never left it alive. I arrived on the morning bus and was picked up by my friends from Port Victoria, led by my childhood friend and neighbor Raphael Sibocha. We dropped off my suitcase, locked up my money, and took off to tour the city. It was a dazzling day, mostly taking city buses past a number of key buildings. Raphael was intensely political, and so he made sure we saw Parliament, the law courts, and the Office of the Presidents. He also took me by a few embassies. This was particularly rewarding as I could finally see the source of much of the reading material that opened my eyes to the wider world.

Then there was the crowning event for the evening. It was a football [soccer] game at the national stadium by the top rivals, Abaluhya and Luo Union clubs.

The teams were ethnic and so when they played each other all the deep-seated rivalries oozed out. I had never been to any place that was packed with people.

As expected, the fans sat on the opposite sides for security reasons. It was an intense scene standing in line to get in. There were riot police at the entrances. I could also see a few police dogs.

Inside, the air was electric, and the chanting was deafening. It was as if I had been transported to a different place where extraterrestrials behaved in a way to suggest they could be barely human. Then at the end of the game as we were exiting the stadium, mayhem broke out. People started throwing rocks at each other and the riot police started adding in tear gas. It was total chaos and in the process Raphael and I got separated. I found myself in a safe location along a road I had been on earlier. But I did not have any money on me, so I decided to 27

Expeditionary Education

walk in the right direction to Kariobangi. It must have been around 9:00 p.m. when I started. I finally made it to the house around 1:00 a.m. after numerous wrong turns and retracing all of the roads I had been on earlier in the day. It was all quiet with no soul around. Later I would learn that I was walking up and down one of the most dangerous locations during some of the most dangerous hours in that area.

I got home and was told by Raphael’s roommate that he rushed home thinking I had headed there. Not finding me, he had gone back to look for me.

Around 3:00 a.m. he came back. I overheard him tell his roommate that police at a station close to the stadium had told him that a dead person fitting my description had been found and taken to the mortuary. He was then told that in fact I had come back and was asleep. The following day we decided to cancel all planned trips to the city. I was very much looking forward to the registration day at college.

I took the bus to Egoji the following morning. It passed through some heavily agricultural areas. I enjoyed the change in scenery very much. It felt like escaping the hell Nairobi had been for me. The final stretch was through a heavily forested region. Soon after getting registered and shown our rooms, we were asked to go to the college farm to meet the agronomy tutor. I didn’t think much of it, but some students wondered why. Some were even joking about having ended up at the wrong college. The Sudanese agronomy tutor explained to us that one of the jobs of being a student at Egoji was growing our own food and selling it to the college. Each one of us was allocated a piece of land. The tutor’s job was to give us technical assistance. The produce was Irish potatoes.

Some of the students didn’t seem happy and started making jokes about the enterprise. He turned to them and seriously said, “You joke me once, I joke you twice.” That exchange set the tone for our conduct on the farm for the rest of our stay. But more important, it was one of the most enjoyable learning moments for us because of its experiential approach. To cap off the experience, there was a tangible product at the end.

Then we got a tour of the whole college. I was overwhelmed by the size of the library and its collections. Most of the books were donations from U.K. and U.S. colleges and covered essentially the subjects that undergraduate students study.

It had a strong liberal arts slant. The librarian was particularly keen to show us the philosophy section. We were introduced to an Irish tutor and told he would be available to guide us through extracurricular readings, which we understood to mean philosophy.

28

The University Drop-In

I wanted to specialize in science education, so I got to talk to the relevant tutors, including a resident priest who had an extensive collection of gemstones in his house. Despite the expectation to specialize, we were at Egoji to train to be well-rounded teachers. We were expected to show enthusiasm for all subjects so we didn’t serve as negative role models. This kind of setting suited my expansive curiosity and interest in finding connections between different subjects. Much of the time was devoted to teaching methods and organization skills. This complemented some core subjects such as child psychology that were essential foundations for elementary school teachers.

Participation in sports was mandatory irrespective of our predispositions.

Everyone was encouraged to try out every sport, which we did with great enthusiasm. Many students discovered talents they never thought they had in fields they had never tried before. It was a great moment for self-discovery. I found out I had a competitive edge in javelin but decided to stick with football.

There weren’t many of us from football regions so we fared quite badly playing against other colleges or even nearby high schools with students from Western Kenya. Egoji was known for its athletics and included it in its recruitment. Our relatively new principal, Mr. Joseph Omondi, was from western Kenya and he had just invested in leveling part of the college grounds to operate a football field. This was necessary as the college was perched on the steep northern slopes of Mt. Kenya. Then came the most dreaded part of college—teaching practice in an actual school. I was assigned to Kanyakine Primary School. We had all been warned that in some schools the students didn’t like being taught by trainee teachers. We were given all types of tips on how to handle difficult classroom situations. I was assigned to teach fourth graders.

The first two days were eventless. The trouble started on the third day.

When I asked questions in English, I would receive an answer in the local Meru language. This would be followed by laughing. My tutors didn’t have a good solution except that I needed to be clear and firm about expecting them to answer questions in the same language in which I asked them. At the end of the week the behavior was getting to me. I knew I had a kind of mutiny on my hands, and the students wanted me out. I thought I would try something new. I asked the class a question and as I expected I got a vernacular answer. I decided to forcefully ask the same question in my mother tongue. The impact was stunning. Nearly half the students fled class in panic. At least two jumped out through the window.

After that I didn’t have to enforce the language requirement.

29

Expeditionary Education

My best moments at Egoji were in the library, where I devoured the classics, starting with Plato. There was a small group of us doing the same, so we had discussions based on guiding questions provided to us by one of the tutors. We totally immersed ourselves in the material. When I emerged at the end of the two years, Bertrand Russell had become my favorite philosopher. I read every book of his in the library. He provided a counterpoint to Karl Marx whom I had read earlier in high school. On the way home for vacation, I would stop over in Nairobi to visit open-air used book selling points. It was amazing how many classics I could find at throwaway prices. I always got home with enough books to keep me busy during the holidays. Raphael was an equally avid reader, so he would pass on some of his books to me.

My broad reading was influenced by a government decision that changed my professional objectives forever. Like many other students I arrived at Egoji expecting to start preparing for my pre-university exams soon after graduation.

A week or so after our arrival we were informed that the government had changed the rules by requiring that new teachers had to work for at least two years before sitting for pre-university exams. This did not just put off the time to sit for exams, it made it harder knowing what to study so as to be ready. It effectively constricted the pathway from teachers’ colleges to university. Many of my colleagues who were pursuing this route got quite discouraged. Still, a few of us saw it as an opportunity to take advantage of the college library and support from tutors to educate ourselves as much as we could. There was little chance that after graduation we would have access to such resources, expect for those lucky enough to be posted to Nairobi, which had a good public library.

The government’s decision wasn’t misplaced. Apparently, the state was having difficulties meeting the demand for teachers as many of them were using the training as a stepping-stone to university. I just happened to be one of those adversely affected by the timing of the decision. But instead of thinking about the foregone opportunity, I decided to broaden my knowledge. I had been raised to believe that learning was a good thing in itself even if it didn’t lead to a particular outcome. I understood from my own childhood experiences with my experiments that growth was a process of creating new combinations and so the amount of pieces you had at the beginning mattered.

I was at Egoji at the time of the introduction of new ways of teaching math and science. The new focus was to make teaching more practical and reduce memorization. We were always looking for opportunities to put this into 30

The University Drop-In

practice. My chance came to play a key role in 1972. That year there was a total solar eclipse at midday. I was chosen to direct a team of students to observe and document the behavior of wildlife during the eclipse. It was amazing to see birds and animals behave as if it were dusk. Then as the sun reemerged they too would come out as if they had just had a night’s sleep. My report was well received, and years later I met an American advisor to the government who told me it had made it to Nairobi and was shared among curriculum developers.

I continued to balance my life between academic and sports as I did in high school. In fact, one year I received trophies for my performance in both. But one aspect of my capabilities puzzled my music tutor. All along from elementary school I knew I couldn’t sing. I was so bad at it that I avoided any occasion that might morph into singing. Being able to sing, or at least try, was one of those new activities we were expected to embrace with enthusiasm. One time in elementary school I was punished for not being aware that I was the one who was out of tune. The teacher had struggled so hard to isolate the discordant tone that by the time he outed me he was livid.

To my surprise, I excelled in music theory. But when it came to practice, I was a total flop. Then we moved on to learn how to play the piano. There I excelled too. I was good at music theory and could learn to play new musical instruments. I also enjoyed listening to music very much although I was not a great dancer. But there was this blockage I couldn’t undo. I decided there was a scapegoat. I had never heard my mother sing although my father was a great singer in both Luhya and Luo. I had decided earlier in life that this was going to be one of my failings that I wouldn’t try to correct. Whenever people told me anyone could sing, I ignored them for trying to make me not feel bad. It is easier to ignore, especially coming from accomplished singers such as Kate Raworth (formerly of the United Nations Development Programme and Oxfam).

My overall recollection of Egoji was that it really valued excellence and recognized it. The tutors were always there on hand to help any students who needed support. Some would welcome us to their houses on campus though the principal didn’t approve of it, especially when it involved boys going to the houses of female teachers. It didn’t surprise me at all that Egoji in 2013 became the first Kenyan teachers’ training college to receive the ISO 90001:2008 in recognition of offering quality services.

There wasn’t much social life outside the college campus except for strolls to the small local market across the ridge. The steep descent to the road and sharp 31

Expeditionary Education

rise to the market wasn’t worth the effort. Nothing really happened there, and some of us were busy reading Plato anyway. Except for one Sunday afternoon when word swept through campus that the Father had been sitting in the market’s local bar possibly drinking a beer. Then, crossing that ridge to go witness the event seemed so easy. We had to approach the bar tactfully. So we first passed by it and walked back as if we were just going back to campus. His back was facing us so we needed to actually confirm that indeed this wasn’t another European of diminutive proportions. As we crammed in to have a closer look, he turned and asked, “Is this the shortcut from that end of the market back to college?”

It was like a dismissal order, so we hurriedly left. He was right. It was a detour.

That afternoon we learned that he had resigned his priesthood and moved on.

We didn’t know what he went to do, but we could not keep our minds from his vast collection of gemstones.

Just before we graduated we had to fill in three preferences for school postings. There was no guarantee that we would get any of our choices but the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) made every effort to ensure that we did not start work on a hardship note. But there were hardship postings for which teachers were paid more. Some people preferred to return to their home areas. I wanted a place with a library. I was lucky to be posted to Mombasa. I wondered whether it had anything to do with my surname, which is common on the coast of Kenya. It means “Friday” or day of prayer in Arabic. Many in fact mistook me for either being from the coast or for being a Muslim. Juma is usually a first name. It was my father’s given name, which became my surname. He wasn’t a Muslim. The family story goes that a Muslim tax collector (then our area was part of the Uganda Protectorate) turned up the day he had just been born to collect the required “hut tax” and “head tax.” There was now an extra “head” to be taxed. My grandfather, Joseph Kwada, pleaded with him for exemption because he needed to feed his baby boy. The tax collector agreed on the condition that Joseph would give his son a Muslim name. “I don’t know any Muslim names,” Joseph said. “Today is prayer day. Call him Juma,” the tax collector announced.

After his baptism, my father became John Juma Kwada. His records adopted the binomial John Juma, although he was known in the community as John Kwada.

I have at least been told that this makes me a descendent from a long tradition of tax evaders. There are many families in western Kenya who owe their Muslim names not to religious conversion but to tax forgiveness.

My surname may have helped me get posted to Mombasa, but my first name 32

The University Drop-In

didn’t make my first six months easy. In typing out our diploma records, “Mrs.” was added before my first name. As a married woman, I was not entitled to a housing allowance. I scrambled to find a relative to stay with until the problem was sorted out. A distant cousin of my mother’s worked with the railways. I stayed at his house until the TSC reimbursed my housing allowance. When they did, it was in a higher tax bracket, so I lost a part of it. This was a rude exposure to gender inequalities and deeply influenced my views on equal pay.

While at Egoji, I had significantly improved my football skills as a sweeper and midfielder. I looked forward to trying out for one of the clubs. Luckily Western Stars practiced on the football field of my new school in Mombasa.

I joined them and made it on the team. In a few months, I joined the team to play in a match in Nairobi. After returning I started to get pressured to consider professional football as it was difficult to balance between the teaching load and being on the team. The option was to quit teaching and find a sponsoring company as a new employer.

In the process of thinking over this option, I discovered that the British Council was running a well-stocked library in Mombasa. Access to a library had been one of my reasons for wanting a city posting. I also got good advice on the risks of becoming a full-time player. It was considered short-lived. The employment that went with it didn’t offer professional advancement. I decided in the end that I would combine my passion to teach science and my reading now that I had access to a good library. I divided my time between teaching in the morning and spending my time in the library in the afternoon. I chose to teach first- and second-graders because they were in school only in the morning.

That became my routine for several years. In fact, I had found a combination of activities that largely reflected how I had spent my two years at Egoji. Western Stars allowed me to continue to join their practices whenever I was able to do so.

But more of my time increasingly became tied down in the library. Many of my colleagues at work tutored students outside their regular work.

I tried it for a German consular family, but despite the pay I found that it interfered with my reading. When I told this to the family they offered to introduce me to literature by German authors, in English of course. But I thought this was a poor substitute for the support of librarians and unlimited access to Encyclopedia Britannica. So I quit tutoring. Going to Egoji had also prepared me for life in Mombasa in another way. It was at Egoji that I was exposed to the full cultural diversity of Kenya. There were students from all over the country and 33

Expeditionary Education

part of being there was to learn about the cultures of others. There were many settings where we shared stories, music, and traditions. Cephas Monyoncho from Kisii had the best songs. Having tutors from the U.K. and the U.S. expanded our worldviews. I felt at home with the even wider spectrum of the cultural origins of the residents of Mombasa. The city was expanding rapidly with the influx of people from all over East Africa. Idi Amin was savaging Uganda so there was a flow of refugees from the country.

Mombasa represented religious coexistence as Christians and Muslims lived side by side peacefully. But tensions were starting to show. This was more evident in school as kids came in having first attended madrassa. Their burning expectations were different. They were keen to do what they were told but not too enthusiastic about learning through open inquiry. This posed some challenges to me as a science teacher so I always had to figure out ways to bring them along. One of the key features of Mombasa was that every new immigrant worked very hard to integrate by speaking Kiswahili the way the natives spoke it. This couldn’t be effectively done without interacting with local people. This made Mombasa a truly cosmopolitan city. It imported new ideas as freely as it exported them into the interior.

The mingling also went with music. The local music was a blend between Arabic and African styles. Coastal music was a key medium through which cultural lessons were transmitted. It was also a good way to learn the language.

By the time I arrived, the legendary Egyptian singer Oum Khalthoum was at her peak. Her music was a huge draw and through it young people worked on improving their Arabic. Oum Khalthoum’s music was long and required patience. It was an acquired taste. I acquired it.

My years teaching in Mombasa were very much like a continuation of my Egoji days. I had similar routines that involved work, study, and sport. I read extensively but did not have ways to express or share what I had learned. I didn’t have the college environment with fellow students and tutors willing to spend time discussing what I had read and offering suggestions on what to read next.

I needed a way to connect what I was learning with the outer world. I needed a purpose to keep me going. I found that purpose in the letters to the editor of the daily newspapers.

34

Chapter 3

Open Curriculum The 1970s marked an important turning point in my expeditionary education. It was a moment of intense international activities dominated by the Cold War. Much of this was reflected in the contents of Kenyan newspapers. They displayed a level of international curiosity that gave prominence to international affairs, a thing that was attractive to young people searching for new directions.

The columns of “Letters to the Editor” became an open forum for debate on international affairs especially those directly affecting the African continent. In addition to the Cold War, there was a spike in interest in liberation movements worldwide. Africa’s own struggles for independence, particularly in southern Africa, became sources of ideas and experience on the alignment of Africa with international geopolitics.

It is particularly notable that my first letter to the editor published in the Daily Nation newspaper was a defense of the intervention of Cuban forces in Angola.

The letter was inspired by an editorial claim that Cuban troops were cowards, and as a result, they were unlikely to make significant contributions to African liberation movements. The issue here was not just about the capabilities of Cuban troops, but the relevance of Cuba’s struggles to the African continent. However, the reason I wrote the letter had less to do with geopolitics and more to do with my interest to improve my ability to learn about emerging international issues through correspondence. In my previous efforts to teach myself, I made three observations about how I learned best. First, I observed that I was more inspired to learn in environments that provided novelty. For example, an observation of a seemingly new kind of fish expanded my curiosity to learn more about fish in general. Second, I observed that the existence of patterns enhanced my ability to learn more about a particular subject. For example, patterns in the structure of leaves got me interested in issues like botany and systematics. Finally, receiving 35

Open Curriculum

feedback on my work and thinking became an equally powerful source of inspiration to learn more.

Of the three phenomena (novelty, patterns, and feedback) I found that I had a greater control of what I wanted to learn about by creating a network of feedback mechanisms of which writing letters to the editor became an important basis for open learning. I had control over the curriculum because I could choose the topic to write on. And the range was quite broad, covering science, environment, and international politics. Much of the choice of topics I wanted to learn about was determined by the contents of the daily newspapers, so my first act in the morning when I woke up was to get that day’s newspaper and simply browse through it then go teach. Because I taught lower elementary classes, I had ample time in the afternoon to read the newspaper carefully. I accomplished this by using the Library of the British Council in Mombasa, which was generally underutilized. I was one of the few users of the library who actually got the support of the librarians to help me identify sources that could support the letters to the editor. This was particularly important because I was not just sharing information—I was advancing positions that needed to be backed by evidence, so I drafted my letters at the British Council Library and then dropped them off at the Mombasa regional office of the Daily Nation, an eight-minute walk from the British Council Library. This routine included carefully reading my published letters to see how they has been improved and to build on the improvements to make my letters publishable. It is through this feedback mechanism that I emerged as one of the most prolific contributors to letters to the editor of the Daily Nation.

Then controversy struck. A reader sent in a letter through the Daily Nation claiming that one single person could not generate as much content and variety as I was doing. This letter was published at a time when I had discernible readership based on other supplementary letters that either challenged or supported my previous letters. The reader alleged that there must be a community or network of writers who only collectively could be that prolific. The reader’s claim struck a nerve with regard to my name, Calestous Juma. The combination of a Catholic first name and Muslim-sounding second name was used as evidence to justify the claim that I was a committee rather than a person. To reinforce this claim, there was another prolific contributor from Kisumu in western Kenya whose name was Jimmy Mohammed. This supposedly helped to entrench the myth that Jimmy and I were committees. Some writers claim that there was a conspiracy 36

The University Drop-In

by the newspaper to advance certain views through the columns of letters to the editor at the expense of other ideas. One writer pushed it a notch higher on the humor scale. He claimed that when he fed my name into his computer, he learned that it was an acronym for “Crush Local Enquiry, Stop Their Open Uneasy Suspicions.” By then, the Nation editors had already invited me to be composing my letters in their offices. They responded by clarifying that all my letters to the editor were handwritten.

This did not satisfy those who believed that I was part of a writing syndicate.

Soon after that, the newspaper invited me to visit their Nairobi headquarters and gave me a guided tour of the publication, starting with the delivery of my draft letters to their final publication. The tour was exceptionally inspirational. It gave me firsthand exposure to the vibrant environment and free flow of information in newsrooms. It showed me how hurriedly put together stories by reporters get “wordsmithed” into comprehensible stories. I also came to learn about the investments that a leading newspaper like the Daily Nation puts into training its reporters and writers irrespective of their backgrounds. It was here that I would meet the legendary East African reporter and trainer Philip Ochieng.

He would later become an important mentor for me as I converted from being a teacher to being possibly Africa’s first science and environment newspaper writer. The final stage of the tour that covered typesetting and printing appealed to my interest in science and technology. It also happened at a time when the newspaper was installing new equipment so there was considerable excitement in the production department.

My final lesson from the tour was the significance of feedback especially in identifying and correcting errors. It seemed like the production of a newspaper worked backwards from a collection of errors to their correction. The logic of continuous improvement seemed to apply to this situation and possibly to the advancement of human civilization. At the end of the tour, I was invited to meet with the news editor Mr. Asaph Mureria, who asked me if I would be open to joining the newspaper as a writer on science and environment. I responded by saying that I couldn’t do that because I didn’t know how to type. He then said “we can fix that.” We then walked over to meet the editor in chief of the Nation Media Group, Joe Rodrigues. Mr. Rodrigues asked if I was interested in the position and I said yes. Then he asked me to go to his Mombasa office and learn how to type. He said “as soon as you are ready, we will make an offer to you.” With guidance from a typing manual and reporters I was able to gain 37

Open Curriculum

proficiency within one month and joined the newspaper in August 1978.

When I joined the Daily Nation, I had high expectations of being able to devote my time to becoming a science and environment writer and communicator. Three weeks into my new job, highly anticipated news broke that the founding father of the republic of Kenya Jomo Kenyatta had passed away.

The organization of work at the Nation shifted to covering the succession of the presidency. This had two impacts on my work. The first was that I was assigned less work on science and environment because of the influence of the succession politics on the priorities of the newspaper. The second is that it afforded me the time and space to think about substantive aspects of science and environment at the national and international levels. At the national level I started to explore and write in depth articles on topics like foodsecurity, energy security, and land degradation. These articles helped to foreshadow national policy discussions on those topics. My articles on international environmental issues were largely guided by discussions and negotiations at UNEP. They included persistent issues like deforestation and land degradation, loss of biological diversity, chemical pollution, and emerging issues such as the depletion of the ozone layer.

One day at the Daily Nation in June I got a call from Gary Gallon, executive director of the Environment Liaison Center [ELC] asking me to go visit their offices. I thought his reason for calling was to interest me in their press releases.

When I arrived, Gary went straight to the point and said they wanted to offer me a job as a writer and editor of their quarterly, the Centre Report. At the time, Gary was doubling as its writer and editor while also running the organization.

His focus as executive director was on raising funds. The idea of specializing on environmental writing and editing appealed to me until I heard more details about the position.

Gary told me that they had funds for only nine months but he was confident that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) would renew the grant if I did a good job. This part was hardly appealing as I had a permanent job at the Nation and hadn’t even completed a year there. Gary asked me about my long-term career plans. I told him that at one time I would like to go to university.

He said the job would expand my networks and opportunities through which I could go to college. He said it with confidence as if he knew it would happen.

I still wasn’t convinced so he said he would let the board chairperson, Wangari Maathai, know about our conversation.

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A few days later I got a call from ELC asking for a meeting with Wangari Maathai, already becoming known for her campaigns for environment and women’s rights. This was going to be easy, I thought. All I needed to do was repeat what I had said to Gary. Wangari opened the meeting by saying, “You belong, not at the Nation.” I was taken aback by the comment. Then I repeated my position, adding more emphatically that I didn’t see the reason to leave a permanent job for a nine-month contract. Wangari repeated the benefits that Gary had spelled out to me. I still wasn’t convinced. “I believe you belong here, so I will come and talk to your boss,” she ended the meeting. I didn’t think she would do it. I didn’t think it was a persuasive recruitment strategy. I knew her tenacity but didn’t conceive how it would work.

Later that week I saw Wangari walk into the office of the editor-in-chief, Joe Rodrigues. Wangari was in the news a lot at the time, so I didn’t think she was there to pursue her promise. It turned out she was. As soon as she left Joe called me into his office and asked me what was going on. I told him my version of the story. He said it was really up to me if I wanted to leave. At that point I thought I would explore options with him. I asked him if I could go for the nine months, deepen my environmental knowledge, and then return. I was keen on some form of specialization. He said he couldn’t guarantee that, as they would need to hire another science and environmental writer. At this point I started to see the possibility of going to ELC and joining another newspaper if things didn’t work out. Gary contacted me that afternoon to get my final answer. When I went, Wangari was there. She reiterated her position that I had a better chance for personal growth at ELC than at Nation.

I went back to the newsroom and told Joe that I had accepted ELC’s offer. He then made a counteroffer, “If you stay we will make you deputy foreign editor under Chege Mbitiru.” I left the office to go think about it and returned after about an hour to tell him I would go to ELC. His last words to me were, “You will end up becoming an international civil servant.” He meant it in a predictive rather than pejorative sense. He was right. Later I became one. Nearly 16 years later, I was appointed as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. In fact, Delmar Blasco and Janine Ferretti (who worked for us as an intern from the University of California at Santa Cruz) would end up heading international environmental treaties. Delmar headed the Ramsar Convention of Wetlands in Gland, Switzerland, and Janine became the executive

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director of the North American Commission for Environment Cooperation (CES) of the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The articles on environment that I had written at the newspaper, prepared me well for my subsequent job at ELC as writer and founding editor of Ecoforum.

Though short, my stint at the Nation reinforced my passion for science and the environment. Not only had I learned valuable interview and writing techniques, but I had acquired new skills on how to organize my ideas at short notice. I had benefitted greatly from in-house training, especially by veteran African journalist Philip Ochieng. My copyeditors, especially Wangethi Mwangi, Kul Bhushan, and Samuel Makinda, gave me regular feedback on how to improve my writing. Wangethi rose to become editor-in-chief of the paper. Samuel Makinda moved on to pursue graduate studies in strategic studies. He became a professor of international relations and security studies at Murdoch University in Australia. Nation had prepared me well in my professional training. By the time I joined ELC, I had extensive knowledge of what was involved in all the steps in the publishing process. The knowledge would come in handy, not just at ELC, but for the rest of my life.

On the surface of it, my new job looked like an extension of my role at the Nation. I was excited about being able to focus on environmental research and writing. I very much looked forward to meeting the rest of the ELC staff. I was invited to go to the office one Saturday morning. When I arrived at 10:00 a.m., I noticed that everyone was very busy. They were repainting the offices. Gary introduced me to everyone. I joined them in helping out with the painting. It was a good way to get to know my new colleagues. They were not doing what they did regularly, and it wasn’t the first time I had done this. It reminded me a lot of my high school days where we were responsible for building and maintaining the classrooms.

My first week at work was devoted to learning about what went into the production of their newsletter, the Centre Report. The work involved all the stages from research to distribution. The task also entailed overseeing the translation and production of the French and Spanish versions. Gary played a key role in guiding me on how to write for the ELC constituency. Most of it involved summarizing technical issues in a way that made them accessible to the general public. The writing had to be vivid but also spell out calls to action.

Other writings involved profiling environmental organizations. This part was easy.

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Soon I realized that my job wasn’t just to do research and writing. I also needed to be sensitive to the underlying political dynamics. There were a lot of major issues on which governments and NGOs from around the world didn’t agree. My articles had to be written in a way that reflected my awareness of those differences. This is where Gary became even more helpful with direct comments of how some of my sentences could be misinterpreted by different constituencies.

As a liaison center, we had limited leeway on taking positions. But at the same time, both Gary and Wangari wanted to see a more assertive organization. The newsletter was one of the vehicles for doing so. As part of the rebranding or identity formulation, I proposed that we change the newsletter’s name from the Centre Report to Ecoforum. I was even more ambitious and suggested we should call it a journal. This was an aspirational name as it was more like a magazine.

The change was substantive. We planned to include more feature articles and not just summaries of ELC’s activities. This was in keeping with the terms of agreement with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) that was funding it.

My joining ELC in 1978 coincided with two major global developments.

The UN was preparing to adopt the New International Development Strategy (NIDS) for the decade. This was the second in a series, the first having been adopted in the 1970s. There was interest in the international environmental movement to ensure that the strategy incorporated outcomes of the 1972 Stockholm Conference organized by UNEP Secretary-General Maurice Strong.

There had been a series of conferences calling on the international community, especially nation states, to identify options for pursuing alternative lifestyles and development patterns so that the world could attain a degree of environmental stability and equality.

The most notable of the events was a conference in Mexico in 1974 that adopted what became known as the Cocoyoc Declaration. The document set out what was considered by many to be a radical call to transform the way people live and economies function to accommodate environmental objectives and global stability. The driving force behind the declaration was Barbara Ward from the U.K. Ward’s book (with René Dubos), Only One Earth, had earlier been a source of guidance and inspiration for many at the Stockholm Conference. The book was initially commissioned as a report for the conference by the Canadian Secretary-General Maurice Strong. The Cocoyoc Declaration of 1975was not well received by the United States, which was not ready for such sweeping 41

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international realignment. It was condemned by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for seeking to impose restrictions on American liberties. Considerable diplomatic pressure was brought to bear on UNEP over the report. A year after the Cocoyoc Declaration, Strong stepped down as head of UNEP and was replaced by his deputy, Mostafa Tolba of Egypt. It was believed at the time that the diplomatic fallout may have contributed to Strong’s seemingly premature departure from UNEP. People close to Strong held that he was more comfortable starting new institutions than he was running them.

This intense political atmosphere was in the background when I joined ELC. One of the first projects I worked on was to produce material on the need to incorporate environmental considerations in the New International Development Strategy. The compilation was published in 1980 as The Quest for Harmony: Perspectives on the New International Development Strategy. The work was funded by UNEP under its post-Cocoyoc project on “Alternative Lifestyles and Patterns of Development.” The same year UNEP published its report on Choosing the Options: Alternative Lifestyles and Development Patterns.

The pursuit to integrate environment and development was not without its opponents, many of whom were ELC staff members. Environmental groups were concerned that the integration would undermine environmental programs and weaken UNEP’s mission. This is mainly why UNEP funded ELC— to get the integration message to international environmental NGOs. My role was to communicate this to our members through the “Quest for Harmony” booklet and Ecoforum. This was part of the precursor to wide adoption of the term “sustainable development.” Preparing The Quest for Harmony opened my eyes to the global policies surrounding environmental issues. It also sparked my curiosity about environmental economics, especially its critique of conventional theory. Our contact person in UNEP for the project was Bangladeshi economist Yusuf Ahmad. Yusuf introduced me to key texts on environmental economics, which helped to improve my understanding of the issues and some of the sources of controversy over the integration of environment and development.

Our attempt to move into what would become the sustainability space gradually became a source of concern for those who thought development was a threat to the environment. It also created territorial anxiety among northern NGOs that did not want ELC to address substantive issues. The London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) was a prime 42

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example. IIED was set up by Barbara Ward in 1971 and played a key role in championing the integration idea at the Stockholm Conference. IIED was represented on the ELC board where its executive director, Richard Sandbrook, stressed the need for ELC to stick to its liaison mission. In 1981, IIED approached me to move to London to join their feature service arm, Panos Institute. The institute was then headed by Jon Tinker, a world leader and role model in environmental journalism. I first met Jon at a conference on climate change, by then becoming a source of concern, in Stockholm in 1979. Jon’s deputy, Anil Argawarl, was returning to India to set up the Centre for Science and the Environment. Anil was an accomplished science journalist whose articles were reproduced worldwide. I felt honored to be considered as a replacement for Anil, but my colleagues felt that the offer was an attempt to lure me from ELC to undercut its efforts to raise its visibility.

In the end, the negotiations to move to London collapsed for two reasons.

The first was contractual. IIED made a phase repatriation offer that was not appealing. If they didn’t confirm me after the first three months of probation, they would cover only one-third of my costs of returning to Kenya. I would have received half after six months, two-thirds after nine months, and only the total costs after a year. I could understand from their perspective why this served as an incentive to do a good job. I did wonder why they approached me if they needed such unattractive incentives to encourage me to do a good job. After all, I had already taken a big risk to join ELC and didn’t think another leap was a good idea. The real deal-breaker was a conversation about where I would live. I was told that the best option for me would be to find a place in Brixton where I would live with people of African origin.

Then I could consider alternative residential areas later. The timing of this suggestion was not appealing to me. A month earlier Brixton had experienced massive race-related riots that resulted in 299 police injuries as well as harm to 65 civilians. The rioters had destroyed 56 police vehicles and 61 private vehicles.

Over 100 premises had been looted and damaged and 28 burned. I turned down the offer. Later the unrest spread to other parts of London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Manchester, Leeds, Leicester, Southampton, Halifax, Bedford, Gloucester, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Bristol, and Edinburgh.

At the time, local politics was affecting us. Wangari Maathai was under constant attack and harassment by the government. In addition to her opposition to gender discrimination, her tree- planting work became a target by 43

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the government. The Forestry Department felt that she was in competition with them as they were the designated agency to promote tree-planting. Some felt that Wangari was using tree-planting as a vehicle to get into politics. I accompanied her to a press conference to respond to charges that she was competing with the government. It was a short event. Her statement was as witty as it was defiant, “The day I will be competing with the Forestry Department to plant two trees in one hole, we would know that our job was accomplished.” By that time, Wangari had become an important mentor and source of inspiration for me.

She constantly encouraged me to deepen my knowledge, build international networks, and be true to my convictions.

She would on occasion remind me that I had made the right choice to join ELC. She often went out of her way to introduce me to experts visiting Nairobi.

I felt that I had a real teacher who trusted me. She had a magnetic personality and intellectual agility that drew people to her. But even more important was her sense of fairness. After watching her take on the government, I felt that at one point I would also take a bold stand on something. I didn’t know how this would go but soon the opportunity arose. 1979 was a bad year for nuclear power.

The Three Mile Island accident had just happened. UNEP had been asked to prepare a report for its Governing Council on the environmental consequences of nuclear power. We were following the global debates closely and reading up on nuclear power. Gary was an important source of technical guidance on what to read. He had worked on nuclear power during his activist days in Canada.

Every year the head of the UNEP Governing Council, Mostafa Tolba, did a TV interview with the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC). He used the event to outline what was on the agenda of the Governing Council and why it mattered. This time I was invited to join a panel of three (including the producer) to interview Tolba. A few days after I agreed, we learned that the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had pressured UNEP to withdraw the nuclear power report from discussion at the Governing Council. The draft report had been leaked to us from a source close to UNEP. We had a meeting on how to communicate the information to our constituency, which included strong anti-nuclear NGOs. I asked Gary if I could use the press conference to bring up the issue. Gary’s plan was to issue a press release. He supported my suggestion.

Since we had a copy of the report and a draft agenda for the Governing Council, I felt confident enough to ask the question. When I did, Tolba became 44

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furious and started banging the table so vigorously that the microphone was jumping up and down on its stand. The producer had to appeal to him not to damage the microphone. At the time, some Governing Council participants had already arrived in Nairobi and watched the spectacle. Tolba’s defense was that the report had not been withheld because of pressure from IAEA but because the analysis was incomplete. He defended the integrity of UNEP and its autonomy in the way it carried out its analysis. He used the occasion to give an overview of the nuclear fuel cycle and why more time was needed to undertake the environmental impact assessment. The exchange left me emboldened and prepared to debate the issue later. During the period of the Governing Council, I met quite a few people who had watched the interview. It seemed that their main interest was in finding out how I knew about the changes in the agenda. I worried a little that Tolba might not want to see me around UNEP. But we finally met at the end of one of the sessions, and he was very warm and jovial toward me. I got the sense that he was confident in his response.

As I continued to talk with diplomats and UNEP staff, it became clear that UNEP was under constant pressure to toe the line taken by the more established UN agencies. In many cases those agencies would prepare reports for the UNEP Governing Council. All that UNEP would do was to print them out on its letterhead and issue them. On nearly all of its work, UNEP was expected to collaborate with other UN agencies. In many cases the direction of influence was from the agencies to UNEP. This wasn’t in keeping with the mandate of UNEP to serve as the environmental conscience of the UN system. It is for this reason that ELC needed to play its watchdog role.

UNEP started to assert its influence more independently from other UN agencies when it embarked on negotiating environmental treaties. To do so, UNEP relied largely on its own experts, consultants, and government secondments. The negotiating processes shielded government officials seconded to UNEP from undue influence by other UN agencies, especially specialized ones that had their own independent governing bodies and did not receive guidance on reporting to the UN General Assembly. UNEP was relatively free to compose its reports to the UN General Assembly in the way it concluded would be best. However, by virtue of being a program of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), UNEP’s Governing Council did not have universal membership and so lacked the political clout of the specialized agencies.

