The new humanitarian coordinator for the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), Eugene Owusu, has arrived in Juba. Owusu will be tasked with helping facilitate humanitarian work amid one of the world's largest aid emergencies.

As a Ghanaian, Owusu joins an estimated 300 of his countrymen serving as armed peacekeeping soldiers in South Sudan. Owusu is also a Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon in the country. He succeeds Toby Lanzer who has taken up a humanitarian post in West Africa.

Here are some key facts about Owusu:

Owusu was born in Ghana and received a doctorate degree in agricultural economics from Pennsylvania State University.

He worked in the private sector in the United Kingdom before joining the United Nations system in 1996 as an economic advisor to the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Uganda.

In 1999 Owusu took up another UNDP economic advisor position in Sierra Leone for three years. He then served as UNDP's Deputy Resident Representative for programme in Tanzania. From 2007 to 2010 he served as a senior advisor at the UN/UNDP office in Brussels.

Most recently he was the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Ethiopia from 2010 to 2015.

Owusu is married with three children.

Photo courtesy UNMISS