This year reaffirmed the importance of focusing on issues central to our region: energy transitions, urban development, agrifood systems and technology management. Across all these domains, our themes of resilience, inclusion, frugality, governance and informality have remained our compass.

Our research portfolio continued to break new ground. In our urban development programme, we advanced innovation in digital inclusion through the co-creation of the Mathare Digital Hub model,one of the most comprehensive community-led frameworks for digital infrastructure in informal settlements. Our climate resilience work along the Nairobi River applied circularity and systems thinking to explore how riparian communities can co-create adaptation solutions, a perspective rarely integrated into urban planning. In the energy sector, our work ranged from conducting the most comprehensive household survey on cooking at the national level and in informal settlements, to pioneering energy demand modelling for informal settlements, to generating new evidence on mini grids in Kenya.