2020

The RUNRES project just completed its first full year. RUNRES seeks to build a circular food system predicated on the recycling of human and organic urban waste in Arba Minch, Ethiopia; Kigali, Rwanda; Bukavu, DRC; and Msunduzi, South Africa.

As a transdisciplinary project that emphasizes community participation and input, the RUNRES team spent the first year conducting context studies to become familiar with the local socioecological environment and existing stakeholder networks in each of the four project sites. In each country, project scientists and coordinators conducted literature searches, surveys, and site visits and held stakeholder workshops in order to better understand the local conditions and to build joint understanding with the stakeholders. The goal of this work has been to facilitate the selection of locally appropriate innovations that will enable the project to capture, process, and reuse organic and human waste.These innovations will make it possible to improve the sustainability and resilience of local food systems. These efforts are now bearing fruit. At each project site, community stakeholders, working with the support of RUNRES scientists, have produced creative, well-designed innovation plans capable of transforming the rural-urban nexus.With locally appropriate plans almost finalized, the RUNRES team will now proceed to realize these plans over the next three years. RUNRES is a multi-year research for development project funded by the Swiss Agency for Develpment and Cooperation.