Alumni of the Month

A graduate school teacher, subsequently college tutor and finally a founding executive director of a national environmental organisation, Mr. Godfrey L. Kamukala is an alumnus of the University of Dar es Salaam, in the graduating class of 1970.

Godfrey Kamukala was born on May 30, 1943 in the Kanyigo village of the-then Bukoba District [now Missenyi district], in Kagera region. He started primary education at Mwisenge Primary School in Musoma town in the early 1950s following the job posting of his father who was at that time an administrative officer in the colonial administration of Tanganyika Territory. For the next level of education, he transferred to Kigarama Middle School in Bukoba (1959-1962), from where he proceeded to secondary education at Kahororo Secondary School in Bukoba (1960-1963) and, subsequently, to high school at Tabora Government School in Tabora district for Forms V and VI (1964-1965). With good principal passes of the Cambridge University Examinations Syndicate, he entered the University College Dar es Salaam of the University of East Africa in 1966/67. There, he studied Geography, Political Science and Education within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He graduated, with a shining B.A. (honours) degree in 1970.

  His first appointment for public service after graduation was teaching at a secondary school in Bukoba—Bukoba Secondary School—where he taught the geography subject for a total of five years until 1975. In that year, he left the school in order to join Ardhi Institute in Dar es Salaam as a lecturer in geography and its related course offerings such as rural and urban planning, climatic measurements, human settlements and land-use planning. While at Ardhi, he was sponsored to undertake a two-year postgraduate training in natural resource planning and management at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, earning an M.A. in 1977. He taught at Ardhi Institute for a total of about four years until May 1981, when he was appointed by the Ministry of Natural Resources, Lands, Housing and Urban Development to the position of Urban Planner and to head the environment protection section of the town planning division of the Ministry. In the same year, 1981, he left for Germany for a UNEP-sponsored postgraduate diploma study (1981-82) at Technical University Dresden in Germany, focusing on ecosystem management. He continued to head the Environment Protection Section at the ministerial headquarters until April 1985, except for a stint away on official government assignment in Arusha town.

For some years since 1983, the Ministry was attempting to lay a legal framework for establishing, assessing, enforcing and monitoring ‘clean environments’ for people in Tanzania and to establish a broad mandate in response to this national need. It was in September 1986 that Mr. Kamukala was appointed a first and founding director-general of the newly-created national body, the National Environment Management Council (NEMC), which was pursuant to the National Environment Management Act No. 19 of 1983. Godfrey Kamukala served NEMC in that position for a total of ten years until he formally retired in 1996.

Upon retirement from public service (in 1996), Mr. Kamukala was engaged by several organisations particularly on matters of environmental management, control, re-creation, both internationally and locally. For instance, from September 1996 to February 1999 (3 years), he was appointed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as Chief Technical Adviser for Lesotho to assist the Government of Lesotho in strengthening environmental management of the country’s National Environment Secretariat. From June 2001 to August 2005, he was appointed team leader jointly by Tanzania and Sweden in order to lead a team in Tanzania on the Kunduchi Integrated Coastal Area Management Plan [KICAMP]. The project was focused on coordinating activities that pertained to land- and water-use planning and ecosystem management and monitoring programmes, all for purposes of capacity building as well as income-generation at municipal level. Within the project’s purview also fell concerns for eco-tourism, research and public education.

For three years between September 2005 and September 2008, Mr. Kamukala was engaged by the UNDP as a Senior Technical Advisor in Rwanda in order to assist the Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA) in mainstreaming environmental management into the development and planning processes so as to achieve coordination and harmony across government agencies and other relevant actors in the administration, planning and natural resource management sectors.

Since his return from Rwanda in 2008, Godfrey Kamukala has been hired by many and various public and private institutions to provide his knowledge, his skill inputs and assistance in environment-related projects, including the Health and Environmental Concerns Ltd (as Director and Consultant, September 2008 to-date); Kalpataru, Plot No. 132/1 Block A Makongo (as Environmental Officer, April 2011–December, 2012) and Kalpataru/World Bank (as Environmental/Social Officer, Sept.2013-June 2014). His other consultancy jobs have been in relation to road construction, bridges, housing constructions, airport locations   , factory relocations, oil pipelines, refugee camp spacing and many more. He has—to say the least—really not only enjoyed his time with the many clients from the many sectors of the economy but also kept himself abreast of all that he studied concerning geography at various stages of school and college as well as at various levels of professional practice.

The University of Dar es Salaam is all happy about Godfrey Kamukala’s professional career and accomplishments.