African Voices: Meet Anthony Egeru

Advancing interdisciplinary research while mentoring the next generation of African scientists and researchers

By Alloya Elwadie August 26, 2021

This Q&A series highlights the experiences and achievements of select African researchers who have benefited from training and fellowship programs supported through Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Higher Education and Research in Africa portfolio.

The recipient of fellowships through Carnegie-funded programs at RUFORUM and Makerere University in Uganda, Anthony Egeru, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the Department of Environmental Management at Makerere University in Uganda. His multifaceted experience in research includes systems ecology with a focus on management of dryland ecosystems, rangeland health monitoring, land use planning, pastoral livelihoods, agroforestry systems, climate change, and adaptation and resilience programming and analysis.

What is your current discipline of study?

I am a human and applied ecologist, at the intersection of various disciplines. Traditionally, most research is and can be dedicated to a single discipline. An entomologist may look at an entomology problem, without psychologists or sociologists. My focus is really to advance interdisciplinary research to achieve real, meaningful impact for livelihood transformations at the community level, and to do this I draw from multiple lenses to formulate a comprehensive solution to the problems I study.

What sort of research topics are you focused on right now?

I've been looking at issues around drought, changing land use, and ecohydrological connectivity in northern Uganda — basically, the interrelationship between the drier Karamoja belt and the humid savannas. Water appears and remains in these climates differently, so usually the pastoralists from the Karamoja side move towards the west of the subregion, entering into the neighboring tribal communities of Teso, Lango, and Acholi, and the traditional narrative is that they are following the water because their land slopes to the west. That introduces various issues around natural resource conflicts and so forth.

Another issue is the reemergence of tsetse flies in Karamoja, when they had earlier been controlled during colonial times from the 1960s to 1970s. This is an area where pastoral communities are surviving, but 40 percent of the land remains cordoned off by government as protected areas dedicated to conservation. This obviously represents some improvement since by 1965 about 95 percent of the total area in the subregion was protected conservation areas. Amid this conflict between protected conservation and pastoral grazing and their settlements, now there was a new issue of the tsetse fly reoccurring. I did a mapping and produced some of the intensity maps that we have, together with some students that have trained in this program, and we have provided this information to the local government and the Ministry of Agriculture for their tsetse fly control interventions.

What type of people do you work with off campus?

This year, from March to May, I led community education for about 11,000 people, organizing dissemination of COVID information in the Karamoja region during the lockdown period. We included broader information on understanding pandemics, discussing how people are relating with the environment, and how some of these diseases emerged. Additionally, I worked with a couple of NGOs in Karamoja as well as in northern Uganda, and I also worked with various colleagues from other universities, including University of the Free State in South Africa, University of Namibia, and University of Abomey-Calavi (Benin), working with the communities. Currently, with the Food Rights Alliance in Uganda, we are focusing our efforts on the legal and policy discourse of the management of fragile ecosystems in the rangelands in Uganda. Meanwhile with AfriFood, my colleagues and I are focused on delivering innovations for enriching the lives of smallholder farmers within the agri-food systems context.

In general, outside the university, I belong to the African Academy of Sciences Fellowship Program, where I am in two sectoral working groups: one on food security and nutrition, and one on health. I also work with a second group that includes pastoral groups. So I am interfacing with other researchers and people working in various ministries and organizations in policy and academia. Right now, we are organizing the International Year of Rangelands. This is where I'm able to provide my technical input towards the issues of pastoralism.

How did you first make all these connections to local policymakers? Is it from your own active outreach, or do they approach you to ask about your research?

These days I find more emails coming to me, particularly as I have developed a body of work around Karamoja. I am sort of a reference point to get information relating to the area because I have concentrated my effort and my research in that region so that I can make a contribution. When I started doing research there, even colleagues within Makerere believed it was too unsafe. They asked me why Karamoja of all places, where I needed to have a team of six to eight Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF) soldiers providing me and my team with the security. But I believed that it was important. Since then the security issues have eased. Of course, I reach out to the leaders and the ministry, and I receive many documents to review that recognize that I have certain capacities for the area and its issues.

What's been the most challenging part of academia for you? What, if anything, is hindering you from progressing in your career?