UNEP’s role was made even weaker by not having its own operational 45

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mandate. It needed to collaborate with other UN agencies to implement practical activities. This limitation had become obvious soon after the Stockholm Conference in 1972 and had become a major theme at UNEP’s 10th anniversary conference held in Nairobi in 1982. I was present at the event where the decision was made to launch the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) to be chaired by the Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. ELC convened a parallel event for NGOs at which I served as a co-rapporteur. I collaborated with Professor Phil O’Keefe to write an article for the Nairobi Weekly Review on the need for a new approach to international environmental implementation. Sweden was a leading champion for the reform and privately expressed the wish to have the Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere chair the commission. Nyerere would later become a member of the Commission under Brundtland.

ELC continued to seek a balance between its liaison, watchdog, and capacitybuilding roles. The watchdog role is the one that often brought us in conflict even when we thought we were being helpful. Our focus was to raise awareness, while UNEP’s approach was to find quiet diplomatic solutions. One of those situations involved the government of Chile under the military dictator President Augusto Pinochet. UNEP convened a meeting in Chile. Their contact person was Pablo Bifani, a former deputy minister for mines under Pinochet’s democraticallyelected predecessor Salvador Allende. We learned from international sources that Chile had barred Bifani from entering the country to run the meeting. We discussed how to handle the issue as UNEP preferred a nonconfrontational approach. We also needed to tread carefully to protect Patricia Bifani, Pablo’s wife who worked with us but was not the source of the information. At our first meeting, we couldn’t decide what to do so we agreed to revisit the issue. Gary went home that evening and issued a press release on the incident. He then went underground, leaving us to handle the pressure from UNEP international media inquiries and an irate Chilean embassy in Nairobi.

The incident exposed the vulnerability of UN staff whose diplomatic immunity was insufficient to protect them against autocratic regimes. Much of the interesting information on global environmental politics flowed through social events at conferences and Independence Day receptions at the embassies in Nairobi. These were as important as the conferences themselves. The flow wasn’t because of the alcohol but because the informal settings made it easier to share or pass on information. It was always hard to tell what was gossip and what 46

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was intelligence. Much was shared at the receptions, from troubled marriages among diplomats to grand intrigue on how to advance or stop the policy pursuits of some countries.

Not everyone thought the receptions were valuable at all. Prof. Charles Okidi, a leading environmental lawyer at the University of Nairobi, didn’t. He thought they were a waste of time and people didn’t listen to what others were saying. I strongly disagreed. Charles set out to prove it with a test. At one reception, he and I set out to introduce ourselves to people. “My name is Mt. Kilimanjaro from Mt. Kenya,” he would say to introduce himself. “Pleased to meet you, I am so and so,” was the response from four people in a row. Just as Charles was starting to tell me that he was right, one of the people, a Dutch diplomat, came directly to him and asked, “Excuse me, can you please repeat your name?” At that point Charles used his name and explained what was going on. “We in the Netherlands pay attention to what others are saying,” the diplomat replied.

ELC was a privileged institution by virtue of its being the NGO liaison office in Nairobi. The Executive Director was regularly invited to make statements on behalf of NGOs at various international conferences. We would consult with some of them on what position to take, but in most cases, we didn’t. These had to be written statements, so we would go over them. NGOs were usually given five minutes.

It wasn’t unusual not to speak because governments took all the time. In some cases, we would be called to speak late at night. It was at the discretion of the chairperson. Gary delegated some of the speaking invitations to staff based on our interests. We didn’t particularly like it because of the uncertainty of when we could be called upon to speak. My first chance to speak was at a UNESCO conference on technical cooperation. It was a tough day. The speeches were numbing. Toward the end of the day, the conference hall (KICC) was almost empty. I made it through the day by switching randomly to the different channels and listening to French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and Chinese interpreters.

While I was engrossed in listening to the French channel and only picking up English-sounding words like “cooperation technique,” I heard the interpreter call my organization. “ELC, you have the floor. Is ELC in the room?” I quickly raised my hand and pressed the speak button to read our statement.

It was a strange feeling speaking through the microphone to a disengaged and largely absent audience. Up to that time, I was used to classroom or news interview settings where eye contact (not staring) was the expected professional 47

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conduct. Reading a written statement was so impersonal. This turned out to be harder than I thought despite the fact that I had practiced the speech for days.

At later events, I found it easier to summarize the gist of our statement and make the written version available. I got much better at this as time went by. I also learned that my reputation for brevity got me to be called upon to speak earlier. This only worked with UNEP meetings where the staff supporting the chair knew me.

My most memorable occasion representing ELC came when Gary asked me to represent him at a conference of government officials in Mombasa. Kenya had created a ministry of environment and natural resources and wanted to ensure that other ministries considered environment in their policies and operations.

A meeting of all permanent secretaries was convened to sensitize the rest of the government to environmental issues. The reason Gary couldn’t attend this highlevel meeting was because he was taking off for the weekend with Janine Ferretti, whom he was secretly dating. I knew it, and Gary talked to me about it. The rest of the office pretended not to know, and at least one person—Cynthia Cole, who was our librarian—disapproved of the affair between the executive director and an intern. [Calestous later became the godfather of their first daughter.]

When I arrived at the hotel in Mombasa, it became clear that I was in the wrong place. I watched the participants check in and realized that they were very senior people. I recognized some of them from press coverage. I was by far the youngest person in attendance and felt completely out of place. The first sessions of the meeting went well. It covered material that I was familiar with.

Most of those who spoke stressed how much their ministries were doing for the environment. The underlying concerns were two-fold. First, the new ministry worried that if others essentially did what it was created to do, then its role would be limited. Other ministries feared that the new entity might want to consolidate its power by taking part of their territory, which was essentially money and staff.

The tensions mirrored the relationship between UNEP and other UN agencies and were being played out in various countries. There was even anxiety that the creation of environment ministries could lead to other parts of government stopping their ecological work in fear of conflict or even possibly having their budgets transferred to the new ministries. These were the undercurrents at the meeting and were openly discussed by some of the participants during the first coffee break.

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Just before the lunch break, we were assigned to working groups but there were no firm instructions that we had to stick to the plan. Just before 2:00 p.m., I went to the room for the information dissemination group to which I had been assigned. A few minutes later one of the participants walked in, looked at me, and said, “There is nobody here. I will go and join another group.” He left before I could gather the courage to tell him that I was assigned to the group.

I waited to see if anyone else showed up. Nobody else did. We had been given an hour for the sessions, after which we were to return to the plenary to report back. I spent the first 15 minutes writing down what I had hoped to contribute to the group. As time went by, I decided to elaborate on my views on how to improve environmental awareness, drawing from my experiences as a teacher, journalist, and researcher. I assumed at the end of the hour that our session would be canceled since there were no other participants. Apparently most people decided to switch to other sessions, especially the one on funding. The chairperson called on the groups to report on their discussions. When he called on the information group nobody seemed to step forward. “Is there anyone here who was in that group?” he asked.

I raised my hand and he called on me to come to the podium and report on our discussions. I didn’t have time to tell him I was there alone, so I went up to the podium. I was extremely nervous but confident about the point I wanted to make. I glanced at my notes only as a crutch to calm my nerves. My points were about engaging schools, working with the media, and reaching out to the NGO community. The points covered familiar territory for me but speaking to permanent secretaries was quite intense. When I finished, I literally fled the podium. Then a thunderous applause erupted in the room. It seemed to last forever. The energy behind the appreciation was unmistakable. When the session ended, some of the participants came to thank me for my contributions.

It felt like I was floating. The impact of those few minutes on my self-esteem was phenomenal. Later that night I thought to myself, “The best committee I have ever served on was made up of two people and the other one didn’t show up.” I also reflected on the power of being prepared.

On my way home from Mombasa, I reflected a lot on the politics of creating something new, especially on the impact it has on existing institutions. I could see parallels with ELC’s own efforts to get established in a field that had few but powerful actors. UNEP was going through the same dynamics. I could think of analogous situations with debates surrounding new activities such as tree49

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planting or promoting the adoption of renewable energy technologies. I learned from the conference just how much of my own life at the time was devoted to balancing between the new and the old. But I could also see how accidents of history have shaped our lives. The fact that I could survive five minutes before Kenya’s top policymakers was not something I could have imagined. My time at ELC helped me to grow considerably. I deepened my knowledge and broadened my horizons. All this happened because I worked with people who trusted me and gave me the best support I could get. I reflected their support back by working hard to improve my performance. This in turn encouraged my supporters to invest more of their time in helping me grow. They expanded my networks by introducing me to more supportive people. This helped me to create my own learning communities from which I drew knowledge, inspiration, and guidance.

It all became a virtuous cycle that reinforced my self-confidence.

The Environmental Liaison Centre (ELC), which had been created in 1976 in Nairobi, was a product of special circumstances. It was conceived during the UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. That meeting, known as the Stockholm Conference, was partly a result of decades of advocacy by environmental NGOs. Nearly all of them were created in industrialized countries.

When governments decided to locate the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, the NGOs became concerned that they would lose their influence in an organization whose creation they had lobbied for.

There were substantive concerns as well. There were clear differences at Stockholm between developing and industrialized countries on how to approach global environmental issues. Industrialized countries saw the issues through the lens of distorting growth as reflected in chemical pollution. For northern NGOs, part of the problem lay in the use of technology. Developing countries, on the other hand, agreed that their problem sprung from too little growth.

They saw poverty as a source of pollution and worried that curtailing it could undercut their development prospects. Locating the new UNEP in Nairobi raised the concern that developing countries could influence the agenda of te new organization at the expense of the interest of industrialized country NGOs. The ELC was thus created to ensure that it served a link between UNEP and NGOs in the industrialized countries. To achieve this, it needed to serve as a watchdog on UNEP to ensure that the organization fulfilled its mandate. A third objective was to promote the creation of environmental NGOs in developing countries. ELC served as a nerve center for nearly 7,000 environmental NGOs 50

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worldwide. Its main outreach vehicle was the quarterly Centre Report, which was published in English, French, and Spanish. It received part of its funding from UNEP, which raised questions about its independence. Some of the northern NGOs preferred to work with UNEP directly and did not support efforts by ELC to develop independent projects. It had a local and international board and functioned with a small staff largely supported by volunteers, some of whom were spouses of UNEP officials.

In its early years, ELC struggled to pay its staff on time as UNEP payments usually came in late or sometimes were delayed in response to certain ELC actions, especially those related to its watchdog role. In 1978, ELC had hired Gary Gallon, a Canadian environmentalist from Vancouver. Gary had experience working both on the stock market and as an environmental activist.

He had helped to found the Society for Promoting Environmental Conservation (SPEC) and Greenpeace, which was incubated in SPEC offices. Gary subscribed to evidence-based activism and was a strong promoter of close collaboration between scientists and activists.

When Gary joined ELC, the organization had just elected Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan advocate of women’s rights and conservation for which, many years later, she was warded the Nobel Peace Prize. At the time, Wangari—the first woman in Kenya to obtain a Ph.D.—was locked in a number of battles with the Kenyan government, mostly over what was perceived as radical feminism. The government frustrated her efforts to lead Kenya’s premier women’s organization as much as it resented her work on tree-planting. Wangari had left her job at University of Nairobi after protracted battles and lawsuits over equal pay and treatment of women faculty.

Both Gary and Wangari were committed to raising the profile of ELC so it would become more than just a documental transmittal center. Gary’s deputy was Delmar Blasco, an Argentinian social anthropologist. Also on staff was Chilean sociologist Patricia Bifani. Patricia and her husband Pablo had left Chile after the 1971 coup by Pinochet. Pablo was a deputy minister of mines under President Allende. ELC had staff from Australia, Scotland, and Uganda and a constant flow of interns and volunteers from around the world. Despite its small staff, ELC had a team of professionals with depth and breadth on a wide range of environmental issues. Because of its uneasy relations with UNEP, it carried out its activities with tact, but it would from time to time run into difficulties with UNEP, which were resolved diplomatically. It was in the context of ELC’s plans 51

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to strengthen its presence on the international scene that I had been recruited to join them.

By the early 1980s, Nairobi had becorme a hub of renewable energy studies.

This was a result of a combination of factors. Nairobi was establishing itself as a center of environmental awareness because UNEP was located there. The 1979 oil embargo generated considerable interest in energy conservation and consideration for alternative energy sources. Evidence was also emerging that deforestation was a major source of concern and that harvesting wood was a key driver. The loss of forest cover was linked to soil degradation and system-wide ecological impacts. Kenya had a long history of soil erosion concerns and its new president, Daniel arap Moi, was active leading public campaigns to fill up gullies and construct terraces. At the diplomatic level the United States had just elected Jimmy Carter as president. His administration was active in promoting alternative energy sources. This atmosphere got me reading up a lot on alternative energy sources. I benefitted from sources and technical discussions with my friend, the ecologist Kamoji Wachiira, senior lecturer at Kenyatta University who was active in this discipline. I was particularly interested in innovation in charcoal stoves after reading papers by a Kenyan researcher, David Kamweti.

David’s work focused on studying charcoal conversion from wood, a process that was known to be particularly inefficient. At the time rapid urbanization was leading to increased charcoal use and the associated deforestation, especially close to urban centers.

The general thinking was that improving the charcoal production process and the efficiency of charcoal stoves could reduce the rate of deforestation.

ELC was known to have a small but rich library of alternative energy sources.

This was partly because of the interest of its executive director, Gary Gallon.

Government officials and educators would regularly come to use the library. We had volunteer librarians, the most dedicated being Cynthia Cole, who had come to us from Peak Island in Maine. Cynthia helped to reorganize the library, which helped me to use it more efficiently for my own research and writing. Usually, when government officials came to the library, they wanted guidance to specific sources of data. In most cases, it was because they were helping to draft speeches for their bosses, so they didn’t have much time to read through the material.

At the time the government did not collect statistics on forests or the use of wood, even in the way it did for chickens, despite the importance of trees to the country’s economy and ecology.

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One early afternoon David Mutoro, a colleague I knew from the Kenyan Bureau of Statistics, came to our office and said he needed some figures of how much wood was being cut down in Kenya to make charcoal. David Kamweti had done some estimates for Nairobi, but no national estimates existed. I told David that we didn’t have such figures. To my surprise, he said we needed something that afternoon. David was highly respected in KBS as a brilliant mathematician and statistician. In my interactions with him I had received a few valuable tutorials as well as suggestions of books to read. He knew not only how to explain complex concepts, but he also used examples from daily life that made statistics accessible. If one real-life example wasn’t getting through, he just summoned another from his reservoir of ideas.

He constructed a rough exercise that included charcoal conversion rates and estimates of the total urban population size of Kenya. We had a brief discussion over the fact that some of the smaller urban centers were probably using more firewood directly than relying on charcoal. He had a thorough grasp of Kenya’s migration and urbanization patterns. He asked that we do our separate calculations and compare the results. After a few minutes of trying out different approaches, we compared our results. We both came up with close to 15 million tons of wood being harvested annually for making charcoal in Kenya.

From a technical standpoint, this was close to a useless exercise, and I didn’t think he would want to have it passed off in a ministerial speech as coming from a credible source. When I raised the issue, David emphatically told me, “This is for a policy statement, policy being that which is declared without evidence.”

He went on to explain to me that we had a good basis to generate a hypothesis that could be tested or even elicit a challenge. A few days later, the minister for the environment was quoted in the media as saying Kenya cut down 15 million tons of wood to make charcoal. In fact, I persuaded myself to believe that there was another source or that our estimate had, in fact, been corroborated by some other research that I wasn’t aware of. In my interactions with government officials, I knew that it was common for high-level officials to seek input from a variety of sources when issues involved a high degree of uncertainty.

David and I met later and he reminded me of the same process. But he went further. He told me about the importance of not claiming credit for information that was passed on to one’s superiors. It was the first time I came to appreciate this point, especially in terms of ownership. It was the minister who had to act in the face of uncertainty. David explained to me that from his standpoint, political 53

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leadership was largely about taking risk in light of uncertainty hence his insight that policy was that which was decided in the absence of sufficient evidence. In his view, there was always room to improve the evidence base but one had to start somewhere. His own motivation at the time was to see new work done to collect more statistics of environmental issues, starting with tree cover.

This was just starting. Soon after that I met Prof. Phil O’Keefe from Clark University in the United States. Phil was a trained economic geographer from Ireland. He had just arrived in Kenya to lead a major research initiative funded by the government of Sweden to establish the baseline for forest cover in Kenya, which would assist in mapping deforestation trends and provide solutions. As he described his role, “We are carrying out a tree census of Kenya.” The description was vivid and invoked the image of researchers marching across Kenya marking every tree. Phil’s work was based on new modeling techniques. The LEAP model was the analytical tool for accomplishing the challenging task.

Phil invited me to his residence, which was also the project office, on the northeastern outskirts of Nairobi. Phil called the building “Kuni House.” “Kuni” is the Kiswahili word for firewood. My first visit exposed me to a remarkable afternoon. There were nearly 10 people in the living room, most of them in their early to mid-20s. The event was a vibrant discussion led by Phil on the different aspects of the role of trees in Kenya’s economic life. All the other people in the room were young researchers from various overseas universities working on the project.

What stood out for me was Phil’s intellectual versatility. He would seamlessly and coherently oscillate between mathematical equations, which he scribbled on a flip chart, and the political economy of household firewood use. This was the first time I had been in a university-level discussion. This discussion lasted about two hours. All throughout I was working hard to find a connection with what I knew and how I understood the firewood crisis in Kenya. Indeed, it was a crisis as there was report after report showing how much farther women had to walk to collect firewood and the implications this had on their lives and on their families. The discussion covered issues from forest regeneration patterns to the impact of indoor smoke. It included the thermodynamics of cookstoves and the social uses of “waste” heat from traditional cooking methods. It covered disciplines ranging from physics to economics through anthropology and sociology to politics. Phil displayed remarkable ability in making the connection between these diverse disciplines. He had enviable command of a variety of 54

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social and political theories, which he used to explain the different observations the researchers were making.

Going to Kuni House became a regular activity. It is where I genuinely felt like a college student. Each week brought together a different composition of people. Some were headed to the countryside for field work. Others had just returned. There was also a regular flow of professionals from Kenya and other countries. It was at Kuni House that I met Prof. Ben Wisner. Ben had done his Ph.D. on a post-independence famine in Eastern Kenya in which he had established a link between inequality and starvation, putting the debate in the context of political economy.

Phil became an important mentor in my transition from journalistic writing to more in-depth research. His generosity was limitless. In addition to having me be part of the Kuni House community, he also went out of his way to offer me personal tutorials that included material I needed to read. These were mostly from journals that I could find in the UNEP library. I developed a strong interest in what turned out be an emerging field of political ecology. Phil provided me with names of some of the top thinkers in the field at the time. I started to correspond with some of them.

My association with Phil significantly expanded my knowledge across many fields ranging from physics to ecology to botany to political economy. But more important, it helped me to learn to identify linkages between the disciplines.

I started to learn the importance of theoretic abstraction, of which Phil was a master. I met many new friends at Kuni House, but the intellectual setting there gave them the character of being classmates. I continued to meet some of them separately to discuss some of the issues arising from the “O’Keefe Seminars.” At the time the diplomatic atmosphere in Nairobi was filled with the excitement of the news that the city would host the UN Conference on New and Renewable Energy Sources. There were expectations that the conference could lead to the creation of a new UN agency to address the issue. Gary Gallon and I were invited to a meeting by the Permanent Secretary of the Kenyan Ministry of Energy. We were asked about how ELC could contribute to the preparations of the conference and how to mobilize the participation of NGOs. We didn’t have clear answers at the meeting, but as we walked back to the office we thought of an idea, to convene NGOs to participate at the conference presupposed knowing what they were doing on renewable energy. So we thought we could conduct a survey by mail, prepare a report, and convene a meeting 55

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of those organizations working on renewable energy. We had a mailing list of Kenyan NGOs working on the environment, so the task wasn’t going be that difficult. We also envisaged that the UN conference would provide sufficient motivation to encourage the NGOs to figure out how to work together. Getting NGOs to collaborate was always a difficult task.

When the survey results started to come in, we noticed that many of the NGOs had projects on renewable energy. They mostly covered wood fuel, biogas, solar, and wind. We put together the report and thought that maybe the 50 or so NGOs that identified themselves as working on renewable energy might want to create a coalition. We prepared to launch the report at the offices of the energy ministry. The meeting was well attended and the discussion was constructive.

The idea of some kind of coalition enjoyed support among the participants.

As the different organizations took their chance to speak and support the idea, I would go to the page with their entry to read more about what they did.

The report had been put together so hurriedly that we did not have a chance to read it. In fact, the reason we agreed to do it was because we had been joined

by Janine Ferretti, an undergraduate intern from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Janine had heard about ELC through David Chatfield, who headed the U.S. Friends of the Earth office in California. We didn’t have anything assigned for Janine to work on, so we agreed that helping to compile the report would be a good task for her. She accomplished the task on time.

The discussions were going very well. The representative of a group called the Jaycees (Junior Chamber of Commerce) started to speak on the importance of the private sector in advancing renewable energy. When I looked at their entry in the report, something extraordinary jumped out at me. Their objectives had been entered by Janine as “the entrenchment of capitalism.” My heart sunk.

I passed a note to Gary at the head of the table. He read it and put it in his pocket. Then the meeting was drawing to a close. There was agreement that ELC would help to promote the establishment of the Kenya renewable energy coalition. Gary closed the meeting and straight away went and stood at the door.

As the first person tried to leave the room he asked for his copy of the report.

Gary then went to the page with the Jaycees entry, ripped it out, and put it in the pocket of his jacket. After he had done this to five reports, his jacket pocket stuck out as if it contained a soccer ball.

At this point the other participants returned to their seats and were intensely browsing through the report. Some were hovering around Gary at the door 56

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with the hope of sneaking by, but he would obstruct their exit and ask for the report. The atmosphere in the room was a mix of unease and bemusement. A few people asked me what was going on, but I pretended not to hear them.

As more people started to surge in the direction of the door, Gary decided to just let them go. At that point we knew what Janine felt about the Jaycees but didn’t know whether their representatives had seen the entry and whether they thought it misrepresented their objectives. Our priority was to rush to the office and send a letter of apology that afternoon. We did and promised that we would produce a corrected version and send copies to all those who had responded to the survey. At the time, we had only printed about 100 copies for the launch. The Jaycees accepted our apology and planned strategy and they continued to play an important role in meetings convened to advance the coalition.

As the coalition took shape, we needed to find an interim coordinator. We settled for Achoka Awori, who had been a regular visitor to our library to read up on biogas. Achoka was a teacher who had been posted to Alliance High School.

He was assigned to oversee the functioning of the school’s biogas digester. In the process he expanded his knowledge to cover other renewable energy sources.

The coalition agreed on the name, Kenya Energy NGO Organization (KENGO) As the preparations for the UN conference advanced, a group of international NGOs set up a project to run a daily newspaper covering the proceedings.

They called it Renews. I was asked to join the team. This was a very exciting opportunity for me to be part of an international team of writers and illustrators.

It was rewarding to see delegates studiously read our analysis of the conference proceedings.

The conference could not agree on creating a fund or agency to implement the plan of action it adopted. Later that year (1981), the UN General Assembly created a committee to help implement the plan. It also called upon other UN agencies to help in the process. The general mood among diplomats and observers was that the conference had failed to deliver on the promise of strong international commitment on new and renewable energy sources. One of the highlights of the conference was an announcement by Canada to set up a fund to train researchers in renewable energy. A day after the announcement I was told

by Phil O’Keefe that Andrew Barnett from the Canadian International Research Centre (IDRC) wanted to meet me. I met Andrew on the mezzanine patio of the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC).

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Andrew told me that I had been highly recommended by Phil as a potential recipient of a graduate scholarship from the newly announced fund. Andrew worked on an IDRC project from the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at Sussex University. At the meeting he was wearing his IDRC hat. I was elated but also apprehensive about pursuing graduate studies without an undergraduate degree. Andrew promised that he would advance my candidacy for the scholarship but leave the discussion on university admission to a later date. At the time there were very few young people researching renewable energy. It is possible that if I had done undergraduate training, renewable energy wouldn’t have been an option for me. I just happened to go outside the formal system, which is also where the action on renewable energy was.

I found comfort in the fact that Phil wouldn’t have recommended me for a graduate scholarship if he didn’t think I could do the work. I also thought that IDRC would not offer the scholarship if they thought my lack of undergraduate training would be an insurmountable obstacle. A few months after the meeting I was awarded a scholarship to do a master’s degree in a university that would admit me. I was free to explore options in Kenya, Canada, or elsewhere. When I started to list possible programs, an IDRC officer told me that the United States wouldn’t be an option, as Canadian universities were just as good. I was then interested in an MSc at MIT on technology policy, although a large part of the syllabus was on the automobile industry. There were few universities that offered courses that could meet the renewable energy requirements of the IDRC. At the time, there was a team in Nairobi from York University funded by Canada to work on improved cook stoves in conjunction with the nascent KENGO, whose formation I had been intensely involved in. Stuart McDonald from York University told me that I had good chances of getting into his university. The University of Nairobi was a nonstarter. There was no way of overcoming the requirement for an undergraduate degree. It bothered me that a Canadian university was willing to consider my candidacy but a Kenyan one wouldn’t. The idea was simple. I needed to offer samples of my work and ask if the university would consider them to serve in lieu of an undergraduate degree.

I was particularly interested in universities that offered interdisciplinary courses.

In fact, that was the only way to meet the IDRC renewable energy requirements.

In May 1981, I decided to seek Phil’s advice on how to proceed, although I felt confident about getting into York. Phil thought I needed to find a way to talk directly to heads of degree programs in the UK and Canada. I told him 58

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that I had just been invited to attend a meeting in June in Rome and maybe I could use the opportunity to visit UK universities. It was a plausible option, so we agreed to meet again to figure out a strategy. At our next meeting, Phil offered to write for me letters of introduction that I could carry and deliver to colleagues of his previous universities. He asked me to put together portfolios of my writings, including any unpublished papers, to present to his colleagues and any heads of degree programs. He also gave me what turned out to be important advice, “Don’t let them interview you. You interview them.” This was hard to contemplate, given that I was the one applying. But he thought that my writings and my IDRC scholarship put me in a position where I could ask whether the universities offered what I was looking for.

When I went to pick up the letters of introduction, Phil also give me $350 in travelers’ checks to pay for the train trip to the UK. The 36-hour trip took me to London and then to his parents’ home in Bradford. On the following day his parents drove with me to Newcastle. I didn’t visit universities in Newcastle but met and talked to a number of people associated with universities. It was there that I played pool for the first time. I did so well that I had difficulties explaining that I hadn’t played the game before. It was actually much easier than a local game we used to play as kids. The game involved a hole in the ground and coins.

The coins were placed near the hole. The idea was to use another coin to hit any of the coins into the hole. The players put in an equal number of coins. Whoever hit a coin into the hole kept it. It was a challenging game that could go on for a long time. Hitting a ball on a smooth table with a stick into a hole seemed so easy but hard to explain how I was able to do it so confidently for the first time.

The following day I took a train to Norwich to visit the University of East Anglia. The university had a good reputation in development and environment studies. Phil had given me a letter to deliver to Prof. Randall Baker. Randall had studied and taught at Makerere University and was deeply committed to African environmental studies. He offered that I stay in his home instead of a hotel. I spent a considerable amount of time talking to him about ecological trends in Africa. He then introduced me to his colleagues. Most of the meetings were more like conversations and not interviews. I also had a chance to meet African students. It was agreed that the best option for me was to apply for their graduate diploma in statistics first. They thought this was a prerequisite for their master’s course in development studies.

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Over this period I had been in contact with Andrew Barnett at Sussex, who encouraged me to also talk to his colleagues. I took a train from Norwich to Sussex. The goal was to focus on two degree programs. The first was the Master’s in Economics (not their Master of Philosophy in Development Studies, which took two years to finish) where there was no fit. The other was a degree run by the History and Social Studies of Science (HSSS) subject group in the School of Mathematical and Physical Studies [MAPS]. The syllabus was interdisciplinary and closely associated with the Science Policy Research Unit [SPRU] an independent research institute run by Professor Chris Freeman. I then went to SPRU and was told that the head of the master’s program, Dr. Norman Clark, was working at home. The receptionist spoke to Norman and he agreed to have me visit him at home. After a short conversation Norman encouraged me to apply, noting that my interests were aligned with their interdisciplinary nature.

Norman was trained in both physics and economics and had spent extended periods in Africa and India helping to set up research institutes. His wife, Brenda, had an African connection too. Her father had helped to set up the post box system in colonial Uganda.

I returned to Nairobi quite confident that I could get into East Anglia and Sussex Universities. I was more attracted to the Sussex program because of its interface between the natural and social sciences. As I was working on the applications, I received a letter from Randall that he had accepted a chair at Indiana University in the United States. I decided to apply only to Sussex. IDRC was quite supportive of my choice despite the fact that I was going to be using Canadian funds to study in the UK.SPRU and IDRC had a historical relationship.

The director of SPRU at the time, Dr. Geoffrey Oldham, had been instrumental in the creation of IDRC, a unique international funding agency that focused on supporting research in the developing world. Its statutes prevented it from funding Canadians. Andrew Barnett ran its energy program out of SPRU. The journey from Kuni House to Sussex was possible because I had one person, Phil O’Keefe, who believed in me and supported me all the way. It also closed an important loop. The chairperson of ELC, Prof. Wangari Maathai, and Gary Gallon had been confident from the outset that the organization would help advance my goal to go to university. The fact that I felt trusted had a big impact on how I viewed myself. I did not have to struggle with my perception of self-worth. My mentors radiated it into me and all I needed to do was reflect it back in my actions.

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Chapter 4

University Drop-In It was in Rome in 1981 that I took the road to science and technology policy analysis. Before then, I defined myself as working on environmental advocacy.

That was the mandate of the Environmental Liaison Centre that I worked for.

As a researcher and writer for Ecoforum, I didn’t realize that my life straddled the worlds of activism and analysis. By then, I had transitioned from writing feature articles for the general public to explaining complex environmental issues to lay audiences. This involved extensive reading of technical materials anddiscussions with the technical staff of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). I didn’t realize how lucky and privileged I was to have access to some of the world’s leaders on environmental science and diplomacy.

UNEP produced an annual “State of the Environment” report. For each issue, they would bring in world leaders on the theme. My job was to help amplify the messages from the reports to the NGO community worldwide. To ensure that I grasped the technical details I would meet with the experts and present to them my ideas of how I planned to write on the themes. I got valuable feedback.

But above all, each of those sessions was like a one-to-one tutorial. Many of the experts were on leave from various universities and research institutes around the world who saw my interactions with them as a mentoring opportunity. One of those whom I learned from immensely was Prof. Esam El-Hinnawi, who was on leave from Egypt to help coordinate the State of the Environment report.

He imbued in me the importance of being able to communicate in ways that conveyed the essence of scientific findings without compromising the technical integrity of the original research.

As a writer, I considered this to be science communication. But I didn’t realize that I was also laying the foundations for becoming a science and technology policy analyst. Those moments I spent with UNEP experts were an 61

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important part of my technical education. The topics covered by UNEP were diverse and ranged from the depletion of the ozone layer to nuclear power to the loss of biological diversity. There were intense debates among scientists and policymakers on the findings and the proposed actions.

At the time the focus of UNEP under its mercurial executive director, Mostafa Tolba of Egypt, was to bring rigorous scientific analysis to inform global commitment to action through diplomacy. I was at the heart of the beginning of global environmental diplomacy as we know it today. UNEP used science to inform international negotiations on a wide range of environmental treaties.

UNEP didn’t just convene meetings (many of which I attended as part of my work), but it served as a nerve center for global environmental research. It also had a unique composition of members of permanent representatives. These were diplomats appointed by countries to represent them at UNEP, the only UN agency located in a developing country. Because of its technical nature many countries appointed ambassadors with technical training. Industrialized countries could afford to fly experts in from their capitals to attend the various meetings.

Developing countries, however, had to rely on their diplomats located in Nairobi. This resulted in developing countries having more technically trained diplomats in Nairobi than the industrialized countries. Environmental negotiations and discussions led by UNEP were therefore of the highest technical quality one could attend. Developing countries were able to hold their own in the negotiations not because of their numbers but because of the expert knowledge they could bring to the table. Attending meetings at UNEP was for me the equivalent of being at academic lectures. The difference was that UNEP meetings gave me global perspectives I could hardly get in any college setting.

My goal was to write about emerging environmental issues, so I had to endeavor to learn as much as possible. It was the equivalent of a self-guided study. It was remarkably inspirational and intellectually rewarding. I had access to UNEP experts, diplomats, and other professionals attending the events. Each meeting included a reception that gave me additional opportunities to follow up with the experts and expand my knowledge catchment area. Within a short time, I built an international network of experts I could learn from. Equally important to my learning was UNEP’s library that held the top journals and best books on environmental issues. For me a trip to UNEP was like a day in college.

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One of the emerging global issues at the time was loss of biological diversity.

There were two main aspects to the issue. The first was the destruction of ecosystems and the associated disappearance of species. On the board of ELC was architect Dorothy Myers. Dorothy was married to Norman Myers. Norman came to Kenya as British administrator in the dying years of colonial rule. He turned his attention to wildlife photography and produced an internationally acclaimed book, The Long African Day. At the time I joined ELC, Norman had just published The Sinking Ark, which documented the dramatic loss of species.

The book made a direct link between the loss of species and the consequences for human well-being. It showed how dependent we were on biological diversity for agriculture, medicine, and many other areas of human endeavor. Norman became my mentor on biological diversity. He would invite me to his house so I could browse his vast collection of books on the subject.

From Norman I learned a lot about the importance of intellectual courage.

He was much talked about at various conferences that I attended. Much of it was not flattering at all. Some dismissed his work as anecdotal, while others questioned his credentials. I quickly realized that Norman’s work was challenging a long-held view, particularly by the Food and Agriculture Organization, about a very slow rate at which species went extinct. The view then was that the natural rate of loss wasn’t significant enough to throw ecosystems out of balance or warrant additional interventions. Norman’s work pointed to new pressures such as population growth and projected much higher rates of loss than was handed down by international orthodoxy.

Norman was embattled but he did not relent as his research was guided by direct observation. I had the unique opportunity to observe firsthand how science and politics interacted and how battles about ideas can turn personal very quickly, especially if the person challenging received wisdom is from outside the field. Norman wasn’t just an outsider—he held no particular office, so his detractors didn’t have much to go after except his writings. I learned from him that a good book with a reasonable print-run can beat a lot of conference opponents with little effort. In the end, it turned out that Norman’s seemingly outrageous estimates of species loss themselves underestimated the crisis. But he singularly forced large sections of the community to rethink their estimates of species loss.

Over the same period, a different strand of advocacy on biological resources was unfolding. It was over the role of crop genetic resources in world agriculture.

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The debate was part of a larger controversy over the Green Revolution. The gist of the debate was about crop genetic resources being collected from developing countries, stored in gene banks in the industrialized countries, bred into new crop varieties, and then sold back to farmers in the countries of origin at a higher price. Worse, the breeders made them responsive to fertilizers and pesticides that were sold as a package to poor farmers. The case for demanding equity and justice was obvious. The countries of origin needed fair compensation from multinational corporations. The debate was framed as a clash between developing countries and industrialized nations. It was also a battle between farmers and large multinational corporations. The combat lines were clearly drawn and what was needed was to modernize troops. The strategic vision for this battle was laid out in a 1979 book by Pat Mooney called Seeds of the Earth.

Pat was a potato farmer from Manitoba, Canada, who was inspired to fight for farmers by the work of Frances Moore Lapé, whose book, Diet for a Small Planet, had become an important resource for food and environmental activists.

Pat visited me at ELC and introduced his work and approach to me. He was clearly focused on the impact of large corporations. He was as persuasive as he was knowledgeable about the issue. He articulated the threats to farmers with empathy and conviction. He was on a mission to rally a new generation of activists focusing on seed justice. He invited me to a upcoming event in Rome at which the Food and Agriculture Organization was going to discuss the future of crop genetic resources. The purpose of the invitation was to join a group of other activists to lobby for a decision that would enable FAO to help developing countries have greater ownership over their agricultural resources.

The manifesto for this work was Seeds of the Earth.

We assembled in Rome under Pat’s guidance. He briefed us on the issues. At our first briefing, it became clear that we would be dealing with a complex issue to help get governments to create a commission to draw up guidelines on how to share the benefits of plant genetic resources. Just as an aside, while Pat was briefing us, we saw smoke in the corner of the room. It was his computer on fire.

