Asal Research & Resilience Programme - ASREP - Africa

19/10/2026

Thank you CRDD. ASREP is profoundly pleased to join thought leaders across the Region, to re-think and re-imagine pastoralism in the lens of both history and the dynamism of the present age.

While the re-think starts with contextualizing, critiquing and positioning long-held anti-pastoral narratives, myths and perceptions, the role of these fictitious narratives in shaping lop-sided policies and development agendas for decades, would not go without mention.

Lastly, since Pastoralism is one integrated system, fed into by a multi-disciplinary web of variables, ASREP will continually partner with like-minded actors, to advance research, generate evidence, produce and disseminate knowledge, as to unravel intersectionalities and interdependence of these disciplines, for Pastoralism to thrive and prosper, beyond the 21st century.

Thanks again

19/10/2026

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10/10/2026

A Day Well Spent.

10/10/2026

🌿🍃Mazingira Day 2027 | Collective Action for a Greener Isiolo

Today, ASREP joined hundreds of Manyatta Zebra community members in Ngare Mara Ward, Isiolo County, to mark Mazingira Day 2027 under the national theme, “Our Environment, Our Responsibility: Collective Action for Tree Growing and Environmental Stewardship.”

Hosted at Ngare Mara Girls School, the event brought community, government, conservation and civil society actors together around a shared commitment: restoring Isiolo’s landscapes through locally led environmental action.

More than 2,000 tree seedlings were distributed to community members, alongside tree growing and greening activities within the school, under ASREP’s Project, implemented in collaboration with the African Agency for Arid Resources Limited, Kenya Forest Service (KFS).

The occasion was graced by Assistant County Commissioner Michael Bett, senior chiefs, leaders of Nakuprat-Gotu Community Conservancy, Grevy's Zebra Trust, F.I.A Women Group, community leaders and other partners.

While Kenya’s national tree cover has risen to approximately 12%, exceeding the 10% national target and contributing toward the country’s longer-term 30% ambition, Isiolo County remains significantly below this level, at approximately 6%. For a dryland county facing climate pressures, biodiversity loss, land degradation and unsustainable charcoal production, this gap is not simply an environmental statistic—it is a resilience and livelihoods challenge.

ASREP therefore remains committed to working alongside communities, government, conservation actors, schools and development partners to accelerate locally led restoration.

Our ambition is to support the planting of 10,000 trees in Ngare Mara Ward and 10,000 trees in each of Isiolo County’s 10 wards during the coming OND rains—building a stronger, greener and more resilient Isiolo.

We cordially invite partners, private sector actors, conservation organisations, foundations, schools, community organisations and individuals to join us in turning this ambition into measurable landscape-level impact.

Let us grow the future together. 🌱



County Government of Isiolo | Nema Kenya UN Environment Programme UNDP KENYA FAO The Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) Dida Fayo, CIFE™ Jennifer Maurer Mastercard Foundation

06/10/2026

ASREP AT AFSS 2026 🌿🍃

ASREP Executive Director Dida Fayo, will join a distinguished panel of experts at the Agricultural & Food Systems Summit (AFSS) 2026 to explore Drylands Forestry Landscapes and Regenerative Enterprises.

📍 Jamhuri Park – ASK Grounds, Nairobi
📅 7–9 October 2026

As the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists 2026 brings renewed global attention to drylands, the dialogue will explore how landscape restoration, Indigenous knowledge, climate resilience and regenerative enterprises can strengthen sustainable livelihoods and resilient food systems across Africa’s rangelands.

From restoring landscapes to regenerating livelihoods.



Conservation International | FAO Kenya | Embassy of Denmark in Kenya and Somalia | Kenya Agricultural Digital Information Centre (KADIC) | IYRP Youth Working Group | AGRA | Tommaso Iser Menini | PELUM Kenya Association | BIBA Kenya (Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya)

30/09/2026

FORGING GRASSROOTS-LED GENDER JUSTICE FOR RESILIENCE: ASREP × NGEC 🌺🌿

A more inclusive Kenya will not be built by policy alone. It will be built when rights, evidence and community leadership converge where inequality is experienced most acutely.

