Zak Essa
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About
Fresh from the economics classrooms of the University of Cape Town, I made my way to Nqileni Village in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. There, working for the Bulungula Incubator at a no-fee school, I encountered the daily realities of systemic inequalities - and people who are fiercely determined to sustainably end poverty in a generation. Later, I migrated northwards to study for a Master’s in Development Studies at the University of Oxford where I aspired to build a toolkit to better understand the world's inequalities: I learned why politics matters, why history's ills linger long after liberation, and about the dangers of searching for silver bullet solutions to complex problems. While here, I spent three months conducting fieldwork in Mathare Valley in Kenya, I worked as a Research Assistant for the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and was elected as a Global Leadership Initiative Fellow.
The road from Oxford led me to the Project Management Office in the Presidency of the Republic of South Africa. As a social protection analyst, I worked with the Presidential Employment Stimulus, which has created over two million jobs and livelihood opportunities. This work sharpened my focus on two questions: how social protection can create sustainable pathways out of poverty, and how it might respond to mounting climate challenges. Now, as a PhD student in Environmental Policy and Development, I am trying to answer them by drawing (mostly) from critical perspectives on human development and adaptation to climate change.
Publications
Zak Essa and Kate Philip (2024) "The role of Public Employment in the climate crisis" Econ3x3. Read article.
Media
- South Africa’s impressive social protection system could be used to help mitigate climate disasters (with Jack Calland for Daily Maverick)
- Missing multidimensional poverty data hinders SDGs (for Global Dev)
- Voter Apathy Among the Youth Is Not a Sign of Political Apathy (for The Elephant)
- How to keep a movement alive: Lessons from 14 years of sustained activism in Xolobeni on the Wild Coast (with Tess Peacock for Daily Maverick)
Research Interests
- Climate change adaptation
- Social protection
- Climate resilient development
- Social differences and intersectionality
- Human development, poverty, and capabilities
Supervisors
- Declan Conway
- Kasia Paprocki
- Lisa Schipper