News

WildCRU-African Leadership University Scholarships awarded

Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), in conjunction with the African Leadership University (ALU), has announced the award of 4 prestigious scholarships funding attendance at a global conservation meeting in Oxford next year.

Terence Chambati (Uganda), Nqobizitha Ndlovu (South Africa), Noel Mbise (Tanzania) and Edwin Tambara (Kenya), all students on ALU’s Conservation MBA programme, will participate in the WildCRU Conservation Geopolitics Forum, March 19th-22nd 2019, at Worcester College, Oxford. They were each selected as outstanding candidates by their course director and tutors.

The Forum will assemble leading figures from the world of conservation, including academics, practitioners and policymakers. Through an innovative mix of plenary sessions, specialist paper sessions, and workshops, it will enable discussions about conservation geopolitics that transcend disciplinary boundaries. The provisional schedule includes over 60 oral presentations from leading scholars and practitioners.

As well as attending the conference, each scholarship awardee will present a paper to a key working group, Terence Chambati and Nqobizitha Ndlovu to a session on Conservation Marketing led by Dr Ewan Macdonald, and Noel Mbise and Edwin Tambara in a session on Tourism chaired by Dr Tom Moorhouse. The scholarships are provided with the kind support of the Turner-Kirk fund.

Professor David Macdonald CBE, Director of the WildCRU, commented: “I am delighted to announce these scholarships because the missions of WildCRU and ALU match perfectly, and WildCRU’s Conservation Geopolitics Forum will be the perfect melting pot to create a new generation of conservation thinkers”.

Noel Latiaeli Mbise 

Noel is an ecologist from the northeast of Tanzania. He is currently Head of Research & Monitoring at Grumeti Fund in the western Serengeti area, Tanzania. Previously, he worked as an ecologist with Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA), and has also worked in rural micro-finance and the hospitality industry. His professional interests comprise environmental policy, conservation innovations, human-wildlife interactions, elephant-landscape interactions, and rural livelihoods improvement. Noel has a B.Sc. in Wildlife Management degree from the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Tanzania; and a Master of International Environmental Policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), California- USA.

Terence Chambati

With 19 years experience in the advertising industry, Zimbabwean Terence Chambati is the Country Director at Aggrey & Clifford, an East African marketing communications firm. He is also a co-founder of Huchi Capital, a conservation enterprise conserving and harnessing the impact and sweet returns of African honey bees. Now a student on ALU’s Conservation MBA, he aims to draw on his industry experience, thus: “Using my marketing communications background I seek to contribute towards understanding and attainment of the Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDGs) from the base of the pyramid (BoP) going up. It is all our responsibility.”

Edwin Tambara

Edwin is a conservation practitioner with more than ten years’ cumulative experience in strategic analysis, business and tourism planning, program development and project management, and monitoring and evaluation. He joined African Wildlife Foundation in 2013 through the Conservation Leadership and Management Program, helping to develop management and tourism plans for iconic parks and conservancies across the continent in Kenya, southern Africa, Cameroon, South Sudan, and Democratic Republic of Congo. Edwin now handles AWF’s Strategy and Impact Analysis portfolio. He holds a Master of Philosophy degree in Terrestrial Ecology and Conservation, and a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences. He is a former research associate and also conservation coordinator with Tropical Resource Ecology Programme at the University of Zimbabwe.

Nqobizitha Ndlovu

Nqobizitha has spent most of his professional life working to improve the livelihoods of marginalized communities in southern and east Africa, partnering with organizations such as International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Southern African Sustainable Use Specialist Group (SASUSG), Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), Solidaridad Network and Acumen to do so.  His work can be located at the intersection of human and environmental rights. He has also led efforts to conserve endangered species such as rhinos and elephant through community-based natural resource management (People and Parks Programme – South Africa), and through promoting sustainable and inclusive value chains in the agriculture and biodiversity economy. Nqo’s work in leadership development, including serving as a Leadership Advisor at Adaptive Change Advisors (ACA), has seen him working to support entrepreneurs working towards providing Food, Energy and Water security on the continent. He is currently reading for his Conservation MBA at ALU, leading JAMY; a start-up focused on funding great ideas to address the SDGs in east Africa and working as the Climate Innovation lead for southern Africa with Solidaridad network.

For more information about the ALU’s Conservation MBA programme, please see: https://sowc.alueducation.com

For more information about the WildCRU Conservation Geopolitics Forum, please visit the website.