Today, the Asal Research & Resilience Programme - ASREP - Africa was hosted by Hon Rehema Jaldesa, Chairperson of the The National Gender and Equality Commission-Kenya (NGEC)in Nairobi, for a strategic conversation on advancing gender equality, inclusion and rights-responsive development across Kenya’s drylands.

Established under the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 and operationalized through the National Gender and Equality Commission Act, No. 15 of 2011, NGEC’s mandate centres on gender equality and freedom from discrimination, with particular attention to six Special Interest Groups: women, children, youth, persons with disabilities, older persons, and minorities and marginalized groups.

For ASREP, this mandate aligns directly with our programming framework, anchored on two imperatives: evidence-based action and rights-responsiveness, translated into grassroots resilience that is owned, led and sustained by indigenous communities.

Our discussion explored practical pathways for collaboration around gender justice, safeguarding, ASREP’s Gender Policy, inclusive governance, the NGEC Partnership Strategy, & the recognition of indigenous pastoralist women as critical actors in peacebuilding, social cohesion and community resilience.

This is particularly significant across Kenya’s ASALs, where women are not merely beneficiaries of resilience systems, they are knowledge holders, peacebuilders, livelihood actors, custodians of community wellbeing and increasingly important voices in governance & decision-making.

As Kenya moves toward the 2027 General Election, strengthening women’s voice, meaningful participation & protection from discrimination must remain central to peaceful, inclusive & resilient communities.

ASREP appreciates Hon. Rehema Jaldesa for her warm hospitality, openness & commitment to advancing equality and inclusion. We look forward to exploring a purposeful institutional partnership that can translate constitutional guarantees into measurable change at community level.

Rights must reach the grassroots. Evidence must inform action. And resilience must be locally owned.



United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) | Wanjiru Mburu | Denmark in Kenya | national Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) | Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) | UN Women | UNDP KENYA | Oxfam Kenya | FIDA KENYA

30/09/2026

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29/09/2026

REWIRING N. KENYA’S FODDER ECONOMY: FROM CLIMATE VULNERABILITY TO MARKET-LED RESILIENCE 🌿🌿

For decades, Northern Kenya’s pastoralist rangelands have under-realized the economic potential of feed & fodder. Despite livestock being a principal economic foundation of ASAL communities, fragmented supply chains, limited market intelligence and weak connections between producers, aggregators, financiers, buyers, research and policy have constrained commercialization and left pastoral economies highly exposed to recurrent droughts.

Today in Isiolo, the Asal Research & Resilience Programme - ASREP - Africa team, led by Hassan Gollo Abdi (Rangelands & Biodiversity Research lead) was honoured to join hundreds from Isiolo, Marsabit, Wajir, Meru, Laikipia and Samburu counties to conclude a two-month regional process to strengthen the fodder ecosystem. The launch of the Isiolo County Feed/Fodder Directory provides a practical market-linkage platform connecting producers & aggregators with financiers, feedlots, buyers and researchers—helping move fodder from an emergency response commodity towards a predictable, investable and climate-resilient value chain.

The opportunity is amplified by the Isiolo Regional Abattoir, which, according to the County Department of Livestock, has an indicative demand of 250 camels, 300 cattle and 2,000 shoats daily. Realizing this potential will require reliable feed systems alongside finance, aggregation, animal health, infrastructure, market coordination and enabling policy, starting with increasing fodder production to 60,000 bales, from the current 19,000 bales per year (as per County Department of Livestock Records).

Spearheaded by H.E. James Lowasa, Deputy Governor of County Government of Isiolo, The Isiolo County Commissioner, State Department for Livestock Development Animal Feed and Nutrition Department, alongside Catholic Relief Services, Millennium Water Alliance (MWA), Kenya Feed and Fodder Alliance KEFFA and other stakeholders, this initiative demonstrates the potential of coordinated, locally led market development.