I would not say it is hindering progress, but our universities have to mature. At Makerere, the University of Nairobi, and others there is still a traditional notion of time and its passage. The senior people were in universities in their heyday — when the world was very slow. And so the slow pace of doing things sometimes creates a bit of frustration for me, and particularly for my students. For example, I have given my time and pushed and pushed my students to ensure that they finish their master’s degrees in time. And then, there are processes that may make a student stay in the system for another six or eight months. Sometimes the dissertations come, and the student has been examined and graduation is in January of the next year; but this is December, and they are saying the student cannot graduate because it's already too late. You begin to wonder, for goodness’ sake, you still have one month to graduation. This is 2021, and you are keeping this fellow in the system until 2022? These processes can make both faculty and students think, “Why the heck did they work so hard?

Another item for me is more about the world not being ready for interdisciplinary research. I have applied for grants and grants and grants, and I get knocked down, because I propose merging things that people still view as separate disciplines. Grants are sometimes looking at the university just as a place to do research, instead of places where we can refine development interventions. For example, I would like to not just go to collect data from the pastures, but also pilot an intervention with the pastures and observe how they are adopting technologies. Then NGOs can have real evidence! But people think, “Aren’t you an ecologist? Why are you thinking about things like that instead of doing ecological things?

When you're not doing research, what are you doing in your free time?

When I'm not doing my research, I play with my daughter. I go to my farm, where I plant and take care of the trees. I really enjoy being at my farm. I drive to the village and look at the cows. I visit friends. Once in a while I sit under a cool mango tree and have a beer. That is my life these days outside of reading and writing manuscripts!

But also, I have to go to the field today — and first to the community. Generally, I love being there and talking with people. It’s very relaxing and whenever I'm in the field I have some free time.

When you were a child, what did you want to do? What did you think your job or career was going to be when you were in primary?

Oh, that's a very interesting one, I grew up in the village where you say “I want to be a pilot” when you see a plane and “I want to be a doctor” when you visit the hospital. But when I reached secondary school, I was in the drama club and did some singing and drama. Although I was not a very good singer, the one role I was good at was that of the teacher. Whenever there was any dramatic action, I would act as a teacher. I recall acting that role all through until I finished my Ordinary Level. Later, when I was applying to join university, my first choice was to become a teacher. I got my first choice and so I am still a teacher up until now! I love teaching. I love it. When I get tired of administrative work and managing projects, I go to class to teach and share knowledge and I get so refreshed. I just love to teach.

You said that the Carnegie fellowships have been helpful for your career. What else has been helpful for you?

Without Carnegie I would not be where I am. The Carnegie fellowships launched my career, supported my PhD research, and have advanced my skills in research with travel grants that allowed me to meet and interact with several people who have advanced my career. I have been able to meet and work with top-notch researchers, some of whom recognized my talent and potential and were then able to be mentors.

The second part, besides being able to travel, is earning space to publish. Because of the flexibility of fellowship and grant support, I've published relatively extensively in a short time.

Carnegie’s investments in me have also allowed me to mentor many other young people. Since I resumed my work at Makerere University, I have supervised 13 master's students to completion, one PhD to completion, and I am currently working with another 16 graduate students. So that in itself is an opportunity to give back and keep the momentum of building a cohort of young scientists. For the exposure, the connections, the opportunity to work with others, Carnegie and other fellowships have been very, very, very instrumental.

What would be the advice you give to a young African right now interested in pursuing a career in academia?

First, I would say that excellence can take you to faraway destinations. So young scholars need to focus and build excellence in themselves and believe in themselves. I can tell you that because my first degree actually made me a teacher by profession. Then I decided to branch out to natural resource management, specializing in rural development and ecology. From there I continued to specialize at the PhD level. Throughout all of these different experiences I have tried to say, “OK. What does it mean to achieve excellence in this?” And that has brought its own flow.

That flow is what led me to meet my supervisor. During my master's, I was supervised by another person who was difficult to meet with. But another gentleman, Professor Majaliwa, started teaching us and I was struck that he kept saying, “It is possible. It is possible. It is possible.” That attracted me to him, and I approached him to request that he be my supervisor. And I started the journey with him! Up until today, we still sit together and talk. Professor Majaliwa taught me that excellence is very important and to believe that everything is possible. I had come from teaching in a private secondary school, where I had had immense mentorship and an emphasis on excellence from my head teacher, Dr. Dalton Elijah Segawa. Dr. Segawa always reminded us that “the excellence of your work needs no reminder to the public that you’re the best.” And as secondary school students, he often reminded us, “If you misuse your education, then spare much energy for the later life.” These two persons have had immense influence on my life and worldview about shaping a career based on excellence!

TOP: Anthony Egeru (Credit: Aya Sinada)