Dr Elizabeth Lungu- Nkumbula
- A first in many ways, Dr. Nkumbula has broken many barriers in Zambia by achieving the role of being the first female Managing Director of the Pan African Building Society, the first female Board Chairperson at Mukuba Pension Trust, the first female Board Chair of the National Vocational Training Center and first indigenous female President of the Agricultural Society of Zambia.
- She has held various key strategic senior management positions in Zambia’s housing finance institutions including serving as Commissioner and CEO at Workers Compensation Fund Control Board. Currently, she is serving as Chair of Envis Consulting Limited.
- She also sits on a number of other boards, such as the US-based USA-Africa Trade Council,
- Chair of African Chief Executive Officers’ network for Vision Zero Global Campaign and the Real Estate Investment Zambia Plc.
- Her past experience on the international stage includes; the Royal Agricultural Society of the
- Commonwealth (RASC), UK, where she was the first female Zambian Deputy President; Council Member at East and Central Africa Social Security Association, Kenya; Vice Chairperson of International Social Security Association (ISSA) Technical Committee in Geneva, Switzerland; and she is also a Melvin Jones Fellow of Lions Club International since 2008.
- As a visionary leader, she has won numerous local and continental awards including:
- Public Service Personality of the Year 2015, Zambia Society Public Administration;
- Organization Excellence 2015, Zambia Society Public Administration;
- Best Community Life Changing Project 2016, Zambia Society Public Administration;
- International Women’s Day Award in appreciation for Economic Contribution and Inspiration to Young Women in Academic Excellence in 2019, Zambia;
- Africa’s Most Influential Woman 2016, CEO Global Limited, South Africa; Continental Lifetime Achiever Winner; and
- Africa Safety Award for Excellence 2019 –AFRISAFE, Nigeria.
- In International awards, she has achieved the following:
- Global Female Leadership Impact Award and was inducted in the Global Women Leaders Hall of Fame at the Centre for Economic and Leadership Development, in Dubai, UAE, 2018;
- Professional Leadership Award, Mwape Peer Award, NY, USA 2019;
- Certificate of Recognition of Exemplary Leadership, NY, USA 2019, Office of the Mayor of Yonkers City;
- Certificate of Recognition of Contribution to the Royal Agriculture Society of the Commonwealth, UK; and
- Conferment of an Honorary Citizenship 2019 and Goodwill Ambassador of Atlanta Georgia State, USA; and
- Appointed Ambassador for Zambia by Patient Safety Movement Foundation USA, 2020.
Dr. Tobias Mulimbika – Zambia
- An accomplished gender-inclusivity policy expert, with over 20 years of experience in public policy development, monitoring, implementation, and evaluation of government programmes, Tobias has amassed a wealth of knowledge working with policy makers in system
transformation of the public service. Currently serving in the Office of the Vice President as a focal person of the National School of Government, his mandate is to promote professionalism, efficiency and integrity in the public service. - Prior to this, Tobias worked as Director of the Department of Industry at the Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry and Director at the Public-Private Partnership Unit within the Ministry of Finance in Zambia. Between 2005 and 2006, he served as Advisor to the Zambian President and from 2006 to 2011, he moved on to become Senior Private Secretary to the President.
- Tobias has played a key role in financing industrialization in Zambia. He has been involved in a number of activities such as mobilizing financial resources for promoting innovative, inclusive and equitable growth in urban areas of Zambia and establishment of multi-facility economic zones and industrial parks in Zambia; the establishment of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC). Has also gained valuable experience in industrial policy formulation, working with COMESA, SADC and JICA projects, including strategies for financing industrialization in the context of the AU’s Agenda 2063 and for promoting domestic industries within Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).
- He has held several leadership roles in the Public Sector, including Director of Gender and Economic Development at Cabinet Office; Chair of both the Zambia Green Jobs Programme and the Inter-Ministerial Committee which established the Multi-Facility Economic Zones and Industrial Parks in Zambia. Notably, he also spearheaded skills development and entrepreneurship programmes supporting Women and Youth, under AfDB, and ILO, including developing soft loan programme under UNDP.
