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Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Dr Meggan Spires

Senior Manager: Climate Change, Energy & Resilience

Meggan believes that African cities are places of innovation and potential, where globally relevant solutions are found. She leads the Climate Change, Energy and Resilience workstream at ICLEI Africa, where a diverse team works with African city stakeholders to build resilience, enable low emission development, and improve access to finance and energy. Meggan holds a PhD in Environmental Science and before joining ICLEI Africa worked as a municipal official.

 

 

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View The Team
AllDirectorsSenior Professsional Officers
Director: Climate Change: Energy & Resilience

Dr Meggan Spires
Manager: Climate Change Resilience

Dr Kate Strachan
Professional Officer: Climate change, Energy and Resilience

Carine Lehtem Buma
Professional officer: Climate Change, Energy & Resilience

Dania Petrik
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Meagen Swain
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Nelson de Lamare
Professional Officer: Climate Change and Water Resource Management

Tarryn Quayle
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Vanessa Tshite
Research & knowledge management officer

Claudia Schroder
Communications Officer: Climate and Energy

Jarita Kassen
Communications Officer

Ayanda Mthethwa
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Nicola Rule
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Ryan Roberts
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Dr. Azizat Gbadegesin
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Lucy Lavirotte
Senior Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Sayuri Chetty
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Kweku Koranteng
Professional Officer: Sustainable Energy Action and Political Liaison

Ayman Aribou
Director: Climate Change: Energy & Resilience

Dr Meggan Spires

Meggan believes that African cities are places of innovation and potential, where globally relevant solutions are found. She leads the Climate Change, Energy and Resilience workstream at ICLEI Africa, where a diverse team works with African city stakeholders to build resilience, enable low emission development, and improve access to finance and energy. Meggan holds a PhD in Environmental Science and before joining ICLEI Africa worked as a municipal official.

Manager: Climate Change Resilience

Dr Kate Strachan

Kate holds a PhD in Environmental Science, focused on coastal changes associated with climate change. She has a special interest in understanding climate change and the associated risks, especially relating to coastal cities. She has worked with and for local governments to build climate resilience, developing climate adaption plans, and identifying challenges and opportunities associated with natural assets to overcome shocks and stressors associated with climate change.

Professional Officer: Climate change, Energy and Resilience

Carine Lehtem Buma

Carine is passionate about energy, especially given the urgent need for sustainable energy access in Africa. She holds a MSc. in Physics and B.Eng in Petroleum Engineering. Carine joined ICLEI as an intern and is working on climate change and energy projects, including CoM SSA. She has experience in the design, monitoring and evaluation of photovoltaic systems, as well as on technical properties of petroleum products.

Professional officer: Climate Change, Energy & Resilience

Dania Petrik

Dania is a MPhil graduate from the Energy Research Centre, UCT, with a focus on climate change and poverty. Her background in communications equips her to effectively communicate climate related issues. She has over five years’ experience in climate research and consulting, working alongside donor agencies, practitioners, local and national government, regional networks, and with academia to implement a range of projects specifically around building capacity and improved climate governance.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Meagen Swain

Meagen Swain holds a Master of Philosophy in Climate Change and Sustainable Development from the University of Cape Town with a theoretical background in Environmental and Geographical sciences. Before joining ICLEI Africa as a Professional Officer in the Climate Change, Energy and Resilience workstream, she completed the City of Cape Town’s Urban Sustainability Internship Programme, within the City’s Environmental Management Department. During her time at the City of Cape Town, she supported the public participation process of the city’s Climate Change Strategy and assisted in strengthening the strategy and action plan. Her interests lie in climate change, resilience and urban greening.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Nelson de Lamare

Nelson is part of both the Climate Change, Energy & Resilience work stream, and the Membership team, while undertaking his MA in International Studies at Stellenbosch University. He has experience working for the Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Service, a global network of International Voluntary Service CSOs, as well as the culture and education sectors of UNESCO.

Professional Officer: Climate Change and Water Resource Management

Tarryn Quayle

Tarryn joined ICLEI Africa in 2009 and focuses on urban water and sanitation projects through the lens of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Tarryn has a keen interest in co-developing projects that reflect the demand-driven, inclusive and multi-stakeholder approaches integral to supporting sustainable urban development on the continent.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Vanessa Tshite

Vanessa holds a postgraduate diploma in Integrated Water Resources Management and a BSc in Environmental and Water Science from the University of the Western Cape. She joined ICLEI as an intern, working on two main projects – UNA and IMPACT. She has experience assisting with environmental legislation and related projects as an Environmental Compliance Assistant at the City of Cape Town and in the private sector.

