Andrew Mude: Powered By His Roots

Photo Copyright: Aspen New Voices

When Dakabaricha, Marsabit is your home and cattle is your livelihood, climate change tends to have an outsized impact on your life. This is the heritage of Andrew Mude – a man on a mission. Long before he was born, his path was charted, including the change he would one day bring not only for his community but for thousands of others. 

Our paths are often determined by choices of our forbearers and Andrew’s story is no different. Both his maternal and paternal grandparents made the decision to send their children to school. This was in the 50s when the peoples of the Northern Frontier were still gauging the merit of education brought by missionaries. After marriage they moved to the capital in search of greener pastures and soon after settling in the growing city, Andrew was born. His father progressed in his work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and when Andrew was nine, he and his family began a new type of nomadic living. As they traversed one country to another representing Kenya, Andrew dove into his education, and was a dedicated student throughout his years as he moved from one school to another. In 2006, he attained his Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Gettysburg College. The world of numbers, graphs and derivatives had nailed him and he subsequently pursued, and attained a PhD in Economics from Cornell University. 

At 29, two decades after he’d left Kenya, Dr. Andrew Mude returned home, spending time re-acquainting himself with his extended family and hitting the tarmac looking for a job. With his credentials he found position as a Junior Scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), a global body dedicated to establishing new opportunities for animals and the farmers whose livelihoods depend on their well being. His first assignment at his new job took him back to the land of his roots – Marsabit. There he found that, in many ways, life had not changed over the years for his relatives and many other pastoralists who were facing the same challenges that had driven his parents to the city decades earlier. Wealth lay in cattle and with drought came an appalling loss of wealth affecting families and driving many into poverty. It was the equivalent of a computer virus turning one’s savings in the bank from millions to mere zeroes on a recurring basis. Something had to be done.  

Two years after he joined ILRI, Andrew and his team had come up with a solution, one he knew would turn around the recurring crisis. He developed the Index Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI), an insurance product for communities in drought-prone and arid areas of northern Kenya, using satellite data to monitor grazing sites as the confirmation of extreme weather patterns and determinant of whether a pay-out is due or not. An innovative feat, that would have far-reaching impact. 

Since then, Andrew Mude and his team have taken the time to educate and engage with the pastoralist communities and leaders on the understanding and delivery of IBLI, sitting in barazas encouraging people to pay the modest premiums that could protect their wealth in difficult times. The economist with pastoralist roots had come full circle and as always, good work never goes unrewarded. In 2016, Dr. Andrew Mude was awarded The Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application – a global prize honoring exceptional, science-based achievement in international agriculture and food production by an individual under 40 who has clearly demonstrated intellectual courage, stamina, and determination in the fight to eliminate global hunger and poverty. In his acceptance speech, Andrew credited his education, saying “If my parents never educated me, today I would not stand up as the father of this product that now gives hope to pastoral communities in Northern Kenya.”  

We applaud scientist, economist, Kenyan, Andrew Mude for innovatively mitigating an age-old problem, and in doing so, being a Paukwa person of #KeExcellence

Photo Copyright: ILRI