News of China’s social credit system has been making waves across media outlets for months. Some publications are going soft on the massive surveillance state, saying it is not as bad as it seems (it is), while others are referring to it as something straight out of Nineteen Eighty-Four (again, it is).

Medium-scale African farmers are relatively wealthy and influential. Driven by population growth and growing land scarcity, most African farm households are witnessing the gradual sub-division of their land. Over time farms are getting smaller and smaller. Today, over 80% of farms in relatively densely populated countries – like Kenya, Ethiopia, Malawi and Rwanda are smaller than one hectare. Because they’re so small, few can generate enough income to keep farmers above the poverty line and most of them increasingly rely on off-farm incomes. But, from about ten …