We are deeply saddened to report that our PhD student Collins Muhadia passed away last Friday, August 18, in Kenyatta University Hospital, Nairobi Kenya. Collins will be laid to rest in his home village, Matunda, Kitale on Saturday, 26 August 2023.

Words cannot express our gratitude for your continued support of this talented and hardworking young man and his family. If you are able to help, we are continuing our funding efforts in order to contribute to hospital bills and funeral costs, the educational savings account for his young daughter, Allyssa and for the immediate needs of Collins’s wife, Priscilla.

Collins Muhadia Bisia

Collins was an ATSAF (Council for Tropical and Subtropical Agricultural Research) PhD Fellow, enrolled at the University of Freiburg and hosted by ILRI’s Mazingira Laboratory in Nairobi, Kenya and by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, IMK-IFU in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. His PhD research continued the work of his MSc thesis, which he earned at IHE Delft, Institute of Water Education, in the Netherlands. His mentorship team included scientists from these three institutions.
Collins was working on water pans in the pastoral areas of Southern Kenya. These small ponds serve as water sources for livestock and people in arid and semi-arid regions. As part of this MSc thesis, he found that almost all the surveyed pans had high loads of fecal pathogens and may present health risks to humans. His PhD research was aimed at investigating how these water pans are used by communities and to further understand their role in climate change as hotspots of greenhouse gas emissions and as sediment carbon traps. He wrote a proposal and was awarded funding through a 3-year PhD fellowship from ATSAF. He was in the process of investigating the dynamics of water pans across seasons, the interaction of livestock and wildlife, and the water use of local communities. His main goal was to find solutions to benefit local pastoral communities and support them in getting better access to clean water for themselves and their livestock. He has compiled his first year of data and shared it with his supervisors, who will finish analysing the data and publishing the research on his behalf. He also contributed data, discussion, and figures to a manuscript from his MSc research, which will also be published.
Not only was Collins a talented scientist, but he was a generous collaborator, teacher, and supportive team member. He co-taught with his MSc supervisor in the classroom on interdisciplinary approaches to research; he worked with other student researchers from Kenya and Uganda in the field and on data analysis; co-authored a report on livestock and water in developing countries, and gave an interview for a podcast on interdisciplinary research. He had a gentle, quiet humour and a quick smile. His mentors remember him for his thoughtful answers to research questions, his willingness to try and learn new things, and by how well he was liked by all our colleagues, laboratory and administrative staff, and fellow students.

Payment information for donations:

In Europe:

Bank transfer to ATSAF

Volksbank Köln Bonn eG
Kto: 300 39 69 010
BLZ: 380 601 86
BIC: GENODED1BRS
IBAN: DE78 3806 0186 3003 9690 10
Reference: Donation for Collins Muhadia Bisia-an ATSAF Academy scholar

In Kenya:

MPESA to Sheila Okoma (ILRI)
0721578549

In USA or elsewhere by credit card or pay pal:

GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/0168c0eb