19.06.2023
On the 25.05.2023, Custódio Efraim Matavel successfully defended his PhD work with the title“Integrating more efficient renewable energy technologies into food systems in Central Mozambique: Implications to food and nutrition security”.
The PhD defense was held at the Albrecht Daniel Thaer-Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the doctoral committee was headed by Prof. Dr. Klaus Eisenack.
Mr. Matavel was supervised by PD Dr. Stefan Sieber (Head of the working group “Sustainable Land Use in Developing Countries” at ZALF) and Prof. Dr. Klaus Müller (Professorship in Economics and Politics of Rural Areas at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Co-Head of Research Area 2 "Land use and governance" at ZALF).
Within his PhD, Mr. Matavel explores the effects of optimally designed processing energy usage on food and nutrition security in rural Mozambique. He followed an experimental and transdiciplinary approach to provide a holistic understanding of the effects of the newly introduced food processing technologies and the nature of food and nutrition security in Central Mozambique. Within five peer-reviewed articles, Mr. Matavel demonstrated the importance of staple crops and post-harvest technologies for the household food and nutrition security. Moreover, Mr. Matavel was able to provide strong evidence that the effectiveness of a technology dissemination program depends on the awareness of cost-effectiveness oft he training approach which, depending on the context, needs to be adjusted to achieve the highest impact per unit of resource expenditure.
The doctoral committee rated the PhD with an overall grade of magna cum laude.
We congratulate Mr Matavel!
