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Kenya is vulnerable to multiple natural hazards that lead to disasters resulting in human, economic, environmental and other losses. The promulgation and ratification of several disaster management (DM) policies, acts, conventions and the establishment of the National Disaster Management Policy Framework has placed Kenya at the international forefront. We critically analyse various Kenyan policy institutions and processes for disaster risk management (DRM), applying a mixed-methods approach. Content analysis was applied to qualitatively analyse Kenya’s DM policy and legislation documents, using Nvivo 11 Pro. Descriptive and econometric analyses were performed on empirical data from DRM key informants in Kenya using SPSS version 25.0. Only 11% of interviewees were aware of the National Disaster Policy Framework; 50% had read up to two national DM-related documents. National institutions exert highest influence in the policy formulation (78%), compared to local and international institutions (67% and 56%, respectively). Participation of local and national institutions in national DRM policy formulation was high (mean scores of 2.44/4 and 1.67/4, respectively). A weak correlation was observed between years of experience (r = 0.115, p = 0.768), and a positive but insignificant one between experience and participation in DRM policy formulation. Based on the aforementioned, we suggest that Kenya’s disaster risk reduction (DRR) implementation benefits from the high human capacity and high level of participation. However, the performance of frontline staff needs to be improved, especially regarding their knowledge of existing national DRM frameworks.

This contribution focuses on analyzing the challenges of diversity in Africa, with a focus on the case of Cameroon. This country, generally presented as “Africa in miniature,” reflects Africa's diversity in different fields: economic, ethnic, religious, linguistic, climatic, ecological. The introductory chapter is the analysis of the diversity in the context of economic growth in Africa. It takes an illustrative testimony of a Cameroonian company executive on its vision and diversity management practices. Thereafter, the chapter highlights the different challenges of diversity management in Cameroon in connection with different analysis settings. The international and African context of diversity is presented to better identify the specifics of Cameroon in the management of diversity. The historical context helps to better understand the challenge of legitimizing heuristic research on diversity. The legal context sheds light on the challenges of institutional regulation of diversity. The cultural context highlights the centrality of the issue of ethnicity. The conclusion explores new fields of research on diversity management and identifies some emerging dimensions of Cameroon's diversity.