Albert Mvula is a PhD candidate in the Institute of Science and Environment at the University of Worcester studying sustainability of social-ecological systems and its application in studying the effectiveness, applicability and sustainability of farming systems and technologies across Africa. He was born and raised in a subsistence farming family in a remote area in Mzimba district, northern Malawi and later attended secondary school in the same district before his admission to the University of Malawi where he studied for a BSc in Natural Resources Management. He graduated from the University of Malawi in 2015 and later employed to coordinate a three-year Functional Landscape Approach (FLA) project in the rural Nkhata-Bay district in Malawi. Albert believes a ‘farmer-first’ approach in both co-development and promotion of farming technologies and the sustainable management of natural resources on which farmers’ livelihoods depend is the key to sustainable rural livelihoods development and poverty alleviation in developing countries. His interests span from the management of wetlands, forest resources, fisheries, climate change and soil and water conservation for smallholder farmers’ livelihoods improvement.