Chris Kalenge was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo.       In 1996, as the first Congo war started, he left Bukavu for Kinshasa, where he was entangled in another war in 1998. A year later, he left Congo for Algeria, where he graduated in electronic engineering at Houari Boumediene University in 2005. He began his career in the field of international development with the Italian NGO CISP in 2006, continuing the experience in this sector by attending the Master program in international Cooperation and Development at the Institute for Advanced Study (IUSS) of Pavia in Italy, in 2009. After an internship at the International Organization for Migration in Brussels in 2010, he worked as Academic Tutor and Teaching Assistant at IUSS until 2014. Since 2012, he has been organizing conferences and seminars on humanitarian crises in the Great Lakes region (Africa) to raise awareness about the impact of wars on the human race as well as on the environment.