Summary The GCRF Health, Polluted Water and Soils Network of excellence is focused on reducing health problems relating to water and soil pollution in climate-stressed, rural and deprived urban communities in Kenya, Jamaica and Grenada. We aim to achieve this by focusing on affordable and innovative technological and sociological solutions to improve access to clean water, healthy and productive soils and safe, nutritious foods. The network is based on a One Health interdisciplinary, approach, with a growing membership drawn from academic researchers, business leaders, entrepreneurs, health and environmental professionals, government officials, science policy diplomats, community leaders, and civil society and a commitment to grow. Our goal is to build a network of committed individuals, who will work together to solve problems together and will get better at getting things done. Network members will engage in a two-year programme of innovative, interconnected activities, designed to facilitate and enrich the exchange of knowledge, ideas and praxis, build capacity, and help early and mid-career academic participants to connect with the wider community and forge long-lasting, interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships. The activities include a series "big-tent" settings including: country-based Knowledge Networks in which entrepreneurs and business will be encouraged to bring new ideas and thinking about social enterprise and for-profit schemes into the network on how to deliver change; Round-tables for diverse groups to "think out of my box" and develop pathways for realising solutions; on-line Communities of Practice to enable everyone to gain a strong understanding of the issues, evidence and potential solutions through moderated conversations; Workshops and co-laboratories, that will give members and stakeholders the opportunity to co-design innovative ways to improve health through affordable and innovative technological and sociological solutions and improved access to clean water and soils; Demonstration activities and Outreach in local communities to heighten awareness of impacts on health from polluted water and soils and solutions; two Global Digital Conferences which will include on-line presentations, chat groups, interactive sessions, and hackathons, to give network members the opportunity to demonstrate how different issues are being tackled; open access e-learning courses and training webinars on key issues leading to University certification; and an International conference to be held at the Eden Centre, UK to present the outcomes and ideas from the network, consolidate new collaborations and future actions. Some of the measurable outcomes will include improved health in selected communities Grenada, Jamaica and Kenya through greater access to clean water, soils and safe, nutritious foods; lasting partnerships and interdisciplinary collaborations able to exploit opportunities for joint research proposals, business propositions and social enterprise; and increased skills and capacities to solve challenges linked to health, climate change and pollution through collaborative and participatory methods. The results of the network's activities will be disseminated widely through the network's website, social media and academic publications, and shared in detail with the UKRI and the Global Challenge Leaders. The hallmarks of success will be a network that has developed its own compass for working with complexity, enjoys "big-tent settings for joined-up action", and whose membership gets better at getting things done by finding power and using it.

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CCEASH aims to adopt a historiographical approach in order to demonstrate how smallholder farmers in Elgeyo-Marakwet County (EMC), Kenya, innovate and respond in times of crisis. The recent surge in desert locust swarms, allied to flooding and drought, across East Africa present an unprecedented urgent threat to local livelihoods, where failed harvests and crop destruction, coupled with pandemic-related collapse of global market chains, has raised concerns surrounding food shortages and impending economic collapse. In response to these crises, the Kenyan Ministry for Agriculture has called upon farmers and other stakeholders to rapidly intensify production (http://www.kilimo.go.ke/covid-19/). Dominant development narratives implicitly suggest that African smallholder farmers are highly vulnerable to new crises as they lack the adaptive capabilities to navigate multiple emerging pressures. For decades it has been argued that solutions for improving agricultural productivity and resilience in Africa stem not from indigenous farmers, but rather the transfer of knowledge, practice, skills, and technological inputs from specialists and institutions in the Global North. This approach is most recently reflected in calls for a new African Green Revolution that aims to scale up agricultural production through processes of intensification and industrialisation. Yet an increasing body of evidence highlights how these methods of farming are inherently unsustainable, contributing to approximately 24% of greenhouse gas emissions, 33% of global soil degradation and 60% of global terrestrial biodiversity loss (UNEP 2016). With evidence suggesting that locust outbreaks are intimately linked to climate extremes, it is a cruel reality that extant agricultural frameworks have fuelled the drivers of such climatic conditions whilst conterminously eroding key ecosystem services that may otherwise provide crucial resilience to the consequences. It is thus clear that 'modernising' paradigms have failed to deliver ecological wellbeing and sustainable prosperity for many smallholder farmers, suggesting that alternative frameworks are required. Postcolonial theory underscores this point through its demonstration of how development frameworks are embedded in colonial ontologies of progress that only serve to marginalise indigenous knowledges/voices and fail to build appropriate locally crafted responses. Beginning with this postcolonial critique, we seek to challenge the assumption that African smallholder farmers lack the capacity to deal with crisis, and instead to cultivate farmer-led understandings of emergency response and explore productive potentials for building resilience to future crises. Our work is premised with a unique historical perspective that views farmers as agents of innovation rather than passive individuals resistant to change. Indeed, in EMC our existing Kenyan Citizen Science team record how self-defined 'digital farmers' are innovatively responding to crisis by diversifying agricultural practices to improve on-farm resilience, whilst simultaneously intensifying kinship networks alongside digital platforms for knowledge sharing and market access. Farmers are responding through an adaptive interplay between the old and new, resonating with the deeper temporal perspective that African farming systems have long been diverse and highly adaptive. The value of this unique humanities perspective thus lies in its ability to blur dichotomies between modernity and tradition, resituate innovation and adaptation in local practice, and offer entry points for designing new rural livelihoods that prioritise farmer agency. Our research will critically reanalyse existing data to situate the current crises in the context of failed historical crisis and development interventions, build an empirical record of farmers' crisis responses in real time, and use these to co-design policy that re-centres invaluable famer knowledge and experience.

