Staff members from Meru University of Science and Technology (MUST) are visiting Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands on an Erasmus KA171 program affiliated to the Food Waste Reduction and Food Quality Living (FORQLAB) project. This program sponsors staff and students to visit Europe for an international experience. Together with staff from Meru University of Science and Technology are also members of staff from Egerton University.

The members of staff from MUST in the exchange are Dr. Eric Mworia, Mr. Oscar Wamalwa and Dr. Beatrice Owiti. Earlier in December, four students from MUST had started the exchange program so they were extremely glad to be joined by their lecturers. While the students will be in the program for six months, the members of staff are there for two weeks.

The students and staff will spend the exchange period working on various approaches to improve living labs in the avocado value chain for Meru University of Science and Technology and the Dairy value chain for Egerton University. The group have together visited various farms in the Netherlands and interviewed farmers on their uptake of Agro forestry. Whereas Europe and Africa have completely different climatic conditions and therefore plant different types of trees, the lessons learnt in agroforestry in the Netherlands can be used for comparison and further learning in the tropics and vice versa.