Vimbai Chaumba Kwashirai University of Duisburg-Essen, Faculty of Humanities African Studies 45117 Essen  Secretariat: Brigitte Fahl vimbai.kwashirai@gast.uni-due.de

Vimbai Chaumba Kwashirai is Zimbabwean. He holds a DPhil. from Linacre College in the Oxford University were he specialised in social and economic history. He has taught at a number of Universities in the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe. He is passionately engaged in researching the interface between rural poverty and environmental degradation, specifically in Zimbabwe, and in Southern Africa as whole. His research preoccupation is on the theme of poverty in Africa. The author believes that several years after independence, poverty in modern Africa has less to do with the colonial legacy but can be explained more by the calibre of political leadership that administers the continent. He is the author of Conservationism in Zimbabwe 1850-1950. His other books are: Zimbabwe: Poverty, Poverty and Poverty  and Green Colonialism in Zimbabwe; 1890-1980. He has also published: Shifting Cultivation: Debating Deforestation and Conservation in Colonial Zimbabwe 1900-1915; Dilemmas in Conservationism in Colonial Zimbabwe 1890-1930; Indigenous Management of Teak Woodland in Zimbabwe, 1850-1900; Poverty in the Gwai Forest Reserve of Zimbabwe c.1880-1953 and Ecological and Poverty Impacts of Zimbabwe's Land Struggle: 1980-2010.