- In area of agriculture value chain analysis and supply chain management, Tobias coordinated One Village One Project- JICA projects which focused on promoting of value addition businesses using locally available resources through establishing Business Support Centres. As Director Industry, Ministry of Commerce and Trade and Industry, he facilitating market and policy-based SMEs-private-public linkages that promoted south-south and triangular cooperation and sharing of knowledge, building skills, and adoption of appropriate technologies. Under the ILO Women’s Entrepreneurship Development and Gender Equality (WEDGE) project, he helped develop specific initiatives aimed at agribusiness which included affirmative actions in support of women farmers, retooling women entrepreneurs in growing their own enterprises and improving marketing and trade fair exhibition skills.
- He is currently the Vice Chairperson of Indaba Agriculture Policy Research Institute (IAPRI).
Professor Gelson Tembo – Zambia
- Prof. Tembo is an icon in the areas of data science analytics and modelling. He has developed a number of large-scale integrated spatial and temporal optimization models for making decisions in renewable energy (biomass to ethanol), and agricultural storage and processing, such as the one
he did for the State of Oklahoma (USA) for which he won a Research Excellence Award. Since then, a lot of work has been built on the foundation laid by this research. He has done similar modeling for the Zambian maize sub-sector, for stock management. He is also an Award winner of the UNICEF's Global Best Research Award for 2014 in Zambia's Child Grant Programme. - One of his greatest contributions to the body of knowledge in the area of stochastic plateau yield response model has been the development of a statistical technique for estimating response functions with stochastic plateaus that can capture these random effects, and its application to input use optimization. This work was published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics in 2008.
- He was one of the researchers that developed a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model for regional analysis for the State of Oklahoma, and this work is part of a highly collaborative Webbook of Regional Science published by the Regional Research Institute at West Virginia University. Further, he has vast experience and expertise in Artificial Intelligence, GIS and remote sensing.
- Prof. Tembo has vast research experience in Agricultural Economics. He is the current Board Chair for the Center for Applied Research and Policy Analysis (CARPA), Zambia, which conducts research to support public and private sector decision making processes in agriculture, health and social protection. He has served as the Country Representative for the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE), a global association for agricultural economists,
and as a resource person for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Conservation Tillage Network (ACTI) International Course on Conservation Agriculture. - He is well known for a number of impact studies he has conducted on Zambia’s Social Cash Transfer (SCT) schemes, which have influenced government policy to increase budgetary allocations to SCTs and scaled the interventions nationwide.
- Prof. Tembo has been conducting research in climate smart agriculture (CSA) among smallholder farmers since 2003 and has published a number of peer-reviewed journal and working papers. He has collaborated with organizations such as the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Conservation Farming Unit (CFU) and the Food Security Research Project (FSRP). He has expertise on the use of Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and the Hydrological
Engineering Centre – Hydrological Modeling System (HEC-HMS).
Professor Judith Ngalande Lungu – Zambia
- She is an ardent agriculturist who has served in various institutions including as Deputy Vice Chancellor at Mulungushi University and Deputy Vice Chancellor of Kwame Nkrumah University. From her research, which focused on small ruminants and poultry, she has become a Small Ruminant Expert and has continued to provide advisory services to the agriculture community through various media tools.
- Prior to this, she served as Dean of the School of Agricultural Sciences at the University of Zambia and Head of Animal Science Department in the School.
- She has sat on various Boards including Bank of Zambia. She also served as a Member of the Advisory Committee on Science and Technology for Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific region (ACP) in agricultural and rural development, where she provided direction to science and technology. She currently sits on the Board of International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) based in Kenya and Ethiopia, where she serves as Vice Chairperson of Audit and Risk Committee and she is the Chairperson of the Board of the National Institute for Scientific and Industrial Research of Zambia (NISIR).
