PICOTEAM is a network-organisation with nodes in Africa, Latin America and Europe
  that supports efforts to bring about change and innovations for sustainable development.

PICOTEAM Ltd. PICO Southern Africa PICO Uganda PICO Tanzania PICO Latin America
PICO Academy for Practitioners PICO Knowledge Networking

Edward Chuma

Paul KibwikaProcess Facilitator Southern Africa   paul.kibwika@picoteam.org

 

Edward´s major area of interest in past few years has been interactive innovation development focusing on facilitating sustainable development of resource poor communities. He has the application of experiential learning and participatory development principles to soil and water management in particular and sustainable natural resources management in general as his area of special focus and experience.

He has almost twenty years experience as a dissemination specialist, researcher, lecturer and facilitator of learning. Edward has worked for the National Extension Department in Zimbabwe, Agritex and the University of Zimbabwe. At Agritex, Edward Chuma worked as a Soil and Water Conservation Specialist and later as a researcher for the GTZ funded Conservation Tillage Project in Masvingo Province. It was in the latter assignment that Edward together with colleagues developed the “Kuturaya” (trying out) approach, which is the basis of the Participatory Extension Approaches (PEA). At the University of Zimbabwe, Edward worked as a research fellow and lecturer at the Institute of Environmental Studies (IES) and the Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering (SSAE). As a research fellow Edward was responsible for the development and implementation of more than twenty donor funded research and development projects at IES and SSAE. He was a member of the academic board that transformed IES from a project to a reputable Environmental Training and Research Institute. As a lecturer he handled Soil and Water management and dissemination related courses in SSAE. He contributed significantly in making the training received in the Department of SSAE to be stakeholder oriented.

Edward has  also taken on and successfully executed a number of consultancy assignments in Zimbabwe and most of the countries in the East and Southern Africa regions.

Edward is a founder member of PICO-Southern Africa. He is involved with the facilitation of workshops and seminars, design and implementation of action research, design and facilitation of training and competence development programs. Edward is one of the PICOTEAM core members involved in the support of Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) Cambodia staff to operationalize the Participatory Extension/Development Approach (PEA/PDA) in their project. He is also involved in the development of a number of cases of integrated natural resources management in the Southern Africa region. He is finalizing a research project on sustainable wetland management with sites in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa
.
Edward was initially trained as a Soil Scientist and graduated in BSC Agriculture Honours (Soil Science) from the University of Zimbabwe. He received further training at the Cranfield Institute of Technology Silsoe, England. This basic training has been fused with on the job training and experiential learning to provide him with a solid socio-technical development and dissemination base. He has published widely technical, development and dissemination oriented articles.