This small incident didn’t distract us from the work of the week.

We had a strong ally inside FAO. José Esquinas Alcázar was a Spanish professor of agricultural engineering who brought his deep knowledge of plant genetic resources to support global diplomacy. José, endearingly known as Pepe, was a forceful personality. He used his charisma and knowledge to command the attention of government officials. Pepe was also an accomplished diplomat 64

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and master of lobbying. He knew which delegates wielded the greatest influence and helped us to talk to them. Our group was quite diverse and included people from Asia, South America, Europe, and North America. We all shared a common interest in seeing the world’s genetic resources adequately conserved and used as a common heritage of mankind. We were opposed to its exclusive use by monopolies.

The setting in Rome was similar to meetings I had attended in Nairobi. But this time, my role was different. I wasn’t there to bring knowledge to diplomacy or learn something new. I was there to market an idea that had been carefully crafted to create a clear dichotomy between the South and the North, farmers and corporations, between good and evil. I felt there was a case to be made for economic justice. But I was uncomfortable with the adversarial framing. I did not believe that the gross categorization was conducive to informed dialogue.

I left Rome for England to visit prospective graduate schools. It was a 36-hour train ride to London. It afforded me enough time to rest after my long hours of meetings in Rome. But it also brought home the reality that I was better suited to analysis than activism. I could clearly see that what we called advocacy at ELC leaned more toward analysis and advice than activism.

The trip from Rome allowed me to reflect on the differences between informing action and lobbying for certain outcomes. I could remember how new information led to changes in the positions of diplomats in the various UNEP negotiations. In Rome, we advocated a position based on a framework that allowed for selective use of information. It was an unchanging world that had fixed moral positions. I did not disagree with the demand for justice but felt a predefined outcome might not be the best approach. In 1983, FAO member states set up an international commission on plant genetic resources under Pepe. These governments continued to negotiate, and in 2007, they adopted a treaty to govern the international exchange of plant genetic resources. The core of the negotiations was to bring the world networks of international gene banks under government control.

While in graduate school at the University of Sussex, my thinking evolved considerably. I felt that developing countries needed to build the capacity necessary to utilize their genetic resources. This position required greater international cooperation, a position that was at odds with those lobbying for greater sovereign control over genetic resources. While doing my Ph.D., I also started to research this topic in parallel. The result of the work was published in 65

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1989 as The Gene Hunters: Biotechnology and the Scramble for Seeds. The book completed my transition from being an activist to being a policy analyst on this issue. The fact that it was funded partly by the Ford Foundation, one of the champions of the Green Revolution, pushed me out of the network of genetic resources activists. I was selected to join the Keystone Dialogue of Plant Genetic Resources to help find solutions to the growing conflict over the issue. Pressure was brought to bear on the organizer of the dialogue to revoke my appointment.

I eventually decided to withdraw from the group.

Around the same time (1989), I was invited to a meeting of genetic resources activists in Harare. Here, previously simmering ideological differences on genetic resource issues came out into the open. While I took the podium to speak, I saw copies of a document being circulated to the participants. At the end of my presentation, the organizer and distributor summed up its contents. It was a copy of a letter I had written to the U.S. Department of Agriculture stating my views on the debate over genetic banks and disagreeing with the North-South divide approach. The letter had been obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The distributor asked me, “Calestous, are you on our side, or are you against us?” My response was short, “I am on my own side.” I then walked off the podium, went to my hotel, and caught the next flight out of Harare to Nairobi.

That incident ended my relationship with the genetic resources activists. Despite this, we would still, on occasion, exchange ideas because there were many other areas where we agreed on substance. Notably, many of the same activists have moved on to take strong positions against transgenic crops. We have certainly grown apart, but we have continued to maintain respect for each other’s founding convictions over the importance of the conservation of biological diversity. We have never openly criticized each other.

The Harare meeting appeared to have two key objectives. The first was to build an African coalition that shared the outlook projected in Seeds of the Earth. It brought together nearly 50 prospective activists in countries that were particularly sensitive to inequities to access to agricultural resources, especially land. Its local champion on genetic resources became Andrew Mushiita. The second objective was to ensure that Africa spoke with one voice. I stood in the way of the second objective, so the use of FOIA to get information that could be used against me was a political move to silence my voice.

The strategy did not work very well. Soon after the meeting, The Gene Hunters was published. It appeared first in the UK from Zed Books, a progressive 66

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publishing house whose titles challenged the prevailing global power imbalances.

It was headed by Robert Molteno, a British citizen of Zambian extraction. The book was published in the United States by Princeton University Press. Both outlets helped to give my ideas access to a broad readership in lay and academic circles. I didn’t need to appear at hostile conferences to defend my views. My readers became my envoys. But more importantly, the book helped to cement my image as a policy scholar and not an activist. I found it necessary to explain the professional group I belonged to. The book would also play a key role in setting my own research and policy advice agenda at the nascent African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) on a variety of issues, such as biodiversity conservation, intellectual property rights, land rights, and biotechnology.

I did not consider the success of The Gene Hunters as a kind of victory against those who thought that my presence would somehow undermine their activities.

I saw it as an addition to the complex ecology of knowledge, viewpoints, and positions on biological diversity and biotechnology. Such interactions, despite their intensity, are part of the evolution of ideas and movements. I do not hold any grudges against those who thought differently about my role. Our differences were in no way personal. On the whole, they acted within the acceptable norms of intellectual warfare. A lot changed over time and we have the opportunity to re-evaluate our positions in light of the unfolding of events that we could not have anticipated at the time.

In retrospect, modern debates on genetic resources no longer have the informed passion or moral commitment of the late last century. Little of it is actually guided by the conviction to conserve biological diversity. Many of the activist organizations appear to have departed from the focus on monopoly power that inspired Seeds of the Earth. They oppose new technologies as such irrespective of whether they are owned by foreign firms or local institutions. The focus on building local capabilities in Africa that guided many early advocates of biological diversity, such as Tewolde Gebre Berhan Egziabher of Ethiopia and Mwananyanda of Zambia, has been replaced by a new form of activism that is purely political and nurtured by rhetoric with little basis in science. Some of it is an extension of alternative business interests in industrialized countries. Their claim that they speak for African farmers is a foil for alternative vested interests.

It is largely ornamental. African farmers, like all farmers, need to have access to any products that will help them improve their productivity and their standard of living and not be used as pawns in ideological struggles that originate elsewhere 67

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Prior to my departure for Sussex University, I had dinner with a team of officials from the International Development Research Council (IDRC) in Ottawa, the agency that was financing my graduate studies. They had respectfully supported my decision to study in the UK and not in Canada. I had a pretty good chance of getting into York University in Ontario but was “turned” down by the Forestry Department at the University of Toronto on the account that I lacked the prerequisites. The dinner was cordial and friendly. Much of our discussion dwelled on their trying to understand my intellectual interests and my level of commitment to the emerging field of renewable energy. But at some point the mood at the table suddenly turned serious even though no word had been uttered. Alan Rix from IDRC, who was also a pastor, looked me in the eyes and stated politely but sternly, “Your job is to go and study and come back. Do not get married and stay in the UK!” I did not say a word but nodded to reassure everyone that I had understood the minister. It was a clear message coming with the authority of a funder conveyed by a person dressed in official church clothes.

Early 1982 saw intensified political activity in Kenya. Professors, especially from Kenyatta University, were arrested and detained without trial while others fled the country. Some of my friends and colleagues, like Kamoji Wachiira who worked closely with Wangari in community afforestation, were thrown into prison. There was a general mood of anxiety in the air. As the months went by, I had started to unplug from local politics. I spent more and more time reading up on technology to prepare for my graduate studies at Sussex. I had been admitted into the MSc on the History and Social Studies of Science (HSSS). It was a unique interdisciplinary course offered through the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) founded in 1965 by Chris Freeman. It was a pioneering center that explored how science influenced the economy. As part of my preparation, I read a large number of papers prepared for the UN Conference on Science and Technology for Development held in Vienna in 1979. The papers covered the full breadth of science and society studies. Up to that point, I approached science as an input into policy and diplomatic processes.

The papers exposed me to a new and exciting angle of how to use science and technology for economic development. They provided vital context to my interests in energy, food security, and conservation. The papers also contained vital insights on the barriers to technological innovation, a phenomenon I observed while following the work on improved cookstoves or on adopting new seed varieties. One of the papers noted that the sewing machine and the ordinary 68

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zipper had been invented around the same time, but the more sophisticated machine was more readily adopted than the simple fastener. It alluded to market and societal obstacles. I was fascinated by this example because it reflected the full breadth of the HSSS course I was going to attend.

Another strand of my preparation was political ecology. There wasn’t much to read on the subject, so I relied on Phil O’Keefe, who shared contacts with me.

They included Prof. James O’Connor at the University of California-San Diego.

Political ecology seemed to me like a hybrid between Marxism and geography.

Then I discovered there was a lot more to the field than I first thought. It started to look like human ecology blended with political analysis. Phil clarified for me that it was about how human relations transformed nature. I made a connection with the unfinished manuscript by Frederick Engels I had read on The Transition from Ape to Man. The extensive reading got me thinking differently about my goals for my years at Sussex. It appeared that one year was quite short to learn a lot of new material. It was really two semesters and a final few months to write a thesis. I started to think that going to Sussex was more about validating what I already knew than learning a lot of new material. This motivated me to read as much as I could in advance. I knew my scholarship restricted me to doing a thesis on renewable energy, but I had a lot of leeway on how to get to the topic. I seemed to almost want to go to Sussex with a draft thesis in my back pocket. Though the reason for my broad reading was misguided, the preparation turned out very useful for my studies.

When the time came, I felt that I was ready for graduate school. Then I nearly never left. There were political activities that nearly prevented me from leaving. I was not aware of them, but some of my close friends were. A week or so before my departure, one of them, Evans Luseno, came to me and said he wanted to take charge or organizing my farewell party. He hinted about an impending crackdown and said he wanted to be sure I left for Sussex as planned.

Luseno and I met through the network of people who had written “letters to the editor.” He said he had colleagues in the military who could take care of the logistics, so I did not have to do anything. By then, all public gatherings were watched closely. I just didn’t know how closely and whether I was on the watch list. His point was to play it safe.

For my last week in Nairobi, I seemed to be surrounded by his military friends full time, all because of planning a farewell party. They chose the venue, which 69

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was an empty, run-down building in Westlands that was about to be demolished.

They vetted the guest list and in a subtle way by limiting the numbers. The idea was to leave from the party at around 8 p.m. and head to the airport for a New York-bound flight that left around 10 p.m. I brought my luggage to the party. It didn’t have much in it except a critical delivery to London. A group of Kenyan radical researchers had been preparing papers for a special issue of the Race and Class journal and analyzing the local political situation. I had been approached by one of them to deliver the manuscript to the journal offices in London. It was the kind of material for which I would have needed military protection, but there was no connection between the authors and my new military friends. The valuable cargo was carefully packed in my carry-on, which was my only piece of luggage.

I was driven to the airport in a military vehicle after the party. Upon arrival, it seemed that some of the security there were expecting us. The check-in was fast. To my surprise I was escorted by my party organizers all the way onto the plane. They left after I was buckled in. I thought about how well-connected Luseno was but also how hospitable the military had been to me. I did wonder a little how they could get this far, but it was clear that something had been organized in advance.

We took off on the 18-hour Pan-Am flight to New York. It stopped over in Dakar to refuel. When I landed in New York the next day and presented my passport the immigration officer said, “You got out just in time.” I asked him why. “There was a coup attempt in Kenya.” The news stung me, and I started to get a headache. I knew Kenya had been politically tense but didn’t know it would come to this. Immediately, I wondered if Luseno knew something and whether his friends were aware or even safe.

As news came through of the chaos and events in Kenya, I felt really lucky that I had left just in time. My plan was to visit friends in the United States before heading to Sussex. Through Gary and Janine, I had met Alexandra Wilson, who was doing her internship at the Hopcraft Ranch east of Nairobi. Wilson was from Connecticut but studying at Stanford to become a vet. We planned that I would stop over in Westport and spend a day at her parents’ house. I was then to fly to California to visit her and also get a chance to visit other people I knew from Kenya. On my list was to travel to the University of California-San Diego to meet Prof. Jim O’Connor. In Westport, I went to the offices of Praeger Publishers to buy one book, Marx and Engels on Ecology, which was reputed to 70

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have the best bibliography on political ecology. By 2017, a used copy of the same book had come to cost $500.

My travel to California afforded me exposure to a totally different cultural environment from the western cities and countries I had visited earlier. It was a lot more open and vibrant. I spent much of my time there going to environmental meetings, most of which were anti-nuclear. Angela Genninno who had worked with me on Renews, took me to a small event to view a documentary on the ecological consequences of nuclear war. The chilling idea of “nuclear winter” was in the air and gaining urgency. I got to meet Prof. O’Connor, who gave me a list of material to read. My last stop before heading to Sussex was San Francisco.

There I experienced my first real technological culture shock. I was in an elevator to the third floor of a building to visit an environmental organization. I pressed the button for the right floor and saw the door close. On the third floor it didn’t open. Then it went back to the first floor. I repeated this sequence three times.

On the last try, I was startled when someone walked into the elevator behind me and asked me if it was going down. I didn’t know there were elevators with two doors. The door on the third floor opened before a large reception area. When I asked for my host, I could tell that the receptionist was working very hard to suppress laughter. Since then, I don’t take chances; I always stand sideways in an elevator.

I arrived at Sussex in August 1982 ready to start on my next educational expedition. I didn’t know what to expect but was focused on leveraging my prior knowledge to give it academic validation. But the first day changed everything.

The international composition of students was sufficient to open one’s mind to new ideas. Almost every continent was represented. I was assigned to live in Park Village 70c. My housemates were from Yugoslavia, Hong Kong, and the United States. The house across the narrow street sounded like the Greek peninsula.

My first night was quiet. But not for my neighbor Vesna Bojicic from Mostar, Yugoslavia. She approached me in the morning saying she had not slept all night because of noises coming from under her room. She pointed 200 meters across the field and said it must have been something from those big trees. It was her first night out of her country. In the end, I didn’t have to protect her from the threat of trees, and she became one of my closest friends throughout my stay at Sussex.

Our circle of international friends expanded to include the Goan sociologist Peter de Souza. From Vesna, I learned many economics principles, and Peter supplemented them with his deep knowledge of sociology and philosophy. My 71

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friendship with Vesna grew to include her friends and family. I visited her in Yugoslavia. We stayed in touch even as the war broke out and reconnected years later. She introduced me to Bosnian music and national humor characters like Mojo and Haso.

There was a strong network of Greek students who opened their parties to everyone. They came from diverse backgrounds but shared common interests in radical politics, for which Sussex was known. At one event I met one of the students. “My name is Euclid Tsakalotos. I did my first degree at Oxford. Where did you do yours?” he said. “I don’t have an undergraduate degree,” I confessed to his surprise. It didn’t lead to a follow-up conversation as it did in many other cases. Tsakalotos moved back to Oxford and much later became Greece’s Finance Minister. He was a student at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS), which hosted most of the international students. IDS was a magnet for international students, partly because it had a bar and a generous student resident from Ethiopia, Taffere Tesfachew, who would open it for late students.

Tesfachew turned gatekeeping into a vocation. He later served as chef de cabinet of the Secretary General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva. He wasn’t the only Ethiopian keeper. There was Mammo Muchie, a diehard pan-Africanist. You could hardly find a place to even stand in his room. There were books everywhere. “I know how to take care of books better than the libraries,” he would explain. This was his way of expressing his passion for reading. His Ph.D. was on the technological transformation of the Soviet Union. It was at IDS that I met Dr. Donald Kaberuka, who had just finished his Ph.D. at the University of Glasgow. Kaberuka would later become Rwanda’s finance minister at a critical period in the post-genocide reconstruction. When he became president of the African Development Bank in Tunis he invited me to go speak to his senior staff on science, technology, and risk-taking. At a dinner at his house he seemed to be particularly proud of the fact that we never dated African students and visiting fellows at Sussex. Many came from the ruling class and with family links to latter-day despots. He also happened to be in a job that involved extensive scrutiny of his background.

There was a lot of learning that took place outside the classroom. This included exposure to new technologies. It was at IDS where I met Steve Pollack from the United States. Steve had connections in the U.S. computer industry.

He knew when the first Macintosh 128K would be available in the UK and wanted me to preorder one. That was in 1984. It cost $2,500 (or $6,000 in 2018 72

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equivalent). I was one of the first owners in the UK and went through three broken disk drives. Soon after I acquired it, Steve came back asking me to invest in an upgrade, making it 512K. I upgraded. He came back later saying I needed Macintosh Plus 1MB RAM. We argued over it because I thought he was just trying to help the company. I said I would never need that much RAM in my lifetime. He was right and I was wrong. Upgrades to the software forced me to upgrade the hardware.

My idea of trying to use Sussex to validate what I knew came to an end when we were asked to propose ideas for our term papers. I was told by one of the professors, Martin Bell, that I could not write papers based on my past experiences. I didn’t have problems with the restriction. By then, my perspectives had significantly expanded, and I had been introduced to a lot of new ideas. I found the lectures and tutorials very stimulating. They gave a lot of meaning and context to what I knew. But more importantly they led me to new avenues that I had not anticipated.

My first six months went very well. Norman Clark asked me if I could consider switching to a research stream leading to a Ph.D. The idea seemed very attractive but not to my funders, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). They had two arguments against it. The first was that I had a contract to do on my master’s degree and needed to abide by it. The second was that if I transferred and in the end failed, I would leave the university with no degree. At any rate, I had only three months left in studies. We agreed I would finish the master’s. IDRC started to process a new application from me for a research project where the output would be a Ph.D. thesis. By the time I finished, the program’s name had been changed from HSSS to that of a new graduate school of Science and Technology Policy managed by SPRU. My MSc thesis was on solar photovoltaics. By then, solar photovoltaics cost about $18/ KWh, well beyond the reach of most developing countries. In fact, the prognosis among my professors was that it was not an option at all. This was also the time when Japan was entering the field with a focus on new materials and manufacturing methods. The shift from crystalline to amorphous cells was just starting to happen so I thought the prospects were better than they looked but still far into the future.

I abandoned the idea of doing a Ph.D. on solar photovoltaics with emphasis on the rising use of amorphous cells. I started to consult other students and faculty on topic options. A researcher, Dr. David Stuckey, had a project funded 73

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by the UN to prepare a report of fuel ethanol use in Africa. David asked me to work with him, and we visited Kenya and Zimbabwe together. After the trip, I decided to do my Ph.D. on the topic. I went to IDS to discuss it with Dr. Raphael Kaplinsky. “What is the purpose of doing a Ph.D.?” he asked me. I went through the usual answers like improving my research skills, deepening my breadth of ideas, and adding something new to the literature. “Wrong! The purpose of doing a Ph.D. is to finish it,” he directed. I took it as seriously as he said and ended up finishing my Ph.D. in two and a half years.

Doing a Ph.D. at SPRU was different from other departments. There was outstanding support from faculty and a lot of practical tips on how to get it done in time. Norman Clark gave a highly instructive lecture entitled “What is a Ph.D.?” It stressed the importance of having a clear argument. It also went into the mechanics of writing the dissertation and the pitfalls that bog students down. I felt like I had an early start. I had used the latter part of my MSc course to undertake extensive literature reviews. The MSc, for me, was like preparing for a Ph.D. The work I did with Starkey also helped a lot. I asked Andrew Barnett and Norman Clark to be my supervisors. Barnett was an energy economist with extensive experience in developing countries. Clark had training in physics and economics. They provided a strong basis for my support. Both had deep knowledge on the economics of science and technology for development. I felt happy with the choice, which I made after extensive consultation with fellow students.

The only issue that I needed to address was where to go and do my field work. I was uncertain about how much access to data I would get in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Much of the information was held by a few key people in the Kenyan government. In Zimbabwe, the information was in the private sector.

It entailed dealing with a small number of people in both places. This posed a risk regarding access. Brazil came to the rescue. There was a group of Brazilian students who offered to help me get access to key institutions and individuals in the country. Some of them had worked in the fuel alcohol sector. It was João Ferraz who strongly encouraged me to go to Brazil. He did it by giving me a Brazilian promotional T-shirt. My classmate and fellow Macintosh owner, Leah Velho, was married to a former staff of the ethanol research establishment.

Paolo Velho would become a key Brazilian resource for me. By then, I had also established contact with Dr. Sergio Trinidade at the UN Centre for Science and Technology for Development. Trinidade was one of the world’s experts on fuel ethanol. He too started to introduce me to his colleagues in Brazil.

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My preparation for field research was short. My supervisors wanted me out in the field as soon as possible. I had sufficient theoretical and methodological grounding to start field work. I had to leave after three months of preparation. This provided me with only rudimentary introduction in Portuguese. I was reassured by my Brazilian colleagues that a few weeks of immersion in Piracicaba would do wonders for my Portuguese. I had learned enough basics before departing for Brazil. But not enough as I found out in my hotel in Rio de Janeiro an hour after I arrived. On TV was a Western movie with cowboys lined up facing their opponents. “Agora!” one of them shouted and a barrage of bullets was fired. This was repeated three times. I went down to the hotel restaurant after this. As I looked at the menu someone walked in and said, “Agora!” My instinct was to run out the door. I didn’t go very far but could hear friendly exchanges of greetings, so I went back. I knew then that I badly needed to work on my Portuguese.

The immersion happened very quickly but not the way I expected. I was hosted by the Luiz de Quiroz College of Agriculture of the University of São Paolo. All the documents I needed for my research were in Portuguese, so I had to improve my reading skills very fast. I got a lot of help from researchers and librarians in basic translation. But my spoken Portuguese suffered greatly. Almost everyone I interacted with either spoke some English or was eager to improve on it. I was quickly known as “the Englishman.” I traveled quite extensively in Brazil, visiting various ethanol-related research institutes and production facilities. I accumulated nearly 70kg of documents, which traveled back to Sussex with me. It was all opened up in the Toronto airport on a stopover to visit Gary and Janine and meet my goddaughter, Kalifi. It took hours as customs officials flipped through every document in search of any possible contraband.

The same happened when I landed back at Heathrow.

I was in Brazil at a momentous time. The country was making its transition from military to civilian rule. There was both optimism and apprehension in the air. Many of the people I worked with were politically active, especially in the evenings. I attended a lot of meetings where the discussions were about political change. Those were my other immersion moments but as a listener. There was great hope when the country elected Tancredo Neves as its first civilian president. Then a cloud of uncertainty spread over the country when he fell ill.

I left Brazil soon after his death in 1985. It was hard enough that Brazilians had lost their beloved leader. It was even harder that he died before taking office.

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I spent my last days in Rio de Janeiro visiting my Sussex classmate Fatima Gaio. We went to the beach, and then I came back and changed into my travel clothes to return to Sussex. A few days after arriving, the receptionist coyly came to inform me that a woman had called from Rio saying that I had left my pants in her mother’s house. Brazilians were clearly adopting American English. It didn’t heighten curiosity until it was communicated to the English, who couldn’t resist conveying what they thought by trying to suppress it. Fatima brought my long trousers when she returned to Sussex.

My next stint of fieldwork took me to the familiar grounds of Kenya and Zimbabwe. I had contacts to go by from my earlier visits with Starkey. I also knew what else to look for as we had already collected some basic information.

In Kenya, one person held custody of the key documents – Lincoln Bailey, a Jamaican expatriate sent to the country by the UK. He wanted to know in great detail what I was hoping to accomplish with my thesis. I didn’t have a grand vision except to finish. I had no lofty theoretical ambitions either. Bailey was in charge of highly explosive information on two ethanol facilities of which one was working while the other had been built but was never operational. The latter was the subject of continuous scrutiny and public debate. I reassured Bailey that my Ph.D. concerned science and technology and not politics. He was incredibly helpful and introduced me to some of his colleagues working on winding down failed public investments. These were the early days of the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

From Kenya, I traveled to Zimbabwe. I spent most of my time there at the Triangle Sugar Co. in Chiredzi, which operated an ethanol plant. The plant dated back to the days when Rhodesia was under international sanctions following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence. It offered me great insights on how an imported technology could be modified to suit local conditions and how this in turn created reservoirs of highly localized knowledge. It was this observation that led me to think about biological analogies that later became the theoretical basis for my Ph.D. The atmosphere at the sugar estate itself was very positive. Back in Harare, it was different. Most of the government officials I spoke with about the project were more interested in talking about how Robert Mugabe was going to destroy the country by filling technical positions with people who didn’t have the relevant training or experience. On a few occasions, they wanted to know what I thought of the future of Zimbabwe. I learned after a few interviews that I needed 76

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to clarify from the outset that I wasn’t Zimbabwean. This helped in getting us to discuss ethanol more quickly.

From Zimbabwe, I visited Zambia and Malawi, which had plans to build ethanol plants. Both of them were at the feasibility study stage.

Upon my return to Sussex, I had the burden of figuring out how to analyze masses of data and documents collected in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Brazil. I considered come comparative analysis, but this was not possible due to the vast differences between the countries and their individual projects. The closest I came was comparing why one of the projects in Kenya failed while the other succeeded. But this would have deprived me of the richness of the Brazilian and Zimbabwean data.

Then came the wisdom of supervisors. Clark and Barnett asked me to write up a short report of what I could discern from the cases I had studied. They asked me to highlight a few key lessons in a document of less than 5,000 words.

This forced me to think hard about what I had learned. It had to be done in a week. The storyline was how foreign technology could be modified and adapted to local conditions, the insight I had developed in Zimbabwe. After reading it, Clark lent me some books and articles on evolutionary and systems thinking.

They provided the starting point for what would become a theoretical exploration I had never planned to undertake. It resonated with my own approach and the material I had read before coming to Sussex. It also helped me to see some aspects of Marx’s analysis on technology from an evolutionary perspective. It led me to interesting scholarship on parallels and differences between Marx and Darwin.

After pinning down the theoretical framework for my thesis, the next pieces of advice were about the mechanics of writing and finishing a thesis in time.

Both my supervisors had vast experience in project management. I had entered that phase where I needed to plan my work, break it down to daily outputs of about 1,000 words, and maintain the discipline needed to get it done. The tools included how to avoid distraction and finding the right time and place to write.

It was in my room from my Macintosh. I also learned to seek help from librarians who were able to get rare material for me from as far away as Japan. Then came the basics of creating redundancy in saving my drafts. It was the obsession with saving my work that most likely led to the death of my disk drives. In the first six months, I had three drives replaced, still under warranty.

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Some of my best advice came from the agony of my fellow students. Many were struggling with compiling references at the end of their drafting, instead of doing it during the drafting. A Sudanese housemate of mine was locked in a battle of wits over splitting one chapter that was 60 pages long. Then there was a student suffering from revisions fatigue. He offered his drafts for feedback too frequently. The most challenging aspect of my thesis writing was building an evolutionary framework for the analysis. There were three main issues. The first was political. At that time, any attempt to apply an evolutionary approach to social or economic change invoked negative reactions. This was the height of the debate of sociobiology. Political scientists opposed the application of biological ideas in social systems. The second problem was finding the appropriate unit of analysis and avoiding being caught up in debates in the life sciences. The third problem was being able to explain social phenomena that didn’t have parallels in biological evolution, purpose being one of them. I developed a framework that could accommodate these three concerns.

The real question was whether I had analyzed the biological metaphors sufficiently to justify applying an evolutionary approach to technological change.

I got my drafts read by a broad spectrum of people with deep knowledge in biology. In the final analysis, the only way to determine whether I had gotten the framing right was to have the thesis examined by a leading expert in the biological sciences who also understood energy technology. This task fell on Prof. David Hall at University College London. Hall was a world expert on photosynthesis who had become a leader in biomass energy.

His selection as my external examiner sent shock waves through our unit, especially among students. Usually on a thesis defense day, students stayed around waiting to celebrate. Passing was always an expectation. Professors worked with students to ensure that a flawed thesis didn’t get to the defense stage. In my case, my fellow students feared the worst-case scenario. By the time I finished and walked out, my colleagues were nowhere to be seen. I was the bearer of good news but with no listeners. In the end, I was able to find a few of my colleagues for an impromptu celebration. I was happy that I had finished my Ph.D. work in record time, something that pleased Raphie Kaplinsky at IDS in Sussex. The best ending of my doctoral work came about two weeks later when Hall contacted me and asked me to meet him. He wanted to find out how we could collaborate on energy research in Africa. That is also when I found out that he was of South African extraction and was passionate about alternative approaches to Africa’s technological transformation.

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During my last nine months of writing my thesis, I was also working on two other major book projects. The first was doing research for what became The Gene Hunters. The other was a joint project with Clark that included material from my MSc and Ph.D. thesis. This book was published in 1987 as Long-Run Economics. Clark and I also contributed a chapter in a major volume published in 1988 as Technical Change and Economic Theory. The book was the first significant effort to bring together researchers from various disciplines to outline an evolutionary approach to technical change and economic theory. The focus of the volume was to offer new departure points but still stay within the confines of the economics paradigm. Long-Run Economics had gone further in embracing a systems approach so our contribution to the edited volume was a historiography of evolutionary economics.

I went to Sussex with the modest ambition of seeking to validate what I already knew. A year into my stay I added the equally modest goal of finishing as quickly as possible. But the support and encouragement I received at SPRU totally changed my focus and enabled me to start exploring new theoretical frontiers that influenced and guided the rest of my professional life. Even better, Clark became my colleague and helped me in the design and implementation of ACTS. After I left the organization, he continued his support through its first 30 years.

Sussex significantly expanded my horizons and prepared me for the test of creating ACTS. In part I was inspired by being in SPRU, which had pioneered the new field of science policy and innovation studies. I was always gratified when at times people referred to ACTS as SPRU in Africa. This was despite the fact that the two institutions had no formal relations. We were joined by a common intellectual heritage. I aspired to see ACTS forge closer relations with a Kenyan university, but the circumstances did not allow. I brought with me to Kenya the same pioneering spirit that characterized SPRU. This found expression in the totality of my Sussex experience. I am grateful that the university became my first and last step in my expeditionary schooling.

It was not a surprise that I came to focus my attention at Sussex on both academic work and also on the mechanics of creating new institutions, especially think tanks. My stay in Brazil for my Ph.D. research was particularly instructive.

This interest wasn’t because I planned to set up a think tank upon my return to Kenya. It was to deepen my knowledge of institutional formation, building on my previous work at ELC documenting and profiling the birth and growth of environmental organizations.

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I returned to Nairobi in August 1988 with $20,000 that had been remaindered from my Ph.D. grant. IDRC had been generous enough to let me keep the money if I finished my Ph.D. sooner. I do not think this was a motivating factor in finishing my Ph.D. in two and a half years, as the offer came when I was already close to finishing. But in retrospect, I think such an incentive would have added to my motivation to finish early. I wasn’t particularly keen on doing in three or more years what could be done in less. But more importantly, I attribute my speed of work to the basic routines I had developed as a journalist and the excellent support I was getting from my supervisors, Norman Clark and Andrew Barnett, other Sussex faculty, and librarians.

When I arrived in Nairobi, I started knocking on the doors of potential funders but it quickly became apparent that I needed to be affiliated with a local organization with similar objectives to mine. During my field research period (1985–’86) I was affiliated with the Public Law Institute (PLI), created by a highly talented Kenyan lawyer, Dr. Oki Ooko-Ombaka. But while there, a senior official in the Office of the President, Catherine Mwango, had called in and told me that my research on renewable energy and biotechnology did not align well with PLI, which had been created to give free legal advice. The bulk of its first cases turned out to be citizens who had complaints about lawyers and general human rights, not necessarily people whose constitutional rights had been violated by the government.

Mwango suggested to me that it would make sense if they opened a file on me that was independent of my affiliation with PLI, which would still continue to manage my research funds. This suggestion carried significant meaning to me. First, it showed that my work was distinctive enough to warrant being given a separate identity. The suggestion was not to find another institution but to be recognized as a technology analyst and not an advocate or activist. It also showed a side of government that wasn’t so evident. Here a government that was being accused of interfering with the work of civil society organizations was encouraging a new field of nongovernmental activity. Many would have worried about having the government open a file on them, but I didn’t.

When I returned to Nairobi, I still reconnected with PLI, but I knew then that I needed to find a different institution through which to raise funds. I considered the Kenya Energy NGO (KENGO) association, but its scope was too national. Through KENGO I met a Nigerian environmentalist, Jimoh OmoFadaka, who said he had set up the African Nongovernmental Network (ANEN), 80

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which could serve my needs. Jimoh had worked with the Ecologist magazine in London and had served in a variety of consulting roles. He didn’t have a house in Nairobi but lived in a hotel, suggesting that he was a person of ample financial means. He offered that I become his first employee if I could raise funds. In talking to donors, a few uncomfortable details emerged. The most important was that despite his claims that ANEN was a registered legal entity, he wouldn’t show me its certificate of registration. I quickly concluded that it didn’t exist legally, so we parted ways. I knew at the time that the government had frozen the creation of NGOs. The political atmosphere in Kenya was quite tense. It was the beginning of the multiparty movement in the country. To put a lid on the spread of opposition activity, the government froze the creation of NGOs and closely monitored the activities of existing ones, especially those receiving foreign funds.

My return to Nairobi was associated with some unexpected responses. My general attire was simple. I mainly wore T-shirts that I had accumulated as a graduate student at Sussex University. One morning on the way to the office, I was confronted by an angry young man who claimed that I was wearing a T-shirt stolen from him. He literally tried to strip me of my T-shirt. I fought back and freed myself from him. The incident reminded me of the global expansion of UK merchandise. I faced a number of challenges in my attempt to find a job.

One of them was that because I had not officially graduated from Sussex, I did not have a Ph.D. certificate to show. I defended my thesis in August 1986, and the next graduation ceremony was in February 1987, long after I had returned to Kenya. My inability to show a certificate and my claim that I had finished my Ph.D. in two and a half years did not add up to prospective employers. Worse, it fueled rumors that, in fact, I had failed my Ph.D. A few prospective employers would ask to see a copy of my thesis. I did show it to a few, but it didn’t contain proof that I had, in fact, passed. It was hard to counter the whisper campaign.

My second obstacle was a lot more serious. My Ph.D. field of “Science and Technology Policy Studies” did not resonate with any of the major employers, whether government or academia. First, I made contact with the Economics Department at the University of Nairobi, which was doing relevant research on industrialization. My MSc was on “Science, Technology, and Industrialization.”

Friends there, especially Dr. Peter Coughlin, made inquiries on my behalf and reported back that I had no chance since I did not have a first degree in

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economics. I didn’t have a first degree anyway, and so I feared I was unlikely to overcome this hurdle in any university department.

Peter and others advised me that my best bet could be in government, especially the National Council for Science and Technology (NCTS). After meetings with senior officials at NCST, it became equally clear that there was no fit there either. They viewed me as a scientist who belonged in the Faculty of Science at the University of Nairobi. They helped me to set up meetings with the faculty. Those meetings were friendly and supportive of my interest, but the faculty there saw me as a policy analyst. They referred me back to government and suggested that I try sectoral ministries. By then I had already observed an emerging pattern in reactions to my interdisciplinary training. I did not fit anywhere. To policymakers, my training was technical, and I belonged with the scientists. To scientists, I had a policy Ph.D., and so I belonged in government.

My Ph.D. and my first book (with Norman Clark), which appeared in 1987, sealed my fate with economists. These works were a critique of neoclassical economics. Long-Run Economics advanced an evolutionary approach to economic growth. In my Ph.D. I concluded that if economics didn’t adapt to the emerging evolutionary and systems approaches, those dominating the field would come from other disciplines. This was viewed by the few economists who read my thesis as an invitation to other disciplines to invade the economics priesthood.

At the time, I was writing The Gene Hunters and supplementing the research I had done at Sussex with new archival material on the history of crop introductions in Kenya. I was learning interesting details about the place of Kenya in the colonial exchange of seeds. I also learned that British settlers in Kenya led an expedition to Yemen specifically to steal coffee seeds. They didn’t know that wild coffee grew in many parts of Kenya naturally, an extension of the Ethiopian center of coffee biodiversity. Armed with Long-Run Economics and expecting to publish The Gene Hunters, I began to consider starting a new institution that could build on my earlier experience at ELC and my doctoral training, of which I now had proof that I had graduated in absentia in February 1987 and had the certificate on hand. I felt that the two books would provide a solid foundation upon which to set up a new institution devoted to policy analysis.

