Abdirahman Zeila (‘Abdi’) is a soil scientist working as a Senior Environmental Specialist with the Kenya Country Office. He supports operations in Somalia both in growing the lending portfolio and supporting analytical work. Mr. Zeila joined the World Bank in 2017 as a consultant based in Nairobi, Kenya, and has been since been supporting the Bank’s operations in Somalia,. He participated in the 2017 Somalia Drought and Needs Assessment (DINA) work which was the precursor to a number of development projects that are now being implemented in Somalia. He also led the preparation of the Somalia Country Environmental Analysis between 2018 and 2020 and is playing a role in the Somalia Climate Risk Assessment and the Capacity Building for Environmental, Social, and Security Risk Management in Development.
Mr. Zeila has a number of publications on soil science and drought monitoring and has co-authored chapters in publications about Somalia. One of his most recent publications “Remote Sensing Based Quantification of Forest Cover Change in Somalia for the Period 2000 to 2019” is now being published as a book. His latest paper in the Sustainability Journal (July, 2022), examines soil organic carbon stocks under different land utilization types in western Kenya.
Prior to joining the Bank, he worked with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) as a soil scientist implementing soil health interventions in eastern and southern Africa. He had earlier worked with the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) as a research scientist in Kenya, evaluating sustainable management options for combating the spread of Prosopis juliflora.
Mr. Zeila holds a Ph.D. in Soil Science, from Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, with his doctoral thesis focused on carbon sequestration accounting models under African smallholder farming scenarios. He also has competencies in GIS-based environmental monitoring and evaluation methodologies.