Olga Glumac, Marta Arniani, Caleb Koton, Dolphine Kiwinda, and Mwamburi Mcharo
The SIFLOOP Hub, an EU-funded circular food initiative in Voi, Taita Taveta County, Kenya, converts locally sourced organic waste into Black Soldier Fly (BSF) larvae for aquaculture feed through a consortium of three independent organisations such as a Kenyan community-based NGO, a Kenyan public university, and a Paris-based social innovation agency; each rooted in a distinct epistemological tradition. We apply Meadows’ leverage point framework as a retrospective analytical instrument, mapping each intervention across leverage level and project timeline to examine where systemic design settles when organisations carrying incompatible theories of change are required to produce one project. The leverage gap the map reveals is the structural consequence of two simultaneous theories of what success means; the most transformative work was relational and community-led, and largely invisible in EU deliverables. We contribute a Global South case in which systemic design pluralism is between independent organisations rather than within a single research team’s method portfolio, a configuration the literature has rarely examined directly.
Keywords: leverage points, systemic design pluralism, epistemic justice, community agency, Black Soldier Fly, Local Innovation Hub, Kenya.