Gracsious Maviza

Gender and Migration Scientist; Regional Lead for Southern Africa in the CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security Team, CGIAR System Organization
I am a gender and migration climate security scientist and the regional lead for southern Africa within the CGIAR Focus Climate Security team at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. I am also a research associate with the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. I am a qualitative researcher with expertise in gender, migration and livelihoods.

At the Alliance, I coordinate and conduct research on gender, inequality, migration, climate, conflict, and peacebuilding for climate security within the CGIAR Focus Climate Security team. I ensure the integration of gender into the climate security team’s work to ensure it is gender sensitive and, at best, transformative. I am currently working on the ‘Building Systematic Resilience against climate variability and extremes (ClimBer)’ and the ‘Fragility, Conflict and Migration (FCM)’ initiatives to ensure the climate security work within the initiatives is aware of and addresses sociocultural norms and values that perpetuate vulnerability. The aim is to promote social equity and ensure positive benefits for all people across various food, land, and water systems. I lead the development of the migration strategy and the rollout of the FCM initiative in southern Africa and provide thematic support in other regions. The migration research seeks to understand mobility and forced climate migration, its drivers and impacts at the destination, unveiling the climate conflict-migration nexus.

I hold a BSc Honours degree in sociology from the University of Zimbabwe (Harare, Zimbabwe), a Master of Arts in development studies from the Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Hague, The Netherlands) and a PhD in development studies from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa).

Before joining the Alliance, I was a research fellow with the Institute of Development Studies at the National University of Science and Technology (IDS-NUST) in Zimbabwe. I researched several socio-economic issues, including migration, gender and inclusion, livelihoods, and local development strategies, on which I have several publications. I also co-founded the Southern Women Academics Forum (SWAN), a network inspired by my experiences and struggles as an early career woman, which seeks to make academia a viable career choice for women through various initiatives.