Farai Kapfudzaruwa
Dr Farai Kapfudzaruwa is the Deputy Director of Team Science for the African Synthesis Centre for Climate Change, Environment and Development (ASCEND) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa. He is responsible for core strategic functions related to team science leadership and facilitation for the synthesis teams supported by ASCEND, as well as providing postdoctoral fellowship supervision and team science capacity strengthening.
Before joining ASCEND at UCT he served as the Research and Strategic Partnerships Manager at Future Africa and the Department of Research and Innovation at the University of Pretoria (UP). In this role, he led and coordinated activities within the African Science Leadership challenge domain geared towards the strengthening of the African science ecosystem through strategic partnerships with the International Science Council, UNDESA, the STI Coalition for Africa, the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and other science ecosystem stakeholders. Whilst at UP he also led the development and implementation of the University’s strategic internationalisation and global engagement strategy – the African Global University Project (AGUP).
Prior to joining UP, he served as a programme coordinator for the Education for Sustainable Development in Africa (ESDA) initiative at the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS) in Tokyo, Japan where he led the implementation of graduate programmes and early career capacity development initiatives at 8 partner African universities. Whilst at the UNU-IAS he also led initiatives to build partnerships to support countries in the Asia Pacific region to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Dr Kapfudzaruwa also worked as an Old Mutual Emerging Markets lecturer at the Graduate School of Business at UCT.
Dr Kapfudzaruwa holds a PhD in Business and Political Science from the University of Cape Town focusing on private climate change governance. He has published extensively in the transdisciplinary space related to climate change governance, sustainable development, sustainable entrepreneurship, and higher education internationalisation.