People

Dr Annie Chimphango

Annie is experienced in the fields of bioenergy, lignocelluloses fractionation, bioprocess Engineering, biorefinery, biopolymers, postharvest engineering, agricultural engineering, food security, environmental engineering, heat and mass transfer, project management (planning, monitoring & evaluation (PME)), project coordination and networking. Annie has applied her knowledge and skills from these fields, in particular, systems thinking, participatory approaches and  critical thinking in her academic and developmental research work. Annie has hands on experience in engaging with people from the top to the grassroot level. Her main focus is in the development and implementation of sustainable technologies for rural development. She has authored and co-authored advocacy materials on the MDGs, NEPAD, and WSSD.  Annie is a Fellow for the Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD) Programme Cohort 7. She spent 5 years in the non-profit sector managing and coordinating civil society networks in Africa, which became active during and after the WSSD with support from the Danish 92 Rio + 10 Group. She worked as a PME consultant for Bread for the world in Africa and was a WSSD project coordinator at Environmental Monitoring Group (EMG) in South Africa. Annie also has business and industrial skills. She worked as an Assistant Manager in Agribusiness, in the Technical Department at Lever Brothers Malawi Limited, a subsidiary company of Unilever. She was responsible for managing production, processing and marketing of hybrid seeds for maize and sunflower country wide and engagements with local and international stakeholders in production, negotiation of contracts and promotional activities. Annie is currently an academic with 16 years of experience. She lectured at the University of Malawi, Bunda College of Agriculture in the Agricultural Engineering Department. She is currently an academic staff at Stellenbosch University, in Process Engineering Department in South Africa. Her current research areas include:  sustainability of bioenergy systems and how they interact with food systems, agroprocessing, value adding to produce speciality biomaterials and industrial enzyme application. She is part of the Global Sustainable Bioenergy (GSB) project and the Latin American, Caribbean, Africa (LACAf) Bioenergy project.