Michael Street's connections with Africa began 40 years ago. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked in a number of African and Asian countries as a 'brown' development expert on various agro-industrial projects. He first visited Ethiopia in 1975. During the 1990s and early 2000s he has travelled extensively in Ethiopia and lectured widely on the country's history and ecology. Since 2001 he has been based in Sicily where he is establishing two small biosphere reserves as part of an initiative to understand and expand Sicily's green economy.