Southern and Eastern Africa

Read highlights of LEAD Southern and Eastern Africa's 2007 activities

LEAD Southern and Eastern Africa (LEAD SEA) is hosted by the University of Malawi at the Chancellor College campus, situated in Zomba, the former capital of Malawi.

There are 113 LEAD Fellows in LEAD Southern and Eastern Africa drawn from the initial 6 countries in the Programme: Malawi; Mozambique; South Africa; Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. There are also 30 new Associates who have attended national LEAD training sessions and many will take additional modules to become Fellows. The activities of LEAD SEA are expanding to cover all the southern and eastern African countries.

The influence of LEAD Fellows and Associates has been growing stronger at both national and regional levels. Many Fellows continue to occupy senior positions and are making significant impacts on policy and practice. Many of the Fellows occupy senior positions and play key roles in national, regional and international development events. Some of our Fellows are:

Naima Besta Abdallah is community relation’s coordinator for SONGAS Ltd dealing with Songo Songo Gas development and power generation project in Tanzania. Previously she was a land use planner for an African wildlife foundation responsible for wildlife enterprises for west Kilimanjaro. The project assisted in creating community awareness for implementing jointly managed projects.

Henry Mloza Banda has just served a full term as Dean of faculty of Agriculture at the University of Malawi, Bunda College. He was instrumental in a number of reforms in both teaching and research. Henry has an excellent track record of research project with significant policy implications in food security and in natural resource management. Currently he has been implementing projects related to water harvesting in rain shadow areas of Malawi and for communities managing AIDS orphanages. He is the secretary general for Rainwater harvesting association of Malawi

Dorcas Kayo is involved in the building of a database on Sub-Saharan countries about contact persons who can participate and provide inputs on sustainable energy issues. She works for the Zimbabwe Electricity Company and has been involved in energy reform discussions nationally and internationally

Charity Mphande is the Town Clerk of the City of Ndola. Ndola is the second largest City of Zambia. The City of Ndola is the provincial and industrial capital of the copper belt province and not only presents challenges of municipal service management but also issues of local government policy and the expectations of the grassroots. Charity has also been appointed to the statutory position of Vice Chairperson of the National Housing Authority Board. This Board is charged with the national responsibility of development and control of housing throughout Zambia

Catherine Warburton has set up her own company called IMBEWU Enviro-Legal Specialists (Pty) Ltd in South Africa. This company is managing the environmental legal aspects of the EIA for the Gautrain Rapid Rail Link Project. This is a R7 Billion Government Project to link Johannesburg and Pretoria with the Johannesburg International Airport by way of a state of the art high-speed rail system. IMBEWU is one of the partners on EU climate change project

LEAD Southern Africa Partners

Together with LEAD Nigeria and LEAD Francophone Africa, LEAD Southern and Eastern Africa participated in several joint projects with: the British Council on Leadership for Africa programme; the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) on African Knowledge Management; and the European Union on a Climate Change Project. In addition, LEAD SEA is collaborating with UNFPA, and Government of South Africa in implementing a capacity building project for population, environment and development issues.

Other partners include: Harvest Help, Eco-Agriculture Partners, Forest Trends, Katoomba group, Florida Atlantic University, etc

Activities

Numerous training sessions have been held under the LEAD banner in Africa since 1991, and in 2002, the African MPs, along with other members of the LEAD family gathered in Johannesburg at the World Summit in Sustainable Development to present their work on the world stage through numerous symposia and round tables initiated by LEAD and carried out with various partners.

In 2004 LEAD International secured a contract from the British Council’s InterAction Leadership Programme to participate in providing training for 1500 African leaders in 19 Sub-Saharan countries. LEAD is an important partner in the development, design and implementation of the training-of-trainers component, and LEAD Africa MPs are participating in the delivery of this program at the sub-regional level. This activity will last until mid-2006.