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Dr. Juliane Zeidler

Country Director

Thirty years ago, Juliane travelled through Africa from her home in Germany in an old Land Cruiser. This journey ignited her love for Africa, its people and nature. Starting her career as an ecologist in Etosha National Park and later working (and completing her PhD) at the Gobabeb Training and Research Centre in the Namib Naukluft Park, gave her a sound ecological foundation for her work in national programmes such as the Programme to Combat Desertification and the National Biodiversity Programme in Namibia. 

In the early 2000s she established her own consultancy in Namibia, working in Africa with a focus on a wide range of technical fields including, biodiversity, climate change, water, and marine conservation. A focus of her work has been to prepare country-led projects for funding by the GEF. She spent two years at the United Nations Conservation of Biological Diversity Secretariat in Montreal, Canada and led the IUCN Commission on Education and Communication as their Global Chair. A shift to Mozambique, where she lived for six years, gave her the opportunity to join the management team of the Gorongosa Restoration Project, a unique and progressive initiative that is fully committed to the wildlife and the people in and around the Gorongosa National Park. 

Although an ecologist by training, most of Juliane’s career has focused on bringing people, development needs, and nature conservation together. Her work is guided by her conviction that progress in environment and development work can only be achieved through overcoming capacity bottlenecks at the implementation level. Building local and national capacities to achieve sustainable development and complementing conservation goals are her passion.