Alumni of the Month

Albert Geoffrey Mmari is—this month February 2023—UDSM’s Alumnus of the Month, having obtained the University’s undergraduate (bachelor) degree in science in what was then the Faculty of Science, which is today’s College of Natural and Applied Sciences, CoNAS. At the bachelor degree level, he graduated in the class of 1989.

He was born on 7^th of November 1965 in Tabora, where his parents—both from Moshi district in Kilimanjaro region—worked as teachers, his father teaching then at Tabora territorial government secondary school. At school-going age, Albert went to Mlimani Primary School in Dar es Salaam where he had seven years of primary education (1971-1978). From there he proceeded to secondary education at Tambaza for four years of lower secondary education (1979–1982) and thereafter to upper secondary education (‘A-level’) at Kibaha (1983-1985). It was from the latter, Kibaha, with an exemplary record of exam performance grades in the Advanced Certificate of Secondary Education Examination (ACSEE), that he was selected for advanced university studies at the University of Dar es Salaam in academic year 1985/86. At UDSM he did Physics along with Chemistry and Education. He graduated in 1989 with a BSc honours and was immediately recruited by the Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) as an academic member of staff in its Department of Science and Laboratory Technology.

At DIT, he worked for a dedicated period of three years (1989-1991) before he embarked on a master’s degree programme in physics at the University of Dar es Salaam, a programme that took him about four years (1991-94). In 1994, he was offered a scholarship of two years of postgraduate study in Seismology at the University of Bergen in Norway (1994–1996). This was a study related to earthquakes and underground seismic waves. For the next eight years (1996-2004), Albert Mmari was in residence teaching at DIT until 2004 when he was ready and had the facilitation to embark on a longer and dovetailed doctoral steep into a doctor of technology (‘Doctor Technologiae’) programme in Chemistry. He did this—and with a true sense of accomplishment and satisfaction—at both Antwerp University in Belgium (2004–2007) and Tshwane University of Technology in the Republic of South Africa (2007-2011). On completion of this long journey of technological research and training, Dr. Mmari has spent a number of years making his due contribution at DIT, not only through teaching and research but also in providing research-based advice to governmental institutions as well as private-sector industry.

Dr. Mmari was appointed Director for the DIT Mwanza Campus, where he plays his executive role of coordinating and supervising the training and production functions in addition to offering his academic share of the applications of Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics to the training programmes.

The Director, Dr. Mmari, is very excited and keen about the developments and prospects of the DIT’s Mwanza engagement. With the support of international development partners, particularly UNIDO, the United Nations’ Industrial Development Organisation, which has pledged a helping hand, Director Albert Mmari feels elated and humbly appreciative of the developments. UDSM congratulates him and wishes him the best of the times ahead.