Mpala Research Centre's 10-Year Plan Expands Opportunities

The Mpala Research Centre in northern Kenya has been an important international Princeton partner since 1994 when George Small ’43 set up a research center on what was a cattle ranch. The center comprises 48,000 acres of semi-arid savannah and has allowed students and researchers, from Princeton and beyond, to study countless facets of its vibrant ecosystems.

Last January, the center appointed biologist and elephant conservationist Winnie Kiiru as its executive director. Kiiru — who has a doctorate in biodiversity management from the University of Kent in England — was previously the director of government relations for the Elephant Protection Initiative and senior technical adviser to the nonprofit Stop Ivory, in addition to serving on many nature conservancy boards. She spoke to Princeton International six months into her tenure about entering the role at a time of growth and renewal and what the center has to offer students and researchers.

What drew you to the role at Mpala?

I had been working in policy and advocacy roles for the better part of my professional life before Mpala, and I yearned for a more hands-on role. I had recently been appointed to the board of the Wildlife Research and Training Institute (WRTI), which is a vital partner organization collaborating with Mpala and is dedicated to advancing wildlife research in Kenya. In the course of my role at WRTI, I noticed there were very few Kenyan professionals engaged in wildlife research administration. When this job came up, I thought this could be a place where I can bring more Kenyans into the research space. My journey to Mpala was driven by a deep-seated desire to empower Kenyan leadership in the critical research spaces to help shape the future of research and environmental stewardship. 

What are the most important lessons Mpala has to offer Princeton students and researchers?

Mpala is a living laboratory. It’s a special place where students and faculty members can spend time observing animals in the natural world. In Mpala, researchers have the privilege of witnessing real animals engaged in authentic behaviors. If you’re studying birds in the wild, you can’t schedule when they lay their eggs or when they migrate. Mpala provides an unfiltered look at the way the natural world truly operates. This is a fantastic place for studying nature and using insights from this research to inform conservation and management of our natural world.

Building on its long history of biological research, Mpala is becoming a place of increasing interest for research and teaching by social scientists, engineers, humanists and artists. 

You came to Mpala at a time of an unprecedented drought. How has that affected your time there so far?

I arrived in Mpala on Feb. 1, 2023, in the middle of a devastating three-year drought. On March 15, a downpour drenched the arid landscape, and the Mpala community, alongside visiting Princeton students, could not contain their joy. We all danced in the life-giving rain.

I arrived in the middle of a crisis, and I was thankful for the wisdom of those who were at Mpala years ago. They had laid the foundation for resilience by developing water reservoirs and dams that served Mpala very well during the drought. Over the last year, the Mpala team has built two new dams capable of holding about 340,000 cubic feet of water. Thankfully, we received adequate rainfall to fill these new dams. We are now concerned about the resilience of the neighboring communities without access to adequate water. Digging boreholes remains a key priority and fundraising efforts are underway, with a special focus on schools and health centers in the surrounding areas.

Mpala’s infrastructure will continue to grow and improve: In the last two years, Princeton has sent five delegations of faculty and staff to lend their expertise on strategic projects, to help us stay resilient in times of drought and to improve information technology infrastructure and to help us harness green energy. As we continue finalizing the strategic plan, I expect engagement with Princeton will increase further.

You mentioned digging wells. What else does Mpala do to foster community engagement?

We have the George Small Scholarship Program where we help young people continue with their high school education. We also support the schools near us through feeding programs and a project where we are building classrooms and providing desks and equipment. 

We also began a pilot program to fund two Kenyans who will receive tuition, field-work costs at Mpala, room and board and a stipend for their two-year master’s degree program. If this pilot is successful, we hope to use the model to raise funds for an endowment to support not only African students but also African researchers at Mpala.

On the research side, some of our results are very useful for the community. Since we have a research herd of cattle, we’ve had long-term studies on grazing management, and we use that information to support communities around us. We often give local pastoralists space within Mpala to raise their cattle during difficult times. We are always growing our community and outreach work.

What about the strategic plan, and what’s in store for the future of Mpala?

This is a time of great progress at Mpala. We are almost done with a 10-year strategic plan that will set the center’s priorities. Broadly speaking, the strategic plan has three pillars:

1. Assemble one of the world’s most inclusive research communities, with a particular investment in African scientists and scholars; 2. Take a multidisciplinary approach to studying society’s most consequential issues, such as climate change, and then disseminate results to locals as well as policymakers; and 3. Complete a first-ever campus plan, which will call for sustainably expanding housing, creating new labs, installing a solar field and increasing fundraising activities. We are working to slowly increase the size of our research community, and to do so in a way that is sustainable.

Mpala aims to steward its resources in perpetuity for the people of Kenya, Africa, and the world.