Listers "*Hyacinth has been found to be a good ingredient for organic fertilizer.*" I will quote Ps. Ndemo !!! And again not once, not twice have we seen the media cover individuals who have attempted to create paper out of the mashed Hyacinth, well the process was certainly long but the end product is very beautiful, home made cards. For me perhaps we only remember Mau Forest and others when the issue of paper comes up, Pan Paper has not performed well, Polythene bags are polluting our country and by extension agriculture is affected, why not use the idea of making hyacinth paper bags that we could use in supermarkets and grocery shops and probably eliminate these non bio degradable bags ? I think we can agree that instead of crying over Hyacinth that has taken over the freshest lake in the world, we could harness the weed and generate animal feed , paper , furniture , bio gas and many more. Someone just needs to start commercializing it. Probably we could have government buy the first batch of hyacinth furniture and yes others would follow suit. Gideon Rop DotConnectAfrica On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 9:09 PM, <kictanet-request@lists.kictanet.or.ke>wrote:

Send kictanet mailing list submissions to kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to kictanet-request@lists.kictanet.or.ke

You can reach the person managing the list at kictanet-owner@lists.kictanet.or.ke

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of kictanet digest..."

Today's Topics:

1. Re: Making Sense of our development (Dorcas Muthoni) 2. Re: Making Sense of our development (Mark Mwangi) 3. The Danger of Celebritizing Entrepreneurship (robert yawe)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1 Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 18:25:38 +0300 From: Dorcas Muthoni <dmuthoni@gmail.com> To: bitange@jambo.co.ke Cc: "kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke" <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Making Sense of our development Message-ID: < CACFhaS58aX6Fy0XK8QAyC6OjUf5TYo8LoZjn98cRNrCaQpBwWw@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"

Kenya Investment Authority has been advertising the opportunity for manufacture of fertilizer http://www.investmentkenya.com/opportunities/manufacturing

I hope they are aware of this opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 8:37 PM, <bitange@jambo.co.ke> wrote:

...

Listers, I very much know that my post today is not directly ICT but its implications have a great bearing on the decisions we make about our future development in ICT.

Page 19 of the Star of Thursday, October 11th, carried a story on Water Hyacinth titled ?Water hyacinth project threatened by court order?. This is apparently a donor funded project in its phase two under Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project (LVEMP).

LVEMP II is an eight-year US$254 million (Ksh. 2.1 billion) old regional project being implemented in the five East African Community partner states says the article. Objectives of the project include: improving ?collaborative management of trans-boundary natural resources of Lake Victoria basin? as well as ?reduce environmental stress in the targeted pollution hotspots and selected degraded sub-catchment areas as a way of improving the livelihoods of communities who depend on the lake basin?s resources?.

One will hope that the project is supposed to physically remove water hyacinth from the lake to enable the people access the resources from the lake. However, in the past eight years the spread of this water menace has more than tripled and this is what prompted me we to re-examine the objectives as stated. If these objectives were to be re-stated in simplified English, the real meaning could be to help citizens of East Africa understand how to collaborate and manage their resources as well as reduce their stress. The project therefore has nothing to do with water hyacinth and hence the reason why the people are fighting over it.

If the donor language were to be simpler, they would have thought about project sustainability in which case we did not need all the resources that is at the disposal of the fighting citizens. In my view we needed only US$50 (US$10 million for each country) to set up an organic fertilizer factory. Hyacinth has been found to be a good ingredient for organic fertilizer. Just recently I wrote a blog how soil nutrients have been depleted in densely populated districts with excessive land sub-divisions. Studies also show productivity levels dropping significantly that our food security and safety is at its worst threat.

Further, chemical fertilizer may be poisoning our ground water and may be likely the cause of increased cancer cases in the region. There is greater urgency than ever before that we exploit every opportunity for developing organic fertilizer like hyacinth that would improve on productivity, ensure sustainable development and reduce its impact on our water resources. Our problems would only be solved by us and as such foreign interventions will not always be a universal remedy to our predicament.

Ndemo.

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet

Unsubscribe or change your options at

https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/dmuthoni%40gmail.com

...

The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and

development.

...

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and

bandwidth,

...

share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.

-- Muthoni

My Blog: http://rugongo.blogspot.com/ -------------------------------------------- Mahatma Gandhi once said:-

First they ignore you, Then they laugh at you, Then they fight you, AND THEN YOU WIN!!!