This series will be the first to systematically examine the legacy of Labour's efforts to transform British Africa policy and relations (1997-2010), exploring (dis)continuities between this period and the current coalition government. Working with leading scholars from across disciplines and partners in the policy community, including Chatham House, Institute for Public Policy Research and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Africa, we will provide the first in depth examination of contemporary Africa policy, analysing how UK Africa relations are managed, presented and justified in a context of financial austerity, coalition government and the increased public scrutiny resulting from ring-fencing aid budgets whilst making deep cuts to UK public spending. Africa is often seen as marginal to UK interests, yet it occupies a special place in the history, foreign policy, self-image and public imagination of the UK. During the Cold War African states were often battlegrounds for superpowers and their allies, but the collapse of the Soviet Union and the bipolar world order created space for new forms of international engagement with African states, based on different assumptions about the nature of Africa's challenges and the role and strategies of international actors to resolve them. In the UK, the opportunity to redefine relations with Africa and tackle challenges of poverty, underdevelopment, chronic conflict and international marginalisation, was taken up by Labour Governments (1997-2010). Often drawing on highly abstract images of the continent, Labour presented Africa as an area of special UK interest. Prime Minister Tony Blair argued the international community must assist Africa, reflecting moral obligation based on shared humanity and, in a new addition, links between underdevelopment and insecurity in Africa and security elsewhere in the world. Africa under Labour became a matter of national interest and national security. Labour sought to transform UK Africa policy domestically and approaches to Africa internationally. They created a ministry, the Department for International Development (DFID), and promoted a joined up approach to Africa across DFID, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Ministry of Defence. Internationally, they pushed for development goals, aid targets, debt relief, and building African capacity to manage conflict. The claim to be pursuing an 'ethical foreign policy' foundered however on the 'arms to Africa' scandal, and some argued that new rhetoric masked 'business as usual'. Nevertheless by the end of Labour's second term the UK had developed an international reputation for its focus on Africa; when the coalition government took power in 2010 it inherited a different relationship with Africa to that of 1997. Domestically it was underpinned by new ways of working and the role of DFID, but complicated by financial crisis and need for UK spending cuts. Internationally, UK attempts to establish a shift in approaches to Africa have also been challenged by rising powers (e.g. China and India). Providing in depth and thematic examination of contemporary British Africa policy, the series will engage with ongoing debates in policy and in UK and international scholarship, particularly in Europe and Africa, crossing Politics, Development, Political Economy, International Relations, History and Area Studies. Working closely with our non academic partners we will form a new network of scholars across these areas, prioritising early career researchers as speakers and participants. The series will contribute to ongoing and emerging debates with policy relevance, primarily focusing on: UK relationships with Africa; the role of foreign policy, especially on Africa, in UK self image; UK public attitudes to Africa and development; African agency in influencing UK policy; and the role of the UK in a changing global context, characterised by financial austerity and the rise of new actors in Africa and globally.

The Rising from the Depths network will identify how the tangible submerged and coastal Marine Cultural Heritage (MCH) of Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar, and its associated intangible aspects, can stimulate, ethical, inclusive and sustainable growth in the region. The multidisciplinary project team (experienced in challenge-led research and KE in ODA environments) will determine ways in which MCH can directly benefit East African communities and local economies, building identity, stimulating alternative sources of income (reducing poverty), and enhancing the value and impact of overseas aid in the maritime sector. East Africa is undergoing a period of profound change as the economy of the region gains momentum, driven by changing internal dynamics and by external interests. The region's maritime zone is central to these developments with offshore exploration for oil and gas deposits driving investment, coupled with major financing of new and established ports to facilitate trade with the Gulf countries. In addition to aid and investment from both the UK and other western governments, China and Saudi Arabia are funding major infrastructural and development projects across the region. While these developments have the potential to realise short-term economic, developmental and employment benefits, there has been little consideration of the impact of this work on the region's submerged and coastal heritage. Nascent maritime research in East Africa is just beginning to reveal the extent of maritime cultures and traditions across the region as well as the evidence for wider maritime activity that connected this coast to the broader Indian Ocean region. The sea in East Africa is a connector, a facilitator of communications, a supplier of resources that sustains life and an environment that is rooted in the belief systems of coastal peoples. For millennia this coast has been embedded within broader political and socio-economic domains, and witness to multiple migrations, invasions and trade activity. Its port towns and cities were intrinsically connected to a wider mercantile maritime world, ensuring it became one of the most culturally dynamic and diverse regions throughout history. It was, and continues to be, a region of continuous transformation and subject to a variety of anthropogenic and natural drivers of change. Development agreements very rarely take account of cultural heritage even though access to it is considered a fundamental human right. East African counties currently have little capacity to protect or explore their rich maritime heritage and, as a result, the socio-economic potential of MCH has yet to be realised. Worse, while the submerged resource is being impacted by marine exploitation, commercial salvage and offshore industry, the coastal resource is being threatened by building and development work as well as climatic and environmental change and even some green-energy projects. MCH is a fragile and finite resource, which once destroyed can never be recovered. This project will establish and maintain a transboundary and cross-sector network of arts and humanities-led researchers, government officers, scientists, policy makers, UN officials, NGOs, ICT professionals and specialists working in heritage, infrastructure and the offshore industry, to consider in what ways MCH can create long-lasting social, economic and cultural benefits in the region. The project will identify new opportunities and methodologies for arts and humanities research in an aid context and add value to coastal infrastructure and offshore development projects. Key mechanisms of engagement will be through the co-production of a Research and KE Framework, Innovation Projects and KE activities. The nations of coastal East Africa have aspirations to transform themselves into a thriving maritime gateway of trade and investment. The past has an active role in not only informing this development but in helping drive it.