“Climate change found me. I wasn’t looking for a career in this area,” said Kevin. “I chose a course that was not popular–dryland resource management. I didn’t go for engineering, medicine, or law because of the context where I’ve lived. Kenya is approximately 80% arid and semi-arid land. That set me up to be where I am now.”

Kevin’s work has journeyed through several issues spanning community level, national and global level, all related to climate change. Kevin started working in dryland resource management (which included work on the environment and climate change) covering the Horn of Africa, then shifted a bit to urban livelihood with short terms assignment in Asia and Latin America. Then he went deeper into working with displaced populations and refugees (both for South Sudan and for Somalia) with a focus on food security and social safety net programming. He left programming in East Africa and worked on food security in Southern Africa and Madagascar (which is one of the countries most affected by climate change). Kevin subsequently left Africa altogether and went to the Middle East and Iraq. Then Covid-19 happened, and he was excited by the job with Mercy Corps and to be back home, closer to family.

Kevin came to work on resilience and food security by working with communities towards sustainable development through natural resource management. Terms change, but Kevin’s early work looking at wetlands, forests, land issues, and how people bounce back from natural disasters was the beginning of his work on resilience. Natural resource management is a bedrock to address and sustain food security. His food security work has focused on different angles, including the emergency perspective of working with refugee camps. In the Middle East, the focus was on early recovery – a bridge between humanitarian and development work, food security, inclusive economic growth through markets, social cohesion and embedding psychosocial support to build the resilience of communities to bounce back and achieve food security. In his current role as Director of Food Systems, Kevin looks at how to build resilient food systems to ensure they deliver food and nutrition security for all and provide equitable livelihoods opportunities in a sustainable way.

Read the full article about Kevin Mugenya by Tyler LePard at Global Washington.