The year 1987 was inspirational for me for another reason. It marked the release of Our Common Future, the report of the World Commission of 82

Editorial body, John Osogo Secondary School, Port Victoria, 1971 (Juma standing, first from R; Kenneth Kobe, Peace Corps volunteer, seated third from R).

Port Victoria Young Stars soccer team (Juma standing, second from R). 1972, Osogo Cup Locational League Championship. “…after crushing the stubborn Nakwanga Express, 1-0.”

Mailbox, Daily Nation, p. 7, June 17, 1977.

Clementina Nabwire Juma (mother) and Sister Celestine (aunt) with Ouma Juma (nephew, R) and Franco (L), ca. 1980.

With Gary Gallon, Executive Director of the Environment Liaison Centre, Nairobi, ca. 1980.

Ecoforum, March 1980.

Environment Liaison Centre Board and staff, Naivasha, Kenya. Wangari Maathai (standing 1st on R; Juma sitting, 1st on R), ca. 1980.

With fellow students at University of Sussex, ca. 1985. Photo: Ann Thrupp.

Family (L to R): Calestous Juma, Alison Field-Juma (wife), John Juma Kwada (father), Hermann Field (father-in-law), Clementina Juma (mother), Kate Field (mother-in-law), 1987.

With Janine Ferretti and his goddaughter, Kalifi Ferretti-Gallon, Toronto, 1984.

With his son, Eric, Montreal, 1998.

ACTS Training Course, 1995. Front row L to R: Cleophas Torori, Prof. Asenath Sigot, H.E. Dr. Joseph Tumushange, Prof. Calestous Juma, Prof. Norman Clark, unidentified, Myra Navarro-Mukii, Prof. John Ouma-Mugabe. Middle row: Ayako Ishiwata (4th from L) Dr. Andrew MacLeod (7th from L), Norman Wambayi (8th from L), Dr. Evans Ouko (1st from R).

As Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity, 1998. Photo: Earth Negotiations Bulletin.

As Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity, 1998. Photo: Earth Negotiations Bulletin.

Greeting Pope John Paul II, The Vatican, 1999. Photo: Foto Felici.

With Hamdallah Zedan, the next Executive Secretary of the CBD (1998-2005), far right. Photo: Franz Dejon/Earth Negotiations Bulletin.

With Eric (son) in Port Victoria (Bunyala), 2000.

Receiving his honorary Degree from Lord Attenborough, University of Sussex, with Alison Field-Juma and Eric Juma, 2006.

At his house site, Port Victoria, 2006.

Demonstration of the One Laptop Per Child at his high school in Port Victoria, 2008.

Prototype bed made by his father for Princess Elizabeth, with Clementina Juma and Eric Juma, 2009.

New Harvest launch with Heads of State, Arusha, 2010.

With Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth at the launch of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (for which Juma was a Judge), London, 2013.

With Prof. Phil O’Keefe and their sons, Cambridge, 2017.

With Prof. John Holdren, former Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under US President Obama, 2017.

Eric Juma (son) and Juma at home in Port Victoria, August 2017.

Thanksgiving with Harvard and MIT students, Juma on Skype from hospital, 2017.

Fishing community in Port Victoria, 2022. Photo: Norman Osodo, CJLF.

Roselyda Nanjala Juma (sister) with Prof. Les Kaufman, Port Victoria, 2019.

Sunset from final resting place, Port Victoria, Bunyala.

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Environment and Development (WCED), chaired by the Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. This landmark report reflected the kinds of ideas I had been toying with at ELC and which were contained in The Quest for Harmony, which I published in 1980. The focus of my graduate work on renewable energy had put me at the forefront of prospective thought leaders on technological and sustainable development.

While at ELC I had been part of a group that argued for what became the global sustainability agenda. In 1982, I helped to prepare a report of a meeting convened in Nairobi to mark the 10th anniversary of the landmark Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. There I would meet world environment leaders from the NGO movement such as Yolanda Kakabadze of Ecuador, Gonzalo Palomino Ortiz of Colombia, and Anwaz Fazal of Malaysia.

In discussions with them and others we developed the idea of forming a world commission to restructure the existing global environmental institutions. We felt then that UNEP’s mandate of being “the conscience of the UN” on environmental matters wasn’t strong enough to accelerate global action to the degree that was needed. Phil O’Keefe and I wrote an article for the Kenyan weekly magazine, the Weekly Review, arguing the case for sustainable development. I had missed the elaboration of the ideas between 1982 and 1987 when Our Common Future was released, as I was in graduate school.

Over this period, my knowledge had considerably expanded, and I had moved from having a teaching certificate to holding a Ph.D. But even more important, I felt that I could contribute to the frontiers of knowledge and action in renewable energy technology, biotechnology, and sustainable industrial development. In addition, I could also bring my training in evolutionary technological change to discussions on the role of science and technology in sustainable development.

Our Common Future gave me an intellectual platform upon which to advance my research interests. It offered more. A global epistemic community around sustainability had emerged from the Brundtland process that I could become part of. Doing so significantly expanded the networks that I had built at ELC. Technologically a lot had changed over those few years. When I left ELC in 1982, our most valued networking tool was the Rolodex. ELC had just installed its first desktop computer as I left for Sussex. There had been so much concern about having it stolen that the executive director Delmar Blasco from Argentina had a special metal case built for it. The computer sat in the case, which had a door that could be locked when we left work. Considerable engineering thought 83

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went into the design of this case. It had holes drilled into its sides to allow for ventilation. I returned from Sussex with a Macintosh computer, having been one of the first Ph.D. students in the UK to have written my thesis on the very first Mac 128K. At Sussex I had made the transition from using a mainframe computer to a desktop.

As I thought about creating something new, I also considered the technological means that were available to me with which to advance my work. Having an Apple computer and a dot matrix printer were major improvements over a typewriter and a Rolodex. I could envisage creating an institution that relied on modern technology and still did not require massive investment in office infrastructure. There was another important institutional design consideration.

Donors generally had made it their policy to focus on funding specific activities rather than put money into building institutions. This approach was intended to provide support to existing institutions and not start- ups like the one I was envisaging. I therefore needed to come up with an approach that would enable me to begin operations without requiring significant investment in institutional infrastructure.

Most people in my situation at the time simply teamed up with senior professionals to work as consultants for international donors. In my case, however, this was not an option for two important reasons. First, the leading sources of consultancy assignments were donor agencies that subscribed to neoclassical thinking. My Ph.D. and first book had already antagonized that community.

Second, that same theoretical framework considered technological innovation as being external to the process of development. Even more significantly, the development paradigm at the time considered Africa as a consumer of imported manufactured products and not as an innovator. These were also the early days of the World Bank’s structural adjustment programs that targeted for cuts rather than investment in infrastructure, science and technology, and higher education.

I was at odds with the establishment in many respects, so I had to think of my work quite in original and innovative ways.

Outside private consulting, certain university units served as key sources of consulting expertise for government and donors. The most notable at the time was the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Nairobi. IDS was modeled after its namesake at Sussex University and one in an international network of similar institutions in former British colonies. It was a home for economists. By the end of 1987, I was relatively confident in 84

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the intellectual foundation that I had developed for a new nonprofit institution.

I also felt that I could leverage new computer technology to reduce operating costs. I had less confidence in being able to attract significant donor support given the theoretical foundations of my planned research. I did not entertain the thought of pandering to other approaches just because they were fashionable.

Many people did, and many tried to recruit me onto their teams to bid for consultancy contracts. Money was not a big motivator for me, and it certainly did not inspire me with a sense of purpose to develop new insights in fields that I considered to be of great importance.

I started to think deeply about what kind of institution I needed to create.

That year had brought to me additional inspiration. Robert Solow of MIT had just won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on growth theory which included an analysis of the role of technological change in economic growth.

Despite differences in the way I thought about evolutionary dynamics, I felt somewhat vindicated in my focus on technology. I was very energized and inspired by the acceptance of his views that the Nobel Prize conferred. My exploration turned toward finding institutional role models that I could emulate.

I had been familiar with the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Washington, D.C., a think tank established by the MacArthur Foundation with the imaginative Gus Speth as its first leader. I had met Speth in 1979 when visiting as part of a team of science journalists. The group from developing countries was invited to Stockholm to be introduced to new research on the impact of carbon dioxide on global warming. Gus was heading the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality in Washington, D.C. February may not be the best month to introduce journalists from the tropics to global warming, but the organizers were smart. They wanted us to experience climate extremes and then think by analogy. It worked. None of the 35 of us had experienced winter. It was my first trip out of Kenya, and I experienced many culture shocks.

In addition to learning about WRI, I read up about the operations of the U.S. Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). I had become familiar with some of their reports as a student at Sussex. I was particularly attracted to their role in providing objective guidance to the legislature. I knew I had to adjust the model to suit an independent nonprofit institution. OTA helped me to start thinking about how a new entity could influence policy on technology in Africa effectively. Thus WRI provided me with a model of the way to structure an independent think tank, while OTA offered an assessment methodology 85

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and a focus on engaging the legislative branch. I refocused my own thinking on the executive branch of government instead. But I needed a source of guidance on how to think about content. I found this in an early draft of the proposed Stockholm International Institute for the Assessment of Environmentally Sound Technologies (SIIESA). The report, eventually published in 1988, had been prepared by the Swedish Ministry of Environment and Energy as a way to implement some of the ideas from Our Common Future. It was officially published in 1988. I benefitted immensely from reading the pre-publication draft. The proposed institute was to be an international version of OTA. It advocated the same methodological approaches but had a global focus.

Through the third quarter of 1987, I had exhausted all avenues of employment, having hit a dead end in trying to find ways to affiliate with existing institutions, and stood at a closed door with regard to registering a new nonprofit organization.

But I had a clear vision of the type of organization I wanted to create and its mission, focusing on international knowledge networks. At the same time, I had the technological tools I needed to use to lower its founding and operating costs.

I turned my attention to exploring how to overcome the NGO formation ban.

My strategy was to share my vision with as many people as I could with the hope that one of them might have a solution. In fact, I had to do this, because everyone I met asked me what my plans were.

I wasn’t alone in trying to think through a problem of this sort. In May 1986, while at Sussex, I was invited to speak at an IUCN Congress in Ottawa. I had finished writing my Ph.D. and was in the final stages of proofreading it. I thought that going to Ottawa would give me a lot of free time to complete the task, as my obligation was limited to one talk. The plan did not work out. At one of the receptions, I met an old friend from Kenya, Nathaniel Arap Chumo.

Nathaniel ran the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya. He was part of a group that had come to Ottawa from another conference in the United States.

Nathaniel introduced me to Professor Hermann Field from Tufts University and his daughter Alison. I talked with both of them, and Hermann quickly moved on to meet other people. I spent the rest of the evening talking to Alison.

We fell in love almost at first sight, and spent the rest of the conference together.

But it almost didn’t work out that way. I was registered both as a speaker and as a participant, with a separate conference mailbox for each role. Alison left notes in the participant mailbox, but initially, I only checked the speaker mailbox.

Serendipity allowed us to reconnect after I discovered that I had another mailbox 86

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that was nearly full. Alison was completing her MSc in natural resource policy and planning at Cornell University. I went back to Sussex and later Alison came to visit. We decided we would move to Nairobi together. All this period, I was thinking of the advice by Alan Rix not to get married in the UK and stay there.

He hadn’t anticipated that I would meet my future wife in his city.

In Nairobi, Alison and I had limited prospects for jobs. As an American citizen, she had to overcome the tough administrative process of getting a work permit. Our future seemed to lie in founding new institutions. We had no income, so we were living off our savings. We remained optimistic about our future together and were open to exploring new professional avenues with full knowledge of our limitations in terms of career paths. We seemed to combine two rather strong negatives for the labor market. I didn’t have an academic discipline, and she wasn’t a Kenyan citizen. These two factors reinforced our desire to be more entrepreneurial in our thinking and focus on creating our own jobs.

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Public Entrepreneurship The late 1980s were an unusual time to start a new organization in Kenya.

There was growing tension in the country as the tempo of agitation for multiparty democracy rose. Rumors spread about the existence of government informers in public places, educational institutions, and government offices. But the intensity of the political atmosphere also inspired deep conversations about the future of the country. This was more prominent in places where people felt safe. It reminded me very much of the period when I lived in Brazil in the 1980s when the country was making the transition from military to civilian rule. Safe spaces, mostly people’s houses, served as impromptu or temporary “think tanks” even for just one evening. Small private gatherings of like-minded people were often the basis for such discussions. We regularly convened such events in our backyard on Rugunga Lane, a practice I had picked up in Brazil during my fieldwork for my doctoral thesis.

There was another source of anxiety. The former Soviet Union was starting to unravel as the Cold War was coming to an end. Many of our discussions centered around the implications of the events in Europe for Africa in general and for donor relations in particular. Kenya had been a key western partner in the Cold War and a major beneficiary of aid to keep it in the camp. There were genuine concerns that Europe would shift its attention to Eastern Europe and Africa needed to be prepared to seek solutions to its problems internally. I contemplated writing a book on this topic under the title Africa Apart.

At the beginning of ACTS in 1988, I had built a vast network of thinkers, mostly from academic institutions but also from the research arms of government. There were disproportionately more lawyers in my network than any other profession. This was for two reasons. First, affiliation with the Public Law Institute (PLI) had brought me in contact with Kenya’s best legal minds 88

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in academia and private practice. Second, I quickly came to learn that policy and law were joined at the hip. Policy research had no impact unless it was codified into law. Conversely, law couldn’t get very far without being guided by policy. In a way, policy without law was blind and law without policy was blind. With this realization it became clear that the legal community in Kenya would become a key resource for ACTS. I started to think that the best measure of the impact of ACTS would be legislative reform. I got so interested in legal studies, especially jurisprudence, that I contacted a colleague at the University of Amsterdam to explore if I could do a law degree by correspondence. This would have complemented my limitations. If Sussex University had a law school when I was there, I would have taken courses. I had encountered many legal issues, especially on intellectual property, during my graduate studies. I had also unearthed in my Ph.D. research how technology transfer, management, and financing contracts affected the ability of developing countries to absorb imported technology.

In a passing conversation, I mentioned to some friends that I was planning to pursue training in law. That group included Prof. H.W.O. Okoth-Ogendo, Africa’s best land lawyer, and Prof. J.B. Ojwang, a leading African constitutional scholar. Both of them told me it would not be necessary as they were there to help me in any way. They became my best friends and most loyal supporters of ACTS. They brought to ACTS their best students as interns. They supported me on all issues ranging from board management to scholarly reviews of research manuscripts. They were as dependable as they were resourceful. Whenever I needed help, they dug deep in their alumni networks. This included practical needs such as installing telephone lines, which was a difficult challenge at the time.

Through my networks, I started to get inquiries from young people offering to volunteer at ACTS. I couldn’t offer them the opportunity because I operated from my spare bedroom at the time. I thought that a good internship program would help us start to train the next generation of policy analysts. Such training would also address the concern among funders that I didn’t have qualified people to hire. My only constraint at the time was the lack of office space. For ACTS to function effectively, we needed to be located in the proximity of the University of Nairobi and the government district. This essentially meant the expensive downtown area of Nairobi.

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Our opportunity to expand came in an unexpected way. Dartmouth College in the United States operated a summer program in Kenya for its students.

They rented space in St. George’s House on Parliament Road just off Harambee Avenue, where the Office of the President and most of the government ministries were housed. They received government permission yearly to run their program in Kenya. But 1989 was a bad year for them. They had 22 students committed to a Kenya summer trip but didn’t have a permit to run it. There was anxiety that the students might write about the political events in the country and could be sources of negative publicity upon their return to the United States. The director of the program that year, Prof. Andrew Friedland, flew to Kenya ahead of the students to try to resolve the issue. He contacted us for help. I couldn’t offer him any good advice but promised to consult.

I went and talked with Catherine Mwango at the Office of the President and offered to serve as a host for the program and take responsibility in the event that students became a source of bad press for Kenya. I didn’t see it happening as the focus of the program was environmental studies. There was one local lecturer to the program who was highly critical of the government, but I didn’t think that he would sway the mood of the students so much that they would turn into enemies of Kenya. Catherine put the burden on my shoulders, and the students came to Kenya under these unwritten arrangements. When the program ended, Dartmouth decided to close the Kenya program due to the political uncertainties in the country. We moved ACTS operations into their offices, and they moved their program in subsequent years to Zimbabwe. This move was not unusual.

Many other organizations including donors moved their projects to the newly independent Zimbabwe. Our new offices were strategic for another reason. We were across the street from the Professional Centre, which hosted events. A block away was the Kenyan Parliament, and the Kenyatta International Conference Centre and the Law Courts of Kenya were also a minute away. We were colocated with the three branches of government. The University of Nairobi was 10 minutes away. We could never have hoped for a better location, except for some reason, we were on the third floor of the building without an elevator.

We moved to St. George’s House ready to expand our operations despite our limited budget and uncertain income. My attitude then was that I was running an experiment, and if it didn’t work out, I would simply shut it down and try something else. The joy of trying out something new is that you don’t have to be ashamed of failure. In fact, a large part of experimenting is precisely about 90

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looking to fail and deriving pleasure from it. Except that there were limits to how much one could do that with other people’s money. So we set out to experiment using our own time and the little income we generated from our publishing operations, which is how we paid for our personal bills.

Soon after we moved to St. George’s House, we got our first formal applicant for the internship. It was formal because John Ouma-Mugabe came to see us with a detailed, handwritten proposal on how to bring development to a poor, marginalized, and flood-ravaged part of Western Kenya called Bunyala, the same place I called home. John had been introduced to us by Chris Aleke-Dondo who had at that time moved from the government to join a development NGO called K-REP. Chris’s family left Bunyala and settled in Kitale in the Rift Valley. They were among the many families that had been displaced from Bunyala by floods.

John had just graduated from the University of Nairobi with a BSc in agriculture. From the first few minutes of our conversation, it was clear that he possessed a strong sense of purpose and could accomplish much with a little guidance. John had apparently considered becoming a priest earlier in his life.

Such was his dedication to service. We couldn’t pay him, as we had no funds, but we offered to work with him to teach him how to write proposals. John’s writing contained very strong ideas, but he had not benefited from support to improve his writing skills. He seemed to play it safe by randomly capitalizing words. This obviously hadn’t been a handicap, as he had been one of the top students in his graduating class. Alison and I divided our time supporting John’s writing on style and content. He was a quick student and was highly motivated.

I introduced him to many of the foreign organizations that visited us. He helped to write some of our proposals requested by potential funders, which were mostly research institutions in Europe seeking African partners.

After working for us for nearly a year writing many proposals that resulted in nothing, a breakthrough came. We got funding from a Dutch organization to support one of our proposals. At the same time, Prof. Gerd Junne at the University of Amsterdam, who had seen John’s writings, suggested that he could admit him into his Ph.D. program under his guidance. In one year of doing independent research and writing proposals, John had improved so much that he could get into a Ph.D. program. This experience gave us the idea and proof that we could work with interns for a limited period as a way to prepare them for graduate studies. We developed this as our approach to employing young

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people. This was selected for those who wanted to pursue further studies. We worked with our university associates to identify them.

John left for the Netherlands before he had a chance to earn a salary from the grant he had raised. The prize for his hard work turned out to be the opportunity for further studies rather than a salary. Our model of hiring young people for short periods was also dictated by the duration of grants. It went against the standard expectation of university graduates, which was to find a permanent job, preferably in government, get married, settle down, and raise a family. We needed to show that local think tanks could be as competitive as international agencies in influencing public policy. We didn’t have the resources or power of the agencies. They owned government. They had their close associates working in government. They trained Africans to do what they wanted and paid them very well to do so. They practically owned the policy space, which they controlled through economic dogma. So instead of seeking to compete, we chose to define a new policy space on issues such as science and technology that they did not consider to be important to Africans.

ACTS was born 25 years after Kenya’s independence. There was a lot of fanfare about this quarter-century landmark, but it was also a moment for retrospection. The push for multiparty politics was just our avenue that gave impetus to efforts to rethink the country’s future. Others questioned whether colonial practices had truly given way to opportunities for independent action. In his work, Okoth-Ogendo demonstrated the impact of constitutional continuity in property rights systems and institutions. In my discussions with Ojwang, we observed that the same continuity marked the industrial property regime.

Kenya had a dependent industrial property law requiring nationals to use the UK Patent Office and UK patent agents in case they wanted to apply for a patent.

The absence of a Kenyan patent office also deprived the country of information when patents expired. It was rumored at the time that Kenya continued to pay royalties on products whose patents had expired. There were even suggestions of collusion between Kenyan government officials and agents of the firms that sold the products after their patents had expired. Kenyan researchers were agitating that their ideas were being “stolen” from them and patented elsewhere.

They were challenging the government to find a way to protect their ideas. The National Council for Science and Technology (NCST) was running a series of workshops for researchers on this issue.

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After reviewing the situation, we came to the conclusion that the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Republic of Kenya in 1989 provided the best opportunity to contribute to the policy debate on industrial property protection.

We needed to do three important things. The first was to elevate the quality of the discourse. The second was to propose concrete steps forward. The third was to act quickly within the anniversary window—which was one year. We feared the political momentum would fizzle out soon after that and the window for action would close. Because of the legal dependence, Kenya did not have the kinds of intellectual property lawyers we needed for the task. J.B. Ojwang offered to educate himself on the issues so he requested me to buy specific books on property law for his use, which I did on my subsequent trip to London. He also brought to the task a brilliant student of his, Bernard Sihanya as a research assistant.

Our idea was to convene an international research conference on intellectual property to clarify the issue and propose specific actions. The product of the conference would be a book that we hoped to disseminate in academic and policy circles. But more importantly, we planned to present the findings of the research conference to the government for action. At the time, we owned a laser printer, which had been flown in from California by Alison’s former classmate.

Hope Rugo and her partner Martin Scott had asked what they could bring as a wedding present. We said a laser printer. Suddenly a laser printer was on its way from an Apple store in California to help us establish Africa’s first desktop publishing unit based on the technology. This would be critical in getting the results of the conference published in time. The conference attracted presenters from international organizations such as the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva. UNCTAD’s representative, Dr. Abdulqawi Yusuf, is now a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Our original intent was not to publish the book ourselves. Zed Books in London had just released The Gene Hunters, and so I thought they could publish this one as well. They expressed interest only in issuing it as a monograph for libraries. They didn’t think there was a market for a book on intellectual property rights in Africa. So we decided we would publish it ourselves, and to our surprise, the first 1,000 copies we printed of Innovation and Sovereignty: The Patent Debate in African Development sold out in two months. This also told us that, contrary to popular opinion, there was a market for technical books in Africa. It helped to counter the claim that African policy makers didn’t read.

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But there was another important lesson that I learned in the process that later became critical to our work. I sent the manuscript to NCST secretary Dr. Frederick Wang’ati for his information with an indication that we intended to have it published. At the time, I thought that publication was the way by which one could influence policy. Wang’ati asked us to delay publication until he had had a chance to review it in detail. He then offered to write a foreword for the volume, which we accepted. Over this waiting period, Francis was working the system to set the stage for the repeal and replacement of the existing law. We didn’t know that he was working on this.

When the book was published it reinforced the internal legal reform process that Francis had initiated. It also supported the series of workshops he had been running. This relationship gave meaning to the phrase “collaborative criticism” that Minister Wilson Ndolo Ayah had offered me as a policy research approach.

Our goal was to effect legal change, but at this point, we were uncertain about the outcome of our work. The pressure to have a local patent system was reinforced by the media frenzy that a Kenyan working at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) had developed a cure for HIV/AIDS, a claim that later turned out to be false. Not long after the book came out, I went to Stockholm for a conference. While I was there, I got a call that someone in the Kenya Office of the President wanted to talk to me. I called back, and the message was short. The President of Kenya had asked me to help draft Kenya’s new industrial property bill to be presented to Parliament without delay. I traveled home immediately, making a stopover in Geneva at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), where I picked copies of their model law and other national industrial property laws. I teamed up with J.B. Ojwang and Bernard Sihanya, and we went to work. We relied heavily on additional input from Okoth-Ogendo.

We decided that we wanted a law that facilitated creativity and innovation and not just industrial property protection. We also wanted a law that could cover ideas coming from local innovators such as herbalists and informal sector creators. At the time Kenya had just created a ministry in charge of the informal sector and I had met its minister, Sam Ongeri, to specifically figure out how to foster innovation in that sector. Our first draft did not go down well with the staff of the Office of the Registrar-General, which enacted bills for consideration

by Parliament. They particularly questioned the use of the term “to facilitate.”

They argued that the job of government was to “regulate,” “control,” “stop,” and “curtail.” To them, facilitation belonged to the private and NGO sectors. We 94

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argued the case that we were proposing a postcolonial role for the government as it was 25 years after Independence. They reluctantly accepted our formulation, which we thought was more suitable to the Kenyan situation as backed by the underlying research published in Innovation and Sovereignty.

The mood in the global civil society movement at the time was quite hostile to intellectual property protection. It was at the height of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations, which included strengthening intellectual property rights.

African countries were being lobbied to oppose the proposals that ended up as the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) under the World Trade Organization (WTO). Our approach wasn’t to protect industrial property per se but to create an environment that would foster creativity and innovation in Kenya. We conceived the industrial property law and its enabling organs are part of a large national system of innovation. Opponents of intellectual property based the arguments on the perceived use of the system by large corporations to control markets in developing countries. The U.S. government gave them ammunition by arguing that their country was losing its global competitive edge because of piracy. There may have been some truth in the claim for some industries, but the argument was not a good substitute for low levels of investment in R&D for industrial advancement.

The challenge for Kenya and other developing countries wasn’t inventing but starting to use technologies that already existed and entering into joint ventures with their owners. Having access to patent information was a critical starting point for industrial learning and industrial collaboration. It was for that reason that the Kenya Industrial Property Office (KIPO) was located across the street from the University of Nairobi’s main campus. A renowned biochemist Prof. Norah Olembo was appointed to serve as the founding director of KIPO to entrench this view. The office later changed its name to an institute, putting it in the family of other research entities that formed part of the national innovation system.

These early experiences taught us important lessons on how to position ACTS. The first was combining research and training through our recruitment program. The second was using conferences as a tool to bring the best available knowledge to support policymaking. The third was the capacity conversion of existing expertise to address emerging issues. Finally, policy was Incomplete until it was codified into law with enabling institutions. In just over a year, we had demonstrated the viability of policy research in Africa. The process of founding 95

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the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) turned out to be an exercise in funding it. I had actually already co-founded it in 1982, although I didn’t know it at the time. While talking to people I met an old friend, Chris Aleke-Dondo [mentioned above] whom I had worked with on cook stoves while at ELC. Chris worked with the National Council for Science and Technology (NCST) housed in the Office of the President. I explained to Chris my vision for a think tank and asked for his advice on how to overcome the government’s suspension of registration of new NGOs. “But you already created that organization,” he said.

I was naturally baffled. He explained to me that an NGO called Technoscan had been registered by myself and Mutua Kihu from the Ministry of Environment.

It had never been worked, so it was lying dormant. Under Kenyan law, such organizations could easily be deregistered. All I needed then was to revive it, if indeed it had not been deregistered.

The story of Technoscan goes back to my last months at ELC. I had been on a consultancy assignment by the National Environment Secretariat (NES). Mutua Kihu was the administrator of the assignment. This was my first consultancy job, so I asked my friends what was really involved and what I needed to know that may not have been stated in the contract. More than one person told me that it was imperative to share a proportion of the payment with the project administrator. This idea did not sit well with my conscience. If I had known this earlier, I would not have accepted the assignment. In my conversations with Mutua, there had never been any hint that there was more to the requirements than delivering an acceptable product.

I thought hard about how to deal with the issue and thought that I could use the money to fund the registration of an organization to advance my budding interest in technology. Much of my work at ELC was writing about NGOs so I thought I could try to set up one myself. When I went to pick up my payment for the work, I was prepared to put this idea to Mutua and to invite him to join hands with me. To my surprise, he had a similar idea but didn’t have the funds for the registration process. We quickly agreed to pursue the process. The choice of the name “Technoscan” was easy. There was a well-known development consulting organization called Technoserve. Ours was just a variant on the name. I didn’t think very much about the details as I was headed to Sussex in two months. We filed the application, paid all the fees using my consulting income, and forgot about it. Mutua and I were the only trustees of the company limited by guarantee with no share capital knew at the time from working on 96

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NGO profiles that there were many variations on the use of this part of company law. Many were public interest groups that used the funds they raised for the stated purpose. Others used such organizations to enrich the trustees through a variety of compensation arrangements, including attending board meetings.

Others were more transparent and stated that the organizations were indeed consulting firms with board members being the partners.

I conducted a search with the registrar and found that Technoscan existed, so I tracked down Mutua and established that indeed he had the certificate of registration. Since we were the only two signatories on the application, none of us could work it without the consent of the other. It was in discussing my vision with him that it became clear that we had different objectives at the time we registered the application. He envisaged Technoscan to serve as a consulting firm, and I thought of it as a public interest organization. But we agreed on one thing: we couldn’t resolve any difference if the organization remained dormant and risked being deregistered. So we settled on working to revive it and leaving operational issues to be addressed at a later date.

The process of reviving Technoscan turned out to be more complex than we thought. The suspension of registration of NGOs also applied to reviving dormant ones. I learned that some people had several dormant NGOs under their names (usually as family businesses), which they would revive and deploy for a variety of purposes. The government had noticed that dormant NGOs could become new assets under the suspension environment, so they closed the loophole. I went back to asking colleagues for a way out. Dr. Oki OokoOmbaka told me that the issue could only be resolved politically and not legally.

He suggested that we seek an audience with the Minister for Research, Science and Technology, Wilson Ndolo Ayah. He arranged the meeting.

The meeting had three objectives. The first was to present a copy of my book, Long-Run Economics, to him. The second was to outline my vision for the proposed think tank, linking it to the argument in my book. The third was to seek his support to revive Technoscan to perform the tasks of the proposed think tank. The meeting was billed by Oki as a courtesy call on the minister.

When we arrived, the minister was accompanied by his senior staff including his permanent secretary. The senior staff took detailed notes of the discussions, which lasted about 45 minutes. Ndolo Ayah was genuinely interested in public policy research. Just before Kenya’s independence, he had been one of the first Kenyans to work for a polling company in the country. He asked very relevant 97

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questions and offered his own advice. The meeting was more like a seminar than like a courtesy call.

He asked me what approach I was likely to take when doing research on matters where government had a strong interest. “I plan to engage in constructive criticism,” I said. He responded, “I suggest collaborative criticism.” I took note of the phrase but decided not to ask him what he had in mind. I later used the phrase in the first promotional brochure I produced for the organization. We left the meeting with a green light to revive Technoscan. Their only request was that I keep his office regularly informed on my progress. He had acknowledged that what I was proposing would be the only organization of its kind in Kenya.

It turned out that it was the first in Africa too. With this support, I worked with Mutua to agree on a change of name and revisions in the objectives of the organization. We agreed that we would each recruit an equal number of board members, which we did.

Before we could have the change of name accepted and the organization revived, we had to go through a review process to inspect our offices and physical assets to support the organization. Four officers visited my residence on Rugunga Lane in Nairobi West. The office for ACTS was our small spare bedroom. Our only physical asserts were an Apple Macintosh IMB, a dot matrix printer, a table, a couple of chairs, and a bookshelf. The inspection visit was very short. I had some vague answers about how I intended to raise funds. Years later I was told that one of the officers had commented that ACTS was one man and a computer and so posed no threat to the security of the Republic of Kenya. In April 1988, ACTS was registered under its new name and constitution. One of the changes I introduced in the constitution was a two four-year term limit for the Executive Director.

Reviving the organization looked hard at the beginning. But the next phase of getting ACTS up and running was equally daunting. At the same time of the approval, we also had a friend, Kiraitu Murungi, help us to register a private consulting and publishing firm called Initiatives Ltd. with Alison as the Managing Director. Kiraitu would later join politics and serve in various roles as a government minister. He never billed us for his legal services and at one point we tried to have him present an invoice so we could pay him. He declined our payment. I divided my time between ACTS and occasional support for Initiatives, which had established itself as a publishing service specializing in technical books, mostly of conference proceedings. We knew it would be a while 98

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before ACTS could pay me a salary, and it was. The publishing business started as an accident. A colleague at the Law Faculty at Nairobi University, Prof. Charles Okidi, had held a conference and was having difficulties getting the proceedings edited and published. Alison offered to help him, and she got it done. That gave us the idea of building a business around scholarly publishing. This became the core mission of Initiatives as well as the publishing arm of ACTS. Long before ACTS was registered I knew I would face a tough challenge raising funds. Nearly everyone I talked to either discouraged me from pursuing the idea or quickly changed the topic of conversation. Program officers in the donor community were more direct in their view that what I was considering was not fundable. It wasn’t clear whether they thought it was a bad idea or whether they didn’t see a pathway for funding it. But they had at least three reasons why an independent think tank in Africa focusing on technology was not fundable.

The first reason was that there was no precedent for such an institution. This was not a particularly good argument to put to someone who knew that the idea was new in the first place. The second reason was that I would not find anyone to recruit as Kenyan universities did not train the kinds of analysts I would need.

The third reason was that policymakers didn’t read, so it didn’t make sense to create an institution whose objective was to generate, publish, and disseminate policy-relevant knowledge.

I didn’t try to argue back on the three objections except to point out that there were always moments when new things had to be created. The other two reasons became challenges I needed to overcome in the design of the institution.

On capacity, it became clear that I would need to have an in-house training program from the outset. On the point of reading, I already had some experience in science communication, so I needed to think carefully on how to reach government policy audiences. The one thing that I could not easily overcome was the clear message that a technology policy think tank would be unfundable and as a result a non-starter. I thought that I would need to demonstrate the feasibility and relevance of the institution before I would expect funding. I also knew from a donor programming perspective that it would be difficult to create budget lines to finance just one institutional category.

The objections didn’t discourage me. To the contrary, they encouraged me to think more creatively about how to finance the start-up phase. In addition to support from Initiatives Ltd., I also considered taking on consultancy assignments and using the revenue to fund research and publishing. My thinking was to 99

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start off with publishing existing material first and demonstrate policy impact before embarking on new research. In fact, there was no other viable option on how to proceed. This path was obvious as we had access to desktop publishing technology that would make the model work. It turned out that not every donor was averse to the idea of think tanks. I found this out when I met Harold Miller, the representative of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in East Africa. I knew Harold from my ELC days when he sat on the board as the local alternate of an international trustee. I recalled him as a deep thinker and person who was passionate about sharing ideas. His real commitment was to issues of social justice writ large.

I met Harold by chance, and he invited me to his office to learn more about my graduate studies experience. At the time I was frantically trying to meet the publishing deadline for The Gene Hunters and naturally eager to talk about the book to whomever was willing to listen. After hearing about my Sussex experience, Harold asked about my current projects and future plans. I told him I was writing a book and planned to use it to guide research in a new think tank I was planning to set up. He asked me a few more questions about how I planned to link the book to the work of the institution. After listening to my answers, Harold pulled out a checkbook and wrote a check in my name for $2,500. I was speechless and stunned by the act. “How do I account for the money?” I asked.

“It is between you and your conscience,” he said. This was my first grant for an institution that had not been created yet and for a book whose contents he had not seen. It became evident to me at that moment that not every donor was unwilling to take risks.

It also dawned on me that I would need to create an institution that built its accountability on trust and transparency. I thought I would use the money to cover the costs of consulting as widely as I could to be sure I got the best ideas possible upon which to establish research activities. This mostly consisted of inviting people out for coffee or meals. I used some of the money to buy basic office supplies. I spent much of my time at a café called the African Heritage, which served as my office. It was conveniently located in downtown Nairobi and halfway between the University of Nairobi and Harambee Avenue where most government offices were located.

