Welcome to Sara Namirembe

The CCRP’s East & Southern Africa (ESAf) community of practice (CoP) has undergone a transition over the past year to merge into one combined CoP comprised of Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda. The newly merged CoP will continue to be supported by CCRP regional team members Kate Wellard Dyer, Prudence Kaijage, and Linnet Gohole. In addition, we welcome Sara Namirembe as a new member of the ESAf regional team. The team in East & Southern Africa reflects a complementary set of skills including agroecology and ecosystems services, social science, biophysical science, monitoring and evaluation, grantmaking, and capacity strengthening, among other.

Sara is currently the leader of STEPUP Standard Limited, a company building research capacity in climate-change response and ecosystem management. Based in Uganda, she has been actively involved in research and promotion of approaches for safeguarding ecological connectivity in forestry, agricultural and watershed management. Sara has mainly focused on agroforestry and landscape-based approaches including Payments for Ecosystem Services, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and forest carbon stock enhancement (REDD+), and Participatory Natural Resource Management.  Formerly, she worked with the World Agroforestry Centre, leading research on incentives and payments for ecosystem services in several watersheds in Africa. Earlier, she lectured in Agroforestry and Community Forestry at Makerere University and served on the board of directors for National Environmental Authority (NEMA), Uganda.  Sara holds a PhD in Forestry and Agricultural Sciences from University of Wales, UK.  She is very much looking forward to working in the Collaborative Crop Research Program. Please join us in welcoming Sara!