Wairimu (Nimo) Muthike is an Associate Vice President at Busara, leading work at the intersection of behavioral science, food systems and agriculture, and climate resilience and innovation adoption.

She is interested in understanding how individuals, as diverse as they can be, have such similar observable patterns of behavior and decision making. Pursuing this curiosity for over a decade has led her to develop a keen sense of mapping behavioral patterns and applying them in real world contexts. For instance, figuring out how behavioral and systemic factors influence how food is handled, how Indigenous and existing knowledge that farmers possess can shape their perception of new agricultural solutions, and what it takes for risk management products to be accepted and adopted by people.   Her work meets people where they are and constantly examines what needs to be achieved, especially by partners to unlock sustained use.

Having led multidisciplinary engagements spanning agricultural technology adoption, financial inclusion, market systems and organizational strategy across Sub-Saharan Africa, Wairimu is now more acutely focused on: what happens after an innovative solution has been rolled out. Solutions, technologies, and even policies that are a result of rigorous research and significant capital can only be effective if they see uptake. She seeks to leverage behavioral, social, and institutional factors to ensure the people who are at the center of a solution are enabled to meaningfully engage with it. A central feature of her work is her widely applicable behavioral frameworks that help partners move away from isolated change and toward sustained systems level change.

At Busara, Wairimu’s body of work includes partnering with the World Bank, Gates Foundation, FAO, CGIAR, and various government and private sector actors  to develop behavioral diagnostics, learning ecosystems, and implementation strategies that have strengthened adoption and scaling.

Before joining Busara, Wairimu held leadership roles at ACRE Africa and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, where she managed programs focused on agricultural risk management, climate resilience and smallholder farmer livelihoods. These experiences continue to shape her practical approach to combining behavioral insights with real-world implementation challenges.

Wairimu holds both an MSc and BSc in Food Science and Technology from the University of Nairobi. 

Languages: English, Kiswahili and Gikuyu.

Profile: LinkedIn