Research & knowledge management officer

Claudia Schroder

Claudia holds degrees in Social Dynamics, Environmental Management and a masters in Environment, Society and Sustainability. Her role as a Research and Knowledge Management enables her to manage the knowledge and information processes for projects while simultaneously exploring the complex dynamics between humans and nature in the face of climate change.

Communications Officer: Climate and Energy

Jarita Kassen

Jarita Kassen spent the last two years working at Eyewitness News producing radio news stories and articles on a variety of topics. She is passionate about climate change and sustainability and excited to work in a communications position that addresses these issues. She has experience liaising with local government officials and gained a good understanding of government structures and communicating about political issues during her studies at the University of Cape Town. She has a BA degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics and an Honours degree in Political Communications, focusing on media. She also has a diploma in Business French and has dabbled in design and layout, and podcast production. Jarita will be joining the ICLEI Africa team as a Communications Officer for Energy and Climate Change, specifically to support communications for the CoM SSA Secretariat as well as our LoCS4Africa Virtual Congress, and other related campaigns.

Communications Officer

Ayanda Mthethwa

Ayanda Mthethwa brings with her a strong writing and journalism background. She has a BA Honours in Journalism and Media Studies from North-West University. Before joining ICLEI she worked as a reporter for Daily Maverick and headed up MavericKids where she mainstreamed climate considerations in ways that our younger generation can relate to. At ICLEI she’ll be assisting with project communications for some of our climate and energy projects.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Nicola Rule

Nicola is passionate about developing more just and regenerative urban systems through local climate action. She holds a Masters in Environmental Change and Management from Oxford University. She has worked in Environmental Management in the local government sector and as a climate change consultant, developing large donor-funded mitigation and adaptation projects with small island developing states (SIDS) and African countries. Nicola recently joined ICLEI to support African cities to develop and implement climate action plans under the CoM SSA initiative.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Ryan Roberts

Born in Johannesburg yet growing up in Durban, Ryan is comfortable having both plenty to do as well as nothing at all. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical engineering from the University of Pretoria. He then furthered his studies at Stellenbosch
University in sustainable and renewable energy, obtaining his Master’s in Philosophy in 2017.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Dr. Azizat Gbadegesin

Azizat holds a PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering,  and currently works on the CoMSSA, ENACT and AFMEG projects at ICLEI Africa. She has experience in capacity building, research, system  design, as well as project management and implementation in energy efficiency, decentralised renewable energy systems, and energy storage. She is passionate about contributing to sustainable energy development within African cities as the way to the overall development of the African continent.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Lucy Lavirotte

Lucy holds a Msc in Political Science and a MPhil in Climate Change and Development. She has worked on GCF and GEF adaptation project design in several French speaking countries before joining ICLEI Africa in early 2021. Lucy currently works on participatory adaptation action planning, gender inclusion and finance for local climate action under the CoM SSA project.

Senior Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Sayuri Chetty

Sayuri has an Environmental Science background and more than six years of project management and technical experience working with all spheres of government, private and public sector on a range of energy efficiency and renewable energy topics. Before joining ICLEI Africa in November 2021, she worked for GIZ South Africa and Eskom. Her interests lie in urban energy, equitable and inclusive low carbon development, climate change mitigation and gender mainstreaming.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Kweku Koranteng

Kweku is a professional Officer in ICLEI Africa’s Energy and Climate Resilience workstream. He has over 10 year of experience and has worked with various organisations such as the AfDB, UNDP-Ghana, British Council – Ghana, Ghana Cocoa Bod, World Cocoa Foundation, Overseas Development Institute – UK and Research ICT Africa – South Africa. His 6 years in Sustainable development research focused on the implication of global energy transition on Africa’s urban energy access in marginalised communities. He is exploring transdisciplinary research methods as a cutting-edge approach to address the many challenges found in standardised approaches adopted from the global north.

Professional Officer: Sustainable Energy Action and Political Liaison

Ayman Aribou

Ayman is a trilingual policy officer and an energy engineer by training. He has solid experience in working at the global network level and a proven track record in political advocacy in an African context. His academic background is in energy transition and governance, as well as energy efficiency and renewables. Ayman has a Master’s degree in Political Science and Social Science from the European Institute in Berlin (Germany), a Master’s degree in Automatic Control of Energy Efficiency from the University of Lorraine in Nancy (France), as well as an Engineering Degree in Renewable Energy from the International University of Rabat (Morocco).

