This essay examines the history, current state, and future prospects of bioethanol and biodiesel production in Kenya, with a focus on their production processes, usage, and policy frameworks. Bioethanol and biodiesel are Kenya's main liquid biofuels, offering opportunities for energy sustainability and economic growth. These industries have very different histories and value chains, yet face similar challenges in their development. Kenya's National Innovation System (NIS) for biofuels is fragmented, characterized by weak linkages between research institutions, industry, and policymakers. This fragmentation limits the accumulation, adaptation and diffusion of technology to local contexts and raises concerns about knowledge appropriability, particularly in biodiesel, where foreign firms dominate the value chain. Similarly, the bioethanol industry suffers from inefficiencies in process innovation and constrained industrial capacity within domestic sugar mills. To address these structural bottlenecks, more strategic policies are required. These should focus on strengthening the industry across the entire value chain, encouraging knowledge transfer between institutional and industrial players, and fostering collaboration among fragmented firms to build a cohesive and sustainable innovation system. By adopting this approach, Kenya can unlock the full potential of its biofuel sector and drive sustainable economic growth.

South Africa’s evolution from the National Climate Change Response White Paper (NCCRWP) to the Climate Change Act (CCA) highlights the challenges of implementing climate policy in a decentralized governance context. While the NCCRWP laid a strong foundation, its execution was hindered by fragmented governance, resource constraints, and limited local administrative capacity. The CCA builds on this framework, targeting net-zero emissions by 2050, but must address the NCCRWP's shortcomings in coordination, policy clarity, and stakeholder engagement. This study employs a hybrid policy framework to explore these challenges and provides actionable insights for achieving effective climate governance and sustainable outcomes.

This policy memo addresses the persistent poverty among Madagascar's vanilla farmers. The problem is brought about by a complex value chain where intermediaries capture most of the income, leaving farmers with only a small fraction. To tackle these challenges, the memo evaluates three policy options: maintaining the status quo, facilitating market access through a digital platform, and imposing a targeted tax on intermediaries. The recommended solution is to implement a digital marketplace that would provide farmers with direct access to market information, reduce reliance on intermediaries, and increase their share of market returns. Even though there are tradeoffs, this policy offers a viable

alternative to the ineffective status quo, with the potential to significantly improve the livelihoods of Madagascar's vanilla farmers by enhancing transparency, reducing poverty, and promoting equity in the value chain.

The decentralized, transparent and traceable nature blockchain technologies makes them good candidates to tackle some of the challenges in the international aid and development sector. Using the design dilemmas model by Cila and co-authors (2020) I aim to assess how current blockchain applications perform in terms of achieving truly decentralized design, operations, and governance.

The REDD+ framework (which stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, with “+” indicating additional activities related to forest preservation) was introduced as part of the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Climate Change Conference and was adopted in Warsaw in 2013. The main actors in REDD+ encompass a broad range of stakeholders: international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank provide frameworks for initiatives; National governments play a critical role in implementing REDD+ policies (through local governments) and integrating them into their development plans. Local communities are essential for on-the-ground execution, and even communities not actively involved in REDD+ activities must be recognized as important stakeholders in decision-making processes to ensure their rights and interests are respected. Given this international scope and multi-level complexity, the establishment of REDD+ has set the foundation for the creation of new scalar configurations in the governance of forests. Understanding such scales is essential to understanding its functioning. In my analysis, I draw inspiration from REDD+ studies in Indonesia by Hein (2019), in Costa Rica by Wallbott and Florian-Rivero (2018), and in the Amazon by Aguilar-Støen (2017) to analyse these configurations.