Chairperson of the SARDC Board is the Ambassador of the Republic of Namibia to the Republic of Germany in Berlin, as well as Poland, Slovakia and the Holy See. He served previously as Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium and the European Union, as well as Netherlands and Luxemburg. He was the founding Vice-Chancellor of the University of Namibia, established following Namibia’s independence in 1990. He is a historian and leading member of the South West Africa Peoples Organisation (SWAPO), and a former SWAPO representative in UK and Western Europe. He returned to Namibia in 1989, and was elected a member of the Constitutional Assembly, was on the committee that drafted the Independence Constitution, and served as a Member of Parliament for two years. Amb. Katjavivi has a D.Phil from Oxford University, UK and was a visiting fellow at Yale University, USA. He has written and edited several books, documents and papers about the liberation struggle.

Vice-chairperson of the SARDC Board is the Secretary General of Southern African Broadcasting Association (SABA). He is a former Chairperson of Televisão Moçambique (TVM) and of the Union of National Radio and Television Organisations of Africa (URTNA), which has been revitalized under his leadership. He is a respected journalist with 30 years experience on various newspapers including a local daily Diario, the national newspaper Noticias (as reporter, news editor and director), Tempo news magazine as senior writer, and the Sunday newspaper Domingo as senior writer. Since 1987 he has been in government service, becoming National Director (Permanent Secretary) in the Ministry of Information and after 1995, Director of Information in the Office of the Prime Minister. He has an MA in Media Ecology from New York University.

Nthobi Angel is the Chairperson of TsaRona Investments and a director of Batho-Bonke Capital as well as the ABSA Group, the Peace Parks Foundation and the Open Africa Initiative. She is a Trustee of the Kagiso Trust and the ABSA Foundation, and a Board Member of Deloitte (SA). She has extensive experience in the corporate world and in communications, including as Chief Operating Officer for Strategic Planning and Communications in the Presidency, 2001-2003. She worked at Engen Petroleum for six years, as General Manager for Corporate Affairs and then Executive Director Strategic Affairs. She was CEO of Mvelaphanda Resources, and Managing Director, External Relations Division of Eskom Holdings. She did all of her tertiary studies in exile in Africa, including Ghana, Zimbabwe and the United Republic of Tanzania, earning a BA Honours, BSc Honours and MSc in Sociology, as well as a postgraduate diploma in Mass Communication. She speaks seven languages, including English, French, Swahili and four South African languages.

Professor Austin is a Zimbabwean law professor who was active in the liberation struggle and a member of the legal team at the independence negotiations at Lancaster House in London in 1979. He was Director and Chief Electoral Officer of the UN Observer Mission to South Africa (UNOMSA) for the 1994 transitional elections, and Director of Elections in Cambodia in 1993. He organised the successful national elections in Afghanistan in 2003, and in the Solomon Islands in 2006. He was recently appointed by the UN Secretary-General as one of three high-level electoral experts to verify the conduct of each phase of the electoral process in East Timor for presidential and parliamentary elections in 2007. Prof Austin has facilitated a number of key initiatives for SARDC including observation of Zambia’s first multi-party elections and the first multi-party conference on elections in Angola (both 1991), and contributed to SARDC workshops for pre-independence Namibia (1989) and post-conflict Mozambique (1992). He was Chief Electoral Officer of UNAMA (2002) in Afghanistan; Director of the Legal and Constitutional Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat (1993-98) and a Director at International IDEA in Stockholm (1998-2002).

Ruhiza Jean Boroto is a civil engineer and water specialist from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), who works as a private consultant and is an advisor to the South African government on water resources management. He did his post-graduate studies at Stellenbosch University (M Eng Civil, Water Eng), and is now resident in South Africa, where he worked previously for the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, as Director of Project Planning. He was also an Environmental Consultant Engineer with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa, and Regional Water Expert at the Global Water Partnership Southern Africa. In addition to his wide knowledge of the challenges and opportunities facing the water sector in southern Africa, he is a motivational writer on issues related to personal development.

Managing Director of Enviroplan, an environment and development consultancy based in Gaborone, where he previously headed the Transboundary Natural Resources Management (NRM) programme at the USAID Regional Centre for Southern Africa. He was Regional Advisor for Natural Resources Management and later Team Leader for NRM. He also served as a member of the SADC Water Sector Reference Group. He has been Coordinator of the UNDP-UNOPS Small Grants, Analyst for the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA), and a government extension officer for natural resources. He holds an MSc in Regional Resources Planning from Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.

Mary Rusimbi is Executive Director of the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP), a widely respected umbrella group and network which supports community development and gender networking. She is a gender specialist and long-time activist who has worked in development agencies and served on the board of a number of non-governmental agencies, including the regional grouping, MWENGO. She has accumulated considerable regional gender knowledge and experience which she is often called upon to share elsewhere in the SADC region, and she has written widely on prospects for gender equality, including a gender-reference checklist for elections.

Dr Shankanga is Director of the Institute for Peace, Leadership and Governance at Africa University in Mutare, Zimbabwe. He is an education and governance specialist from Zambia, and former Director of the UNESCO Sub-regional Office for Southern Africa, where he worked with SADC in establishing a consultative conference of Ministers of Education and on the SADC Initiative in Education Policy Development, Planning and Management. He served in the UN system for more than 20 years, after leaving the Ministry of Education in Zambia. He has a doctorate in Curriculum Development from the University of Southern California.

Dr Somolekae is Programme Director at the Kellogg Foundation Africa office. She is a specialist in organizational development and public administration, as well as governance and elections. She headed the Democracy Research Project at the University of Botswana and was a member of the President’s Commission on Traditional Leadership in Botswana. The President of Botswana also appointed Dr Somolekae as Chairperson of the country’s Vision 2016 Council and she dynamized the implementation countrywide. She administered the development of local projects for Kellogg Foundation in Botswana before being appointed as Director of Programmes. She has a PhD in Public Administration from Syracuse Universityin the USA , and has written several books, research projects, papers and reviews.

The SARDC Executive Director is a writer, editor and broadcaster, a long-time resident of southern Africa and student of southern African affairs. She has written and edited numerous books and articles, mainly on the historical, socio-political and security dimensions of regional development, and also on environment and water issues. She has written several books on the liberation struggle in southern Africa, including Apartheid Terrorism: The Commonwealth Report, and a biography of the former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, entitled Eye of Fire. Founding Director of the SARDC.

SARDC Deputy Director and Secretary to the Board is an economist and writer, and has an in-depth knowledge of SADC issues, opportunities and challenges over the past decade. He is Editor of the official SADC newsletter, SADC Today, and heads the SARDC programme on Regional Economic Development Information (REDI). He has a BA in Economics from the University of Zimbabwe and is currently studying for a Masters in International Relations. He writes widely on regional economic development and integration, including the current challenges of overlapping membership of Regional Economic Communities.

Chairperson of African Publishing Group (APG) and a founding director and former Chairperson of Zimbabwe Publishing House (ZPH), he is an accomplished writer, photographer and investigative journalist. He worked in the national media in the United Republic of Tanzania (Tanganyika Standard) and UK (Africa correspondent of The Observer), and marched with the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) in the liberated zones prior to independence. David Martin has written several books about the liberation struggle and now promotes the marketing of African history through area-specific tourism guides. He is the author of Into Africa Travel Guides, a series of more than 20 area-specific guidebooks for visitors, primarily on Tanzania, published in collaboration with Tanzania National Parks (Tanapa).