Blog

Nachilala Nkombo

Nachilala Nkombo

Country Director, World Wide Fund for Nature – Zambia

Nachilala Nkombo is the Country Director for the World Wide Fund for Nature in Zambia. Since joining WWF in 2018, she has led WWF International conservation strategy in Zambia via a range of innovative science, policy, and field initiatives aimed at protecting and restoring Zambia’s rich biodiversity. Some of the programs include the restoration of depleted wildlife species and restoration of degraded forests, empowerment of communities with sustainability knowledge and livelihoods, and the Conservation of critical freshwater resources. Her work involves working with a range of partners spearheading national level sustainable development policy initiatives, mobilizing private sector green finance initiatives, and collective actions to secure advance Zambia’s sustainable development agenda. Nachilala is a leading voice on innovations on sustainability and sustainable agriculture in Zambia and in Africa. She has spoken at the World Economic Forum on Africa, The African Green Revolution Forum, the Africa Union Agriculture and Trade Ministers Conference, the Open Government Partnership Forum in Africa amongst others.

Prior to joining WWF Zambia, Nachilala served as Director and Deputy Director for Africa at the ONE Campaign in Johannesburg, South Africa. At ONE in Africa, she led the organisation’s strategy development and implementation; secured strategic partnerships with African Institutions, with think thanks, policymakers, Media CSOs, and the private sector. Her work focused on focus on securing public sector commitments to the 2030 sustainable development agenda based on best practices of policy and program success. In 2015 she mobilized voices of African citizens to influence the new SDG agenda. In 2014, she mobilized best research and Africa wide partnerships that secured African heads of state recommitment to investing in agriculture via an Africa Union Malabo declaration during the AU year of Agriculture and Food security. In Nigeria, she leads campaigns that led to the government commits to implement their national health act. In Mali, she led efforts to secure legislation for women to be first time owners of the land. With the African Development Bank, she contributed to the creation of the African Leaders of Network on Nutrition

Nachilala has over 10 years of management experience across various organizations where she successfully led a number of national and international policy reform initiatives. Her leadership expertise covers a range of sustainable development policy areas with the most recent ones where she successfully led partnerships with the Africa Union, the African Development Bank, civil society and governments of Benin, Nigeria, Niger, South Africa, Mali, Senegal, and Zambia focused on agriculture, nutrition health and land reform and investments.

As a global thought leader, Nachilala is a member of the Malabo – Montpellier panel, as well as the Chicago Council on Global Affairs 2018 global food security report task force and a board member of the Lusaka Water Security Initiative. She is a member of the WWF International Network Executive Team (NET) and was recently elected as the Governance Practice Champion for the WWF NET. The NET engages with and acts on behalf of the Network in making Network-wide decisions affected over 100 country programs worldwide and holds a Masters of Public Management from The University of Potsdam, Germany and a Bachelor of Arts, Economics University of Zambia.