LocationsBy Martin Namasaka
Seeds of Resilience: How Dr. Lily Murei Took Development to Where It’s Needed Most
August 25, 2025
Beneath the golden clouds of Karamoja, where Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, and Ethiopia almost touch, the air carries both laughter and struggle. Women rise before dawn, balancing jerrycans on their heads as they trek miles for water. Children trail behind, dusty feet kicking stones, their schoolbooks left in the hut. Yet even here, resilience hums like a quiet song, woven through daily survival. It is here, in these fragile yet hopeful landscapes, that I met Dr. Lily Murei, Policy Research and Data Specialist at UNDP’s Resilience Hub for Africa. In the villages, they call her the mother of peace and development, not because she arrives with miracles, but because she listens, walks, and works alongside communities with sleeves rolled and heart open.
Her work has stretched across the dry borderlands of the Sahel, the fragile ecosystems of East Africa, and the buzzing innovation corridors of Nairobi. Whether perched on a rock in a dry riverbed sketching ideas in the sand with children, or in a boardroom shaping regional policy, Lily has carried one conviction throughout: development must bend toward humanity.
A Childhood of Scarcity but Resilient
Lily’s own story begins in Kenya’s Rift Valley, in a childhood framed by scarcity.
“I carry the sound of my mother’s footsteps,” she recalls softly. “She walked miles for water, carrying heavy jerrycans, just so we could drink. I also remember my father’s quiet calculations when the livestock thinned, when the granary went empty. These are not just memories. They are the fire that drives me.”
Scarcity was never theoretical for her; it was lived. Those memories have shaped a career that is as much about empathy as expertise. They explain why she is drawn to Africa’s borderlands, where scarcity is still the daily reality for millions.
Connecting the Dots: Water, Energy, Food & Humanitarian-Development-Peace (HDP) Nexus
In the dry plains of Karamoja, Lily once sat under the shade of an acacia tree with a group of women. Their laughter was soft, but their stories were heavy. They described waking before dawn to walk six hours for water, time stolen from farming, rest, and their children’s schooling.
“These conversations revealed more than water scarcity,” Lily explains. “They exposed the fragile ties between food, energy, and survival. Without water, you cannot farm. Without energy, you cannot irrigate or store food. Without food, dignity itself begins to crumble. “Such deficits, at times, result in conflict.”
With colleagues, we co-designed and rollout of an area-based integrated portfolio anchored in the Water–Energy–Food (WEF) Nexus and the Humanitarian–Development–Peace (HDP) Nexus, breaking away from siloed approaches. We demonstrated how water scarcity weakened food security and livestock rearing, how the lack of reliable energy blocked irrigation and storage, and how these deficits entrenched poverty and vulnerability. Our analysis shaped the Karamoja Integrated Project, which improved crop and livestock productivity, expanded community access to water, and strengthened social cohesion, ultimately enhancing resilience for thousands of households in the region. When we take development where it matters, the changes are tangible. “Where goats once crowded dry riverbeds, I saw kitchen gardens thriving,” she remembers. “Women who had spent half their day fetching water were now joining savings groups, raising poultry, or attending literacy classes.”
One woman, Maria, put it simply: “Now, when I carry water, it is for my garden, not for survival.”
For Lily, those words carried the essence of her mission. “Resilience is not a statistic,” she insists. “It is Maria planting spinach for the first time. It is children carrying books instead of jerrycans. It is communities that once felt forgotten, beginning to see themselves in national development plans.”
Community voices, Lily emphasizes, are critical in shaping both programme design and policy. She reminisces about the flagship research she led, Promise, Peril and Resilience: Voices of Agropastoralists in Africa’s Borderland Regions and her work on strengthening social protection in Africa. For her, evidence is more than data; it is the lived experience of people whose stories must guide policy and programming.
Through direct testimonies from agropastoralists living in Africa’s borderlands, communities described not only their vulnerabilities but also their strengths. One of the clearest recommendations that emerged from this research was striking in its simplicity: borders are not barriers. Rather, they are magnets, keeping families together, encouraging trade, and shaping the quality of life.
“Governments and development actors can make a significant impact by better understanding and leveraging the potential of communities living across borders,” Lily reflects. “Instead of weakening the centuries-old ties that bind them, we must reinforce these bonds, because they are the backbone of resilience in Africa’s history and future.”
From Fragility to Fortune: Africa’s Borderlands at the Heart of Development Investment
Stand on the border of West Pokot in Kenya and Karamoja in Uganda, and you witness Africa’s paradox in sharp relief. Pastoralists move cattle through dusty plains, their livelihoods hanging by a thread. Just across, traders haggle over goats and hides destined for distant markets. The borderlands are alive with resilience and possibility, yet for decades, they have remained among the most marginalized and forgotten regions of the continent.
