The aspirations of rural Kenyans is not a topic that has been the subject of much research. Until quite recently, more attention was spent on researching crop yields, rainfall and other agricultural data that helps organisations such as World Agroforestry (ICRAF), International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University to understand how they could tailor their services and products to farmers.

A critical variable in this complex system is the aspirations of households – do farmers, and especially their children, even want to farm? What do their aspirations mean vis-a-vis mobility, cultural rootedness and safeguarding the landscape for future generations? Will understanding aspirations help researchers create better-informed services and products?

All these questions and more were explored in a funded project commencing September 2018 in Kenya, led by ICRAF. As the project commenced, a timeline website detailing the progress of the project was made available to the general public.

This project also features the notable achievement of having the concept of distributed ethnography published for the first time in an article in the Outlook on Agriculture journal on April 11, 2018.

• Client:

  ICRAF –  http://worldagroforestry.org/

• Location:

  Kenya

• Portfolio URL:

  http://apps.worldagroforestry.org/projects1/timeline/