Research Projects undertaken during the specified Financial year 
(Including Long term Projects and regional/ international research projects being undertaken within your institutions)

Select Research Projects

“When the donkeys start dying, the people are next”: working animals as agents of climate-related drought resilience for marginalised communities

Developed in response to the British Academy’s call on environmental resilience and climate action: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/environmental-resilience-and-climate-action/

Background: Exacerbated by climate change, the Horn of Africa has recently experienced its worse drought for 40 years. In rural communities, this has led to the loss of livestock and livelihoods, rising poverty, food insecurity and conflict over resources. Working donkeys, a highly drought tolerant species, are crucial for community resilience, facilitating access to water, animal feed, healthcare, income, and food production when other livestock do not survive. Despite their importance in climate change resilience and mitigation strategies, working equids remain largely absent from agricultural policy and emergency aid efforts.
Aims: Addressing this evidence gap by:
1) Highlighting the role of donkeys in promoting drought resilience in Kenya and Ethiopia;
2) Identifying policy gaps and making recommendations regarding best practice in supporting equid owning communities in the horn of Africa during drought.

Methods: Triangulation of data using mixed methods, including Policy reviews of national and international livestock emergency, livestock health and climate action guidelines for working equid inclusion. Key informant interviews discussing drought responses with local government officials, humanitarian, development, working equid and livestock NGO staff, vets and community representatives. Participatory Rural Development Workshops with drought affected communities in Kenya and Ethiopia to explore the role and value of donkeys during drought. Socioeconomic data collection comparing resilience measures of equid and non-equid owning households. Welfare Assessments of animals in affected communities.

Outcomes:

• The generation of data which documents the beneficial impacts that donkeys bring to communities and the role they play in drought resilience.
• A policy review demonstrating the current provision in national and international policy for working equids in climate resilience and disaster management which highlights areas where beneficial changes can be made to support equid-reliant communities to cope with climate shocks.
• A set of practical evidence-based recommendations that can be used to inform NGO decision making on the ground in the study areas and facilitate lobbying for top level policy changes on the inclusion of working equids.
• Enhanced donkey welfare which results in improvement in the lives and livelihoods of East African equid-reliant communities and long-term enhancement of community drought resilience.

Team Members: University of Portsmouth: Dr Leanne Proops, Dr Emily Haddy & Dr Julia Brown. Maasai Mara University: Dr David Obiero Oduori. University College London: Prof Ilan Kelman

Partner Organisations: The Donkey Sanctuary, Brooke.
For Research collaborations, please contact: oduori@mmarau.ac.ke

Low Tech energies Project – Dr. Aloys Osano (PI)

The ‘Embodied energies – socializing low tech energies’ project was conceptualized by a multidiscipline team from East Africa and France and funded in July, 2023 by the Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Joint Research Programme titled. The project Principal Investigators are Prof. Benoit Hazard (CNRS, France) and Dr. Aloys Osano (Maasai Mara University, Kenya). Other researchers involved in the project include: Prof. Thomas Kivevele and Dr. Aloyce Amasi (Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology, Tanzania) and Dr. Bakari Chaka (Maasai Mara University, Kenya). Sustainable and cyclical energy projects using “low tech” to “power the vulnerable” in East Africa – are the target of the project. Embodied energy” This project aims to question the emerging paradigms of the transition (“strong sustainability”) by describing, through interdisciplinary research, the socio-ecological dynamics (resources, uses, effect on biodiversity, on health) posed by the issue of access to energy for the most vulnerable populations in Kenya and Tanzania. The team aims to enrich, even rethink the notion of “strong sustainability” based on principles studied empirically (Circularity, Replicability/Transferability, Scalability, Durability). Concretely, it is a question of building a repository of low-tech energies existing in the sub-region, of questioning the notion of “energy vulnerabilities” in relation to domestic energy resources and the energy flows from these resources, and experimenting with two low-tech energy pilots (biogas) by measuring their socio-ecological effects. The project is betting that “appropriate technologies” bring the possibility of appropriation by local populations. Ultimately, it questions the forms of socialization of energy. It aims to generate knowledge that could be used by policy makers, donors and NGOs.

JUAMI Charz African Materials Characterization Network – Dr Bakari Chaka (PI)

An all-too-common problem in the materials research community is the lack of readily-accessible characterization equipment. We propose a collaborative infrastructure to unite collective materials characterization resources of participant universities. The proposed framework would enable researchers with a streamlined tool to locate the nearest functional equipment suited to answer their research questions and, if desired, provide a collaborative relationship intended to guide them toward formulating and testing their scientific questions. In order to incite a strong foundational kindling of core users, the initial roll-out of this infrastructure would be limited to a handful of characterization tools across a small number of universities directly represented by current JUAMI members. However, the system will be designed, from the start, with the robustness to easily scale to usage across any number of participant universities and users in Africa and the United States. Eventually, the network of users and equipment has the potential to grow into a decentralized pan-African materials characterization facility.

June 4-5, 2024, marked the first JUAMI Charz educational opportunity. We partnered with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) for its 15th annual Advanced Materials Characterization (AMC) Workshop to offer remote workshop attendance to 50 students representing 20 different African Institutions as well as several from the African diaspora. Practical tutorials were presented by scientists covering techniques such as AFM, Raman, ellipsometry, TGA, DSC, FIB, SEM, TEM, XPS, XRD, cryo-EM and biological sample preparation. We were delighted to see many high-quality applications for the JUAMI Charz workshop registration scholarships, with thoughtful responses including attendee’s perspectives on the scientific future of their field in light of Africa-U.S. collaborations and how AMC attendance would benefit the attendee’s institution and local scientific community.

Link to the JUAMI platform: https://juamicharz.weebly.com/

Funded Research Projects currently ongoing