Michael Mugisha researches the role of power and politics to investigate and explain differences in regulatory regimes observable between Kenya’s and Uganda’s coffee sectors. The ultimate question the research seeks to answer is: why do some countries manage to adopt regulatory regimes that enable continuous upgrading of their productive sectors while others fail? Michael’s research explores this question through the political settlement lens. But unlike the dominant political settlement framework greatly steeped in the logic of economic rents, Michael’s research seeks to explore other non-economic motives of those who control the state vis-à-vis economic actors in the coffee sectors, and analyse the extent to which regulatory regimes may serve as tools for achieving those interests, but, in turn, may consequently promote economic upgrading in some cases and not in others. His research at LSE is supervised by Professor James Putzel and Professor Catherine Boone.
Prior to commencing the PhD programme, Michael worked as a Consultant for the Neumann Kaffee Gruppe (NKG), one of the global coffee merchant houses, with subsidiaries in 50 coffee exporting countries around the world. Michael spent four years, in total (between 2017 and 2021), in Uganda working for the NKG’s subsidiary, Ibero Uganda Limited. During this period, Michael traveled across different parts of rural Uganda working with coffee smallholder farmers to set up organisational structures, to facilitate sustainable access and delivery of agricultural inputs and financial credit to coffee farmers whilst ensuring that robust links are established to guarantee continuous aggregation and delivery of high-quality coffee to Ibero Uganda. During the same period, Michael also taught economic demography to undergraduate classes at Makerere University, where he continues to hold a teaching position as an Assistant Lecturer.
Michael holds Masters degrees in Development Management and Economics, respectively from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and London Metropolitan University, and a BSc. in Population Studies from Makerere University.