In August 2025, Puff Ray Mukwaya completed his MSc(R) Master of Science by Research at the University of Edinburgh’s College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. His thesis was on ‘Assessing the effectiveness of drought anticipatory action in Uganda’s agro-pastoral drylands: a cost-benefit analysis.’
After completing his bachelor’s degree in veterinary medicine from Makerere University, Puff pursued a master’s degree in Agribusiness from the same university, gaining knowledge and skills in socio-economic and climate change impact assessments.
With a background in humanitarian and development work in fragile settings and pastoral communities, he brings experience in data and economic modelling to enhance decision-making processes for food security and climate change actions, to provide insights into the impact of anticipatory actions in vulnerable pastoral communities of East Africa.
He previously worked with VSO in Uganda, Tanzania and Bangladesh and Vetwork Services Trust and Land O’Lakes in South Sudan where he led livestock development projects. His last assignment was with a multi-faceted European Union funded project implemented by ATTA (AgritechTalk-Africa), ACTED and the Ministry of Water and Environment that aimed to enable Uganda to accurately estimate GHG emission from the livestock sector, reduce its impacts on the environment, and advance evidence-based livestock management practices in adapting to and mitigating climate change impacts.
Research focus
For his research, he carried out an ex-ante cost-benefit analysis of commonly proposed anticipatory action interventions, particularly drought-tolerant seeds and livestock vaccination, in the Napak and Moroto districts of the Karamoja region in Uganda. Given the stochastic behaviour of drought, stochastic benefit-cost models were set up in XLrisk for Excel over a 20-year horizon to assess whether the benefits of implementing the two anticipatory interventions based on a drought return period of five years would outweigh the cost.
Overall, the evaluated interventions produced mixed net present values with wide ranges that included negative values during simulations. However, the proposed interventions for Karamoja appear to be more cost-effective when focused on protecting livestock livelihoods than crop livelihoods.
Other outputs:
Mukwaya, Puff Ray. 2025. Assessing the effectiveness of drought anticipatory action in Uganda’s agro-pastoral drylands: A cost-benefit analysis. Poster. Presented at the Jameel Observatory Community of Practice meeting and drylands food security and resilience early action research and evidence dialogue, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 13-16 May 2025. Edinburgh: Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174667
Mukwaya, Puff Ray. 2024. Economics of anticipatory action . Poster presented at Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action Community of Practice meeting, Nairobi, 14-15 May 2024. Edinburgh: Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/141917
Mukwaya, Puff Ray. 2024. Economics of anticipatory action: Can context-based cost and benefit analyses of anticipatory action accelerate ex-ante disaster investments? Poster presented at the University of Edinburgh Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Systems Symposium, 15 March 2024. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/4382