Prof Gelson Tembo 

Executive Director

Professor Gelson Tembo is a holder of a PhD in Agricultural Economics (Oklahoma State University, USA), MSc Agricultural Economics (Oklahoma State University, USA) and a BSc in Agricultural Economics (UNZA). Prof Tembo is the Chairman of the Palm Group of Companies, an associate professor of development economics at the University of Zambia and an adjunct professor of business studies at the University of Lusaka. He is also a board member of Statmind Institute of Management and Development. He is also a board member of International Association of Agricultural Economics (IAAE), the Honor Societyof Phi Kappa Phi (USA), Gamma Sigma Delta Honor Society of Agriculture (USA) and International Association of Agriculture Economics (IAAE). For more than 20 years, he has overseen many evaluation studies and project M&E assignments in a wide range of sectors, including natural resource and wildlife management, social protection, food security, nutrition and agriculture. In the past decade, he has been co-PI in randomized control trial (RCT) studies on the impact of social cash transfers on poor households and communities in Zambia. This work has changed government policy and practice substantially, hence in 2014, the Government has increased 8 fold its budgetary allocation to social cash transfer while expanding such programs to 31 new districts. One of the reports out of this work received the 2014 global award as UNICEF’s best research output for that year. SEE