Olipa Nyazambe Lungu

Department of Soil Science
Lecturer
Biography
Academic Qualifications:
  • MSc. Physical Land Resources, Ghent University, Belgium
  • B. Agric Sc. Soil Science, University of Zambia, Zambia

Ms. Lungu O.N is a Lecturer at the University of Zambia (UNZA) in the Department of Soil Science. She has been teaching undergraduate Agro-Climatology and Soil Physics since 2013. She is currently a CAS-TWAS President’s Fellow at the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.  Her research focuses on agriculture and food security, particularly using remote sensing and geographical information systems (RS-GIS) techniques in data-scarce environments. She serves as a core writing team member for the CropWatch Bulletin, a remote sensing-based global crop condition, and production monitoring system. CropWatch is China’s main crop monitoring system which informs policy-makers and various stakeholders on crop production, thus ensuring food security for over a billion people.

Prior to her appointment, Ms. Lungu was a Staff Development Fellow in the Department of Soil Science (UNZA) from September 2010 to 2013, and a Flemish Government for Development Cooperation (VLIR-UOS) Fellow at Ghent University from 2011-2013 majoring in Soil Science. She also served as a consultant to map the food systems for Lusaka City under the Food and Agricultural Organization’s (FAO) City for Food Programme in 2016. Ms. Lungu is also involved in supervising undergraduate students in their final year research projects.

Courses taught include:
  • Soil Physics (CC)
  • Agro-climatology
  • Integrated Land Husbandry
  • Environmental Soil Physics
  • Final Year Research Projects
  • Watershed Management and Monitoring
  • Soil Pollution and Solid Waste Management
  • Management of Irrigation and Drainage Systems

Apart from teaching, she is involved in Curriculum Development, and Review of the aforementioned, and related courses. She has been engaged in multi-disciplinary research and consultancy work such as the Development of Post-harvest technologies for cereals and legumes in Zambia and Mozambique, Scaling-up Conservation Agriculture in Zambia, Strengthening Capacity in Environmental Physics, Hydrogeology and Statistics for conservation agriculture research, Crop monitoring, and Mapping of city-region food systems in Lusaka, among others. Mentoring students and farmers, making policy recommendations to Government, as well as coordinating School seminars, (a platform for stakeholder engagement, sharing of experiences, research findings, opportunities, and challenges in multi-disciplinary topics as they cut across agriculture) are also an integral part of her contribution to public service.

 

Research Interests

Climate-smart and digital agriculture, particularly land and water management, Environmental and Earth sciences, Agro-climatology, and Food security.