Article by Philo Ikonya

For Dr. Esther Mwangi, a change from working on insect programmes at Nairobi based International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) to environment issues at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has spelt a lot of joy.
Dr.Mwangi is the National Coordinator of the Global Environment Facility/Small Grants Programme (GEF/SGP), which is under UNDP. GEF/SGP gives small grants to grassroots civil society organizations to implement environment projects.
Before that, in the early eighties, Dr. Mwangi had a stint at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) and also worked in the Zoology Department at the University of Nairobi. She has had a taste of everything. Now in her element, she feels that her work has a great impact on real lives of individuals, communities and the environment.
She tells of the famous Butterfly farming project in the Kenya coastal town Malindi, an eco-tourism project in Solai in the Rift Valley, a micro-hydropower in Chuka of the Eastern Province and seven projects under the title-greening Rusinga Island- to cover the little Western Kenya island (43 Km. Sq.). There is also the Mt. Kenya World Heritage Site in the Central Province. All these projects are firsts under the GEF/SGP.
This has meant some unique activity in the communities concerned. The participation of women in these projects is always taken very seriously. So unique and worthwhile are most of them that they have forced a revision of government policy. For instance, in the case of the Chuka micro-power project, she says, “It was the first time that a community in the country had generated its own power and after a revision of policy since power was only previously sourced by the state- could sell the surplus to neighboring areas.”
Cheerful and dressed in a casual jeans suit whose blue matched with a white blouse brought out her chocolate complexion beautifully, Dr. Mwangi continues to explain what her work entails and little by little, the power in her becomes apparent.
The energetic woman has many a title to her name. These vary from scientific dissertations of which she has authored over 35 publications in topics on insect science to women in science, such as the recently published The 21st -Century Woman Scientist.
Where as the former type of publications carry all the seriousness of topics such as ‘studies on tick parasitoid in Kenya’, ‘Prospects for biological control of livestock ticks using the entomogenous fungi’, there are others on women in science from the pen of this scientist, who wrote a fiction that turned out to be a good enough for entry into the Macmillan African Prize! Dr. Mwangi has a powerful style of expression and once she grabs your attention she cannot lose it.
At UNDP, a third of her time is spent on field travel but this is a woman driven by the principles of honest service. Everything, even her journeys around Kenya and on planes holds a lesson for her which she tries to share with others. Then, she says, she has to go out and see the projects that are very well run by regional coordinators.
Dr. Mwangi is a keen manager whose desk at home is flooded with books on management. In her spare time she is studying an MBA with Leicester University in the UK. She is a successful online student. She also loves to be on the cutting edge of computer developments. She is well prepared for the information superhighway.
Dr. Mwangi built her career locally by dint of hard work. In 1990 she got her PhD in Biological Sciences from Kenyatta University. She got her first degree from the University of Nairobi and in 1984, got a masters degree in Biological Sciences.
The warmth with which she handles life and people leaves one doubting the typical description of scientist as aloof beings whose lives only revolve around the laboratory. Dr. Mwangi, though not so keen on depending on other people’s approval, is a good team player.
She likes to travel a lot to meet her peers and to have a feel of the different countries she visits. She has been to all the five continents and has fond memories of Brisbane in Australia and a soft spot for Geneva, Switzerland.
The SGP, started in 1993 in 67 countries. Esther joined the UNDP in 1999 to find a running Program, which she has since put her mind and soul in as she works at the UN Gigiri Complex in Nairobi. Gone are the long hours she would spend with insects as an entomologist. She keeps reminding
Biosafety News in the interview at her Villa in the Lavington Green area, of her satisfaction:
“I am happy when I see that I am doing a project that is more practical... that has a more direct impact. I feel more fulfilled than when I was a researcher at the bench,” she says, as her eyes light up and a set of white strong teeth re-enforces her winning charm and beauty.
She currently manages about 55 projects, and every New Year sees the birth of about 15 new projects. Asked if some of them are listed in Best Practices, she affirms, adding that many are award winners. And she is the only general who does not take credit for the conquest. One of the projects won the Equator Initiative Award in Johannesburg and another the Dubai International Award. “Many of them have not won, but they are all great!”
She sees herself as a typical Kenyan but people who knew her in school tell her that she has changed a lot. It is true that she has the polish it takes to work in international circles but she is charmingly natural. She recalls her early days in Central Province of Kenya, as those days of running to school, in this case Nginda Primary, quite happily. She was doing well and ended up in Kahuhia School and later Alliance Girls School for her ‘A’ levels. She was good both at humanities and sciences.
She also says that she is a typical Kenyan in the religious sense. Daughter of a Rev. Daniel Githanji and midwife Mary Muthoni, Dr. Mwangi says that when she was growing up with her eight sisters, their home was like a church. “My late parents were very religious. My father belonged to the first crop of pastors educated by the first missionaries. He was also a school teacher.”
Dr Mwangi is happy that her father believed in the education of girls. As for her, it is important that affirmative action is practiced until women move up to competent levels. She knows that women need to express their independence, noting that her grandmother chose to be a single mother of five and was a defiant woman who dug the strip of land near the road on her farm and told others she had no qualms doing her work on a Sunday because, she argued, it is the land that gave her food and not the church.
For Dr. Mwangi, biographies- currently she is reading Jon Sopel’s Tony Blair, make interesting reading. “This is real stuff, not fiction, it happened to someone, that is what makes a difference,” she says. She has a couple of favorite bookshops at Yaya Centre and knows the others from her own efforts to stock her book on Women Scientist in them. A little bit of gym and computer surfing and travel complete her hobbies.
“Driven women inspire me,” she says. Dr. Mwangi admires people with a dream and people of focus. In the future, she hopes she can get to run a whole UN agency but honestly after our candid talk I wondered when time would come for a woman to become UN Secretary General. Who knows, it might be Njoki from Maragua.