Insights from the Global South: Shaping Climate Research Through CGIAR’s Mobility Academy

Climate change is becoming a driver of internal migration in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the World Bank’s Groundswell Report predicting at least 86 million climate migrants.

In 2024, CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security in partnership with Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST), and the Climate and Migration Network (CMARN), launched the Africa Climate Mobility Academy to promote high-quality research on climate, peace, and mobility in Africa. This initiative aims to address global research imbalances by highlighting African perspectives and producing locally relevant studies to guide climate resilience and human mobility policies.

The Climate Mobility Academy workshop brought together selected scholars from different countries in Africa (Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Egypt & Morrocco) with their expert mentors (including authors of this brief) for an intensive mentorship workshop. The fellows underwent a one-week intensive mentoring programme in October 2024 in Kakamega, Kenya. The programme was tailor-made to develop fellows’ research and writing capacities and involved writing sessions through draft manuscript presentations and capacity development through feedback sessions. Other topics included the presentation of key topics such as writing and publishing peer-reviewed articles, journal submissions, research methods and ethics and the use of AI in academic writing, among many others.

Bridging the gap between theory and reality

It was imperative to link fellows’ understanding of climate change issues with practical examples of the different climate change phenomena in different communities. To grasp the challenges of climate change in communities, the academy organized a one-day excursion to five counties in Kenya. This allowed fellows to witness first-hand the effects of climate change on communities, the cultural implications of climate displacement, lived realities in displacement camps and disruptions of livelihoods, among many others.

Our journey began early in the morning from Kakamega to Busia, Trans – Nzoia, Kakamega, and then Siaya counties. As our bus crossed from one country to another, one could not miss the green landscapes. The beautiful landscapes made it difficult for one to immediately pick the havoc that climate change has wreaked in these communities. It was not until we reached Budalangi, a sub-constituency in Busia County (our point of interest in this piece), that the natural landscapes, beautiful as they are amenable to flooding, as illustrated by devastating sights of sinking houses completely destroyed or submerged in floods and no longer habitable.

To give context, Busia is one of the forty-seven counties in Kenya, bordering Bungoma, Kakamega and Siaya counties, with part of Lake Victoria also falling under this county and shared by Uganda. As we drove further into Budalangi, we arrived at Bukeke and Malomba IDP camps where 372 families (Malomba camp) and about 180 families (Bukeke camp) have been living under makeshift tents, owing to flood displacement that occurred in 2019. The floods resulted from Lake Victoria’s backflow due to alleged closures of the lake by some communities downstream. The two camps are evident proof of climate-induced displacement. The academy fellows got a chance to engage directly with climate-impacted communities in real-time, which was key in grounding their theoretical knowledge with real-life examples of what climate-induced displacements look like. Significantly, both fellows and their mentors were fortunate to have the opportunity to engage with internally displaced persons (IDPs) in their camps and gain firsthand perspectives of their lived realities in camps.

Although details of interactions with IDPs are beyond the scope of this brief, this crucial phase – linking research to lived realities of climate change proved to be extremely useful in bridging the gap between theory and reality. In this brief, we want to focus our discussions on the lessons learnt from this live session with the main intention of spotlighting potential directions for future research in Busia County. Drawing from information we gathered through our rich conversations with academic experts from Masinde Murilo University, academy fellows, mentors and crucially some of the IDPs, this brief identifies some research gaps that potentially warrant further social enquiry.

Key lessons learnt

Firstly, we established that Busia country is prone to annual flooding, which often leads to families temporarily migrating to safer areas every year and then returning when the floods subside. The effects on families are often extreme and devasting, yet they still return. Though a point of robust debate and discussion on our journey back to Kakamega, our question remains an area we identified for future research. If the country is prone to annual flooding, why do families living in this area continue to return to precarious locations despite flood displacement almost every year? Preliminary discussions advanced two main reasons that account for the return migration phenomena in Busia County, notably intangible heritage, and livelihoods. Intangible heritage – includes traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.

Recommendations and conclusion

During our excursion, we learned that in the rainy season, the Nzoia River flows into Lake Victoria, causing a backflow that eventually leads to flooding, given the flat topography characteristic of this county. We also gathered that the solutions that have been suggested to address flooding in Busia include water cross-border cooperation between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to solve the backflow of water from Lake Victoria, shared by Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. The county policy framework recognizes flooding as one of the major climate risks in Busia and has prioritized flood mitigation as one of the key solutions to address the problem,

Based on these few insights, our final reflections and recommendations for future research should focus on in-depth inquiry on:

1. Why do people in Busia County not move away permanently from precarious locations amidst perennial flood crises characteristic of Budalangi,
2. What solutions can be put in place for people to stay in their original ancestral lands and,
3. What are the sustainable solutions that can be put in place as durable / sustainable solutions to mitigate the backflow from Lake Victoria?

In the final sum of things, further research into temporary migration dynamics is essential to fill in the identified gap – connecting mobility patterns to cultural heritage to better understand why people stay/ remain. Fast forward to 2025, it is envisaged that the Climate Mobility Academy will pursue the research agenda on a larger and greater scale, not only to foster knowledge production from the Global South but to engender local led adaptation solutions informed by a transdisciplinary evidence base from scholars on the continent.

Authors: Joyce Takaindisa and Gracsious Maviza, Alliance of Bioversity International & CIAT