Michael Buteera Mugisha is a Ph.D candidate with the Department of International Development at the LSE. He is jointly supervised by Professor James Putzel and Professor Catherine Boone. Michael’s research focuses on politics of cooperatives development and value chain upgrading, and specifically investigates why and how coffee cooperatives in Kenya have been able to enhance their organisational capacity to shape regulations in ways that has facilitated their better upgrading in the global coffee economy while Uganda’s coffee cooperatives continue to struggle.

Prior to returning to LSE, Michael worked for Ibero Uganda, a company of Neumann Kaffee Gruppe (NKG), where he designed and implemented a robust commercial and operational strategy that boosted the companies’ coffee exports within a year by more than double. While working at Ibero Uganda, Michael also taught undergraduate classes at Makerere University in the field of economic demography.

Michael holds MSc. degrees in Economics and Development Management, respectively from LSE and the London Metropolitan University and a BSc. in Population Studies from Makerere University.