Zebedee Njisuh, the newly appointed Senior Advisor for Africa, officially assumed his role at the Secretariat on 1 April 2020.
Zebedee has more than 19 years of experience working on forests, biodiversity, coastal ecosystems management, policy development and projects implementation and research. Zebedee has been working with various stakeholders including: local communities, national governments, regional institutions (Abidjan Convention, ECOWAS, MRU) and international aid agencies such as UNDP and USAID across Africa, Europe and South-East Asia to design people-centred solutions to issues of wetland biodiversity loss, habitat degradation, depletion, and climate change. Zebedee’s efforts have led to the development of various conservation, sustainable management and climate change adaptation interventions and management plans.
Before joining the Convention, Zebedee worked as Coastal Resilience, and Adaptation Specialist for the West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BICC) Programme across West Africa. He led the scoping studies that resulted to USAID West Africa funding the WA BiCC programme. While with WA BiCC, he contributed to strengthening National Adaptation Planning (NAP) processes for six countries, delivered various climate change vulnerability assessments and field-based interventions which culminated in strategic policy frameworks promoting coastal resilience across West Africa. Prior to joining WA BiCC, Zebedee worked with the ZSL, ProForest, UNEP-WCMC and Management Systems International (MSI).
Zebedee holds a Diploma in Forestry and Water Management from the Mbalmayo Forestry School Cameroon, a B.Sc. in Environmental Sciences and a M.sc degree in Botany from the University of Buea, Cameroon. He holds a second M.sc degree from the Universities of Manchester, Central European University Hungary, Lund (Sweden) and Lesvos Greece in Environmental Science Policy and Management. He is a member of the IUCN Mangrove Specialist Group; he has published various articles about conservation and sustainable management of mangroves in West Central Africa.
