Flower E. Msuya
Founder & Chairperson, Zanzibar Seaweed Cluster Initiative and senior researcher, Tanzania
Flower E. Msuya is a freelance senior researcher and expert in seaweed aquaculture with over 30 years of experience. She is the Founder and Chairperson of the Zanzibar Seaweed Cluster Initiative (www.seaweedcluster.or.tz) in Tanzania, where she connects farmers and small-scale processors with research, government and the private sector. Msuya has worked with the Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Dar es Salaam, including with its Department of Botany on the GlobalSeaweedSTAR project. She has also worked in starting and promoting seaweed farming and value addition in Mauritius (and Rodrigue), Mayotte, Mozambique and Kenya. She also pioneered the start of seaweed farming in southern Tanzania between 1995 and 1996.
For the past six years, Msuya has researched the impact of climate change on seaweed and is particularly committed to developing farming technologies to curb the impact of climate change, increase seaweed production and improve farmers’ livelihoods. She was the first person to produce the first seaweed value-added product in Tanzania in 2006 – prior to her work, there were no seaweed products in the country. Her work has helped especially marginalized women to improve their livelihoods by producing seaweed products.
SPEAKERS & MODERATORS
Zaidy Afrin
UN Fellow of Government of Grenada´s Blue Innovation Institute & Ph.D. Candidate at World Maritime University (WMU), Sweden
Vera Agostini
Deputy Director, Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy and Resources Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Italy
Kristal Ambrose
Founder and Director, Bahamas Plastic Movement; Ph.D. Candidate, World Maritime University (WMU), Sweden
Steven Bograd
Supervisory Research Oceanographer, NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Institute of Marine Sciences (UCSC), USA
Jens Brandenburg
Parliamentary State Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany
Isabella Lövin
Chair, Stockholm Environment Institute & Co-chair, Friends of Ocean Action & Author, Sweden
Carolyn Lundquist
Associate Professor at University of Auckland, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), New Zealand
Flower E. Msuya
Senior Researcher, Founder & Chairperson, Zanzibar Seaweed Cluster Initiative, Tanzania
Christian Müller
Head of marine resource exploration, German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Germany
Alexis Papathanassis
Professor for Cruise Tourism Management, the Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Angelique Pouponneau
Policy Adviser to the Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), Seychelles
Vladimir Ryabinin
Executive Secretary, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, France
Jörn Schmidt
Chair of Science Committee, International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), Denmark
Merete Tandstad
EAF-Nansen Programme Coordinator, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Italy