Powell Mponela

Born in 1980 in Mtema Village of Northern Malawi. Powell lived and camped on the pure sand shores of lake Malawi and had beautiful views of Nyika national Park than spans on the west. Like most people in the area, his vision was limited to sky-lake sky-Nyika horizons. He spent most of my early childhood days farming, the main livelihood strategy for the community. Later, he studied forestry that gave him the landsape perspective beyond the managed plot and village horizon boundary. During work at CIAT (2010-2016), he traversed Southern Africa from east to west travelling by car for long distance and on foot for longer time to rural farm areas (including cropped, grazing, reserves) of Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Angola, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia but also to Ethiopia and Ghana conducting soil health surveillance. He has collected soil samples from more than 44 village locations (dug 17,600 holes) and learnt how diverse and similar the livelihoods in rural Africa are. This has brought him to his current research and career interest: to study a farm as a coupled human-ecological system and consider farmers as active agents whose actions shape the landscapes where they live and beyond.