Amsterdam Center for Transformative Private Law
23 September 2024
Where did you study?
I studied at the University of Zimbabwe, where I completed my Bachelor of Laws (Honours) degree. Following that, I pursued an LLM degree in Economic Regulation with the University of London; and a second LLM degree in International Human Rights law and Public Policy at the University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland. My LLM thesis focused on human rights, climate investments and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa.
What is your research about?
My research seeks to answer the question on how microfinance and microinsurance regulations under free-market systems impact sustainable financial inclusion in climate-vulnerable communities. Furthermore, the research seeks to identify how economic, political, technological (particularly fintech and AI) and regulatory systems can be restructured to challenge exploitation, enhance equitable access to climate financial resources, and promote the development of solidarity-economic practices in the Anthropocene (or Capitalocene).
I will be working on my doctoral thesis under the supervision of Prof. dr. Marija Bartl. The co-supervisors are Dr. Andrea Leiter and Prof. dr. Joyeeta Gupta.
My research forms part of the EU co-funded Graduate Research on Worldwide Challenges (GROW) program which recruited 50 PhD researchers from around Africa to six universities in the Netherlands with nine of the researchers coming to UvA and 1 (me) coming to the Amsterdam Law School. The GROW programme is designed to offer tomorrow’s leaders a unique opportunity to do high quality and novel research, related to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals on the African continent.
Are you planning on teaching afterwards?
Yes. I see teaching as a valuable way to engage with, to shape and to inspire the next generation of legal scholars, legal activists, and practitioners. I believe I can contribute significantly to the academic community by bringing fresh and critical perspectives.
While I am excited about the prospect of teaching, I am also exploring other career paths where I can equally apply my research and skills, such as in law and policy-research and advocacy, community organising, green fintech or in climate finance and law consultancy. My goal is to find or create a role that allows me to make a meaningful global impact in the fields of law, socio-ecological and climate justice, and sustainable finance.
What moved you to write a PhD?
I have been working with my non-profit environmental law organisation in Zimbabwe for the past six years since I completed my masters’ studies, training and organising communities around environmental rights and conducting applied research and public interest litigation. In this work I realised the need for ensuring that climate finance reaches these grassroots communities in an empowering manner. The macro and microfinance sectors seem too commercialised to deliver green and sustainable finance in an empowering manner and hence seem to be unfit for purpose. In that regard I felt the need to critique the existing legal frameworks on microfinance and microfinance institutions and see how these can be redesigned for sustainable climate financial inclusion and the funding of solidarity-economic practices in both the Global South and Global North. And that is how I shaped my PhD proposal to the GROW selection processes.