For ASREP, it is an important step towards transforming Northern Kenya’s pastoral economy from one disproportionately defined by climatic vulnerability into one strengthened by productive assets, functioning markets, local enterprise and community-led resilience, while safeguarding Indigenous knowledge, community institutions and land and resource rights.

The next frontier is to convert connectivity into investment, investment into enterprise, and enterprise into durable economic resilience.

CGIAR | International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) | Heifer International Kenya | Global Environment Facility | Root Capital | AGRA | Jennifer Maurer | Dida Fayo, CIFE™ | Embassy of Denmark in Kenya and Somalia | Conservation International

25/09/2026

The dismantling of USAID in Jan 2025, created an estimated US$1 billion annual funding gap for biodiversity, climate, clean energy and pollution-reduction programmes across more than 100 countries.

Asal Research & Resilience Programme - ASREP - Africa is deeply honoured to be featured among approximately 100 high-potential resilience and environmental projects identified through the global assessment across 80+ countries 'Momentum for the Environment Initiative 166-page Report' by One Earth Partners

We are therefore especially grateful to Dr. Hadas Kushnir and Monica Bansal of One Earth Partners for recognising the momentum being built from the ground up.

We are equally grateful to Mongabay.com CEO Rhett Ayers Butler for amplifying this story through journalist Ashoka Mukpo, bringing global attention to the environmental consequences of the changing development-finance landscape. The funding landscape may be changing. The need for action has not. And from Africa's drylands, local institutions are ready to lead.

🔗 Read the Mongabay feature: “New report reveals the environmental cost of USAID’s destruction” https://news.mongabay.com/2026/09/new-report-reveals-the-environmental-cost-of-usaids-destruction/


Global EbA Fund | UNCCD Youth Caucus | IUCN | Conservation International | FAO | Antony Wandera | Wyss Academy for Nature | Jennifer Maurer | Dida Fayo, CIFE™ | Charis Enns

Nearly two years after U.S. President Trump’s decision to dismantle international development agency USAID removed nearly $1 billion from global conservation and environment funding, the agency’s absence is being felt across the world, a new analysis says. The abrupt termination of around 5,200 ...

21/09/2026

Today, at the University of Nairobi, ASREP joined academic thinktanks, indigenous knowledge holders & biodiversity conversation practitioners, from across Kenya, Liberia, Uganda and Botswana, to take part in the "Inclusive and Rights-based approaches to conservation and development: Indigenous Peoples in the African Continent" course.

The 3-weeks course, graciously offered at the collaboration between IMPACT_KENYA, Institute of Development Studies at the University of Nairobi, Inclusive Conservation Initiative (ICI) & Conservation International deeply aligns with ASREP's evidence-centered yet rights- responsive approaches to nature restoration and development programming, building on our emerging strategic partnership roadmap with Kenya National Commision on Human Rights (KNCHR) and the Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) vault series, that ASREP is engineering across the region.

Further, this strongly concurs with the , ratified at COP17 Mongolia, which advocates not only the deconstruction of anti-pastoralist myths, but also advances a 'from knowing indigenous people's rights to exercising them', as prior stipulated in the UN-IPCC Sixth Assessment Synthesis Report, released in March 2023.

Re-imagining Conservation and Development, formidably begins with ceding leadership, ownership, power and dignity to the host communities, prioritizing the indigenous systems, knowledge and pastoral livelihoods, of the immediate communities. Time has come, for modern scientific contemporary academia to tap into the authority of traditional wisdom, which has yielded resilient communities and thriving pastoralist livelihoods, for over 2,000 years, even in the wake of climate variability.

As an organization therefore, we profoundly appreciate this profoundly timely opportunity, to join hands, share knowledge, models and policy insights, with thinkers, practitioners and actors, across Kenya and the African continent.

UNCCD Youth Caucus | FAO | UN Environment Programme IUCN | African Indigenous Women's Organization (AIWO) | Mali OLE KAUNGA | Dida Fayo, CIFE™