Even though there was no expectation to prepare a report to account for the use of the funds, I diligently kept a receipt for every expenditure, no matter how small. I had a convenient way of storing the receipts: I carried a backpack 100

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wherever I went and its only valuable contents were the receipts. The backpack was a constant reminder to me that my conscience was the only thing at that time that would determine my success or failure. Indeed, less than a month after the meeting with Harold, I got a message that the head of the local office of the Lutheran World Relief (LWR) wanted to see me. The meeting seemed choreographed. It went over the same questions and answers I had covered with Harold. At some point, it seemed like it was a test for consistency. The World Lutheran Relief offered to match the MCC support. In less than a month I had $5,000 of unrestricted funding. I felt positive and energized by the contributions, but also apprehensive not knowing what lay ahead.

Not long after the LWR relief meeting, I got another message that the head of the Ford Foundation office in Nairobi wanted to see me. I met with Dr. Salih Booker, who asked me similar questions. He referred me to his program officer, Dr. Dianne Rocheleau. Dianne was on leave from Clark University in the United States and was helping to put together a network of grantees. They were looking to give up to $250,000 to new and promising ideas in a broad range of areas, especially in the environmental field. My work fit the profile of what they were planning to fund. But there was an obstacle. I did not have suitable affiliation through which they could run the grant. The foundation reviewed the situation and proposed that I be considered for an individual grant. In this case, I would be personally accountable to the foundation. The level of funding would be lower and so would the reporting requirement. I was awarded $50,000 by the Ford Foundation a few months after the initial meeting.

The support from the three institutions provided powerful motivation for me in creating the new organization. I used the funds to support research assistants to help me complete writing The Gene Hunters. It also helped me in communicating my plans to other people. The fact that I had been awarded individual grants sent the signal to the Nairobi research community that other people and organizations valued policy research and were willing to invest in it. As part of my preparatory work, I convened numerous consultative sessions, mostly with academics and policymakers. These were small meetings of no more than five people. This number was dictated by how many people restaurant or café tables could comfortably hold. It was also an optimal number of people to convene without the help of administrative support. But it turned out to be the best size for in-depth discussions. The openness with which people were willing to share ideas was only matched by their offer of support. Whenever we couldn’t 101

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find a café or restaurant that wasn’t too noisy we simply looked around for a tree with sufficient shade to protect us from the sun. I held quite a few such meetings in Westlands with participants from the science and agriculture campuses of the University of Nairobi. Initially, I envisaged the meetings as opportunities to test out some ideas. But they turned into community-building forums that would later be vital in the evolution of ACTS. Many of the scholars who showed continuing interest became research associates or professional fellows of ACTS. Others ended up becoming trustees of the organization. I had not set out from the outset to embark on such an elaborate process of consultation. It just unfolded, mostly because I trusted that there were people out there who in one way or another had faced similar challenges and were willing to share their experiences. The academic community was quite different from the donor community I was interacting with initially, who generally greeted my ideas with skepticism at best and outright hostility at worst.

The consultations with the academic community also came much later in my thinking process. It helped a lot that I had funding from MCC, LWR, and the Ford Foundation. I was seen as someone who was dedicated enough to the cause and whom others put trust in. It also helped that the result of my graduate studies had just been published in Long-Run Economics a year after finishing my Ph.D. The fact that I was working on The Gene Hunters also reinforced my standing as an emerging member of the scholarly community. Nairobi was a small place and word went around quickly and the frequency of my consultations increased.

The people I initially contacted started bringing their colleagues. Many of the ideas they shared were either from their own research or were new and hadn’t been advanced. The meetings provided all of us with the opportunity to conduct open discussions on a variety of issues well beyond the remit of science and technology policy studies. They served as a forum for me to educate myself on a wide range of new issues from a variety of perspectives. By their very nature the discussions were interdisciplinary. None of the meetings were convened with a set agenda. This was not deliberate. I did not have the administrative capacity to work through setting an agenda. It turned out that this open format suited most of the participants as discussion issues emerged from self-introductions by the participants. Some people would bring follow-up questions to later meetings, but generally I looked forward to new ideas at every meeting.

By the time we got the organization into its first year, we had a solid foundation upon which to proceed. We had built a sizable network of supporters 102

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among academics and policy makers. But even more important, we had clearly laid a path for policy analysis and eliminated the original ambiguity over what kind of organization we hoped to become. As in so many other fields of human endeavors, preparation became the most important investment that we made.

Some of it was planned, but most of it was done in response to obstacles. In all cases, I sought to learn as much as I could about the nature of the challenge and then learn some more about how others had dealt with similar challenges. This preparatory phase of the organization didn’t differ much from the experiences of others. But as soon as we started operations it became clear that we were not riding the tiger; the tiger was riding us. Everything became experimental.

I knew that I would some day need to leave ACTS, but my departure turned out to be more difficult than I had thought. I knew there would be resistance, so I incorporated various strategies into the design of the institution. First, I surrounded myself with professionals more qualified in organizational change than I was. They were associates of ACTS. Second, I started training for succession from the beginning and helping promising young people to go to various other institutions to study science and technology policy. Third, and more important, I revised the constitution of ACTS to include a limit of two four-year terms for the executive director. I envisaged the possibility of eventually taking on a nonexecutive role in the institution.

I had a good knowledge base for building succession into the design of ACTS. When I worked at ACTS, I came across many examples of NGOs that had collapsed or stagnated because of the “founder syndrome.” There were cases in Nairobi where the syndrome had turned into a leadership cult that threatened both the founders and their organizations. Some were openly talked about in donor circles. At a higher political level, the advent of multiparty democracy had also generated debate of presidential term limits.

Though I didn’t promise any of my staff the leadership position, there was one person who expected to take over from me as soon as he completed his Ph.D. Mohammed Khalil was affiliated with ACTS for a short period before going off to Sussex University to do his Ph.D. under my former supervisor, Prof.

Norman Clark. Like me, Khalil did his Ph.D. on renewable energy, specializing geothermal power. We seemed to have followed the same path. Upon his return he showed great ambition to take over from me. I invested time in guiding him on fundraising, project management, and the basic routines of running an organization.

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Khalil felt he was ready and couldn’t wait any longer. He got support from a donor to create the Africa Centre for Environmental Studies. Its constitution was similar to ours. When I heard about it, I thought it had the name that fit our operation better. We were working largely on the environment and natural resources. I was criticized by some of my board members for appearing to overpromise succession. I didn’t perceive any of the people I was training as a threat since I planned to step down anyway. Just not that soon. This incident got me thinking about the unintended consequences of my planned exit. I didn’t know how it would actually work out, so I wanted to start the formal process early enough so as to be able to adjust strategies in case of any missteps. I wanted to see a smooth process that allowed me to ease into a different role. When I informed the board that I intended to step down as provided in the constitution, there was a long moment of silence. The round of comments went as if rehearsed.

Everyone voiced concern that my departure would lead to the collapse of ACTS. I tried to explain the measures I had put in place to smooth the transition. One of the board members suggested they amend the constitution to remove the clause. It wasn’t a wise idea to pursue that route.

Similar concerns were expressed by our donors. But they went further. A few threatened that they would pull their funding if I left. They didn’t know how determined I was to leave. They explained that they were funding me and not the institution. This argument reinforced my resolve to leave. They asked if I had been offered other jobs. They didn’t believe that I wanted to leave because the constitution of the organization said so. The campaign to stop me from leaving took an ugly turn. Rumors swept through donor circles that I had probably misappropriated the organization’s funds and wanted to leave before I was discovered. Then the audits started. Donor after donor asked for our accounts to be audited. After each audit we had to respond to audit questions. In my last few years, I had become used to audits. I had even started my own internal audits, which were done every six months. When I started it, my accountant quit his position thinking that I was looking for a reason to fire him. When we finally audited the accounts, we found quite a few bookkeeping errors but no mismanagement of funds.

We would spend time with one donor’s auditors and respond to questions, only to be hit soon after by another request. The donors asked for the whole organization to be audited, not just their grants. We became so good at it that at one point I decided to respond to an audit request before the actual audit was 104

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done. “I have enclosed for your consideration my response to questions arising from your forthcoming audit report,” my letter read. It ended the audits but also reinforced my commitment to step down. I was admonished in various public forums of planning to abandon my baby. The organization didn’t have the funds or the will to hire someone from outside. Over this premise the board staff thought I would change my mind. Some staff decided to leave before I did.

The word in donor circles was that ACTS now needed a management review to establish the cause of the high staff turnover. To start the succession process, I tendered my resignation as Executive Director and appointed Myra NavarroMukii, a Filipina statistician, in my place.

It was clear from the outset that Navarro-Mukii did not enjoy the full support of the board, donors, or staff. Some board members let me know privately that they felt insulted by her appointment. A few months later Navarro-Mukii resigned from the organization to focus on motherhood responsibilities. I agreed to take over from her but as acting executive director.

Over this period, another line of scrutiny had opened up. Because we were co-located with our private firm, Initiatives Ltd., which my wife Alison was managing, the donors wanted to be sure that their funds were not subsidizing the private company. We knew that the flow was in fact in the other direction in the form of publishing services. Our residence and car were being financed by Initiatives, making it possible for ACTS to offer me a modest salary. In fact, for a few years, I worked without pay. ACTS carried forward the back pay as a debt to me. We eventually had it written off.

Part of this scrutiny was for a different reason. A number of private foundations in the U.S. differed with bilateral donors on how to respond to my planned departure. They preferred to help the organization survive my exit.

They wanted to be assured that there were no practices that compromised the tax-exempt status of ACTS. The group was led by the Ford Foundation. This concern had not explicitly been communicated to us. One day at 9:00 a.m. my secretary informed me that there was someone enjoying the morning sun in our courtyard who wanted to see me whenever I was free. I decided to see him.

Dan Martin said he was visiting Nairobi from the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. He said he knew what ACTS was going through. “Will you leave ACTS if we funded the organization?” he asked. It was an easy question to answer affirmatively. It was so different from the threats I had been receiving on a regular basis.

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Martin left saying he couldn’t make any firm promises but would try. I had also been working with Eric Rusten from the Ford Foundation who was exploring how to provide ACTS with more stable funding. By then, my relations with some of the bilateral donors had fallen apart, and we had returned the remaindered funds. In a year, ACTS had lost nearly 60 percent of its funding.

I saw it as a great opportunity for the next executive director to restructure the organization. It was also evident that my original plan to step down as executive director and focus on research was not viable. I would still be viewed as the father figure of the organization, which would undermine my successor. There was the equally bad idea, based on Scandinavian practices, of becoming the chairman of the board.

The timing of my final departure was influenced by the return of Dr. John Mugabe from the Netherlands. Mugabe had been studying for his Ph.D. while also running the ACTS Biopolicy Institute located in Maastricht. In 1986, I was appointed as director of the Biotechnology program of the International Federation of Institutes of Advanced Study (IFIAS) under Frank Rijsberman.

This position allowed me to run it from Nairobi with a few visits to Maastricht.

We held one research conference in Nairobi, whose results were published as Biotechnology and Sustainable Development. A few years into the role, IFIAS decided to close down its offices and move some of its operations to Toronto.

Rijsberman and I agreed to keep biotechnology operations in Maastricht. We registered the nonprofit Biopolicy Institute as a branch of ACTS. Then Maastricht had a mayor who supported institutions located there to enhance its international status. Our offices and facilities were funded by the mayor. Mugabe was our link with the mayor and the Dutch government.

Mugabe, 29, returned to Nairobi with the right international exposure and connections. The timing was perfect. He was appointed Interim Executive Director to replace me. It was Mugabe who took over negotiations with donors for new funding. This included a generous offer by the Ford Foundation to set aside $1.2 million as an endowment on the condition that the interest would start going to ACTS if the organization matched it. The World Resources Institute (WRI) was designated to manage the funds. This was a good idea but difficult to implement. By 2017, the funds were still being held by WRI. Mugabe streamlined the operations of the organization. He narrowed its focus and trimmed its publishing program. He got the charter of ACTS signed by Kenya, Malta, and Thailand, which turned it into an intergovernmental organization.

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For a period, I was listed as a member of the ACTS board but never participated in its meetings. I wanted to be sure that I gave Mugabe the space needed to give ACTS a new direction.

The timing of Mugabe’s arrival enabled me to leave ACTS a year before the end of my second term. The opportunity of moving to Geneva to become the Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity ensured that I left Nairobi. This was good for me and for ACTS and even better for Mugabe.

Even after it was known that he was the one in charge, international visitors still sought me out to discuss how to collaborate with ACTS. Though I had no power, they still thought I had influence over the organization. In the end, it was more important for my standing that ACTS had survived my exit. It was its continued existence that gave standing to the fact that I had created the organization. The transition, though rocky at the time, helped to establish a tradition of succession that was followed when Mugabe left at 38 years of age. He helped to create a pan-African forum of science and technology ministers that became part of the African Union. His successor, Prof. Judi Wakhungu, left after her two terms to become Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Natural Resources.

I learned many lessons from the succession process. Key early and explicit planning was necessary was one of these. Many of my staff invested in the organization because they saw that they could play larger roles if they advanced academically. But the heightened expectations also came with their own consequences. Some of ACTS’ staff who worked very hard to increase their chances for further educational opportunities didn’t take my departure lightly.

One of them sued me for breach of contract despite the fact that there was no written commitment that I would get them scholarships. Fearing for their own future in the organization, others agitated to get permanent employment even though they knew we were also being financed from short-term projects. The nature of our funding did not provide a conducive environment for overcoming the founder syndrome. I was fortunate to have a few donors who believed in the continuity of Africa’s first institutional experiment on science and technology studies.

My first regret was that we never got ACTS to focus on technology as its name suggested. I had to go to Harvard to start working on the role of science and technology in African development. This work needed to have a strong base in Nairobi. My second regret was that I never left a strong training foundation at ACTS despite our efforts and the dedicated support of Prof. Norman Clark.

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We were fighting against a funding environment that actively discriminated against higher education. Many of our funders didn’t think technology was a priority for Africa. Their focus was on natural resource management, not on training in innovation studies. Training in innovation studies wasn’t their area of funding either. So ACTS combined two features in its mission that were not in line with funding priorities of the time. The later explosion of interest through the awareness raised by mobile phone adoption wasn’t enough to amplify those activities that had inspired the creation of ACTS in the first place.

Every organization has its lifecycles and inflection moments that force it to align with the times. I take responsibility for setting ACTS on a sustainable development path. In the early 1990s, this was the right field to be in, especially if one aspired to do something new and relevant. The new millennium has brought many new issues to the surface. In a way, they show that ACTS was well ahead of its time, and the moment to create such an organization was 30 years later. Despite the fact that incentives and resources are aligned, there is no guarantee that creating new institutions will always work. While serving on the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) appointed by the president of Kenya Mwai Kibaki in 2004 the issue of the role of diasporas in development was put on the agenda for discussion.

I was one of two people specifically appointed to the NESC. I also recommended that the presidency include non-Kenyan experts whose experiences could inform the creation and implementation of Kenya’s Vision 2030. My recommendation of Ir. Yee-Cheong Lee, Vice President of the Science Academy Malaysia, was accepted, and he was appointed by the president of Kenya to join NESC. His appointment expanded Kenya’s potential to learn from the experiences of Malaysia and other Asian nations. While serving on NESC, I also worked closely with the ministry of foreign affairs to help them develop a new strategy for economic diplomacy. The government adopted portions of it and in recognition I was awarded by the president the Order of the Elder of the Burning Spear. I was later invited by the government of Ethiopia to provide a training program to all its senior foreign affairs officials, and its ambassadors were recalled to Addis Ababa in part to help develop their own economic diplomacy program. These two efforts led to policy and institutional adjustments in the two countries.

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In another initiative, following conversations with NESC members I thought that Kenya could benefit from the creation of an institute that is devoted to training young people on how to create their own enterprises, instead of looking for jobs that don’t exist. In setting up the Victoria Institute of Science and Technology (VIST), I received outstanding advice from young lawyer Peter Wanyama whose legal practice was aligned with the vision of VIST. To help meet the administrative requirements of setting up VIST, we decided to affiliate ourselves with the KCA University. In the end, the initiative did not work out, and we had to legally shut down the operations of VIST. This was partly because of the pressure in the market by students to pursue degree programs. We did not think that VIST was the best vehicle for this purpose. One of the key lessons we learned from the process was that diaspora members can hardly do much about the situation at home without a clear and consistent policy in a particular field.

Such policy initiatives are critical to enabling projects initiated by the diaspora to support national priorities.

The second lesson was that little could be achieved without the diasporas in their new countries of residence creating institutional structures that support their projects. Such structures should go beyond the convening of conferences and the creation of directories of professionals in diaspora. It should be a commitment to deep engagement that involves the transfer of knowledge and financial resources. One example of such a success story was the creation of the University of Hargeisa in Somaliland. Without such arrangements at the national level and among the diasporas the focus tends to shift to financial remittances at the expense of the transfer and acquisition of knowledge. My experiences with setting up ACTS in the 1980s did not translate into a success story in our attempts to establish VIST. Working with Peter Wanyama as legal counsel, we decided to draw lessons from the creation of ACTS to see what could be accomplished in the new millennium. Drawing from the lessons of ACTS and other institutional efforts, I was inspired to create the John and Clementina Juma Institute of Science and Technology (JIST). The institute was created in 2017 to honor my late parents. My mother, Clementina, passed on at 93, after a fully lived life. Poverty is associated with factors such as poor infrastructure and logistics, inappropriate education and low skill levels, inadequate levels of capital investment in new businesses, and lack of access to markets for new products and services. Solving these challenges

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will contribute to the creation of meaningful jobs for the youth. Priority areas for JIST include nurturing creativity, advancing experiential learning, fostering computing and data analytics, promoting medical innovation, and protecting the environment.

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Chapter 6

Biodiplomacy The release of the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, in 1987 transformed the diplomatic environment in Nairobi. Sustainable development was the motivating force behind most conversations. I was introduced to the process by Bob Munro, a Canadian advisor to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi. In addition to consulting for the UN and various agencies, Bob had also created the Mathare Youth Sports Association that used football to help improve the lives of young dwellers in Nairobi’s largest slum.

Bob was very well connected in international circles. His wife, Ingrid, was from Sweden and they spent much of their time in the Nordic diplomatic community in Nairobi. At one of meetings he asked if I would work with him to produce a report on environment and development in Kenya. The Embassy of Denmark was the funder. What started off as a support role for Bob was quickly transformed into a transfer of full responsibilities to me. Bob offered to get me a good consultancy rate that would put me in the bracket of senior professionals.

He advised me that the starting rate I accept would serve as a benchmark for future assignments, so it was important to get it right the first time. The report was a series of country studies that Denmark was planning to commission and publish for wider circulation.

The report was eventually published as Sustaining Kenya’s Future. As promised, it was widely circulated by the Danish government and helped to establish me as an important contributor to the sustainable development discourse. At the time, there were concerns that African NGOs had not been adequately engaged in the Brundtland process and so were at a disadvantage in the negotiations leading up to the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio. Bob arranged for me to be part of a team helping to support the participation of Africans in Rio. This involved convening potential participants, working with them on the 111

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issues, and supporting them to participate at the summit itself. This work was later structured as a project funded by Norway and administered by ACTS. Over the period, Bob had been remarkably generous and supportive. He introduced me to the top players in the Nairobi diplomatic community as well as visiting experts. He had a genuine commitment to nurture young people.

He did for me what he was doing for the youth of the Mathare slums: giving everyone a chance to flourish. The way Bob treated me certainly affected how I approached the management of ACTS. In addition to the preparation for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), governments also launched negotiations on two treaties on climate change and biological diversity. The climate negotiations were held at the UN in New York while UNEP took charge of the biodiversity negotiations. My attempt to contribute to the climate negotiations didn’t go well. In 1990, we teamed up with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Research Center to convene a conference on African perspectives on climate change.

We issued an open call for abstracts. It turned out that a lot of African researchers had been doing original work on changes in climate without necessarily referring to carbon emissions. Their view was unanimous. They strongly recommended urgent adaptation measures. I quickly came to realize that we were not supposed to talk about adaptation to climate change, but only about mitigation. The publication of the conference report made us unwelcome at many climate events. On at least three occasions, I was disinvited to attend a conference where I had been confirmedas a speaker. When finally the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) adopted a decision on adaptation, the Executive Secretary Joke Waller-Hunter traveled to Harvard to persuade me to return and help contribute to work on climate issues. His visit took place fifteen years after the Nairobi conference.

The idea of adopting an international treaty on biological diversity was initiated through the World Conservation Union (IUCN) but transferred to UNEP, which was considered to be a more appropriate forum for such a treaty.

In the process, the initial focus on conservation was expanded to include the sustainable use of genetic resources and the sharing of benefits arising from the material. The last objective was meant to cover international sharing of the results of biotechnology as well as its safe use. In 1989, governments set up an ad hoc negotiating group to draft the treaty. They elected Dr. Vicente Sánchez, Chilean ambassador to UNEP, as its chair. Sánchez was a veteran in international 112

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environmental diplomacy. He had been involved in the Stockholm Conference and worked with UNEP before being appointed as Chilean ambassador to UNEP. When the decision to start negotiations was made, UNEP’s Executive Director, Mostafa Tolba, approached Kenya to put forward a candidate for the chair of the process. He hoped that Kenya would put forward the name of Dr. Thomas Odhiambo, head of the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Nairobi. Tolba believed that the scientists needed to play a strong role in such negotiations. Instead, Kenya put forward the name of its foreign minister, Njoroge Mungai. At that point, Latin American countries put forward the candidacy of Sánchez. Those countries argued that they had the largest reservoir of biological diversity in the world. They also argued that they had contributed significantly to the global food gene pool, which brought little benefit to the countries of origin of the material. Ultimately, it was at a meeting in Mexico City that the negotiating objectives for the treaty were expanded to the chagrin of the United States. Sánchez had a reputation for being a tough and uncompromising negotiator. He deployed his training in psychiatry to great effect. Word in diplomatic circles was that it was always better to have Sánchez on the inside of the negotiating “tent” than on the outside. After his decision, there were doubts about whether UNEP was likely to give him the technical support that was needed to succeed. The issue was complex and not well studied.

There were many points of controversy.

I had been working on the same issues and The Gene Hunters had just been published. I learned later that a team of Danish negotiators were using it as required reading and referring to it as the book by the Greek living in Nairobi, an allusion to the origins of my first name. At about the same time, I was in the news for winning a Pew Foundation Scholars Award for my work on the environment and natural resources. The award came with $150,000 to be spent over three years. The funds were administered by the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C., where I worked closely with Dr. Walter Reid on bioprospecting.

One Saturday morning, a diplomatic car pulled up at our offices in Parklands.

I opened the door and asked the guest if I could help him. He pushed me aside and walked on by saying, “I am here to see Dr. Calestous Juma.” I followed him and introduced myself. He was friendly but firm. He acted like he was a person on a mission but also owned the area. He explained to me his new role and said the 113

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Group of 77 countries (a league of developing nations) needed technical support on biodiversity matters to improve their negotiating positions and thought that I was the right person for the task. He said that my contributions would be in the form of presentations to the ambassadors at sessions hosted by one of them.

He added that at times I may be called on during the actual negotiations but my role would be largely to clarify technical issues in advance. He assured me that I would not be involved in the political aspects of the negotiations. That was the start of my working relationship with Vicente Sánchez.

The first meeting with the ambassadors was held in a conference room of the Kenya Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was clear that part of the reason for having me was that the ambassadors were not getting answers to their questions from their home bases in time. Without a common understanding of the technical issues they could not agree on a common negotiating position.

Even though my brief was to support the G77, there was an understanding that I would also liaise with technical support teams from the industrialized countries. This was mostly to compare our understanding of certain technical terms and how they were being interpreted by the negotiators.

Different countries had focused on their own areas of interest. I came to meet Dr. Val Giddings, a member of the U.S. delegation, because they were strongly interested in the biosafety clauses included in the draft negotiating text.

There was a push, mostly by the Europeans and a few of the G77 countries, led by Malaysia, to have strong restrictions or possibly a ban on the release of genetically modified organisms. A number of African countries supported the view, equating GMOs with the dumping of hazardous waste, which was the subject of the Basel Convention.

As the negotiations advanced, my role shifted to being an informal mediator between different groups, both within the G77 but also between the industrialized and developing countries.

Countries also started to increase the number of experts on their delegations.

I would meet with some of them individually or collectively ahead of the negotiations. The discussions were usually technical and helped to clarify both my role and input. Dr. Manfred Schneider of Austria was the contact person for the EU with me. He introduced me to his counterparts and I became an informal part of a layer of science diplomats supporting the negotiations.

On two occasions it became necessary for me to be in the negotiating room to give direct support to a number of the G77 countries on emerging issues.

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But there was the issue of credentials. I couldn’t sit with a delegation without having been officially designated by the respective governments. To solve this problem, I was co-opted by Ambassador Charles Liburd of Guyana to be part of his team. This new involvement helped me to better understand the relations between science and diplomacy and the level of trust needed to ensure alignment between the two.

The politics were just as complex. Mexico had started off as the leader of the G77. It brought considerable expertise to the negotiations. It was a powerful force. Then Mexico joined the OECD, a trading block of industrialized countries, and left the G77. Suddenly there was a void in leadership, with Mexico becoming a silent voice during the negotiations. At the same time, Eastern Europe was unraveling and its position was hardly being articulated. There was a lot of turmoil in the mission of those countries in Nairobi and the only consistent spokesperson seemed to be Ambassador Suian Paval. However, he spent much of his time warning about the then non-credible view that China was going to dominate the global economy in our lifetime.

Sánchez was worried from the outset that there were way too many points of controversy that could lead to countries failing to agree on the final text at the last minute. Usually countries would wait and at the last minute reopen negotiations of text that had been agreed. Sánchez sealed this loophole by getting a commitment that any agreed text could not be reopened at a later date. This had the added advantage of getting countries to agree on the less controversial issues early in the negotiations.

A few months before the Rio Summit, the United States indicated that the text wasn’t advanced enough to consider signing. They suggested that negotiations be continued after Rio. Sánchez was put in an awkward position. There was no guarantee that the United States would sign the treaty later, even if there were further negotiations. He was concerned that if there were a delay, the treaty would not benefit from the Rio momentum and enthusiasm for it would fizzle out. On the other hand, pushing to meet the Rio deadlines meant that nations would end up being asked to sign a treaty with many unresolved issues.

The bigger issue was whether to proceed with the final negotiations knowing that the United States would not sign the treaty. Sánchez asked me to join a small group of negotiators to advise him on what to do. The group included Fiona McConnell of the UK. Strong views were expressed on both sides of the issue. In the end, consensus was to proceed without the United States. I didn’t realize that 115

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three years later I would become the head of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity with the task of continuing to find solutions to unresolved issues. At least I knew what the issues were and who the protagonists were. As expected, the United States refused to sign it.

During this period, I learned a lot about how science informed diplomacy and vice versa. But above all, I learned about the role of scientific uncertainty in political discourse. Positions shifted based on the introduction of new information. It was hard for countries to sustain dogmatic positions except by rejecting the role of science. Some in fact did. I also learned that I was judged not so much by what I knew but by how much I admitted I didn’t know. Topics that were marked by large margins of scientific uncertainty were put aside for later consideration. They were also the ones that generated the most controversy.

A large part of my advice was on what we didn’t know. By being a Pew Scholar with flexible funding I had a large network of scientists to consult and a budget to attend critical scientific meetings. Walter Reid at WRI became a key node in a global network of specialists in all aspects of this area and helped to expand my knowledge catchment considerably.

Sánchez and I became very close friends. He trained me in many aspects of diplomacy, which served me greatly when I joined the UN. I learned from him how to run complex and controversial negotiations. We met on a regular basis.

It was Sánchez who taught me how to stay sober at receptions but still appear to be drinking like everybody else. “When you approach the bartender ask for gin and tonic in a loud voice,” he said. “Then whisper to the bartender, ‘without the gin.’” It works miracles.

During this period, I was also involved in a substantial way in three activities leading up to Rio. The first was serving on the Working Party of Biological Diversity of the Rio preparatory process. The group was charged with producing the draft chapter of Agenda 21 on biological diversity. A large part of my role was helping to ensure that there was consistency between the chapter and the draft treaty. I was also added to the Working Party on Environmentally Sound Technologies. These two roles gave me incredible access to the leaders of the Rio preparations chaired by Maurice Strong of Canada, with Nhitin Desai of India as his deputy.

At one meeting I was introduced to Strong. He wanted to know what I did. I told him I had created ACTS, which I hoped would help with some of the aspects of the outcomes of Rio. “What is your vision for ACTS?” he asked. I outlined its 116

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vision and then said my strategy was to start small and if it worked out I would then scale it up. “Anything that starts small always remains small,” he said. Back in my room I started thinking of a much grander vision for ACTS that involved creating constituent institutes headed by my associates. It was also then that I started to think of turning ACTS into an intergovernmental institution. Upon my return to Nairobi I consulted Prof. Okoth-Ogendo who said all it took was getting three sovereign states as signatories to its charter, including Kenya as a host country. We started the process.

A third process that I was involved in entailed bringing science to inform the overall Rio preparatory process. There was no process of engaging the global scientific community. However, science and technology issues were emerging in every draft chapter. UNESCO was promoting the inclusion of a chapter on science. But this was insufficient to integrate science into the rest of the chapters.

The International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSV) put together a global team to provide the scientific basis of each of the draft chapters of Agenda 21.

This work was being done as an afterthought. ICSU, led by Julia Marton-Lefèvre, convened a meeting of authors in Vienna in 1991. I had been paired up to write the paper on “Technology Transfer” with Prof. Mark Sagoff at the University of Maryland. Sagoff was one of the world’s leading environmental philosophers.

Both of us were Pew Scholars. We worked very well together and through him I was exposed to a lot of new philosophical issues.

ASCEND21 was an amazing gathering of world experts. The people I met there ended up becoming lifelong mentors. I had never been to such a gathering as contributor. I had the opportunity to share what I had learned during my graduate studies. But even more important, I used the occasion to consult widely on what topics to address at ACTS. It was really at ASCEND21 that I settled on what became the substantive work program of ACTS. It also helped me to broaden the base for my input into the final sessions of the biodiversity negotiations. It was there that I met Prof. John Holdren from UC Berkeley and Dr. Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Garden. Both of them would later play key roles in my subsequent professional development.

The process of helping African NGOs prepare for the Rio conference helped me to introduce ACTS to various donor agencies, especially those from Nordic countries. Norway was particularly important. I started negotiating with the Nairobi office of their overseas aid organization, NORAD, on how to implement the outcomes of the Rio conference. In 1991 we finalized the proposal document, 117

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and I was invited to the embassy for a signing event. As I sat there waiting to sign the contract with Steiner Skjaeveland, head of the office, a staffer stormed in and said something to him in Norwegian. There was shock on his face. “The President of Kenya has just expelled our ambassador.” The signing event was postponed. Worse was to come later that day.

By the end of the day, the news was that Kenya had ordered the closure of the Norwegian embassy. The decision had arisen following a dispute of the construction of a hydropower dam that would have adversely affected Norwegian development projects downstream in the Turkana region. There was mayhem as Norway scrambled to comply with the one-week deadline. The human toll on embassy staff and project workers was immeasurable.

Norway left behind one diplomat to look after its interests. Arman Årdal operated from the Danish Embassy. Årdal informed me that Norway would continue to work with ACTS on the Rio process. A Kenyan program officer in the Norwegian embassy, Dr. Mukhisa Kituyi, joined ACTS as my deputy director. Kituyi became an active member of the rising opposition movement.

ACTS became a rallying venue for opposition leaders. In the beginning, the meetings happened after work, so they didn’t pose a threat to the independence of the organization. But as time went by, we were starting to look like a wing of the opposition movement.

The government was cracking down on opposition leaders, and Raila Odinga was a target. He was in hiding and switching houses for his safety.

He was running out of friends’ houses to hide in, and a plan was mounted to deliver him to the U.S. embassy, which would send him to a safe place. This plan involved having him disguised as a woman and driven to the embassy in the late afternoon. Disguising him as a woman entailed shaving his signature beard.

Odinga totally refused to shave his beard. In the end there was a compromise. He agreed to have his beard painted white to look really elderly. He wore sunglasses belonging to Kituyi’s Norwegian mother-in-law. By the time he was delivered to the embassy, the responsible officer had already left, and he almost got thrown in the street by security guards.

As time went by it became difficult for ACTS to claim it was neutral while maintaining such a high profile in opposition politics through its deputy. After some discussions with Kituyi, it became clear that both ACTS and he would be better off if he joined the opposition as a politician. He did and beat the sitting foreign minister with a landslide and became Kenya’s trade and industry minister.

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He was a favorite candidate for the leadership of the World Trade Organization (WTO). His intellectual mastery and communication talents endeared him with all the parties. He didn’t pursue the position but later became the SecretaryGeneral of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTACT) in Geneva.

The next time I saw Kituyi was in 2002 at a general conference of UNCTAD in Sao Paolo, Brazil. I joined him with other East African trade ministers at a dinner table. The occasion was a display of Brazilian music and dance. The master of ceremonies was the legendary singer Gilberto Gil. The African influence on Brazilian dance was unmistakable. “Who says Africa is in trouble? Africa is well and alive. It is just hiding here in Brazil,” he said. My last contribution to the Rio process came in late 1991. Then it had become clear that the process had lost focus on industrial reform. Various UN agencies had taken over the various sectoral themes. They were using the process to strengthen their bureaucratic turfs rather than advance sustainable development. It didn’t look like this process would overcome the fragmentation that had prompted the creation of the Brundtland Commission.

To try to get the process back on the original agenda, Brundtland decided to reconvene her commission to issue a statement. This was unusual for two reasons. First, the commission had technically completed its work and had no official role. Second, it was late in the game, and it was unlikely that its statement would have a significant impact on the outcome. I was approached by Årdal to help prepare a report to assist the Brundtland Commission to issue a statement to Rio. I was paired up with Dr. Vince Cable, head of the Shell planning office.

I had two roles. One was to liaise with Cable and write the report. The other was to work closely with the Prime Minister’s office and to learn more about the philosophy behind Our Common Future. My contract person was Morten Wetland in the cabinet office. I traveled to Norway several times to meet Brundtland and on one occasion she invited me to go and observe how she managed their cabinet affairs. I also accompanied her to a public event. There was an unusual protest. A recorded voice erupted from a loudspeaker in the ceiling. Instead of having it just pulled down, she asked that the concern be heard. She then proceeded after the recording was over.

I also met diverse thinkers on sustainable development from “deep ecology” advocate Arne Naess to industry leaders. Cable trusted me with the information gathering. He had little flexibility to travel. In addition to his Shell job, he was 119

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also busy fighting against the construction of Heathrow’s terminal 4. Later Cable ran for a public office, became a Member of Parliament, and joined the government as cabinet minister. We prepared our report and attended the reconvened meeting of the Brundtland Commission in April 1992. We helped with the preparatory statement issued by Brundtland two months later in June. I missed the opportunity to go to Rio. I was very much looking forward to being in Rio. It would have been an important occasion to reconnect with a process I had watched being mooted a decade earlier, but my father died just before the meeting. ACTS was represented at the meeting, so I got a good account of what transpired. For us, the biggest benefit was having been part of the preparatory process. We worked to integrate the outcomes of Rio into a new focus for ACTS. After leaving ACTS, I pondered a lot about what to do. I didn’t think much about my next career as the exit occupied all of my time. I thought I would spend a year or two doing consulting work while figuring out what to do next.

What was evident was that there were not options for me to work in Kenya. I needed to move elsewhere to give ACTS and my successor the space to shape each in a different image. Then I was serving as a consultant for the Scientific and Technical Advice Panel (STAP) of the Global Environment Facility created to finance the Rio Convention. I was hired by UNEP. This role kept me engaged with UNEP and involved by participating in teleconferences involving the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) implementing agencies— UNEP, the UN Development Program (UNDP) in New York, and the World Bank (which also served as the secretariat of the $2 billion fund). During the teleconferences, I learned a lot about how the GEF worked and how the different agencies worked through remarkably complex procedures to access funds for their respective programs. They programs were submitted to GEF through them by member states. They had to be parties to the Rio Convention. The involvement exposed me to the politics of financing global commitments. It was a tedious and cumbersome process created to ensure financial accountability and transparency.

While working with STAP, I got an offer by Gus Speth, the administrator of UNDP, to lead a group working on science and technology for development. The position was to use the funds pledged by governments to support the defunct UN Financial System for Science and Technology for Development created at the 1979 Vienna Conference on Science and Technology for Development. This position appealed to me because it was more aligned with my graduate training.