- A Mentor of AWARD Fellows, who believes that ‘when you promote a woman farmer, you have provided food security for the whole village.’ She is a Fellow and sits on the Steering Committee of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) in Kenya.
- Her influence extends to Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM), a consortium of many African Universities with Headquarters at Makerere University in Uganda.
Dr. Maggie Opondo – Kenya
- Dr. Opondo is the socio-economic and cultural studies Coordinator in the Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation (ICCA) at the University of Nairobi with vast experience in monitoring and evaluation both at the project and programme level. Her focus of work is on smallholder agriculture gender and labour rights in global value chains; ethical trade and corporate social and environmental responsibility; trade policy; vulnerability and adaptability to the impacts of climate change and responses; and risk communication.
- Currently, she is part of the Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich team that has been commissioned by DFID to manage and conduct an independent programme evaluation of the Trade and Global Value Chains Initiative (TGVCI).
- She is also part of the Building Resilience and Adapting to Climate Extremes and Disasters Programme (BRACED), a Knowledge Management consortium, whose mandate is among others, to develop a BRACED monitoring and reporting system.
- She has also been instrumental in mainstreaming and integrating gender in agricultural research and development projects and programs.
- She has served and still serves on various boards at both the advisory and editorial levels. She is Co-founder of the Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation (ICCA) at the University of Nairobi.
Professor Youba Sokona – Mali
- A renowned icon, whose scientific achievements span over a career of more than 4 decades. They revolve around the relationship between energy, environment, and water systems with development outcomes in Africa, within the constraints of ecological and climate change.
- He is one of the leading African thinkers in the deployment of multiple disciplines towards sustainable solutions. He has worked very closely with industry and non- governmental organizations in the spirit of co-production of knowledge and evidence-based solutions for policy making.
- Also known for his pioneering work in end-use based energy modelling valuable tool for energy planning, he was instrumental in the early development, testing and deployment of various energy planning tools.
- He has served in various regional and international executive positions including following: Executive Secretary for International Relations and Coordinator of Energy Program of the organization Environment and Development (ENDA); Inaugural Coordinator of the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC); Executive Secretary of the Sahara and the Sahel Observatory (OSS); Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); and the Founding Coordinator of the African Climate Policy Centre (UNECA) funded by AfDB.
- His distinguished service has seen him affiliated to numerous boards and organisations. He is Honorary Professor at the University College London (UCL); Member of African Academy of Sciences; Member of Science Advisory Committee of the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA); Special Advisor to the African Energy Leaders Group (AELG); and Member of the Advisory Board of the Payne Institute for Public Policy, Colorado School of Mines, USA.
Professor Lawrence Agbemabiese – USA/Ghana
- Driven by a strong passion for environmentally friendly jobs for young people, Lawrence operates in the USA and Accra, Ghana, where he is the Executive Director of Planet Institute of Transition Engineering & Management which offers advisory services and training programmes for youths and new entrants on Green Occupations.
- Prior to this, he worked as Manager for the Joint UNEP and African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) project on the sustainability of innovations in energy access.
- He has served as Manager for a number of institutions including: the Global Technology Needs Assessment Project (GTNAP) funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), currently underway in 36 developing countries of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. He has also managed the eCommerce and Renewable Energy Project in Ghana; the China Rural Energy Enterprise Development (CREED) project, and the Africa Rural Energy Enterprise Development (AREED) project.
- He served as Manager for collaborative research on sustainable energy technology and policy with the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University, Sweden and the Saïd Business School at Oxford University
- He is an Award winner of the Alumni Achievement for Outstanding Contributions to Energy Justice and Rural Sustainability.
Dr Susann Stritzke
- An experienced researcher focused on renewable energy, sustainable development, technology and HR-solutions. She has substantial industry know- how in managing complete business development projects at global level. She also deals with renewable energy infrastructure and research projects with a specific focus on sub-Saharan Africa.
