Joyce Takaindisa

Joyce Takaindisa is a Migration and Climate Security Specialist and Regional Lead for East Africa at the Alliance for Bioversity International and CIAT. She specializes in qualitative research with expertise in migration, displacement, and climate change, focusing on the nexus between climate change, migration, human mobility, and security. Her work aims to promote evidence for peace through research and policy programming on the climate change–climate security nexus across food, land, and water systems.

Her research interests center on the intersection of climate, security, and peace in the Global South and how these dynamics connect to food, land, and water systems, particularly in the context of resource scarcity and food (in)security. She explores how food insecurity contributes to fragility, disrupts peace in communities, and alters social cohesion as people compete for scarce resources amid the global climate crisis. Joyce is committed to contributing to knowledge production through a strong evidence base on the climate crisis in the Global South.

Her work focuses on fostering sustainable solutions that enhance resilience and adaptive capacities among the most vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by climate change, including persons with disabilities, youth, women, and children. She also examines the gendered impacts of climate change on food, land, and water security and how climate change acts as a threat multiplier in already vulnerable contexts. Joyce is particularly passionate about translating research-generated evidence into actionable solutions that promote locally led adaptation strategies in climate-affected communities.

Before joining the Alliance, she worked with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) under the Migration Governance and Development unit. Her role involved policy initiatives and program implementation aimed at promoting understanding of the climate change–migration nexus, strengthening government capacities to mainstream migration and human mobility into policies, supporting migration data strategies for evidence-based policymaking, advancing safe and regular migration pathways, enhancing migrants' social protection, engaging the diaspora for national development, and operationalizing migration policies.

Joyce holds a PhD in Migration and Displacement and a Master’s in Social Development from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Outside of work, she enjoys reading books, taking nature walks, and watching documentaries.