Predicting Famine, and the Harder Problem of Getting Anyone to Act
By: Monica Adjei | September 3, 2026
Dr. Catherine Nakalembe is featured on the latest episode of What's Your Problem?, the Pushkin Industries podcast hosted by Jacob Goldstein. The 37-minute conversation, titled "Using Satellites to Prevent Famines", centers on a question she’s been grappling with since her grad school days: how do you see a famine coming, and how do you convince decision-makers to move before it arrives?
Drawing on her work across Africa, Dr. Nakalembe walks through how satellite data can flag crop failure months in advance, and why the science is often the easy part as compared to getting a response to the result. She explains why a photograph can move a decision-maker faster than a map or a table of statistics, why imaging systems built for U.S. farmland routinely stumble in African agricultural contexts, and why a half-page memo can get food trucks rolling faster than a peer-reviewed paper ever could.
It's a candid look at the gap between knowing a crisis is coming and actually preventing it — and at the practical, human work of closing that gap.