In the meantime, I was approached by UNEP to consider becoming the first 120

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Permanent Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The position was not permanent but the decision to locate the interim secretariat in Geneva was imminent. The two positions were quite different.

One was about project management and the other was about managing global environmental diplomacy. I knew both the heads of UNDP and UNEP, as I had worked with them before. I had good personal and professional relationships with them, although I had worked longer with Speth at UNDP than with Elizabeth Dowdeswell at UNEP. Dowdeswell’s deputy, Dr. Reuben Olembo, had served on board at ACTS. He was a great mentor and supporter. I had been on the board of WRI under Speth. His policy director, Anders Wijkman of Sweden, had been the chair of my fundraising group when he was head of the Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA) in Stockholm. He was the person I would be reporting to at UNDP. UNEP was then headed by Dowdeswell of Canada through whom I would report to the office of the Secretary General of the United Nations. My ability to work productively with Dowdeswell became an important criterion for deciding on the prospective offer. I had already worked with Dowdeswell on matters related to biodiversity. My interactions with her and her deputy executive director Dr. Reuben Olembo reassured me that I would be able to work constructively with UNEP in advancing the goals of the CBD. In addition, I had also worked directly with senior biodiversity officials of UNEP such as Dr. Jorge Illueca and Dr. Cyriaque Sendashonga of Rwanda.

I thought hard about the two positions and the prospects of living in New York or Geneva. UNDP invited me to visit and meet the team I would be working with. I did. It all went well. The staff were very cordial and welcoming, except one person who told me candidly that he had a sensitive mission from his government to work on military technology transfer from the former Soviet Union. He said that due to the sensitivity of the task he would not be reporting to me if I headed the group. He asked me to confirm that I fully understood the reasons. The exchange led me to wonder who else in the group had similar missions. It was clear to me that it was going to be difficult to manage the group and help create a coherent program the UNDP expected. I couldn’t apply the lessons of ACTS under such circumstances.

The CBD position had its own challenges. I knew that UNEP and the Interim Executive Secretary Angela Cropper of Trinidad and Tobago were having difficulties working together. I didn’t know the reasons but rumors of 121

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political and administrative tension between the two were in wide circulation in the environmental diplomatic community. Cropper was a strong-willed personality who had come from the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Some third world diplomats feared that she might try to refocus the work of the CBD around conservation activities as originally conceived through IUCN. They thought this would favor industrialized country interests at the expense of their pursuit of sustainable use of biological diversity and the sharing of the benefits derived from the use of genetic resource derived from their territories.

Some UNEP officials thought that she was too independent to give the CBD Secretariat greater autonomy. This would have reflected the sovereign character of the Conference of the Parties (COP), which was the decision making body of the treaty. She was distrusted by some governments and supported by others.

I was also aware of some other undercurrents related to the interim location of the Secretariat in Geneva. It was rumored that the Executive Director of UNEP, Mostafa Tolba, had informally promised to have the secretariat located in Seville. He instead granted this opportunity to Geneva, ostensibly to be in proximity to other UN agencies. Spain had been protesting the decision, and it was decided that the best way to solve the problem was to call for open proposals for member states to vote on the issue at the second meeting of the COP. I considered the pros and cons of the two positions and decided that I could probably have a greater impact leveraging my interest in science diplomacy at the CBD. The position seemed to be a natural continuation of the work I had done during the negotiations for the treaty. I was familiar with the contents of the CBD and the details surrounding the level of consensus on each of the major articles of the convention. It was widely known in the negotiating community that governments had reached convenient consensus on many of the articles to have the treaty signed at the Earth Summit. It was also tacitly understood that many of the contentious issues would be discussed further as part of the implementation of the convention and not through amendment. It was also understood that some of the issues would be elaborated as protocols to the convention.

These divergent expectations also touched on a more fundamental issue of how different governments understood the character of the treaty itself. From the onset, the CBD had been conceived as an umbrella treaty under which governments would consolidate the functions of the numerous biodiversityrelated treaties that existed at different levels of global governance. The treaties 122

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covered species and ecosystems and operated at local, regional, and global levels.

The underlying assumption was that such rationalization would promote regime efficiency and thus foster conservation. This legal and institutional origin of the CBD in effect excluded any substantive discussion of the underlying biodiversity science and would later become the soft underbelly of the convention.

Negotiating a new umbrella treaty to cover the subject of existing treaties had to be approached very delicately so as not to trigger opposition. The matter was even more sensitive considering that many of those existing treaties were being administered by UNEP, under which the CBD was being negotiated. In many cases the CBD negotiators had to use distinctive language to avoid charges of duplication. But the language couldn’t be too distinctive as to create perceptions of contradiction. For example, the term “components of biodiversity under threat” was preferred to “endangered species” to avoid potential conflict with the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Similarly, “freshwater ecosystems” became a partial euphemism for wetlands, which were the subject matter of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.

As the negotiations went on, it became clear that subsuming some of the functions of the biodiversity-related conventions would not be easy. Some of them started to actively seek to increase their sovereign membership. The main instrument envisaged to foster the consolidation of function was the centralized funding under the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The CBD served as the window for countries to get biodiversity-related funding from the GEF. But the criteria set by the GEF for access to funding did not cover all the functions performed by the biodiversity-related conventions.

In the meantime, it became clear that the CBD could serve as a mechanism for addressing new issues that were not covered by other conventions. This could be done through protocols or programmes of work. In this respect, the CBD evolved as a treaty that could fill in the gaps left by other conventions.

This was a different outcome from the umbrella convention that had been originally envisaged. Unlike the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the CBD did not have a strong scientific base upon which to serve as a convention that addressed new issues. Even the umbrella functions needed firm scientific and technical foundations upon which to implement the treaty.

The tensions between the different perceptions of the character of the CBD and the challenges related to scientific uncertainty became a large part of my work and the related controversies.

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This foundational limitation in the CBD design and negotiations were well known. UNEP sought to address the issue by commissioning the Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA) led by Robert Watson who had led the climate change assessment. The idea was to present the GBA to the CBD so it could provide the much-needed scientific underpinnings of its work. I confronted the controversy surrounding the GBA at my first substantive meeting of the CBD in August 1995. The setting was the meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical, and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) held at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

Upon my arrival at the venue of the meeting, I was confronted by Madam Ting of Malaysia who told me directly that developing countries did not support what they considered to be efforts to use science to subvert their interests.

Madam Ting was a forceful voice among the G-77. She put her training in theater to great use as a negotiator. She had honed her overtly confrontational tactic while representing Malaysia at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Her mission was to deflect attention from any topics that could lead to discussions on Malaysia’s use of its forest resources for development. A legitimate scientific assessment of the sources of biodiversity loss pointed to deforestation and ecosystem fragmentation, especially from agricultural expansion. This finding by the GBA was sufficient to generate concern among a large number of developing countries. UNEP’s expectation of the adoption of the GBA by SBSTTA was thwarted from the outset. There were several substantive challenges for the GBA. The first was purely methodological. Unlike climate change, which could be reduced to a single indicator such as global warming, biodiversity was place-based and irreducible to a single indicator such as global warming. This basic observation seemed to have eluded the framers of the GBA, who somehow thought that the methodology used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could apply to biodiversity.

The second concern had to do with the role of UNEP, which sponsored and managed the GBA. Governments had been suspicious about UNEP’s intent to assert strong control over the convention. This had been played out during the negotiations where UNEP envisaged itself as the future secretariat of the convention. Governments, however, wanted a secretariat that was accountable to the contracting parties. The final wording of the convention gave substantive or policy control of the secretariat to the parties and delegated administrative control to UNEP. This split channels of accountability would become a significant 124

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source of difficulties for me and subsequent executive secretaries, a subject I will return to later.

When the GBA was tabled, a number of governments saw it as an attempt by UNEP to usurp the functions of the secretariat and opposed it on that account.

Many of them, however, were concerned with the implications of the GBA findings but found it convenient to hide behind the debate on the legitimacy of UNEP as a source of documents for the convention. Senior UNEP program staff presented UNEP as the secretariat which governments sought to assert its autonomy. They did so by wording the decisions to explicitly ask the executive secretary and not the secretariat to perform certain duties. On their part, UNEP staff considered the Executive Secretary as an employee of UNEP, and therefore accountable to the organization.

The third issue related to the place of science in the CBD decision making.

This issue divided developed and developing countries. Developed countries argued that CBD decisions needed to be based on sound science. Their developing country counterparts feared that this would give an advantage to industrialized countries. They argued that it would undermine the explicit objective of the convention to bring biodiversity under sovereign control. They stressed the need to ensure that scientific and technological advice was guided by political considerations. Their views were reinforced by the understanding that the bulk of the world’s biological resources were in developing countries. The rejection of the GBA reinforced the political roots of the CBD and set the tone for much of its subsequent evolution. A large part of my tenure was devoted to trying to expand possibilities for scientific and technological input into the treaty.

I worked closely with a number of international scientific bodies, especially the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). Additional efforts to bring science into the CBD were made by governments as part of their preparation of SBSSTA meetings. The most notable of these was the Trondheim Conferences supported by the government of Norway and led by Peter Johan Schei. Schei was a formidable negotiator who headed the Norwegian Directorate of Nature Management. The first Trondheim Conference focused on invasive species. It brought together the world’s leading experts on the subject. The results of the conference helped to clarify many of the scientific and policy issues surrounding invasive species. Schei also served as the chair of SBSTTA and we spent long hours with other government delegates to try to strike a balance between

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the need for scientific input and sovereign control of the convention’s policy processes.

The rejection of the GBA was a mistake. It deprived the treaty of the best possible source of sound scientific support it could get. UNEP had demonstrated through a variety of forums that it had the capacity and reach needed to support the convention. It was up to the governments to determine how best to structure the relationships. UNEP did not have to act alone. It enjoyed considerable confidence and support among other technical UN agencies and international scientific organizations. Concerns about the direction of authority could also have been easily addressed through CBD decisions, making explicit requests for scientific assessments. By rejecting the GBA, the convention sent a negative signal to the world that science was somewhat suspect and scientists unwelcome in the treaty. It appeared that non-scientific advocacy groups enjoyed greater access to delegates than the scientific community did.

Ironically, the CBD secretariat relied heavily on the CBD in preparing papers for SBSTTA and COP. This fact raised the possibility that governments would support a strong internal mechanism for generating scientific advice.

The obvious solution was to seek to strengthen SBSTTA and give it more authority to draw on diverse sources and not necessarily one independent body.

This approach would also have been consistent with the distributed nature of biodiversity expertise worldwide and the complex nature of the objective of the CBD. CBD’s relationship with science got even more complicated as countries started to send their political negotiations to attend SBSTTA meetings. This had two impacts on the process. First, the deliberations of SBSTTA turned from being technical to becoming negotiations for particular political outcomes rather than the generation of advice to the Conference of the Parties. Second, the scientific community started to lose interest in participating in SBSTTA meetings because of their increasingly political nature. In effect, SBSTTA started to serve as pre-negotiations for the COP, which in turn simply rubberstamped its recommendations. In many cases, the people who crafted SBSTTA’s recommendations were the same ones that would conveniently adopt them at COP meetings.

We tried to create separation between advice and decision making as part of efforts to make SBSTTA more effective. The idea was to create under SBSTTA expert groups with limited members of 15 state representatives. The idea was that 126

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with the proliferation of topics there would be enough opportunities for member states to be involved in areas of their interest. By then we had asked governments to send us names of experts who could be called upon to participate in the meetings. This approach seemed to enjoy support from some governments but not others. A major objection was that expert groups of 15 countries lacked the transparency needed to guarantee support for the outcomes. One delegate told me that lack of transparency constituted whichever discussion they were not part of. This was important because it was coming from a country that strongly supported the need to strengthen scientific advice under the convention. There wasn’t a good way to balance between transparency and effectiveness.

There was a general view among many actors associated with the CBD that the treaty needed an independent body similar to the IPCC. Members of the CBD continued to agitate for the creation of such a body. In 2012, governments created the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services to perform functions similar to those of IPCC. This assumption overlooked the fact that the challenge with the CBD wasn’t simply the absence of an independent scientific assessment body. The challenge was largely political and structural. The CBD was viewed by the majority of developing countries as a political body focused on strengthening their sovereign control over genetic resources under their jurisdiction. This position made scientific input a lower priority.

During my tenure at CBD, there was continued political tension with UNEP. These tensions arose from the ambiguities in the design of the CBD secretariat and UNEP. Both implemented programs adopted by their respective governing bodies. These tensions continued to be a source of diplomatic chatter and uncontrolled swarming of conspiracy theories, the most pervasive of which was the claim that these tensions were emanating from a personality clash between Dowdeswell and myself. This could not have been any farther from the truth.

At each one of our negotiating sessions, I worked closely with Dowdeswell to advance the objectives of the foundation.

She was a true champion of the mission of the CBD. Her primary role was direct engagement with ministers of environment and natural resources worldwide. This was the same constituency that the CBD operated under.

We worked very closely to get governments to commit to implementing new programs on marine and coastal resources, agricultural biodiversity, freshwater ecosystems, and a wide range of other things. I continued to collaborate 127

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with Dowdeswell after we both left the United Nations on other issues such as freshwater resources, bioethics, and renewable energy. The collaboration continued through a diversity of institutions including the University of Toronto and the Science Council of Canada which Dowdeswell headed.

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Public Academic: Coming to Harvard I planned my last day in August 1998 at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to be as eventless as possible. I did not want a farewell party nor media coverage, so I planned to exit the office through the basement, resurface onto McGill Street in Montreal, and walk back to my house with my wife, Alison. The next step was to go to the airport with our five-month-old son Eric and fly to Boston to spend a few weeks staying with Eric’s grandparents and introducing him to his relatives. It did not go exactly as planned. On the way to the basement, I heard steps behind me. They turned out to be those of my staff, Chikako Takase from Japan and Ina Pranoto from Indonesia. I urged them to turn back, but this was their first and last act of defiance. They dutifully escorted me through the basement exit.

They were the last members of my staff that saw me walk into a new world without a job, with no certainty of my next residence, and a five-month-old son to raise. It was truly a remarkable walk into the unknown. I had a high benefit of working briefly with Dr. Kilaparti Ramakrisha, a world leading expert in climate diplomacy. He had just barely joined the CBD Secretariat when I left.

He was instrumental in helping me identify various universities in the Boston area that could provide me with transitional affiliation. While exploring these options, I realized that there were longstanding professional colleagues of mine, especially Dr. Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Prof.

Jen Lubchenco at Oregon State University.

The exploration led to reestablishing contact with Prof. John Holdren and Prof. Bill Clark at Harvard Kennedy School. They helped me to secure the position of visiting fellow in 1999. The visiting fellow status at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs became an inflection 129

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point in my professional development. Along this personal growth path, I was blessed to have outstanding mentors that guided me along. This included Dr. Robert Frosch, former administrator of NASA and longstanding senior fellow at Belfer Center. Others who gave me equal support in my transition to being a public academic included Prof. Venkatesh Narayanamurti, founding dean of the Harvard School of Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In matters related to international relations and politics, I benefitted immensely from the support of Prof. Joseph Nye, Prof. David Ellwood, and Prof.

John Ruggie.

Through a postdoctoral program funded by the Rockefeller Foundation at the turn of the century, I was able to admit Dr. Victor Konde from the University of Zambia as one of my first fellows. Dr. Konde became my most important source of moderation on Africa’s technological possibilities. Every time I mentioned in class examples of successes in regions similar to Africa, Victor would be the first person to say, “No, it won’t work in Africa.” He then provided valid reasons to prove this was the case. This response became so common that the class anticipated it. Then, one evening, Victor stormed into my office with remarkable news. He announced to me in a near ceremonial format that African universities were capable of generating new technologies and commercializing them. He then provided information on the creation of Africa’s first Internet Service Provider (ISP), which was created in the physics department of the University of Zambia. After extensive discussions with the university senate, it was decided that the ISP was a private enterprise and did not belong on campus.

The creators then created Zamnet, which grew to become Zambia’s largest internet provider. After seeing the tremendous growth and dominance of what had been a physics project, university authorities decided to sue Zamnet under the claim that the creators had absconded with university property from a public university to create a private firm. Being at Harvard gave me the opportunity to learn about such kinds of inspirational models for technological innovation in Africa. Policy outreach was initiated with generous support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the enthusiasm of its president, Sir Gordon Conway, and vice president Susan Sechler. I later significantly expanded my engagement with African policymakers through generous support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation’s development work was led by Dr. Rajiv Shah.

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The geographical location of Harvard University created new challenges for engaging with African policymakers. My commitment to teaching overrode invitations to participate in various science and technology forums in Africa. I had to devise methods that allowed me to balance my commitment to teaching and my ability to apply the lessons from my research in support of policy making in Africa. I drew inspiration from my previous work at ACTS to avoid devoting too much time to directly engaging with high-level African leaders. I worked closely with professional staff and policy advisors who became my link with the high-level policymakers, including presidents and prime ministers.

This approach helped me to avoid falling into the trap of being yet another high-flying academic tourist. It also enabled us through the Harvard Kennedy School to strengthen the advisory capabilities of the staff that we were dealing with. It also distinguished me from being perceived as a consultant instead of a policy analyst. This also prevented me from being perceived as an advocate. My real task was to generate a range of policy options that gave policymakers the flexibility to own their final choices.

Teaching at the Harvard Kennedy School allowed me to observe the challenges students face when deciding on their professional pathways in development. This is vividly illustrated by the case of one of my students, Bob Bell, Jr. Bob, an African-American student from Texas, did his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering. Then Bell’s community advised him that the best way to contribute to Africa’s development was to do a degree in divinity and work through faith-based organizations. This led to his successful admission into the Harvard Divinity School. While he was there, he was introduced to my work by my devout Muslim assistant, Dr. Derya Honça, who trained as a prehistoric archaeologist at Carleton College. I worked with Bell to help him find a connection between divinity and development in ways that could enable him to combine his passion for innovation with strong moral and ethical foundations.

He moved on to complete his Ph.D. at UC Berkley and serves as a consultant for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva. Along his professional growth path, I worked closely with Bell to produce scholarly articles on issues such as bundling infrastructure and technology prospecting, especially in economic diversification. Bell’s path correction efforts were made possible by the supportive intellectual environment provided to faculty and students at Belfer Center.

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The convening power of Harvard University brought me in contact with the wide range of outstanding practitioners who helped me to expand the scope of my own work. For example, one such person is Mr. Issa Baluch, then a fellow of the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative.

Baluch’s first participation in my class on “Innovation for Global Development” had a flair of drama to it. He positioned himself not far from the exit door of the class, was intensely alert, but also repeatedly glanced at the exit door. There was a reason for it. Baluch was in a program that required the participants to use resources provided by the entire university, which included attending different courses and receiving advice from faculty. Mr. Baluch felt that he had exhausted the possibilities of developing a social enterprise. “I am used to making money. I am having difficulties conceptualizing and founding a social enterprise that is not focused on earning profit, so I need your help to think through how to create such a social enterprise,” he told me later after class.

Incidentally, Baluch had already packed his bags at his hotel and had decided to withdraw from the program. This may be the reason why he was repeatedly glancing at the exit door. After discussions, Baluch decided to give the creation of social enterprise a chance. Through a series of persistent efforts, he finally established The Agribusiness Knowledge and Innovation Leadership Initiative (AKILI). One of its founding projects is a daring effort to revive agriculture in southwestern Somalia. Baluch’s continued engagement with Harvard Kennedy School deepened and expanded to the point where he was invited to join its dean’s council as an advisor on how to strengthen the school’s collaboration with Africa.

Issa Baluch was instrumental in helping me appreciate even more profoundly the importance of logistics in economic transformation. Not only did he introduce me to his global networks but he also became an important source of financial support for our work on logistics that included funding research by our students. Baluch gained his experience running his own logistics company in Dubai. My interactions with him helped to expand my professional work to the Gulf Cooperation States. My partnership with Baluch demonstrated another important feedback loop that included inspiring new research activities based on real-world experience. With him, I was able to develop a program of work that combined science and technology advice arising from internal HKS research with new research projects inspired by practical experience. The

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example of Baluch also illustrates the deep connections between public policy and entrepreneurship.

Through its executive programs, Harvard Kennedy School also provided a very efficient mechanism for policy engagement and capacity development in emerging economies. My signature executive program, entitled Innovation for Economic Development (IFED), has more than 600 alumni worldwide. These include participants who used IFED to advance their professional careers to the level of ministers and deputy ministers. The program also became a source of new research ideas, for example contributions to my class by a senior official in the presidency of Namibia resulted in the creation of a research project on the role of presidential advisors in Africa. The project focuses on presidential science and technology and advice.

There are three examples that illustrate this point. In 2001 in San Francisco, I had a brief encounter with a young entrepreneur who was exploring prospects for technological leapfrogging among African countries. Travis Kalanick had just been sued by over 30 Hollywood companies for trying to do for film what Napster had done for music. He intended to implement his next ideas in Asia or Africa After I met Kalanick, he maintained contact and reached out to me often when he was in Boston. The frequency of meetings increased after the firm Akamai acquired his startup. In one of our last brainstorming sessions, Kalanick had been planning to use an app to aggregate shopping functions associated with weddings. We had a long night at Henrietta’s Table at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge. We overstayed the hospitality of the restaurant. We noticed the repeated appearance of restaurant staff but the intensity of our conversations prevented us from being more responsive to their signals. At around 1:00 a.m., the staff came to inform us that they cleaned using potentially harmful substances and that the decontamination process needed to abide by certain time durations prior to the opening of the restaurant the following morning. That information sent us scrambling from the restaurant and resumed the brainstorming session at my house which ended at 4 a.m.

The next time I heard from Kalanick was in 2011 when he called me to tell me that Uber was opening in Boston and he wanted me to be his “Rider Number 0.” It had to be done the following morning. So I replaced our routine of driving Eric to school with taking the first Uber ride in Boston using a black limo. Upon arrival, we noticed surprised looks …. On my return, I stopped 133

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to give a lift to Brigadier General Kevin Ryan, then executive director of the Belfer Center, who was waiting to catch a ride to work. He was impressed by the fact that I was using a black limo to take my son to school. He was equally impressed by the fact that there was now a new service that he could use to transport his Russian counterparts for diplomatic and military interactions at Harvard Kennedy School.

In the domain of social entrepreneurship, I was invited by Prof. Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab to support his One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. It was a small board of trustees that included Negroponte, his accountant, his lawyer, and myself. The goal of OLPC was to advance education using new technologies. Negroponte felt that such a grand initiative could not be effectively implemented using market mechanisms or public sector support publicly. This motivated him to create OLPC as a social enterprise. It was one of the most exciting practical initiatives I had been involved in. It entailed designing a radically new technology that could meet longstanding educational objectives.

It involved a large number of people around the globe connected to a research facility in Kendall square on the campus of MIT. My then eight-year-old son Eric became one of the testers of the software developed under the auspices of Walter Bender at OLPC, where he was introduced to programming and became interested in his current study of computer science.

Many analysts especially from the educational field have declared OLPC a failure. This is partly because the project could not meet the narrow pedagogic objective of improving education outcomes. It is precisely this narrow approach that leads to low expectations on deploying new technologies or teaching methods.

A wider look at the impact of OLPC a slightly different picture. First, OLPC became a reference point against which people decide on which educational technologies to experiment with. Second, it was an acknowledgement of the fact that learning is an experimental process that itself involves learning. Third, OLPC inspired new generations of standard laptops and a wide range of low-cost devices designed to improve learning. The development and commercialization of netbooks was partially in response to the introduction of OLPC. Fourth, the OLPC model demonstrated that inclusive innovation strategies provide a wide range of private and public options for solving intractable social problems.

Viewed from this broad perspective, the OLPC model ended up providing unintended positive benefits without significant evidence of unintended negative consequences.

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In other fields beyond agricultural innovation in Africa, this included getting high-level guidance and practical technology development tutorials from leading experts. My first such engagement was using advances in genetics to develop low-cost vaccines for African countries. I received in- depth intellectual support from Prof. Peter A. Singer and Prof. Abdallah Daar at the medical school of the University of Toronto. I was also able to contribute to their work with ideas on sources of social resistance to new technologies. This partnership nearly never happened because I received a series of phone calls from Singer at Princeton University. Prof. Singer’s expertise is in bioethics so there was a possible common intellectual interest between us, but I wanted to learn more about his writings before I could respond to the phone calls. After nearly a month, I received a FedEx package from Prof. Singer at University of Toronto.

The contents of the FedEx then clarified that there were two Peter Singers in the field of bioethics. The contents of the FedEx allowed me to establish right away a working relationship with the University of Toronto.

Later, I was able to undertake similar work in collaboration with Dr. Thomas Burke jointly appointed at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School. My partnership with Burke involved exploring the potential application of miniaturized ultrasound devices, initially developed for use in rugged environments similar to those in Africa. I used devices borrowed from Burke in my classes and public lectures in ways that were ethical being a non-medical professional. I also did similar work in collaboration with Prof.

Wesley Harris in the Department of Aerospace and Astronautics at MIT. The work focused on developing roadmaps for small satellite programs in African countries. It was done with the support of our joint students, Danielle Wood and Peter Waswa.

In a contribution to leverage advances in 3-D printing, I collaborated with a team of engineers and young entrepreneurs at the national university of Singapore led by Prof. Neo-Kok Beng to develop a prototype desktop 3-D printer.

The timing of the effort was particularly strategic in the context of technological leapfrogging. Our initiative was informed by the expiry of critical patents for 3-D printers that kept the cost of additive manufacturing out of reach for those wishing to develop new industries. We thought that this window of technological opportunity would serve as a boon for emerging economies especially those of Africa to push themselves to the frontiers of technological innovation by defining 3-D printing as a new platform that also combines advances in robotics, 135

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artificial intelligence, digital imaging, and data analytics. The prototype that was developed was subsequently improved and commercialized under the brand name of Buccaneer 3-D printer. A prototype of the printer was showcased at the Harvard Kennedy School. Other Massachusetts-based firms also joined the demonstration event and showed the prospects of broad application of 3-D printing in Africa. These included the use of the technology in creative arts such as the production of masks for personalized garments and related fashion accessories.

My role as a public academic extended to using social media to share important information on the role of innovation in economic social and political transformation. Much of this work started at the time of the Arab Spring when I publicly called for the removal of despots. My engagement with social media started by using Facebook as a way to store news items for further review. This practice stems from my earlier days when I would browse the daily newspaper in the morning and read it substantively in the afternoon, so for me, Facebook was not about advocacy but about an easy and low-cost way to store and retrieve news. I was doing this as part of my regular research work especially on identifying emerging technologies of relevance to Africa.

The Arab spring provided me with impetus to transfer the activities to Twitter which offered greater functionality. But more importantly, the retweet function became an important source of information on what people considered to be of interest to them. It is this feedback to my posts that enhances my own research work and helps others to identify areas that are of general public interest. In this regard, Twitter is an important part of my research infrastructure. By virtue of using Twitter in an open and transparent way, the platform reinforces my role as a public academic. Twitter has become an important source of ideas on what topics to research and therefore plays a key role in my priority setting.

Harvard University provided me with the opportunity to broaden my global perspectives, deepen my policy analysis, and become a public academic. This is all due to the mentorship that I received from Prof. Holdren, Prof. Clark, and Prof. Graham Allison, then director of the Belfer Center. It allowed me to fully expand my portfolio of academic training and interests to accommodate work on the application of science, technology, and innovation in sustainable development worldwide.

This transition was made possible through my election and participation in the activities of scientific and engineering academies that included the U.S. 136

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National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London, the U.K. Royal Academy of Engineering, the World Academy of Sciences, and the African Academy of Sciences. One of my most significant areas of personal growth and professional fulfillment was my participation (2006-2008) in the Grand Challenges for Engineering committee established by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. The committee helped me re-evaluate my understanding of my area of professional training in science, technology, and public policy. It became evident that much of the discussion on science and technology is largely a code word for understanding the profound role of engineering in providing diverse solutions that have made it possible to improve human well-being.

This is most evident in fields such as providing infrastructure, advancing human capabilities through skill development, leveraging engineering to advance scientific discovery, and promoting entrepreneurship. This is important because society generally downplays the role that engineering plays in expanding prosperity and improving human well-being. This is reinforced by the tendency in public communication to credit scientists with the work of engineers. It is not uncommon to see press releases from engineering schools and institutes citing breakthrough inventions by engineers being reinterpreted by the popular media as work of scientists. In many cases, whenever there is a scientific breakthrough, the tendency is to credit scientists, but when there is a technical challenge, it is often referred to as an engineering problem.

The work on grand challenges for engineering has helped me to identify numerous ways by which emphasis on engineering could bring prosperity and human wellbeing worldwide. My conviction was reinforced by having the honor and privilege to serve on the jury of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering administered by the U.K. Royal Academy of Engineering. The £ 1,000,000 award is the largest engineering prize worldwide. The laureates and the winning engineering inventions underscore the extent to which engineering has transformed our lives for the better. The inventions include the World Wide Web and the Internet, controlled drug delivery, and digital imaging. All these engineering inventions have had significant impact on technical applications that have profoundly influenced our daily lives. I have also developed a deep interest in the role of prizes in stimulating inventions. I have, in my own modest ways, advocated and helped to launch new engineering-oriented prizes.

I have learned to view engineering from three perspectives. The first is looking at engineering as an academic discipline covering a wide range of areas 137

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of study. Second, I view engineering not as a discipline, but as an approach to problem solving. In this respect, engineering applies to all aspects of human endeavor to find solutions to pressing social, economic, and political problems. For example, Somaliland has been the world’s first country to use iris recognition technology to create a transparent and duplicate-free voter register. Finally, I have observed one feature that distinguishes between how scientists and engineers approach their work. Scientists are predominantly preoccupied with discovering what is already there through careful scrutiny of natural phenomena. In contrast, engineers, through their problem-solving approach, focus on creating or inventing what is not already there. This may be a simplification because knowledge flows in both directions, but it helps us to understand and appreciate the fact that both scientists and engineers need to work together to use knowledge to generate new solutions.

I applied experiences from the academies in my subsequent teaching on science and technology policy studies. I also applied the same advisory methods in running various panels that I was appointed to chair by the United Nations and the African Union. The focus of my work with the panels was to bring evidencebased decision-making to public policy, especially in African countries.

What I learned at Belfer as a public academic was to go beyond just commenting on current affairs, it focused on deep engagement with policy makers in various countries and regions around the world. This was made relatively easy by virtue of being located at the Belfer Center, which has been ranked consistently over the years as the world’s best university-based think tank. I drew inspiration from the transformational work that my colleagues were doing and identified ways to link them with the aspirations of African high-level policy makers. I also discovered in the process that Africa’s challenges were not unique to the continent. My proposed solution to Africa’s problems seemed to immediately command attention among state, city, and local leaders in marginalized parts of the industrialized world. For example, in 1999, I wrote a policy paper at the request of the United Nations University on the relationships between science and technology on the one hand and natural resource management for economic development on the other.

The first call requesting a copy of the paper came from the staff of the governor of Arkansas. I tried to explain to the staffer that Arkansas was not an African country. His response was that the challenges of African countries are remarkably similar to those in many of the U.S. states. In 2002, when I formally 138

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launched a course on technology and African development, many of the American students that petitioned to take it were from U.S. states experiencing similar development challenges. In addition to Arkansas, I also got students from poorer parts of Appalachia, Maine, Vermont, Florida, and other regions of the United States. I made the same observation during my executive training programs on “innovation for economic development” offered to participants from around the world. It was notable that U.S. applicants to the program sought to learn from participants from poorer regions of the world to identify solutions for their communities. These observations changed the way I perceived my role at Belfer as the first and only African professor. I devoted my time to making these global connections rather than seeking to identify points of exceptionalism.

This is particularly important because of the long history of Americans and Africans independently appealing to exceptionalism to justify why their experiences are so unique that they have little to learn from other regions of the world. I, therefore, perceived myself as belonging to a wider Belfer community that used evidence-based analysis to address global grand challenges, of which poverty is one. Through Harvard Kennedy School networks I started to provide science and technology advice to members of the Asian region.

My first assignment was to assist the government of Taiwan in identifying new technological windows of opportunity. This invitation was based on my work on technological leapfrogging and catch-up. By then, Taiwan was seeking new technological directions to respond to the migration of semiconductor manufacturing to mainland China.

In Taiwan, I worked mainly with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). The institute had been responsible for helping Taiwan transition from being a raw material exporter (covering mushrooms, bananas, and shrimp) to becoming the world’s leading semiconductor exporter. I was also invited by the government of Thailand to serve on an international advisory body on science, technology, and innovation. The aim of the advisory body was to assist Thailand in strengthening its innovation institutions as drivers of economic transformation.

Then, Thailand was seeking new pathways to facilitate the transition from low-value natural resource based exports to high value technology products.

Based on additional knowledge gained from working in Taiwan and Thailand, I was able to expand my engagement with non-Asian countries. The following examples provide an overview of the scope of those engagements.

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My journey to the Caribbean started in Tokyo in 2000 at the founding of the Inter-Academy Council (IAC), a coalition of national academies around the world.

The process was led by Bruce Alberts, president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. There I met the renowned mathematician from Trinidad and Tobago, Harold Ramkissoon. Harold was serving as the chair of the Caribbean Academy of Science (CAS). Harold enlisted me to help him rally support from Africans at the meeting to join the steering group of the IAC. At the time, I was giving much thought to the potential role of universities in sustainable development.

While at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), I had been puzzled by the disconnect between botanical research in universities and conservation efforts among NGOs. It was like the brain and arms were detached. I had given a few talks on why I thought environmental NGOs needed brain implants and university research departments needed to grow arms. By then, I had not realized that the problem extended beyond conservation. Harold confirmed that this was indeed the situation in the Caribbean and thought the University of West Indies needed to be more active in sustainable development work. In 2001, Harold informed me that CAS was going to invite me to keynote their general assembly in Georgetown, Guyana. He said they wanted me to speak on the role of universities. My talk was broadcast live on Guyanese television. At the end of it, I was informed that the organizers also needed my written speech, so I sat down with John Caesar of the University of Guyana and wrote it out.

The road trip to the airport took about an hour, and my flight out was at 5:00 a.m., so I needed to be there by 3:00 a.m. The Pegasus Hotel staff advised me to find a good reason to just stay away all night rather than risk sleeping through my departure, which was not uncommon. But they ruled out roaming the streets of Georgetown, which was rumored to have death squads hunting down suspected criminals. At around 2:00 a.m., my phone rang. It was someone who identified himself as being from the Office of the President. He said President Bharrat Jagdeo wanted to see me at 8:30 a.m. in his office. “The President is out of luck. I have a flight to catch at 5:00 a.m.,” I said. “The President is in luck. He will shut down the airport,” he responded with a ring of finality in his voice. He then proceeded to tell me when a car would come to pick me up. At that point, it started to sound real. He also said they would take care of rebooking my flight.

The meeting with President Jagdeo started on time. He said he had watched my keynote speech and had some questions. They were not questions. He went through the key points that I made and mounted a forceful challenge. I started 140

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to get irritated. I wondered what the purpose was for inviting me to his office only to launch into an attack on my presentation. I maintained my calm and answered his questions to the best of my ability. I was just starting to explore the issues surrounding the role of universities in sustainable development. Into the 90th minute, on what sounded like a hostile Ph.D. defense, the president asked, “What would you do if you wanted to reform an existing university where there was strong resistance to change?” “I would wait until there is an opportunity to change the leadership and then appoint someone who can champion the reforms,” I said. He thanked me for my time. On my way back to the hotel, I thought the president was playing the devil’s advocate. I suspected that he was throwing at me questions he himself had had to answer. I knew very little about the University of Guyana except that Walter Rodney, author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, had been on its faculty.

About two months after the meeting, I got a call from President Jagdeo. He reminded me of my advice and asked me if I could become the next Chancellor of the university. I told him I couldn’t relocate to Guyana for family reasons.

He clarified that the position was honorific and did not involve relocation. He said he had tried everything possible to reform the university to no avail. In a follow-up conversation, I agreed to take up the challenge. He arranged for me to meet the other council members, faculty, student leaders, and key government officials. At my own initiative, I made arrangements to visit foreign embassies in Guyana to get their perspectives on the university.