- She is a Research Associate in Renewable Energy, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, at Oxford University focusing on the impact of solar energy initiatives in Sub- Saharan Africa.
- Susann is Chief Group Coordinator for an international renewable energy project where she is strategically and operationally involved in renewable energy (RE) project development in Germany and South Africa.
- In the energy sector, she specifically focuses on energy governance, regulatory frameworks, energy access in developing countries including sectoral business models, as well as, RE project implementation.
- Susann wears many hats across continents with ease. Not only is she the Chief Group Co- Ordinator of the Renewable Energy Projects at NDL Management GmbH, but also the International Account Manager Technology & Telecommunication at Randstad Global Client Solutions in Germany, UK and the Netherlands. She is also the HR-Management Advisor & Project-Lead for the Voluntary Services Overseas in Zambia and the Team Manager Permanent Placement & Senior Consultant in Germany.
Professor Jong-Tae Lee – South Korea
- He is the Vice President of the Society for Environmental Health in South Korea and also Vice President and Chairperson of Academic Affairs Korean Society for Environmental Health.
- He is also the Dean at College of Health Science, Korea University and has focused his research on effect of air pollution on health; global health of climate change and ambient particulate matter; methodological research on the analysis of longitudinal data and case data in epidemiology.
- Prior to this, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine, College of Medicine, Ewha Woman’s University, Seoul, and Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health, Graduate School of Hanyang University, Seoul.
- He is also a former Environmental Health Commissioner with the Korean Department of Environment.
Dr. Jeremy Webb – New Zealand
- Jeremy is an expert at finding practical solutions to complex real-world problems. He has 20 years experience in building institutions and leading interdisciplinary projects on climate change, energy, minerals, water, and development. This includes various roles in the United Nations and other organisations, creating partnerships, chairing processes and negotiating technical standards.
- Currently, he is the Chairperson of the Renewable Energy Working Group, which promotes the applications of the United Nations Framework Classification (UNFC) to renewable energy resources. The UNFC provides project milestones giving a sense of resource and project maturities. The applications include monitoring of project development, portfolio management, finance and related reporting as well as climate related financial disclosures. He is responsible for convening Renewable Energy Working Group meetings, responding to international requests for information and support, and engagement with international stakeholders.
- He also chairs the Solar Energy Subgroup of the Expert Group on Resource Management (EGRM) under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The Subgroup is responsible for promoting the application and testing of Solar Specifications. It is composed of international experts on solar resource assessment, project development and financing.
- A man of diversity of skills, Jeremy is a contributing author on the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His contribution focuses on climate change mitigation and relationships between climate change, industrialization and sustainable development goals. He also focuses on analyzing and visualizing the future with regards to development of least developed countries and transformations of developed countries required to fulfill the SDGs and limit GHG driven climate change.
- Jeremy is the Founder and Director of the Tiaki Institute, a think tank with branches in New Zealand and Finland. Tiaki Institute designs metrics of progress, decision support tools and interventions for businesses and governments addressing global challenges. It has several projects underway, consisting of: a ranking of human and development needs; the design of green growth metrics; a global renewable energy resource assessment; and, climate change and development metrics and modelling.
- He has held several positions in his working life, including: Geology and Mineral Information Systems Specialist at African Minerals Development Centre (AMDC) under the auspices of UNECA; Statistician at the African Centre for Statistics, where he was responsible for planning the African Project for the Implementation of the 2008 System of National Accounts and fund raising for the project. The project was a joint initiative between the African Union Commission, African Development Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.
- Jeremy was the first professional staff member employed at the African Climate Policy Center (ACPC) at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in June 2010. He helped establish the Center, the ClimDev-Africa Programme and the designing of the ClimDev Special Fund.
Ms. Suman Jain – India/Zambia
- Suman has over 32 years of teaching Mathematics and Statistics in Zambia focusing on Calculus, Numerical Methods, Statistics and Probability. She supervises MSc dissertations on regional climate change assessment.
