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Kenya is among the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to formally require the assessment of public policies, plans and programs. National strategic environmental assessment (SEA) guidelines were finalized in 2012 to adapt and enhance SEA practice in the Kenyan context. The purpose of this research was to examine recent Kenyan SEA, with a particular emphasis on public participation, by developing and applying an analysis framework that both incorporates commonly accepted SEA principles and approaches and is cognizant of the national context in shaping SEA practice. Results reveal that a number of SEA practices are consistent with the framework in the nine cases considered, such as containing standard SEA components and developing monitoring plans. A requirement that each SEA must include educating the public about SEA is an innovative local adaptation. Results also show a number of practices that are still emerging, such as initiating SEA early and disseminating results to the participants. We conclude that SEA is still developing in Kenya, but processes for conducting it are slowly adapting to the Kenyan context. ' … re-shaped by empirical and evaluatory lessons from Kenyan's own SEA experience and context' (Mutui et al. 2013, p. 181). This parallels a previous call by Onyango and Schmidt (2007, p. 325

This paper examines the role of participation and learning in Kenyan strategic environmental assessments (SEAs) of urban plans that include a solid waste management (SWM) component. Two SEA cases were studied using 40 semi-structured interviews and two focus groups. Data are analysed qualitatively employing NVivo software. Participation is assessed using ideal conditions of learning derived from Transformative Learning Theory, and operationalised for this study. Strengths of SEA participation are freedom from coercion and equal opportunity to participate. Notable weaknesses include inaccessibility of SEA documents, inadequate participant funding, and lack of feedback and transparency about the SEA findings. Participants exhibited numerous learning outcomes and associated social actions on urban SWM including waste sorting, recycling and composting (instrumental learning), sharing values and community collaborations on cleanup and recycling (communicative learning), and altering conventional viewpoints from ‘waste for disposal’ to ‘waste as a resource’ (transformative learning), including for livelihood opportunities.