The meetings with the faculty, starting with the vice chancellor and the deans, were very cordial. I did not get the sense that there was either enthusiasm or optimism for reform except from the student leader Romana Baxter. Much of the discussion focused on the financial and infrastructure needs of the university. The need for an upgraded and comprehensive library appeared to be a top priority. These were the early days of online libraries, so I thought there was an opportunity for the university to leapfrog into the digital. But there were deeper political undercurrents that stood in the way of reform. One of them was the ethnic makeup of the country. Guyanese Indians had overtaken AfroGuyanese in population and had gone on to capture political power. At the time there were very high political tensions in the country. The opposition party, which was largely Afro-Guyanese, had boycotted Parliament; the university faculty had largely been Afro-Guyanese, whereas the Indo-Guyanese controlled the business sector. Now the latter also controlled the government.

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Any suggestions to make the university more entrepreneurial were interpreted as seeking to extend the Indo-Guyanese influence in the last refuge of the Afro-Guyanese. I was seen as an African front for the Indo-Guyanese agenda. Some of the top faculty at the university had been senior government officials, so they candidly shared their concerns with me. At some point it was in fact suggested to me that I could also serve as a mediator between the two ethnic groups, a role that I did not relish. I got some help from Prof. Norman Clark at Sussex University on drafting a reform plan for the university. The purpose of the document was to serve as a reference point for stakeholder consultations.

But none of the proposed ideas had any chance without new funding, preferably from international sources. The U.S. embassy expressed support and offered to reach out to their funding networks in government and multilateral institutions.

On one of my visits to Guyana, the U.S. Department of State designated Dr. Melissa Flagg to accompany me. That was the strongest signal of external interest in support that I had received.

Upgrading university infrastructure was critical. The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) included in a loan proposal for Guyana to fund highspeed connectivity for the university. Then Guyana had one of the most outdated phone systems in the region. The upgrading would have allowed the university to expand its research networks and access online library material internationally.

There was a snag. Guyana had a long-term contract with the U.S.-based Cable and Wireless Company. It decided to take legal action against Guyana and the IADB. I was named in one of the legal documents in my capacity as Chancellor.

The IADB decided not to proceed with the project as conceived. This experience exposed an aspect of the decay of developing country universities that I had not considered. The extent to which vested interests hindered reform in universities became one of the issues I looked at in my later work.

With the diminished prospects for new funding, I knew it would be difficult to sell reform to a university that was only funding salaries and limited research activities. The quality of teaching was also being hampered by institutional isolation. Medical students were graduating without having had the benefit of hospital experience. The national hospital in Georgetown did not allow university students to be attached to their doctors as part of their training. The same isolation extended to other sectors, denying students the opportunity to gain practical experience. This in turn made it harder for them to get jobs.

Migration was at the top of the agenda for many students, as well as residents.

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In fact, there were more Guyanese in the United States and Canada than there were in the country. I broached the idea of opening a campus of the university where the Guyanese were, especially in New York. I was informed by people who knew better that the diaspora were perceived as key sources of the political destabilization of Guyana. I decided not to bring up the idea with the president, even though an opportunity to do so had been provided by having me sit next to him on a flight from Georgetown to the Bahamas.

Harold Ramkissoon continued to be supportive of the idea of developmental universities. He invited me to stop over in Port of Spain to talk to a small number of people interested in the idea. I arrived in Trinidad drenched in rum. Upon takeoff in Georgetown, a bottle of rum in a bag just above me broke, and the contents emptied all over me. I was very worried that upon exit, I could come intact with a fire source and go up in smoke. The airline attendants offered me the option of having a shower at the airport. In the end, it was not necessary.

The following day I gave the talk to about 35 people. I didn’t know who was in the audience, but around the same time, the University of Trinidad and Tobago was created with similar objective. In 2013 I was invited to speak in Trinidad and Tobago again. The event was hosted by the University of West Indies, the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT), and the University of Southern Caribbean. At a meeting at UTT, I said that if I could recommend a university for the country, it would look like UTT. “But you already did,” said the senior official I was meeting with. He said they had kept track of my writings on the topic. I think the idea was in the air at the time of my first talk, and credit goes to the prime minister at the time. I was reassured, though, that there were people with the political means at the time who felt strongly enough to act.

After serving for about two years as Chancellor of the University of Guyana, I decided to step down. After being appointed to the faculty of Harvard Kennedy School, it became clear that I could no longer continue in the role because of the time conflict with new teaching responsibilities. I no longer had the flexibility to fly to Georgetown at short notice to attend to urgent issues. I learned a lot over that short period. One of the key lessons was how young people viewed agriculture. I learned this lesson while visiting the new Berbice Campus of the university. Agriculture invoked images of people using rudimentary implements in farming, especially in cutting sugarcane. But there was great enthusiasm when the field was presented as scientific, innovative, and entrepreneurial. The use of

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modern technology in agriculture inspired young people to consider going into agriculture.

I also learned how hard it was to reform an institution that performs multiple purposes. The University of Guyana wasn’t just an institution of higher learning.

It served as a quasi-branch of government that served the political interests of a large section of the population. The reason I was interested in raising new funds was to take the issue of money off the table so we could start to explore new avenues for reform. There was no doubt that everyone I spoke to felt strongly that the University of Guyana needed to be strengthened. But there was also a sense of resignation about its entanglement with national politics. It was not possible to address the details of reform without getting involved in national politics. I left too soon before I figured out how best to get engaged. My next engagement in the Caribbean was in Jamaica. I convened my first executive program on Science, Technology, and Innovation as a follow-up to the report of the UN Task Force on Science, Technology, and Innovation that I co-chaired.

Innovation: Applying Knowledge in Development had generated considerable interest in government circles, which was expressed to us through requests for training on how to implement it. One of the participants was Minister Phil Paulwell from Jamaica. In fact, he was the only minister in attendance. After the program ended, I spoke with Dr. Arnoldo Ventura from the Office of the Prime Minister. “How did our minister do in your course?” he asked. “He was among the most active and thoughtful people in the group,” I replied. “What a relief!

We were very worried about his coming. We feared that if he failed the exams, it would reflect very badly on Jamaica,” he added. I told him that we did not subject our executive participants to the tyranny of exams.

Phil O’Keefe invited me to keynote a signature annual science and technology event in Jamaica the following year. The highlight of the one-month science festival was a gathering of high school students from all over the country. I addressed them in a soccer stadium. One of the concerns raised during the visit was that Jamaicans didn’t generate new technological creations. I proposed that one way to find out whether innovation was happening would be to run an annual prize competition, which would reveal the answer. They did, and the following year they awarded prizes in digital education and food preservation.

The process also helped to identify a mother trained in traffic engineering who had modified her kitchen to function as a lab to induct her children into the sciences associated with food preparation. She had identified local plant extracts 144

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that extended the shelf life of juices. The other innovators were a team of young people who had set up a business using mobile phones to help schoolchildren do their homework. I also met a young man who told me that he had recombined parts from other vehicles to make a functioning helicopter. We joked that he was motivated by the desire to fly back to Africa. These events were convened by the very able director of the Jamaican Scientific Research Council, Dr. Audia Barnett.

Phil was very committed to creating an innovation fund, especially after seeing that young Jamaicans were coming up with new ideas that were not making it to the marketplace because of a lack of funding. He thought Jamaica could also specialize in generating technologies that could be marketed to other small island states. He saw great potential in fields such as energy, water, and telecommunications. He also considered the geographical location of Jamaica as an asset. It was in the same time zone as parts of the United States. He thought an innovation fund could also attract Jamaicans in the diaspora to bring their ideas back to the country. He saw an example of how Jamaican nurses were investing back in the country. But even more interesting, he had figured out a way to fund it. The idea was to change the way oil payments to Jamaica were made. Under the prevailing model, the quantity of oil shipped to the country from Venezuela was certified upon landing in Jamaica. It was at that point that a check could be issued to Venezuela. There was a delay of two weeks between the shipment and the issuing of the check.

The new idea was to station Jamaican staff in Venezuela, where they would verify the quantity of the shipment. The payment would then be placed in an interest-earning account. The funds earned from the two-week grace period would be transferred to the innovation fund. This, of course, needed to be negotiated with Venezuela. The idea was simple and workable. But its implementation was not that easy. Questions arose as to why what appeared to be a national fund would be restricted to innovation. Those arguing the point viewed innovation as a sectoral ministry. The argument put forward was that the fund should be set aside for national emergencies, especially those arising from hurricanes. It is hard to object to a national fund created in Jamaica to respond to such a common natural disaster.

My association with Phil morphed from science and technologies into the field of politics proper. He called me up and said they needed me to go to Jamaica to help out on an urgent matter. He did not disclose what the issue was but said 145

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he would send someone to come and explain. I said I was interested in principle but needed more details. I assumed that the task would be in the same field of science and technology we had been working on together.

He said he would send Robert Stephenson. I knew Robert well. He was the one who encouraged Phil to attend my course in the first place. Robert had heard me speak at another executive program he was attending. Robert was abundantly resourceful and a man of ample proportions. He was a political troubleshooter and was called upon to undertake some of the most challenging tasks. His energy was limitless. He put several cellphones on his car’s dashboard and took whichever rang and managed the conversation as if he was a mobile switchboard. He did all this while driving and navigating Kingston traffic. The word multitasking did not adequately describe Robert’s talents. He was my host every time I visited Jamaica. I was never sure if he knew every Jamaican, but it seemed everyone knew him.

Robert arrived in my office straight from the airport. The first thing he did was to pull out my article from his briefcase and put it on my table. He wasn’t sounding like this was going to be a vacation. Then he explained the purpose of the invitation. He said they had a political problem only an African man could solve. “We have a contest coming up in the ruling party to replace Prime Minister J.P. Patterson. Minister Portia Simpson-Miller is a contender, but she might not get the necessary support,” he said. I wondered aloud what role I could play that could affect the outcome. He said there were only two male ministers supporting her, although she had strong support from women.

“The problem is that the men are telling women that a woman can’t be a prime minister, and more and more women are believing it,” he explained. He said all I needed to do was to appear with Simpson-Miller at one or two public rallies and say that women are just as qualified as men to run matters of the state. The point was to support women in general and by extension, this would also help their candidate. He also informed me that Simpson-Miller had a formidable contender in the person of Peter Phillips, the Minister for National Security. He assured me that my security would be taken care of since I was being invited as a state guest.

Everything went as planned. I appeared at two public rallies. One was in Simpson-Miller’s constituency, and the other was a larger venue and attended by women from across the country. I made my brief statements and was cheered wildly. I learned later that it had to do with my support for women just as much 146

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as it was for the cultural affinity of Jamaicans and Africans. We were put up at a state lodge at Laughing Waters. This was a secluded facility with its own power source. It was across the sea from Cuba. I was told, jokingly, that the facility was strategically located to facilitate the escape of the prime minister to Cuba in the event there was trouble in the country. This only made sense if Cuba wasn’t the source of the trouble.

My visit was very well orchestrated. In addition to the public appearances, I also did a TV interview. The focus of the interview was not on Jamaican politics.

We talked mostly about economic development and my own background, including how I got involved in Jamaica. My first visit to Jamaica was when I was in the UN. Given my position, I could hardly go into any country as an ordinary citizen on vacation and avoid the trappings of the official protocol, as I needed to let the country know that I was visiting. Jamaica was one of the few countries that would let me vacation without the controlling arms of officialdom. It was on one of those escape visits that I was badly bitten by lice. I was told the best treatment was a drink called “Devon” at my hotel. It had no impact on the itching.

My last substantive engagement in Jamaica over that period was to be part of a special farewell event for Prime Minister Patterson. The occasion was to launch a collection of essays on information and communication technologies compiled by the prime minister’s office. The event was part of the continuing emphasis on the role of science and technology in development. I was one of the contributors to the collection. It was the prime minister’s way of indicating that moving into the information age was his legacy. The event was held at his office and attended by about 120 guests. I joined the prime minister on the podium.

Other speakers included Phil Paulwell. At the start of the event, we were asked what beverages we wanted. I said I wanted coffee, which was then poured into my cup. I whispered to the lady, “Is it spiked?” She acted that she hadn’t heard me. Moments later, she returned with another cup and substituted it for the one I had. When I sipped it, I could immediately tell that my joke had been taken seriously. There was rum in my coffee. I could also see a few people at the back raising their thumbs in the air and smiling. I didn’t drink the concoction but kept thinking that not even the prime minister had what was in my cup. I learned from experience that people take their national drinks very seriously and will offer them even under extraordinary circumstances.

Simpson-Miller got elected as the successor to Patterson and took over from him as the first female Prime Minister of Jamaica. Robert had played other 147

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roles to shift the vote in favor of Simpson-Miller and had fallen out with some powerful forces in the country. He needed to get out of Jamaica for a cooling-off period. I agreed to have him come and stay in our basement bedroom for as long as was necessary. After two weeks, he returned to Jamaica.

You know you have had a long association with a country when it is assumed that you must hail from there. This comes with a price too. In my early days on Twitter, I used to be trolled and insulted by a few Nigerian followers. The moment they realized I wasn’t Nigerian, they would stop. Much of the trolling happened because of the confusion between my optimism for Nigeria as a country and presumed support for the government in power. For my detractors, any government in power was to be viewed with suspicion.

My association with Nigerian leaders goes back to the late 1980s when I first met former President Olusegun Obasanjo. I first met Obasanjo through Prof. Thomas Odhiambo, founder and head of the Nairobi-based International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE). Tom had also founded the African Academy of Sciences and the Kenya National Academy of Sciences.

He had also founded the Research and Development Forum for Science-led Development (RANDFORUM), which he directed. Working with him was like doing a post-doc on institution-building. He used to tease me saying ACTS was a jua kali (open hot sun) operation.

Through RANDFORUM, Tom sought to raise the profile of science and technology among African presidents. He worked closely with Obasanjo on this effort. On a few occasions, Tom would invite me to events he co-hosted with Obasanjo to help prepare reports for his use. By the time we met, Nigeria was back under military rule following the 1985 coup by Bangida. Obasanjo returned to political life in Nigeria to try to restore civilian rule in the country having earlier been the first military ruler to pave the way for civilian rule.

After Obasanjo became president in 1999, he pledged to raise the profile of science and technology. At the time, one of the main concerns was funding for research and development (R&D). Through his office, I was introduced to his science and technology minister, Chief Ebitimi Banigo. The minister had a background in banking and was a person of vast financial means. Our interactions focused mostly on how to encourage Nigerian scientists in the diaspora to return home to help rebuild the country. Like Tom and Obasanjo, Banigo believed in the importance of domestic human capabilities. When I mentioned to him that some of the scientists might be more valuable to Nigeria 148

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working on issues of national interest from their current locations, he noted, “You mean we should treat them like our national reserves?” The analogy made sense coming from a banker. I got the sense that he got the point, but I also knew that Obasanjo held very strong views about the need to reverse the so-called brain drain. At one point, Obasanjo was visiting Harvard, and just ahead of his public address I asked him a question about science and technology. He just brushed off the question in his typical combative style, “Ask me that question when you come to Abuja.” It was the first time we had spoken since 1989, when he left the African science community to concentrate on restoring democratic rule in Nigeria.

My contacts with the Nigerian government increased when he appointed Prof. Turner Isoun as his science and technology minister and Dr. Babatunde Thomas as his science and technology advisor in the presidency. Both Turner and Babatunde were people I knew well. Turned had worked for the African Academy of Sciences for many years. Babatunde and I met when he was heading the African Regional Centre for Technology (ARCT), an arm of the Organization for African Unity (OAU). I met Babatunde at the suggestion of officials in the Kenyan government. They had told me that they had received a complaint from ARCT that Kenya wasn’t paying its dues to the organization, and yet it was supporting a competing entity called ACTS, which I had just created. I met Babatunde and explained that we were not a government-funded organization. He and I became friends and communicated regularly. Later he and his wife Nardos moved to Nairobi, and we became family friends. With him and Turner in government, I had colleagues I could share ideas with.

One day I got a call from Obasanjo’s office saying that the president needed my help to give Babatunde some space to reflect on what Nigeria needed. My colleague Prof. Dani Rodrik had some funds and was able to offer a three-month fellowship for Babatunde to work on how to reverse the “brain drain.” Upon his arrival, Babatunde gave me an elegant agbada, the wide-sleeved robe worn in Nigeria. He said it had been made by Obasanjo’s tailor. It was so magnificently made that I started to think that it should be classified as real estate and made exempt from tax.

It was during Babatunde’s stay that I came to learn that his job was not tenable, as he was in regular conflict with the ministry of science and technology.

He was not the only one with the problem. Obasanjo had dozens of presidential advisors. Some people put the number at 32. They appeared to be doing the 149

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same work as legally established ministries, hence the tensions. Babatunde felt that his advisory role was too limiting and he wanted to implement projects.

This could not be done in the presidency. He and I had extensive discussions about the importance of separating operational and advisory roles. His position was even more tenuous because it didn’t exist by law, so it could be abolished anytime.

I entered a new phase of interaction with the Nigerian government soon after the election of President Umar Yar’Adua and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan in 1999. They succeeded the Obasanjo presidency. I got a call from Yemi Cardoso, a former student of mine (as well as former finance minister in the State of Lagos). I had met Yemi on his last day at Harvard Kennedy School and had maintained contact. Yemi said that the newly elected vice president wanted to visit various U.S. institutions to seek ideas on how to solve some of Nigeria’s problems such as energy and conflict in the Niger Delta. He said the Ford Foundation’s office in Lagos was financing the trip but they needed a formal letter of invitation. I later learned that the possibility had been discussed in some Harvard circles, and it was felt that such a trip was premature. There were questions about the conduct of the election and the advice was to play safe until the legitimacy of the new government was established. I agonized about the situation and decided that I could host him in my personal capacity and arrange for him to spend time with experts on energy and conflict. I talked to Prof.

Larry Susskind at MIT, who agreed to put together a team to work with the vice president and his team. Then there was the issue of sending him a formal letter. I wanted to create enough separation between myself as a Harvard employee and as an African who was keen to respond to the need for advice by a newly elected government. I thought I would have my nine-year-old son, Eric, invite him instead. He accepted Eric’s invitation. Back in Nigeria, word reached the public through the press that the vice president was visiting Harvard, among other institutions. The inquiries started at Harvard on who was hosting him. When I was contacted by a colleague from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, I said the vice president had been invited by my son, who didn’t have any connection with Harvard. When asked what my son did, I said he was into robotics and computers. I was expecting a question on his institutional affiliation or where he worked but to my relief it didn’t come.

The vice president and his team of 10 came, and we hosted them for dinner at our house. It was a remarkably lively evening. We exchanged a lot of ideas, 150

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mostly on energy and technology in general. Eric had been a great host, making sure they were well attended. My wife Alison had spent hours preparing the food and making sure that we had enough rice for everyone. I think we overlooked tomato sauce, but the vibrancy of the discussions compensated for any inadvertent culinary omissions. At the end, when the vice president-elect stood up to thank Eric, that was the time he realized he hadn’t eaten his dessert. So as Jonathan spoke, Eric was intensely eating his strawberries as if there would be no other time. Jonathan then gave Eric a notebook as his token of appreciation.

Jonathan started off on a rocky path with the subsequent passing away of the president and his own ascendancy to the presidency. Over that tumultuous period in Nigerian politics, Yemi and I decided to shift our focus from federal to state government. A new Governor of the State of Lagos had been elected and word was out that he was making Lagos work again. Governor Fashola visited Harvard Kennedy School in 2010, and we agreed to help him shift Lagos from his initial focus on infrastructure to making the state a hub for innovation in the country and region. We agreed to do this through an executive training program for his cabinet, private sector leaders, and top university officials.

To ensure that we didn’t run into difficulties, we liaised with the Office of the President to get his support for the role of states. This issue was particularly touchy in the Nigerian federal structure as well as history. On the way to run the program in Lagos, I arranged to pass through Abuja to visit with the president.

At the time I also had the galleys of The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa and thought it made sense to give him an advance copy. Earlier we had sought and secured a commendation from him for the book.

The plan was to have lunch with the president. I was accompanied by Yemi.

When we arrived at the Office of the President we were informed that he had gone to his residence where he was expecting us. We drove around the block to his residence. At the gate we were told that the president had just left the villa for the office. Before we could decide what to do, we saw the president walking back to the villa. We could just see his shoulders and head. Then behind him we saw two heads of ostriches keeping pace with him. At first I thought I was imagining things because of jetlag. I had arrived that morning and just dropped off my bags at the hotel before heading to Aso Rock, the presidential area. Yemi saw the spectacular parade as well.

When we entered the residence, the president greeted us and proceeded to ask me in a very genuine way how to get rid of the ostriches. They had been 151

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given to him by his predecessor by supporters from Northern Nigeria, so getting rid of them would have sent the wrong message to the source of the gift. Then the president turned to his chief of staff, Oronto Douglas and said, “And what happened to the gift elephant?”

To which Douglas calmly replied, “It fell off the truck, Sir.” I learned from those few minutes the kinds of complex issues that a head of state had to deal with to keep his constituents happy. I also saw first-hand why it is never a good idea to have two diary managers. These were structures that the President inherited, and they continued to be maintained despite the agony they caused.

We had a wonderful lunch, composed entirely of different types of fish.

The president explained to me what was on offer by using the scientific names of the different fish species. During the lunch he made it quite clear that he supported strengthening the economic role of states and gave a number of examples where he had seen this being done with discernible results. He recollected his visits to China where, despite perception of centralized control, provinces had great leeway to promote development as well as international trade. He offered to send staff to the program to reassure Lagosians of this state support. The assurance was important because from the outset there were expressions of concern over how the federal government might react to the initiative. Public statements from the President’s representatives played a key role in getting those concerns off the table.

When I handed Jonathan the advance copy of The New Harvest, he flipped through it and said, “Agriculture is our new oil.” We talked briefly about its importance, but it was clear that he understood the issues and had a minister, Akin Adesina, who was an expert in the field. His government was widely perceived as ineffectual on many issues but it was acknowledged that he had recorded successes in agriculture and information technology. With this record, Adesina was elected the president of the African Development Bank.

What started off as a chance meeting with Obasanjo got me so immersed in Nigerian affairs to a point where friends and colleagues there thought I needed to be identified with a particular place in the country. It fell upon Yemi to consult on the matter. Usually such discussions tend to be highly partisan. One of the lessons I learned as a public academic was that hierarchy bred contempt. Those at the bottom of the hierarchy, especially experts, have low expectations of their supervisors. Their confidence that those above them can understand what they

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know diminishes as one goes up the ladder. This contempt is a major barrier to the flow of information and creativity in hierarchical organizations.

This insight came to me vividly in 2010 in one of my most successful contributions to public policy reform in Africa. That year, at short notice, the King of Swaziland, Mswati III, was hosting the summit of heads of state and government of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). With one month to go, King Mswati III proposed that he would convene the summit on the theme of “Leveraging Science and Technology for Development.” The COMESA Secretariat had to find a keynote speaker on the topic within a month. The Secretary-General, Sindiso Ngwenya, designated Francis Mangeni to find the keynote speaker and make all the necessary travel and logistical arrangements for the selected person. Francis reached out to me.

The urgency in his voice was apparent. I was willing to do it, but there was one challenge. The dates conflicted with the beginning of classes at Harvard, so I could not travel. Francis offered a solution. He proposed that I record my talk and send him a DVD, which I did. It was a 20-minute recording of ideas on the advantages of latecomer economies and their prospects for technological leapfrogging. I did not have any guidelines to follow so I saw the keynote as an opportunity to risk putting forward new ideas that would not normally be on the agenda of regional trade organizations. I drew some of the ideas for the keynote from my forthcoming book, The New Harvest.

The recording was first viewed by the COMESA staff, whose first reaction was that it was too technical for government officials who had to view it first before recommending whether their ministers should see it. After some internal discussion, they agreed to show the recording to government representatives.

Under normal practices, the officials would only present a summary of key recommendations to ministers. In this case, the officials recommended that the video be shown to their ministers in full. COMESA staff also made copies of the DVD, which was viewed at different locations at the venue of the meeting.

When the ministers viewed it, they too recommended that the video be seen by heads of state and government. This was itself unusual because at this level leaders come, make speeches, and sign onto a communiqué agreed upon by their ministers.

The highlight of this summit for the presidents was going to the palace for cultural entertainment. A video recording of a talk on technological leapfrogging was no match for the famed reed dance by Swazi young women. But in the 153

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middle of my night, a Kenyan diplomat sent me a text message reporting that African heads of state were watching my video recording. This was a surprise to me because it was a departure from the standard protocol for adopting presidential decisions. In fact, I had expected that at the viewing by ministers, COMESA would call me to allow me to respond to questions. At least this was the plan. This had not happened, so the thought of my talk being juxtaposed with a ceremonial reed dance was beyond my imagination.

My keynote contained several ideas, all aimed at bringing the idea of technological innovation into the COMESA trading regime. They were all about creating new incentives, advisory mechanisms for innovation, and capacity development for regional trade. Under normal circumstances, these were ideas for which a presenter would have been asked how they would be funded. But I guess people along the technical and political hierarchy knew well not to pose the question to a recording. In retrospect, I suspect that if I had been present, they would have asked the question. It is a common way of killing new ideas.

All the ideas I recommended were adopted and implemented. A COMESA prize was launched to reward innovation. A COMESA innovation advisory council was established to provide ideas on how to leverage science, technology, and innovation for development and competitiveness in international trade. But by far the most important proposal was to create a COMESA University for Regional Integration. The idea of creating a new university to serve 26 member states is a daunting one, especially coming from an institution whose mandate was not higher education.

Even more striking was the fact that the idea was adopted without any consideration of its financial implications. It was the compelling nature of the argument that led to its adoption. To go around the fact that the there was no money allocated to implementing the idea, COMESA decided that they would launch a “virtual university.” After a series of discussions the project was funded by the African Capacity Building Fund located in Harare. It was decided that the university would be housed at Jomo Kenyatta University in Kenya and would operate in conjunction with other universities in the COMESA member states.

In 2017 the COMESA Virtual University admitted its first cohort of master’s students specializing in regional integration.

This story suggests that indeed hierarchy breeds contempt. It is possible that these ideas could have met their demise at the hands of COMESA staff who were concerned that they were too technical for government officials. It is not 154

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clear whether those suggesting it were projecting their skepticism to a higher level or whether they were genuinely convinced that indeed the ideas were too technical. There may also have been other considerations at play, like the possible concern that science and technology did not fit well or was too technical for trade negotiators. Yet trade negotiators often deal with highly technical issues such as standards and measures.

We will never know the roots of the objection. But what is notable is that as soon as the video crossed that initial threshold of contempt, the rest of the mobility of ideas to the top happened with remarkable enthusiasm and ended up breaking some diplomatic traditions along the way. My engagements with African policymakers seemed to challenge some established views and, as a result, generated controversies. In 2006 I wrote various popular articles on how Africa could reposition its universities as agents of economic transformation. I expected negative reactions either from governments or universities, but I was not prepared for both. The first personal response to the articles came from a senior government official who confronted me at the Kisumu airport and called on me not to continue promoting the view that some national research institutes or facilities needed to be integrated into national universities. This was essential, in my view, for strengthening local universities by bringing teaching, research, commercialization, and community engagement under one roof.

The official became highly agitated and started waving his finger at me. Then rose Dr. Kristin Mango, a member of the Kenya parliament. She, too, started waving her finger at him to calm down the tense atmosphere. Rising from another angle was a well-known gynecologist Prof. Nimrod Bwibo, a man of ample proportions. He walked in an avuncular way towards us. Our response to give him his right of passage ended the standoff as we both moved to the farthest possible space that could separate me from the official.

In South Africa, my writings on new roles for universities took a less personal approach. The university of Cape Town convened an international workshop to discuss an opinion piece of 1000 words I had published on the website scidev. net. The university convened 35 experts who offered different perspectives on my argument. They produced a 30-page proceedings of the workshop. A digital copy of the proceedings was widely distributed through the internet through African universities. The main concern came from those disciplines whose work did not lend itself ready to entrepreneurial activities such as creating university based enterprises. It is notable that in the case of Kenya the response 155

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was personal, while the University of Cape Town did not invite me to present my views and engage with the participants in discussing new roles for African universities.

156

Chapter 8

Science and Technology Advice Since I arrived at Harvard, I mostly wore African shirts purchased during my various visits to the continent. It appeared as if I had made a deliberate decision to make a fashion statement about Africa. The shirts became so much a part of my identity that they became the first choice for gifts from my African friends.

The origin of this wardrobe transformation had nothing to do with Africa. It has its origins in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta in 1995. It started with a batik given to me by the country’s Environment Minister, Sarwono Kusumaatmadja.

It started as official camouflage. I had just joined the Convention on Biological Diversity as Executive Secretary.

November of that year was my first meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the Convention. I was only two months into the job, and I hadn’t had the time to travel to key capitals to meet the staff of the focal points of the convention. The COP was the first opportunity to meet my sovereign network.

My arrival in Jakarta was dramatic. When I flew out of Zurich, I decided to dress down, which I usually did on travel. I wore a T-shirt and jeans. I knew I would be met at the airport by protocol officials from Indonesia. But I had no way of telling what lay ahead. I was met by protocol officials who informed me that they had instructions to take me directly to the residence of President Suharto.

They also informed me that Elizabeth Dowdeswell, the Executive Director of UNEP and official representative of the UN Secretary-General, was already en route to the president’s residence. This was not what we were expecting. Usually, with such grand events, UN officials would meet the host president just before the official opening of the conference. This would happen at the conference venue. But this time, there was a change of plans due to Suharto’s poor health.

He wasn’t coming to open the conference the following as planned but wanted to have an audience with us.

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After disembarking, I was led to a room to change. My luggage was quickly retrieved for me. It was so efficient that the protocol officials must have anticipated that I would need to change at the airport and not at the president’s residence. Waiting outside was a convoy of motorcycles, a luxury car, and police escort cars. The purpose was to get me to the president’s residence as quickly as possible. The sirens were turned on as we went at high speed while the famed Jakarta traffic was pushed aside by the police motorcycles. At this point, I started to see a side of the power of sovereign states that I had not yet experienced. It was clear from the setting that I was headed to a serious event. When I entered the residence, everyone was already assembled in a relatively small room with the president seated in a large chair in the middle. The occasion was to take an official photo with the president. One of the officials started to move us around to ensure that the lineup followed proper protocol. In the process of being moved around, my foot ended up slightly on top of the president’s, who quickly withdrew his foot. But it didn’t go unnoticed by a few of the officials.

After the photo session we moved to a separate room where we were served beverages. This is where I was informed of the changes in the schedule and the fact that the president would not be able to open the meeting. As we stood up to leave, one of the officials moved close to me and said quietly, “You are the first person who ever stepped on the president’s toes and survived.” At that point I thought that whatever could go wrong had just happened, and it would be smooth sailing after that. Indeed, the conference had been superbly planned.

The government had thought of every possible detail. But with such events it is not possible to anticipate everything.

My hotel was connected to the conference center by a tunnel. This made movement between the two points quite fast. The first few days I was able to get to the meeting venue on time. A large part of the time when the plenary meeting was not in session I met with country delegations. But I was not keeping up. The second week of the conference included a ministerial session and I had to repeat the meetings, this time with the ministers. As time went by the delegates could recognize me from a distance and would approach me. My movement started to slow down. My security officer tried to help me by holding onto my belt and getting me through the throngs.

By the beginning of the second week, the delegates figured out that the best way to catch me was to line up in the tunnel. The first delegation I encountered

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was from Germany, led by their Environment Minister Angela Merkel. It was like inspecting a guard of honor in slow motion. I was late getting to the podium by nearly 20 minutes, which was a lot of time given the heavy agenda and the difficulties of enforcing brevity of speeches by delegates. I knew that the following day would have even more people. I considered leaving my hotel at 5:00 a.m. to get to the venue but this was not practical. My nights were equally long and so sleep became the most valuable commodity at this meeting.

I decided to consult Minister Sarwono. He came up with a brilliant idea. He turned up at my room around 6:30 a.m. and gave me some beautiful Indonesian shirts. They fit perfectly. But they did something else. They made me look like an Indonesian. He and I walked through the tunnel past the waiting delegations without any of them recognizing me. I wondered how long the shirts would work their magic but it worked perfectly to the end of the meeting. At one point, someone came to me and asked me what island I came from. She was visibly mesmerized by my hair.

The shirts also had unintended consequences. A meeting was set up with representatives of the private sector. This was a new constituency of the convention coming from the biotechnology field and other sectors. They were mostly from Europe and the United States. The meeting was scheduled for 6:30 a.m. I decided I would go in my new attire. When I entered the room there were about 35 people, most of them dressed in suits. As soon as I entered, one of them looked at me and said, “Excuse me, could we get some coffee, please?” I knew my camouflage was working. The convener of the meeting, Kerry ten Kate from the UK, leaped into action and quickly introduced me. All through the meeting, I was tempted to comment on my new fashion taste, but I didn’t want to ruin the highly productive meeting.

The conference adopted program of work on marine and coastal biodiversity.

I later hired an Indonesian, Ms. Ina Pranoto. Ina would become my second supplier of batik whenever she visited Indonesia. Slowly, I started to alternate between the batiks and the business suit, which was mandatory for most official occasions. By then Nelson Mandela had just been released from prison. He adopted a variant of the Indonesian batik, which became his signature attire.

Very quickly people started referring to my shirts as “Mandelas.” At one point in New York, I was followed by a group of teenagers chanting, “Mandela, Mandela, Mandela…” I had to make a technical stopover in a fancy restaurant to shake them off.

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I was hearing the Mandela reference so often to the point of irritation. I had been wearing Indonesian shirts before Mandela acquired the taste. At a meeting in 2002 in Mexico City to prepare for the World Summit for Sustainable Development, I had my showdown over the Mandela association. At a reception for the conference, a gentleman walked over to me and asked where I got the Mandela shirt. “Mandela has the same tailor as me,” I told him. He walked away, paced to and fro for a few seconds, and returned with a masterful comeback, “You and Mandela may have the same tailor, but you are not made of the same cloth.” He introduced himself and said, “I was born and beaten in South Africa.”

Before that, I thought he was from the Indian subcontinent.

At this point, I started to think of diversifying my collection. I would discover that the Woodin store in Accra specialized in African shirts, so I found a colleague going there who I gave cash to buy me a few. Not only was I actively looking for African shirts, but they became part of my identity to a point where they became the preferred gifts from my friends and later my African students. I noticed that I was not alone in projecting the African image. It was catching on even at high levels. Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete became a good example.

He had a special tailor, Binti Africa, in Dar es Salaam, who kept him updated.

In August 2013, President Kikwete invited me to join the “Smart Partnerships” meeting. The meeting was part of a series initiated and run by the Malaysian leadership, accompanied by its private sector. It brought together heads of state and government from the Commonwealth to explore investment opportunities.

All the visiting leaders wore magnificent shirts. The King of Swaziland wore one of the most attractive shirts. I asked where I could get a similar one.

I was led to the designer and owner of Binti Africa. She said she could consider making me one but only if I promised I would not wear it when the King was still in town. I was happy to comply. Then she said, “And something else.

Tomorrow night we are hosting a fashion show for the president and his special guests. Would you join the catwalk but in a different shirt?” This was going to be a new experience for me. I was there with my wife Alison and my 15-year-old son Eric. We agreed that Eric and I would participate in the fashion show. I spent part of that evening practicing a posture that would befit a gathering of heads of state and government. The plan was to have me hit the walk last. When I got on stage, the surprised President Kikwete exploded in laughter. Then someone else shouted my name. It was Amos Sawyer, who had served as President of the Liberian Interim Government of National Unity from 1990 to 1994.

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The last time I had seen Amos was in 1987 at a meeting of prominent African academics convened by Prof. Goran Hyden of the University of Florida and Prof. Robert Kates of Brown University. The purpose of the meeting was to project what Africa would look like in 50 years. It was also the 20th anniversary of Ghana’s independence, so it was a good time to take stock and look forward.

Modeling for Commonwealth leaders wasn’t the way that Amos conceived that we would reconnect. And it was all because I was looking for African shirts that were distinct from Mandela’s iconic ones. And how refreshing that the King of Swaziland put aside his regalia to join President Kikwete and other leaders in wearing less formal but elegant African designs What started in Jakarta as camouflage had morphed over time into a way to project African creative designs.

