I am a young, aspiring scholar at the University of Bern, Switzerland, where I am a Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship Fellow 2014 in the The Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), (and the Institute of Geography). It is in the very same department that I also pursue my Doctoral Degree, conducting research on the State and Rural Transformation in Northern Kenya (1960-2010). In the past I have worked on political and social factors that drive or constrain pro-poor change and the politics of policy making, governance and reform. Much of my previous work has explored citizen-state relations, systems and processes for strengthening accountability and transparency, the process of e...