- Her work in climate change has made imprints in a number of studies, including her contribution on the Zambia country study under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) funded project “Climate, Water and Agriculture: Impacts on and Adaptation of Agro–Ecological systems in Africa” in collaboration with the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy in Africa (CEEPA), University of Pretoria.
- She contributed in the report ’Development of Regional Climate Change Scenarios for Sub- Saharan Africa’ using the PSU/NCAR Regional Climate model MM5, in collaboration with the Climate System Analysis Group of the University of Cape Town.
- She also provided Climate Change Scenarios extracted from the global climate model HADCM3 to the study ‘Assessment of Impacts of Climate Change on the Hydro Power potential in the Zambezi River basin’ in the Eskom Research Report 2003-2004.
- Her current research is on statistical analysis of meteorological observations and regional climate models simulations, assessment of climate change impacts, and inventory of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions.
Michael Munalula Liweleya – Zambia
- He is a senior legal practitioner of 35 years standing at the Zambian bar. He worked in private practice as an Advocate, having appeared in Zambian courts including the Subordinate Courts, Industrial Relations Court, the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Zambia; and in the financial services sector as Legal Counsel, Company Secretary and Executive Director.
- In February 2012, he set up a private law firm in Lusaka, MML Legal Practitioners, at which he is serving as a Managing Partner. The law firm specialises in corporate and securities law, takeovers and mergers, and Legal advisory on capital markets and financial services transactions.
- Prior to this, Michael was the Head of Legal, Compliance and Market Supervision at the Securities and Exchange Commission of Zambia (SEC), the securities and capital market regulator in Zambia, for 16 years from 1996 to 2012. Michael was responsible for the review of all applications for licensing of financial intermediaries, licensing of securities exchanges, registration of securities and authorisation of public offerings and private placements by public companies, as well for collective investment schemes. He was also responsible for the surveillance of the conduct of capital markets transactions and players on the market, including inspections.
- At SEC he was also responsible for processing, advising and guiding all issuers of financial instruments on the procedures on securities exchange transactions and offers such as rights offerings, initial public offers, restructurings, mergers and acquisitions and matters relating to quotations on the Lusaka Stoke Exchange issues of debt and equities securities, custodian services related to collective investment schemes.
- Michael served as Chairperson of the SADC Committee on Insurance and Securities Nonbanking Authorities. Under his two-term elected tenure SADC signed the regional Finance Investment Protocol, under which the region committed to increase intra-regional trade and investment, harmonise financial and commerce and related laws. In addition, he also served as a Senior Legal Consultant for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees/Commissioner for Refugees.
- He is one of the foremost Zambian experts in financial markets regulations. He is known for his work in the strengthening of legal and institutional frameworks for financial services under the Financial Sector Development Programme (FSDP) visa v the Bank of Zambia and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Zambia and the Pensions and Insurance Authority. This work culminated in the amendment and harmonisation of all laws affecting financial and non-bank financial businesses in Zambia as well as the Companies Act of 2017.
Tayob Kamda – South Africa
- A Partner in Shepstone & Wylie, which offers a comprehensive range of legal services in South Africa. Tayob has over the years gained vast experience in commercial litigation and has been involved in major cases in the fields of contract disputes, income tax law, leases, tender irregularities and constitutional law.
- Although he originally started as a civil trained lawyer, his practice took a different turn in the mid 80’s to 90’s, when he was involved in prominent human rights matters, including the Delmas Treason Trial and the Bophuthatswana Coup trials. Tayob is a stalwart freedom fighter who significant contributions in the fight for human rights and against discrimination.
- He sat on the bench of the North-West Province Labour Court as Acting Judge. As a renowned expert in legal drafting, he was responsible for drafting the original legislation for the North West Broadcasting Services. He has also served as consultant to the Telecommunications Department in the province.