c:o/re Fellow 08/25 – 07/26
Fredrick Ogenga is a professor of media and security studies and the founding director of the Center for Media, Democracy, Peace & Security (CMDPS) at Rongo University. He also serves as the CEO of the Peacemaker Corps Foundation Kenya (PCFK). Ogenga was a recipient of the 2016 Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding Scholarship at the Wilson Center in Washington DC, as well as a visiting research fellow at the Swiss National Science Fund at Swisspeace, University of Basel, in 2023. He was also a 2023 UNDP Fellow in Digital Peacebuilding, a beneficiary of the 2014 and 2016 Africa Diaspora Fellowship (ADF), and a 2014 SSRC’s Africa Peacebuilding Network Fellow. He has worked as a visiting scholar on media and peacebuilding at the Institute for the Advancement of Social Sciences (IASS) and the Africa Studies Center at Boston University, and at the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Berth. He is a senior research associate at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation at the University of Johannesburg, a senior non-resident research fellow at the Institute for Global African Affairs at the University of Johannesburg and West Indies, and a senior research associate at Swisspeace and the Africa Studies Center at the University of Basel. Ogenga is also a member of the scientific panel on information integrity about climate science (IPIE) and chairs the IPIE scientific panel on AI and peacebuilding.
Technology, Climate and Peacebuilding: Nurturing Resilient Communities in Western Kenya through Climate Change Information Action Research Anchored on Tree Planting and Carbon Offsetting
The impacts of climate change are real, and there are valid concerns on how they contribute to violent conflicts. Scholarly evidence is increasingly pointing out relationships between climate change and violent conflict especially in already fragile spaces, where dramatic and sustained impacts of climate change have put pressure on natural resources, making them scarce and opening an avenue for their weaponization through climate misinformation on social media. The climate security nexus in Kenya is relatively well explored. What is underexplored and understudied is how technology can be adapted in climate mitigation, adaptation and peacebuilding as well as how climate related policies have incited commercialized mitigation efforts like carbon credits that are marginalizing communities, putting pressure on community vulnerabilities and worsening conflict pressure points, and therein the peacebuilding and technology nexus. This research project examines the manifestations of climate change mitigation efforts through examining elite case studies in Western Kenya as a result of the climate change policy framework. The project aims to establish how these efforts are gendered and conflict sensitive and what their implications are for grassroots communities. Additionally, the project will explore the role of technology in climate misinformation literacy and redesigning mitigation efforts to innovate alternative livelihoods anchored on community- driven tree planting initiatives for resilience and climate adaptation using whole-of-society approach. The project uses critical new theories of technology and innovation in the context of theories of change under the rubric of varieties of science that calls for epistemic democracy in climate action to meet the following objectives:
- To establish the relationship between technology, climate change information, mitigation and peacebuilding through elite climate related case studies in Western Kenya
- To examine how social media platforms contribute to climate misinformation
- To explore how technology can be used to address climate misinformation and redesign climate action using local epistemic approaches
Publications (selection)
Elbeyi, E., Bruhn Jensen, K., Aronczyk, M.., Asuka, J., Ceylan, G., Cook, J., Erdelyi, G., Ford, H., Milani, C., Mustafaraj, E., Ogenga, F., Yadin, S., Howard, P. N., Valenzuela, S. (Eds.). (2025). Facts, Fakes, and Climate Science: Recommendations for Improving Information Integrity about Climate Issues. Zurich, Switzerland: International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE), SFP2025.2. https://doi.org/10.61452/QHRL3301
Elbeyi, E., Bruhn Jensen, K., Aronczyk, M.., Asuka, J., Ceylan, G., Cook, J., Erdelyi, G., Ford, H., Milani, C., Mustafaraj, E., Ogenga, F., Yadin, S., Howard, P. N., Valenzuela, S. (Eds.). (2025). Information Integrity about Climate Science: A Systematic Review. Zurich, Switzerland: International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE). Synthesis Report, SR2025.1. https://doi.org/10.61452/BTZP3426
Ogenga, F. (2025). Pan-African Digital Peacebuilding: Maskani Home Platform and Ethno-Political Polarization in Kenya. Routledge. Forthcoming.
Ogenga, F. (2025). Democracy, Governance and Peacebuilding in Africa: Technology, Cybercitizens and Kenya’s Post 2022 Election Jitters. In A. Oye and K. Matlose (Eds.), African Union Agenda 2063: The Past Present and Future. University of Johannesburg Press. https://doi.org/10.36615/9780906785713
Ogenga, F. (Ed.). (2024). Special Issue: Emerging Issues in Social Media, AI and Peacebuilding in Africa. Kujenga Amani.
