Prof. Joseph Ouma Muga was born in the early 1940s in Kochia village, Rangwe, Homa Bay County, in what was then Nyanza Province, Kenya. From a humble Luo family, he demonstrated extraordinary academic prowess early on.
He attended St. Mary’s Yala for secondary school, where he topped the nation in the Kenya African Secondary Education (KASE) in the 1950s and again in the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate in 1957.
This brilliance earned him the nickname “genius from the lake” among peers and contemporaries.
Muga’s academic journey took him to Makerere University in Uganda, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Geography. He then pursued a Master of Science in Australia and completed a PhD in fluvial geomorphology a record-breaking achievement in a short timeframe.
According to sources, he passed away in September 2018 after a protracted battle with an unidentified illness. It was the demise of a man who was meant to achieve greatness.
Near the end of his life, nevertheless, he was ridiculed. He passed away indigent and without any respect. Prof. Muga was a member of a very select group of Kenyan academics.
Muga was buried on September 28, 2018, in his home village of Kochia, Rangwe, Homa Bay County. The funeral drew notable figures, iincluding the late opposition leader Raila Odinga, who eulogized him as a key contributor to Kenya’s “second liberation” and affirmed that the country was “on the right track” in honoring such legacies. Eulogies highlighted his intellectual rigor, contributions to environmental conservation, and role in parliamentary debates.
His son, Peter Ouma Muga, delivered a poignant tribute, calling him “Aburu oke kanyango” (a Luo phrase evoking his heroic stature) and emphasizing that “heroes do not die, they multiply.”
Muga is widely credited as Kenya’s and Africa’s foremost early advocate for climate action. As Assistant Minister for Environment under President Daniel arap Moi appointed in 1988 after his election as MP for Rangwe on a KANU ticket, he drafted Moi’s landmark 1989 speech at the Montreal Protocol conference in Brazil, which highlighted the ozone layer’s depletion and propelled Kenya onto the global stage.
This initiative earned the country international acclaim and positioned Muga as the “first international initiator of the push for climate action to preserve the ozone layer.”
His work extended to policy development on disaster management during the NARC government in the early 2000s, including the establishment of the Ministry of State for Special Programmes.