To many policymakers and investors, borderlands look too risky: infrastructure is poor, regulations uneven, insecurity high. But as Lily often reminds us, “risk is simply another word for untapped return.”
Guided by this conviction, we began working with communities to reimagine these regions not as peripheries, but as corridors of opportunity. Through the SDG Investor Map, people themselves helped identify ventures that could both attract private capital and transform local lives. The first Kenya–Uganda cross-border map highlighted investment opportunities in dairy processing, honey production, solar energy, cross-border finance, and hides and skins processing.
The results were more than numbers on a page. They bridged the gap between global ambition and local reality. They showed where capital could do double work, delivering returns while tackling food insecurity, expanding clean energy, creating jobs, and strengthening resilience.
In borderlands, the stakes are always higher. But so too are the possibilities: to turn fragility into fortune and forgotten frontiers into thriving corridors of prosperity.
Building a Green Future
Lily’s work has never been only about survival; it is also about possibility.
In Nairobi, she met James, a young entrepreneur producing eco-friendly packaging from banana fibres. “His idea was brilliant but fragile,” Lily says. “Without support, it could have vanished.”
As the National Coordinator of the SWITCH Africa Green Programme, she helped bridge that gap. With seed funding and mentorship, James’s idea blossomed. Within a year, his start-up employed ten young people and replaced thousands of plastic bags each month.
But for Lily, this wasn’t just about one start-up. “We helped shape Kenya’s Green Economy Strategy and Implementation Plan,” she recalls. “Policy is important, but it must create space for people like James. Green growth is not just about documents; it’s about giving young people the chance to build businesses that heal the planet.”
The ripple spread outward. Women’s cooperatives launched recycling ventures. Youth incubators piloted solar innovations. Farmers adopted climate-smart agriculture with small grants.
“The real achievement,” Lily reflects, “is seeing ordinary citizens become leaders of change. That’s when sustainability stops being a vision on paper. It becomes jobs, dignity, and hope.”
Peace Across Borders
Her journey has also taken her deep into the fragile peace corridors of the Sahel, where competition over resources often fuels conflict.
“In a dusty town near the Mali–Burkina Faso border, I joined a dialogue between pastoralist herders and settled farmers,” she recalls. “The tension was thick. These groups had clashed before, sometimes violently, over scarce grazing land and water.”
A young herder named Moussa spoke of losing cattle in clashes and fearing to cross borders. A farmer, Fatou, described how stray cattle had destroyed her crops, leaving her children hungry. “Their words carried decades of mistrust,” Lily says. “But with facilitation, they reached consensus on shared grazing corridors and crop compensation. Weeks later, Moussa’s herd grazed peacefully near Fatou’s farm for the first time in years.”
That moment stayed with her. “Peacebuilding is not about high-level declarations,” she reflects. “It is about Fatou and Moussa finding common ground. It is about turning borders of division into borders of cooperation. And it is about giving people tools and trust so peace can take root in fragile soil.”
The Heartbeat Behind the Work
From Karamoja’s dusty plains to Nairobi’s green hubs to the Sahel’s tense dialogue tables, Lily’s career has been guided by one lesson: resilience is deeply human.
“Yes, I work with data, policies, and frameworks,” she says. “But I remind myself daily that they must bend toward humanity. Every dataset must serve a purpose in someone’s life. Every policy must translate into dignity on the ground.”
That conviction is what communities see in her. “If my work does not give a mother more time with her children, or a girl light to study at night, then I have missed the point,” she says. “Development is not about numbers. It is about Maria with her spinach garden, James with his green enterprise, and Moussa and Fatou choosing dialogue over conflict. They are the heartbeat of resilience. They are why I serve.”
A Legacy of Hope
As the sun sets over the plains of the Sahel and the hills of Karamoja, the sky glowing amber and rust, Dr. Lily Murei remains a steady presence in Africa’s borderlands. In the gentle chaos of villages where three languages blend in one conversation, she reminds us of something profound: resilience is not a programme or a policy, it is lived, breathed, and carried in the quiet courage of ordinary people.
And as she moves forward, her legacy is not only in the projects she helped shape or the policies she influenced. It is in the lives touched, the futures opened, and the reminder she leaves behind: That development must always walk where it is needed most. That hope belongs even in the dust-laced paths of forgotten Africa borderlands. And that real change begins with listening, because the people themselves already carry the seeds of their resilience.