Related Projects

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Smart Energy Solutions for Africa (SESA)
We, together with various partners, are jointly delivering activities under the SESA project, which aims at providing energy access technologies and business models that are easily replicable and generate local opportunities for economic development and social cohesion in selected sites in nine African countries.
WIOMSA
We are supporting and facilitating capacity building within coastal cities and the transfer of knowledge and expertise to harness the potential of these cities. We are assessing needs of coastal cities’ in the Western Indian Ocean region through a key stakeholder engagement workshops and delivering trainings on adapting to climate change and enhancing resilience.
African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC)
Cities are complex, dynamic, political systems. We bring together the right people and an understanding of the political economy of individual cities to identify and address the critical challenges they are facing. Our aim is to generate insights and evidence that will help improve the living conditions, services and life chances of all city residents, particularly for disadvantaged communities.
Supporting inclusive and sustainable food systems in rebuilding economies of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and Gauteng Provinces (FoodforRebuilding)
Building more inclusive and sustainable food systems has the catalytic potential to offer several economic and development benefits to all people, especially the poor and disadvantaged.

Related Resources

View More

The Team

View Staff
AllDirectorsSenior Professsional Officers
Director: Climate Change: Energy & Resilience

Dr Meggan Spires
Manager: Climate Change Resilience

Dr Kate Strachan
Professional Officer: Climate change, Energy and Resilience

Carine Lehtem Buma
Professional officer: Climate Change, Energy & Resilience

Dania Petrik
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Meagen Swain
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Nelson de Lamare
Professional Officer: Climate Change and Water Resource Management

Tarryn Quayle
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Vanessa Tshite
Research & knowledge management officer

Claudia Schroder
Communications Officer: Climate and Energy

Jarita Kassen
Communications Officer

Ayanda Mthethwa
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Nicola Rule
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Ryan Roberts
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Dr. Azizat Gbadegesin
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Lucy Lavirotte
Senior Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Sayuri Chetty
Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Kweku Koranteng
Professional Officer: Sustainable Energy Action and Political Liaison

Ayman Aribou
Director: Climate Change: Energy & Resilience

Dr Meggan Spires

Meggan believes that African cities are places of innovation and potential, where globally relevant solutions are found. She leads the Climate Change, Energy and Resilience workstream at ICLEI Africa, where a diverse team works with African city stakeholders to build resilience, enable low emission development, and improve access to finance and energy. Meggan holds a PhD in Environmental Science and before joining ICLEI Africa worked as a municipal official.

Manager: Climate Change Resilience

Dr Kate Strachan

Kate holds a PhD in Environmental Science, focused on coastal changes associated with climate change. She has a special interest in understanding climate change and the associated risks, especially relating to coastal cities. She has worked with and for local governments to build climate resilience, developing climate adaption plans, and identifying challenges and opportunities associated with natural assets to overcome shocks and stressors associated with climate change.

Professional Officer: Climate change, Energy and Resilience

Carine Lehtem Buma

Carine is passionate about energy, especially given the urgent need for sustainable energy access in Africa. She holds a MSc. in Physics and B.Eng in Petroleum Engineering. Carine joined ICLEI as an intern and is working on climate change and energy projects, including CoM SSA. She has experience in the design, monitoring and evaluation of photovoltaic systems, as well as on technical properties of petroleum products.

Professional officer: Climate Change, Energy & Resilience

Dania Petrik

Dania is a MPhil graduate from the Energy Research Centre, UCT, with a focus on climate change and poverty. Her background in communications equips her to effectively communicate climate related issues. She has over five years’ experience in climate research and consulting, working alongside donor agencies, practitioners, local and national government, regional networks, and with academia to implement a range of projects specifically around building capacity and improved climate governance.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Meagen Swain

Meagen Swain holds a Master of Philosophy in Climate Change and Sustainable Development from the University of Cape Town with a theoretical background in Environmental and Geographical sciences. Before joining ICLEI Africa as a Professional Officer in the Climate Change, Energy and Resilience workstream, she completed the City of Cape Town’s Urban Sustainability Internship Programme, within the City’s Environmental Management Department. During her time at the City of Cape Town, she supported the public participation process of the city’s Climate Change Strategy and assisted in strengthening the strategy and action plan. Her interests lie in climate change, resilience and urban greening.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Nelson de Lamare

Nelson is part of both the Climate Change, Energy & Resilience work stream, and the Membership team, while undertaking his MA in International Studies at Stellenbosch University. He has experience working for the Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Service, a global network of International Voluntary Service CSOs, as well as the culture and education sectors of UNESCO.

Professional Officer: Climate Change and Water Resource Management

Tarryn Quayle

Tarryn joined ICLEI Africa in 2009 and focuses on urban water and sanitation projects through the lens of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Tarryn has a keen interest in co-developing projects that reflect the demand-driven, inclusive and multi-stakeholder approaches integral to supporting sustainable urban development on the continent.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Vanessa Tshite

Vanessa holds a postgraduate diploma in Integrated Water Resources Management and a BSc in Environmental and Water Science from the University of the Western Cape. She joined ICLEI as an intern, working on two main projects – UNA and IMPACT. She has experience assisting with environmental legislation and related projects as an Environmental Compliance Assistant at the City of Cape Town and in the private sector.