The shirts now serve as a fashion idiom, and my collection now includes designs from non- African countries such as Mexico and Singapore. The common theme is that they project the desire to depart from the numbing uniformity of the business attire that traces its roots to October 7, 1660, when King Charles II conceived the precursor of today’s three-piece suit. The simplicity of the shirts relieves one of the burdens of national costumes. I am getting to a point where I am considering collecting the shirts as artistic expressions rather than as part of my attire. The first in that line of collections will be the surviving shirt from Minister Sarwono. It has withstood the times and the confusion with the Mandela shirts.

161

Afterword Calestous wrote this manuscript during the summer of 2016 after he had, through sheer willpower and the support of his doctors and nurses, taught himself to walk again. Cancer had attacked his spine and for a few months he had lost the use of his legs. One year later, he was hiking along a ridge in the Maasai Mara looking out at the land he loved, and four months after that he left us. He could sense what the future held, so that summer of 2016 he resolved to tell his story. He told it for two reasons: to show how a boy could come from simple circumstances in a rural Kenyan community and end up in a prestigious academic institution from which he could have an enduring influence on society; and to show that he didn’t do it alone, and to thank the many people who inspired and helped him on his journey.

He wrote with a fountain pen on paper. Very few words were crossed out and it has not been edited. In his last month, knowing that he had little time left, Calestous resumed writing. This time he asked his son Eric to sit next to his bed and insert his spoken words into the manuscript now transcribed into a document on his laptop. We shared some memories and then he dictated them—but always carefully choosing his own words. He kept a running list of events, people, stories, and anecdotes that he wanted to add. As he crossed some off, he added more. He didn’t stop until the day before he died; the list would never be completed.

What you have read is direct from his pen to you. He hoped that it would inspire the next generation and the following one, and those who may lend young people a hand in changing this world for the better.

Alison Field-Juma September 7, 2022 163

Selected Publications Books and edited volumes 2018. Emergent Africa: Evolution of Regional Economic Integration, Headline Books, Terra Alta, WV, USA. (with Francis Mangeni).

2016. Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies. Oxford University Press, New York, USA. Multiple language translations.

2015. The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa. Oxford University Press, New York, USA (Second Edition).

2011. Feeding the Next Generation: Science, Business, and Public Policy. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, USA (co- editor).

2011. The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa. Oxford University Press, New York.

2010. Health Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Special Issue of the BMC International Health and Human Rights, Vol. 10, Supplement 1.

2009. World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change.

World Bank, Washington, DC (substantial contributor on technological innovation).

2009. The Future of Biofuels and National Energy Strategy: US Perspectives.

Special Issue of the International Journal of Biotechnology, Vol. 11, No.1/2.

Inderscience Publishers, Oxford, UK. 2008. Engineering Change: Towards a Sustainable Future in the Developing World.

Royal Academy of Engineering, London (co-editor).

2008. Global Challenges and Directions for Agricultural Biotechnology. National Academies Press, Washington, DC (Committee Chair) 2008. Lost Crops of Africa: Fruits. Volume III. National Academy Press, Washington, DC (Contributor to a Study of the National Research Council).

2007. Freedom to Innovate: Biotechnology in Africa’s Economic Development.

African Union, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

2006. Lost Crops of Africa: Vegetables. Volume II. National Academy Press, Washington, DC (Contributor to a Study of the National Research Council).

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2006. Redesigning African Economies: The Role of Engineering in International Development. 2006 Hinton Lecture, Royal Academy of Engineering, London.

2006. Reinventing African Economies: Technological Innovation and the Sustainability Transition. 6th John Pesek Colloquium on Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA. 2006. Science and Innovation in Africa: New Strategies for Economic Growth.

Special Issue of the International Journal of Technology and Globalization, Vol. 2, No.3/4. Inderscience Publishers, Oxford, UK. 2006. The New Global Biosociety: Innovation, Security and Development.

Special Issue of the International Journal of Biotechnology, Vol. 8, No.1/2.

Inderscience Publishers, Oxford, UK. 2005. Going for Growth: Science, Technology and Innovation in Africa. The Smith Institute, London.

2005. Innovation: Applying Knowledge in Development. United Nations Millennium Project. Earthscan Publications (lead author with Lee YeeCheong).

2002. Biotechnology and the Precautionary Principle. Special Issue of the International Journal of Biotechnology, Vol. 4, No.1. Inderscience Publishers, Oxford, UK. 2002. Knowledge and Diplomacy: Science Advice in the United Nations System.

National Academy Press, Washington, DC (Contributor to a Study of the National Research Council).

2002. Down to Earth: Geographical Information for Sustainable Development in Africa. National Academy Press, Washington, DC (Contributor to a Study of the National Research Council).

2000. Biotechnology in the Global Economy. Special Issue of the International Journal of Biotechnology, Vol. 2, No.1/2/3. Inderscience Publishers, Oxford, UK. 2000. Science, Technology and Economic Growth: Africa’s Biopolicy Agenda in the 21st Century. United Nations University/Institute for Natural Resources in Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Annual Lectures on Natural Resource Conservation and Management in Africa. November, 1999).

1996. In Land We Trust: Environment, Private Property and Constitutional Change. Zed Books, London and Initiatives Publishers, Nairobi (co-edited with J.B. Ojwang), pp. 462.

1995. Economic Policy Reforms and the Environment: African Experiences.

Geneva: United Nations Environment Programme (co-written with Hugh Monteith, Hartmut Krugmann, Tobias Angura, Herbert Acquay, Akino Anthony E., Philip Wandera and John Mugabe), pp. 214.

165

Selected Publications

1994. Coming to Life: Biotechnology in African Economic Recovery. Nairobi: Acts Press and Zed Books, London (co-edited with John Mugabe and Patricia Kameri-Mbote), pp. 192.

1994. Biodiplomacy: Genetic Resources and International Relations. Nairobi: Acts Press (co- edited with Vicente Sánchez), pp. 370.

1993. The Adaptive Economy: Economic Crisis and Technological Change, Nairobi: Acts Press (with C. Torori and C.C.M. Kirima), pp. 204.

1991. Biotechnology and Sustainable Development: Policy Options for Developing Countries, Acts Press, Nairobi (with Norman Clark), pp. 112.

1991. A Change in the Weather: African Perspectives on Climatic Change, Acts Press, Nairobi (co-edited with S.H. Ominde), pp. 210.

1989. The Gene Hunters: Biotechnology and the Scramble for Seeds, Zed Press, London and Princeton University Press, pp. 288.

1989. Innovation and Sovereignty: The Patent Debate in African Development, African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi (co-edited with J.B. Ojwang), pp. 252.

1989. Gaining Ground: Institutional Innovations in Land-use Management in Kenya, Acts Press, Nairobi (co-edited with Amos Kiriro), pp. 228.

1989. Biotechnological Diversity and Innovation: Conserving and Utilizing Genetic Resources in Kenya, Acts Press, Nairobi, pp. 139.

1987. Long-Run Economics: An Evolutionary Approach to Economic Growth, Pinter Publishers, London (with Norman Clark), pp. 206.

Chapters in Books 2019. “Game Over? Drivers of Biological Extinction in Africa,” in Dasgupta, P., Raven, P.H., and McIvor, A.L., eds. Biological Extinction: New Perspectives.

Cambridge University Press, UK. 2014. “Farmers as Entrepreneurs: Sources of Agricultural Innovation in Africa”, In Hazell, P. and Rahman, A. eds. New Directions for Smallholder Agriculture.

Oxford University Press, UK (with David Spielman).

2014. “Transgenic Crops and Food Security,” In Ricroch, A. et al. eds.

Plant Biotechnology— Experience and Future Prospects. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer (with Katherine Gordon).

2014. “Biotechnology and Food Security,” In Smyth, S.J. et al. eds., Handbook on Agriculture, Biotechnology and Development, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK (with Pedro Conceição and Sebastian Levine).

2013. “Agricultural Science, Technology and Innovation: Feeding Eastern and Southern Africa in the 21st Century,” in ASARECA. Feeding our region in the 21st century: First ASARECA General Assembly, Volume 2: Selected

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Scientific and Technical Papers, Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa, Entebbe, Uganda 2011. “Introduction, In Juma, C. et al. eds. 2011. Feeding the Next Generation: Science, Business, and Public Policy. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, USA (co-editor).

2011. “Technological Abundance for Global Agriculture: The Role of Biotechnology”, In Juma, C. et al. eds. Feeding the Next Generation: Science, Business, and Public Policy. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, USA (co-editor).

2010. “Foreword,” in Conway, G. and Waage, J. eds., Science and Innovation for Development. UK Collaborative on Development Sciences, London.

2008. “Economic Growth as Social Learning; Africa in the Age of Rapid Technology Change,” in Garuba, Ayotunde and Irwin, Leslie, eds., Teaching and Education for Teaching in Developing Countries: Essays in Honour of Professor Jophus Anamuah- Mensah. SACOST, University of Education, Winneba, Ghana.

2008. “Reinventing Growth: Technological Innovation and Economic Revival in Africa,” in Kasekende, L. and Kisubi, M. eds., Sharing Visions of Africa’s Development, Vol. 1. African Development Bank, Tunis, Tunisia.

2007. “Technological Learning and Sustainability Transition: The Role of Institutions of Higher Learning in Africa”, In Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Integrating Science and Technology into Development Policies: An International Perspective, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris.

2005. “Developing Countries in the Global Bioeconomy: Emerging Issues”, In Melendez- Ortiz, R. and Sanchez, V. eds., Trading in Genes: Development Perspectives on Biotechnology, Trade and Sustainability, Earthscan, London.

2004. “International Trade and Environment: Towards Integrative Responsibility”, In Vertovec, S. and Posey, D., eds., Globalization, Globalism, Environments, and Environmentalism: Consciousness of Connections, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. 2002. “Bridging the Genetic Divide”, In M. Ruse and D. Castle, eds., Genetically Modified Foods: Debating Biotechnology. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books.

2001.“Safe Use of Biotechnology,” In Pinstrup-Andersen, P.P. ed. Appropriate Technology for Sustainable Food Security. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

2000.“Science and Technology in the Convention on Biological Diversity,” In Raven, P. ed. Nature and Human Society: The Quest for a Sustainable World.

Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

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Selected Publications

1999. “Modern Biotechnology,” In Persley, J. and Doyle, J. eds. Biotechnology for Developing-Country Specific Agriculture: Problems and Opportunities.

Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (with Aarti Gupta).

1998. “Sustainable Development and Institutional Change: Challenges and Options for Improving International Environmental Governance,” In Softin, G.B., et al., The Brundtland Commission’s Report: 10 Years. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.

1997. “The Role of Information in the Operation of the Convention of Biological Diversity,” In Hawksworth, D.L., Kirk, P.M., Dextre Clarke, S. (Eds.), Biodiversity Information – Needs and Options. Cab International, Wallingford, pp. 125-128.

1997. “Public Policy and Generic Technologies: The Case of Biotechnology in Sub-Saharan Africa,” In Bhaghavan, M.R. ed. New Generic Technologies in Developing Countries. London: Macmillan Press (co-written with John Mugabe).

1996. “Private Property, Environment and Constitutional Change,” In Juma, C. and J.B. Ojwang, eds. In Land We Trust: Environment, Private Property and Constitutional Change. London: Zed Books and Nairobi: Initiatives Publishers.

1996. “Towards Ecological Jurisprudence,” In Juma, C. and J.B. Ojwang, eds. In Land We Trust: Environment, Private Property and Constitutional Change.

London: Zed Books and Nairobi: Initiatives Publishers (co-written with J.B. Ojwang).

1996. “Property Rights, Medicinal Plants and Indigenous Knowledge,” In Juma, C. and J.B. Ojwang, eds. In Land We Trust: Environment, Private Property and Constitutional Change. London: Zed Books and Nairobi: Initiatives Publishers (co-written with Arthur Okoth-Owiro).

1995. “Economic Policy Reforms and Sustainable Development.” In Juma, C. et al., Economic Policy Reforms and the Environment: African Perspectives.

Geneva: United Nations Environment Programme.

1994. “Ecophilosophy and Parental Earth Ethics: On the Complex Web of Being,” In Oruka, H.O., ed. Philosophy, Humanity and Ecology: Philosophy of Nature and Environmental Ethics. Nairobi: ACTS Press and the African Academy of Sciences.

1994. “Environmentally Sound Technology Transfer and Capacity Building in Africa: Strengthening Incentive Systems,” in Hanisch, T. ed. Climate Change and the Agenda for Research. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

1993. “Challenges and Opportunities for South-South Co-operation in Implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity,” in Krattiger, A.F. 168

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et al. Widening Perspectives on Biodiversity. International Academy of the Environment and World Conservation Union, Geneva.

1993. “Promoting International Transfer of Environmentally Sound Technologies: The Case of National Incentive Schemes,” in Green Globe Yearbook 1994, Oxford University Press.

1992. “Facing Africa’s Ecological Crisis,” in Seidman, a. and Anang, F. eds. 21st Century Africa: Towards a New Vision of Self-Sustainable Development, African Studies Association Press and Africa World Press, Inc., New Jersey, USA (with Richard Ford in Association with Wanjiku Mwagiru).

1991. “Investment Strategy and Technology: Empirical Lessons from Power Alcohol Development” in Coughlin P. and Ikiara G.K., eds. Kenya’s Industrialization Dilemma. Heinemann Kenya Limited, Nairobi.

1990. “Non-Equilibrium Economics: Alternative Paradigms and Technology Policy,” in New Paradigms—The World 300 Years After Newton, World Academy of Art and Science, Stockholm.

1989. “Environment and Economic Policy in Kenya,” in Kiriro, A. and Juma, C., eds. Gaining Ground: Institutional Innovations in land-use Management in Kenya, Acts press, African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi.

1989. “In Search of a New Regime for Protecting Innovations,” in Juma, C. and Ojwang, J.B., eds. Innovation and Sovereignty: The Patent Debate in African Development, African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi (with Silas Ita).

1989. “Intellectual Property Rights for Biological Innovations,” in Juma, C. and Ojwang, J.B., eds., Innovation and Sovereignty: The Patent Debate in African Development, African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi.

1989. “Intellectual Property Rights for the Jua Kali Sector,” in Juma, C. and Ojwang, J.B., eds., Innovation and Sovereignty: The Patent Debate in African Development, African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi.

1989. “Technological Change and National Sovereignty,” in Juma, C. and Ojwang, J.B., eds, Innovation and Sovereignty: The Patent Debate in African Development, African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi (with J.B. Ojwang).

1988. “Evolutionary Theories in Economic Thought,” in Dosi, G. et al., eds., Technical Change and Economic Theory, Pinter Publishers, London (with Norman Clark).

1986. “Social Relations and Energy Technology Choice: The Case of Woodfuel and Power Alcohol in Kenya,” in Stener, D. and Winser, B. eds., Human Ecology and Geography, Lecture Series No. 28, Edigenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland.

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Selected Publications

1986. “Alcohol From Sugarcane in Kenya and Zimbabwe: Project Implementation as Evolution,” in Energy for Development: What are the Solutions?, International Solar Energy Society, London.

1985. “A Study of Ethanol Production in Kenya,” in Egnues, H. et al., eds., Bioenergy 84, Vol. Bioenergy in Developing Countries, Elsevier Applied Science Publishers, London.

Articles 2017. “Leapfrogging Progress: The Misplaced Promise of Africa’s Mobile Revolution,” Breakthrough Journal, No. 7, pp. 39-47.

2014. “Complexity, Innovation, and Development: Schumpeter Revisited,” Journal of Policy and Complex Systems, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring), pp.4–21.

2013. “Building the Future,” Africa Defense Forum, Vol. 6, No. 4 (December).

2012. “Establishing a Space Sector for Sustainable Development in Kenya,” International Journal of Technology and Globalisation, Vol. 6, Nos. 1/2, pp.

152-169 (with Peter Waswa).

2011. “Science Meets Farming in Africa,” Science, Vol. 334, No. 6061, p. 1323, December 9. 2011. “Africa’s New Engine,” Finance and Development, Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 6-11.

2011. “Preventing Hunger: Biotechnology Is Key,” Nature, No. 479, pp. 471-472 (November 24).

2008. “Role of Institutions of Higher Learning in Creating Innovation for Sustainability,” Journal of Science Policy and Research Management, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 186-193 (with Masaru Yarime) (in Japanese).

2008. “Learn to Earn,” Nature, No. 456, pp. 15-17 (30 October).

2008. “Broadband Internet for Africa,” Science, Vol. 320, June 6, p. 1261 (with Elisabeth Moyer).

2008. “Agricultural Innovation and Economic Growth in Africa: Renewing International Cooperation,” International Journal of Technology and Globalisation, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 256-275.

2007. “Technology Prospecting: Lessons from the Early History of the Chile Foundation,” International Journal of Technology and Globalisation, Vol. 3, No. 2/3, pp. 296-314 (with Bob Bell Jr.) 2006. “African in the Global Economy: Strategic Options,” International Journal of Technology and Globalisation, Vol. 2, No. 3/4, pp. 218-231 (with Hezekiah Agwara).

2006. “Higher Education in Economic Transformation,” International Journal of Technology and Globalisation, Vol. 2, No. 3/4, pp. 241-251 (with Jose Zaglul and Daniel Sherrard).

170

The University Drop-In

2006. “Infrastructure, Innovation and Development,” International Journal of Technology and Globalisation, Vol. 2, No. 3/4, pp. 268-278 (with Yee-Cheong Lee and Tony Ridley).

2006. “Reinventing Growth: Science, Technology and Innovation in Africa,” International Journal of Technology and Globalisation, Vol. 2, No. 3/4, pp.

322-339.

2005. “Biotechnology in a Globalizing World: The Coevolution of Technology and Social Institutions,” BioScience, Vol. 55, No., 3, March, pp. 265-272.

2005. “The New Age of Biodiplomacy,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Winter/Spring, pp. 105-114.

2003. “Biotechnology in the Global Communication Ecology,” Economic Perspectives, An Electronic Journal of the US Department of State, Vol. 8, No. 3, September.

2003. “A Manifesto for the Disenchanted,” Nature Genetics, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 7-8 (Review of Science, Seeds and Cyborgs: Biotechnology and the Appropriation of Life by Fnn Bowring, Verso Books, 2003).

2002. “Biotechnology and the Precautionary Principle,” International Journal of Biotechnology, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 1-3 (with Derya Honca).

2002. “Industrial Applications for Biotechnology: Opportunities for Developing Countries,” Environment, Vol. 44, No. 6, pp. 22-35 (with Victor Konde).

2002. “Biotechnology and International Relations: Forging Strategic Partnerships”, International Journal of Technology Management, Vol. 4, No. 2/3, pp. 115-128.

2002. “The Global Sustainability Challenge: From Agreement to Action”, International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, Vol. 2, No. 1/2, pp. 1-14.

2001. “Global Governance of Technology: Meeting the Needs of Developing Countries,” International Journal of Technology Management, Vol. 22, Nos. 7/8, pp. 629–655.

2000. “Biotechnology in the Global Economy,” International Journal of Biotechnology, Vol. 2, no. 1/2/3, pp. 1-6.

1999. “International Ecosystem Assessment,” Science, Vol. 286, 22 October, pp.

685-686. 1995. “‘Get Up, Stand Up,’ . . . . Keep Up,” Ceres, Vol. Vol. 27, No. 3, May, pp. 34–40 (with John Mugabe).

1995. “Policy Research in sub-Saharan Africa: An Exploration.” Public Administration and Development, Vol. 15, pp. 121–137.

1994. “Tissue Culture for Coffee: The Case of Uganda,” Monitor No. 20, pp. 19– 20 (with J.M. Magambo and Hugh Monteith).

1992. “Notes on Technology,” special supplement: Reviews of Agenda 21, Network ‘92, Number VII, Issue Number 15, March.

171

Selected Publications

1991. “Africa Apart: Technology and Environment in the 1990s,” RSA Journal, Vol. CXXIX, No. 5422, October, pp. 656–669.

1991. “Biotechnology for Sustainable Development,” Nature and Resources, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 14-17.

1989. “The Last Harvest? Biotechnology and Third World Agriculture,” geneWatch, Vol. 6, No. 2–3, pp. 1–3, 9–11.

1989. “Local Initiatives in Maintaining Biological Diversity,” ILEIA Newsletter, Vol. 4, December, pp. 10–11.

1988. “Technology and Regional Collaboration: Policy Dimensions,” Southern African Political and Economic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 8 May, pp. 8–11.

1988. “Technology Policy and Economic Recovery: Africa’s Weakest Link,” Southern African Political and Economic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, April, pp.

14–17.

1987. “Patents and Appropriate Technology: The Case for Utility Certificates,” Appropriate Technology, Vol. 14, No. 3, December.

1985. “Market Restructuring and Technology Acquisition: Power Alcohol in Kenya and Zimbabwe,” Development and Change, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 39–59.

1983. “New Energy in the Old Mould,” Futures, Vol. 15, No. 5.

1983. “Renewable Sources of Energy and Environment,” Renewable Sources of Energy, Vol. 1, No. 1.

1982. “Kenya: See How they Move,” Populi, Vol. 9, No. 3.

1982. “Population and Patronage: An African Perspective,” Uniterra, No. 1.

1981. “Kenya: Population and Resources,” Ambio, Vol. 10. No. 4, Stockholm.

1980. “The State of World Food: Perspectives and Challenges,” World Environment Day Resource Pack, Environment Liaison Centre, Nairobi.

1980. “Progress sans Pollution,” Development Forum, Vol. 8, No. 9, Geneva.

1980. “Energy for Food,” Alam Sekita, Malaysia, September.

1980. “World Conservation Strategy: Moulding a New Environmental Ethic,” Environment Awareness, Vol. 2, No. 3, India.

Monographs 2018. Exponential Innovation and Human Rights: Implications for Science and Technology Diplomacy, Discussion Paper, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, USA. 2017. Space Technology and Africa’s Development: The Strategic Role of Small Satellites, Faculty Research Working Paper Series, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, USA (with Wesley L. Harris and Peter B. Waswa).

172

The University Drop-In

2017. African Megacities As Emerging Innovation Ecosystems, HKS Working Paper No. RWP17-031, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, USA (with Katarzyna A. Nawrot and James Donald).

2013. Innovation for Sustainable Intensification in Africa, The Montpellier Panel, Agriculture for Impact, London (with Tabo. R., Wilson, K. and Conway, G.).

2012. Technological Abundance in Global Agriculture: The Case of Biotechnology. USA. 2003. Science, Technology and Diplomacy: Concepts and Elements of a Work Programme. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Geneva.

2000. Science, Technology and Economic Growth: Africa’s Biopolicy Agenda for the 21st Century. United Nations University, Tokyo.

1999. Intellectual Property Rights and Globalization: Implications for Developing Countries. Cambridge, MA: Center for International Development, Harvard University.

1995.Technology, Growth and Sustainable Development. Nairobi: African Centre for Technology Studies, January.

1994. Sustainable Human Development: From Concept to Operation: A Guide for the Practitioners. New York: United Nations Development Programme, April (with Tariq Banuri, Goran Hyden and Marcia Rivera).

1994. Incremental Costs, Economic Uncertainty and Public Policy: The Case for Capacity- Building in Developing Countries. Nairobi: African Centre for Technology Studies, December.

1993.Technology Development and the Convention on Biological Diversity: Emerging International Policy Issues. Nairobi: African Centre for Technology Studies, October.

1993. Technology Transfer and Sustainable Development, Acts Press, Nairobi (with J.B. Ojwang).

1992. Managing Science and Technology Policy in Africa, Aide-Mémoire for the 14th AAPAM Roundtable organized by the African Association for Public Administration and Management (AAPAM).

1992. Property Rights, Biotechnology and Genetic Resources, Acts Press, Nairobi (with Mohamed Khalil and Walter Reid).

1992. Biosafety: The Safe Application of Biotechnology in Agriculture and the Environment, International Service for National Agricultural Research, The Hague (with G.J. Persley and L.V. Giddings), pp. 47.

1992. Sustainable Development Policy in Africa: A Research, Training and Advocacy Programme for Eastern and Southern Africa, African Centre for Technology Studies, February.

173

Selected Publications

1992. Science and Technology Policy: A Post-Graduate Programme, African Centre for Technology Studies and the Office of the President, February.

1989. Country Strategy for Strengthening Environmental Considerations in Danish Development Assistance to Kenya, DANIDA, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Copenhagen, Denmark (with Robert Munro).

1989. Environmentally-sound Technology Assessment, African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi, January.

1988. Biotechnology and Genetic Resources: A Bibliography, African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi, June.

1988. Industrial Property and Economic Development: A Status Report, African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi, May. 1988. Science, Technology and Economic Renewal: The Relevance of Policy Research. A Concepts Paper, Genetic Resources and Biotechnology project, Nairobi, January.

1988. Science, Technology and Economic Renewal, Genetic Resources and Biotechnology Project, Nairobi, January.

1986. An Evolutionary View of Economic Change: A Systems Approach, science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, May (with N.G. Clark).

1985. Evolutionary Technological Change. A Theoretical Recapitulation, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, December.

1984. The Use of Power Alcohol in Kenya and Zimbabwe: An Overview, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), Sussex University, Brighton, UK. 1982. The Green Revolution: A Cure that Kills, Environment Liaison Centre, Nairobi.

1982. Energy in Kenya: A Developing Crisis, Environment Liaison Centre, Nairobi.

1982. The Maya Effect: Agriculture and Political Ecology, School for Environmental Studies, Kenya.

1981. Poison for the Poor: Hazardous Exports to the Third World, Environment Liaison Centre, Nairobi.

1980. Kenya: The Petroleum Economy in Decline, Environment Liaison Centre, Nairobi.

1980. Nuclear Energy: Incidences and Accidents, Environment Liaison Centre, Nairobi.

1980. The Quest for Harmony: Perspectives on the New International Development Strategy, Environment Liaison Centre, Nairobi.

For further biographical information: Clark, Norman. 2021. “Calestous Juma. 9 June 1953-15 December 2017.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. Vol. 71, pp. 293-315. London.

174

Index Symbols 3-D printing 135, 136 A Abaluhya and Luo Union 27 African Academy of Sciences (AAS) 137, 148, 149, 168 African Capacity Building Fund 154 African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) i, ii, 1, 4, 67, 79, 88, 89, 90, 92, 95, 96, 98, 99, 102-109, 112, 116-118, 120, 121, 131, 148, 149, 166, 168, 173, 174 African shirts 157, 160, 161 agbada 149 agricultural innovation 135 Alcázar, José Esquinas 64 Allison, Graham 136 alternative energy 52 Amin, Idi 34 Arab Spring 136 ASCEND21 117 B Baluch, Issa v, 132, 133 Barnett, Andrew 57, 60, 74, 77, 80, 145 Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs 129, 164, 167, 172 Bell, Bob Jr. 73, 131, 170 Beng, Neo-Kok 135 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 130 Binti Africa 160 biological diversity 38, 62, 63, 66, 67, 112, 113, 116, 122 Bojicic, Vesna 71 books: banned 14; burning of 6, 22; Little Red Book 6 Brazil 74, 75, 77, 79, 88, 119 Brixton (U.K.) riots 43 Brundtland Commission. See also Earth Summit; Brundtland Report; Our Common Future 119, 120, 168 Brundtland Report 111 Brundtland, Gro Harlem 46, 83 Bubamba 2 bullying 15, 16 Bunyala 1, 7, 11, 12, 91 Burke, Thomas v, 135 Busia 18

C Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) 38, 41 capacity building 1 Cardoso, Yemi 150 charcoal stoves 52 Clark, Bill 129 Clark, Norman iv, v, 7, 60, 73, 74, 80, 82, 103, 107, 142, 166, 169 climate change ii, iii, 43, 85, 112, 123, 124, 127, 129, 164, 168 Cocoyoc Declaration 41, 42 COMESA prize 154 COMESA University for Regional Integration 154 Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) 153 D Daar, Abdallah 135 Daily Nation 35-38 deforestation 38, 52, 54, 124 diaspora 109, 143, 145, 148 Dowdeswell, Elizabeth 121, 127, 128, 157 E Earth Summit. See also: United Nations Conference on Environment and Development; Rio process 111, 122 Ecoforum 40, 41, 42, 61 economic diplomacy 108 education iii, 2, 9, 11, 12, 14, 18-21, 23, 29, 35, 62, 84, 108, 109, 134, 144, 154 Egoji Teachers’ College electricity 3, 4, 7 Ellwood, David 130 entrepreneurship 133, 134, 137 Environmental Liaison Centre (ELC) 38-52, 55, 56, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 79, 82, 83, 96, 100 executive program 133, 144, 146 executive training 139, 151 F Facebook 136 fashion idiom 161 fashion show 160 Fashola, Babatunde 151 175

Index

Ferretti, Janine v, 39, 48, 56 Field-Juma, Alison v, 7, 163 fish 1, 2, 8, 13, 16, 19, 35, 152 floods 1, 91 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 63, 64, 124 football 3, 7, 21, 23, 24, 27, 29, 33, 111 Ford Foundation 66, 101, 102, 105, 106, 150 Funyula 19, 24 G Gallon, Gary 38, 51, 52, 55, 60 gene banks 64, 65 Gene Hunters 66, 67, 79, 82, 93, 100, 101, 102, 113, 166 genetic resources 63-67, 112, 127 Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA) 124, 125, 126 Grand Challenges for Engineering 137 Green Revolution 64, 66, 174 Group of 77 (G77) 114, 115 Guyana 115, 140-144 H Harris, Wesley v, 135, 172 Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative 132 Harvard Kennedy School 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 139, 143, 150, 151, 164, 167, 172, 173 Harvard Medical School 135 Holdren, John 117, 129, 136 I Initiatives Ltd. 98, 99, 105 innovation i, ii, 1, 8, 52, 68, 79, 84, 94, 95, 108, 110, 130, 131, 134, 135, 136, 139, 144, 145, 151, 154, 164 Innovation and Sovereignty 93, 95, 166, 169 Innovation for Economic Development (IFED) 133 Innovation for Global Development 132 innovation fund 145 intellectual property rights 67, 93, 95 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 44, 45 International Development Research Centre (IDRC) 57-60, 68, 73, 80 International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) 42, 43

176

J Jagdeo, Bharrat 140, 141 Jamaica 144-148 Jaycees 56, 57 Jonathan, Goodluck 150, 151, 152 Juma, Roselyda Nanjala v, 5 K Kalanick, Travis 133 Kenya Energy NGO Organization (KENGO) 57, 58, 80 Kenya Industrial Property Office (KIPO) 95 Kenya People’s Union (KPU) 6 Kikwete, Jakaya 160, 161 Kisumu 1, 4, 26, 36, 155 Kituyi, Mukhisa 118, 119 Kobe, Kenneth v, 22, 23, 25 Konde, Victor 130, 171 Kuni House 54, 55, 60 Kwada, John Juma v, 2, 12, 32 L Lake Victoria iii, 1, 15 Letters to the Editor. See also: Daily Nation 35 Long-Run Economics 79, 82, 97, 102, 166 Lunatic Express 1 Luseno, Evans 69, 70 Lutheran World Relief 101 M Maathai, Wangari 38, 39, 43, 51, 60 Mahaga, Mbaga 11 Makokha, Theresa 11, 12 Mangeni, Francis v, 153, 164 Massachusetts General Hospital 135 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 58, 85, 134, 135, 150 Mathare Youth Sports Association 111 Miller, Harold 100, 146, 147, 148 MIT Media Lab 134 Mombasa 7, 8, 12, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 48, 49 Montreal 129 Mugabe, John v, 76, 91, 106, 107, 165, 166, 168, 171 Mugasa 9 Mutoro, David 53 Myers, Norman 63

The University Drop-In

N Narayanamurti, Venkatesh v, 130 National Academy of Sciences 137, 140, 148 Negroponte, Nicholas 134 Nigeria 148, 149, 150, 152 Nile perch 8, 9 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) 41, 42, 44, 46, 47, 50, 51, 55, 56, 57, 81, 96, 97, 103, 111, 117, 140 NORAD 117 nuclear power 44, 62 Nye, Joseph 130 O O’Keefe Seminars 55 O’Keefe, Phil 46, 54, 57, 60, 69, 83, 144 Obasanjo, Olusegun 148, 149, 150, 152 Ochieng, Philip 37, 40 Odinga, Oginga 6 Odinga, Raila 118 Ogalia, Lucia 11 Ojwang, J.B. 1, 24, 89, 92, 93, 94, 165, 166, 168, 169, 173 Okhubedo, Clementina Nabwire 2 One Laptop per Child (OLPC) 134 Osogo, James 6, 11, 19, 21, 23 Our Common Future i, 82, 83, 86, 111, 119 P patent system 94 Paulwell, Phil 144, 147 Peace Corps 22 Pew Foundation 113 Port Victoria 1, 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 19, 24, 27 prizes 137, 144 Q Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering 137 R radio 4, 5, 22 Ramkissoon, Harold 140, 143 renewable energy 50, 52, 55-58, 69, 80, 83, 103, 128 Renews 57, 71 Rio process 118, 119 Rockefeller Foundation 130 Royal Academy of Engineering 137, 164, 165 Royal Society of London 137

Ruggie, John 130 Ryan, Kevin v, 134 S Sánchez, Vicente 112-116 science diplomacy. See also: Earth Summit 122 Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) 58, 60, 68, 73, 74, 79, 174 Shah, Rajiv 130 Sibocha, Raphael 5, 13, 27 Simpson-Miller, Portia 146, 147, 148 Singer, Peter 135 social entrepreneurship 134 social media 136 species loss 63 Stephenson, Robert 146 Stockholm Conference 41, 43, 46, 50, 83, 113 Strong, Maurice 41, 42, 115, 116 Susskind, Larry 150 sustainable development ii, iii, iv, 1, 42, 83, 106, 108, 111,119, 136, 140, 141, 160, 165, 166, 168-170, 172, 173 Sustaining Kenya’s Future 111 T technological leapfrogging 133, 135, 139, 153 Technoscan 96, 97, 98 The New Harvest 151, 152, 153, 164 The Sinking Ark 63 Thomas, Babatunde v, 113, 135, 148, 149 Three Mile Island 44 tilapia 2, 8 Tolba, Mostafa 42, 44, 45, 62, 113, 122 Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) 95 Twitter 136, 148 U Uber 133 Uganda 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 32, 34, 51, 60, 167, 171 UNEP Governing Council 44, 45 United Nations 31, 39, 61, 112, 121, 128, 131, 138, 165, 168, 173 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). See also: Earth Summit 112 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) i, 39, 121-127, 129, 140 177

Index

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) 38, 41, 42, 44-46, 48-52, 55, 61, 62, 65, 83, 111, 112, 113, 120-127, 157, 165, 168 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 123. See also climate change.

University of Guyana; see also Guyana 140, 141, 143, 144 University of Sussex 65, 174 University of Trinidad and Tobago 143 Uruguay Round 95 V vaccines 135 Victoria Institute of Science and Technology (VIST) 26, 109 W Wachiira, Kamoji v, 52, 68 Wakhungu, Judi 107 Waswa, Peter 135, 170, 172 Western Stars 33 Women’s empowerment 11, 12, 39, 51, 54, 146. See also Lucia Ogalia; Theresa Makhoka Wood, Danielle 135 Woodin 160 World Academy of Sciences 137 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). See also Brundtland Commission 46, 83, 112 Z Zambia 67, 77, 130 Zamnet 130

178

Calestous Juma (1953-2017), a national of Kenya, was an internationally recognized authority on the application of science and technology to sustainable development. At the time of his death, he was Professor of the Practice of International Development at Harvard Kennedy School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Juma was elected to prestigious scientific academies including the Royal Society of London, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, World Academy of Sciences, UK Royal Academy of Engineering and African Academy of Sciences. Awarded the Order of the Elder of the Burning Spear by the President of Kenya. Juma was named one of the most influential 100 Africans in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2016 by the New African magazine. In 2015 he was named by Scientific American as one of the world’s 100 most influential people in biotechnology.

He held a DPhil in science and technology policy studies from the University of Sussex (UK) and received international awards and honorary degrees for his work on sustainable development. Juma founded the African Centre for Technology Studies in Nairobi and was the first Executive Secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity. His latest book was Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies (Oxford, 2016).

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