Research & knowledge management officer

Claudia Schroder

Claudia holds degrees in Social Dynamics, Environmental Management and a masters in Environment, Society and Sustainability. Her role as a Research and Knowledge Management enables her to manage the knowledge and information processes for projects while simultaneously exploring the complex dynamics between humans and nature in the face of climate change.

Communications Officer: Climate and Energy

Jarita Kassen

Jarita Kassen spent the last two years working at Eyewitness News producing radio news stories and articles on a variety of topics. She is passionate about climate change and sustainability and excited to work in a communications position that addresses these issues. She has experience liaising with local government officials and gained a good understanding of government structures and communicating about political issues during her studies at the University of Cape Town. She has a BA degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics and an Honours degree in Political Communications, focusing on media. She also has a diploma in Business French and has dabbled in design and layout, and podcast production. Jarita will be joining the ICLEI Africa team as a Communications Officer for Energy and Climate Change, specifically to support communications for the CoM SSA Secretariat as well as our LoCS4Africa Virtual Congress, and other related campaigns.

Communications Officer

Ayanda Mthethwa

Ayanda Mthethwa brings with her a strong writing and journalism background. She has a BA Honours in Journalism and Media Studies from North-West University. Before joining ICLEI she worked as a reporter for Daily Maverick and headed up MavericKids where she mainstreamed climate considerations in ways that our younger generation can relate to. At ICLEI she’ll be assisting with project communications for some of our climate and energy projects.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Nicola Rule

Nicola is passionate about developing more just and regenerative urban systems through local climate action. She holds a Masters in Environmental Change and Management from Oxford University. She has worked in Environmental Management in the local government sector and as a climate change consultant, developing large donor-funded mitigation and adaptation projects with small island developing states (SIDS) and African countries. Nicola recently joined ICLEI to support African cities to develop and implement climate action plans under the CoM SSA initiative.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Ryan Roberts

Born in Johannesburg yet growing up in Durban, Ryan is comfortable having both plenty to do as well as nothing at all. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical engineering from the University of Pretoria. He then furthered his studies at Stellenbosch
University in sustainable and renewable energy, obtaining his Master’s in Philosophy in 2017.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Dr. Azizat Gbadegesin

Azizat holds a PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering,  and currently works on the CoMSSA, ENACT and AFMEG projects at ICLEI Africa. She has experience in capacity building, research, system  design, as well as project management and implementation in energy efficiency, decentralised renewable energy systems, and energy storage. She is passionate about contributing to sustainable energy development within African cities as the way to the overall development of the African continent.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Lucy Lavirotte

Lucy holds a Msc in Political Science and a MPhil in Climate Change and Development. She has worked on GCF and GEF adaptation project design in several French speaking countries before joining ICLEI Africa in early 2021. Lucy currently works on participatory adaptation action planning, gender inclusion and finance for local climate action under the CoM SSA project.

Senior Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Sayuri Chetty

Sayuri has an Environmental Science background and more than six years of project management and technical experience working with all spheres of government, private and public sector on a range of energy efficiency and renewable energy topics. Before joining ICLEI Africa in November 2021, she worked for GIZ South Africa and Eskom. Her interests lie in urban energy, equitable and inclusive low carbon development, climate change mitigation and gender mainstreaming.

Professional Officer: Climate Change, Energy and Resilience

Kweku Koranteng

Kweku is a professional Officer in ICLEI Africa’s Energy and Climate Resilience workstream. He has over 10 year of experience and has worked with various organisations such as the AfDB, UNDP-Ghana, British Council – Ghana, Ghana Cocoa Bod, World Cocoa Foundation, Overseas Development Institute – UK and Research ICT Africa – South Africa. His 6 years in Sustainable development research focused on the implication of global energy transition on Africa’s urban energy access in marginalised communities. He is exploring transdisciplinary research methods as a cutting-edge approach to address the many challenges found in standardised approaches adopted from the global north.

Professional Officer: Sustainable Energy Action and Political Liaison

Ayman Aribou

Ayman is a trilingual policy officer and an energy engineer by training. He has solid experience in working at the global network level and a proven track record in political advocacy in an African context. His academic background is in energy transition and governance, as well as energy efficiency and renewables. Ayman has a Master’s degree in Political Science and Social Science from the European Institute in Berlin (Germany), a Master’s degree in Automatic Control of Energy Efficiency from the University of Lorraine in Nancy (France), as well as an Engineering Degree in Renewable Energy from the International University of Rabat (Morocco).

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