A fellow of Carnegie Corporation of New York's Next Generation of African Academics initiative, Tamuka Moyo is working to increase transport access to marginalized groups in Cape Town and other low-income suburbs and informal settlements
This Q&A series highlights the experiences and achievements of select African researchers who have benefited from training and fellowship programs supported through Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Higher Education and Research in Africa portfolio.
Hazvinei Tsitsi Tamuka Moyo, PhD, is currently a senior transport modeler, Department for Transport (DfT).
I received a fellowship through Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Next Generation of African Academics initiative. The fellowship funded my PhD, which I finished in 2019, and I’m still working on my postdoc at the University of Cape Town. For my PhD I was trying to understand the development of land use and transport and how we can develop more proactive planning. I was looking at the exclusion of marginalized groups in Cape Town, but my research can apply to other areas with low-income suburbs or informal settlements.
I needed to understand why there were disparities in access to transport in Cape Town, and the opportunities that transport actually provides to people. I noticed that marginalized groups were located away from transport networks, so they had to spend lots of time commuting to work and recreation.
People see a road, but are they able to access the mode of transport on it that will get them from point A to point B?
Well, transport is about day-to-day life — people accessing recreation opportunities or getting to schools or jobs. People see a road, but are they able to access the mode of transport on it that will get them from point A to point B? So I was looking at buses, minibuses, and taxis — but also at this mode of transport we see all over Africa, which we call minibus taxis, or matatu, or some other name.
The minibus taxi serves low-income people in the cities and the informal settlements, getting them from their homes to the markets or job sites. They already operate on set routes in low-income neighborhoods, so how can we make them part of the formal transport system? Also, how can we work with them to reduce traffic congestion, because they contribute to it and Cape Town is in the top 50 most congested cities in the world. I was also looking at South Africa’s history of apartheid and how that has shaped the city and how people access transport.
Before COVID-19 hit, I was focusing on understanding ethnic segregation in relation to residential location choices. Why are apartheid-type structures still prevailing in Cape Town? You can pinpoint where the black population is living, the white population, the colored population — what are the drivers of residential location choices? Do those drivers explain the spatial distribution of different ethnic groups? How is that embedded in the way people perceive people of other ethnicities or other nationalities?
I was working on that for my postdoc — and then COVID happened. We were going to do field research with face-to-face interviews, but because of COVID we couldn’t. So we’ve made it an online survey — but that’s still a work in progress.
The research shifted to looking at the impact of COVID on mobility, using data from all over South Africa. It was very interesting to see how travel trends changed during the different stages of the lockdown. This was in collaboration with 20-plus academics from other universities from around the world, a research consortium involving six continents, spearheaded by Professor Stephane Hess at the University of Leeds.
Being published is really exciting to me, and I’m proud that I’ve managed to get two of my PhD articles published. A big surprise was how rewarding it was to bring in all the different perspectives from a huge academic community and how willing people are to collaborate.
Well, these policies are still works in progress, so there’s not yet the buy-in from policymakers. But I’m hoping we can still make this happen. In fact, my main PhD focus was to spotlight what has already been suggested and, using what-if scenarios, to then say, “You know what? If you actually do it, it will look like this. And if you change certain things, this is how things would look.”
Things are happening, but we’re talking about trying to rebuild decades of systemic segregation, so it’s not going to happen overnight.
Things are happening, but we’re talking about trying to rebuild decades of systemic segregation, so it’s not going to happen overnight. Also, the issue of funding will always be there.
Luckily for me, my mentor at UCT has also been my PhD supervisor, Professor Mark Zuidgeest. He represents what mentorship should look like, because he allows someone to develop as who they are. Most mentors try to recreate themselves through another person, whereas with him it’s like, “I want you to be you and to be better than I am, if possible.” He has also been very valuable in pointing out opportunities outside South Africa or outside UCT. His approach is, “Spread your wings and see what’s out there.”
Sometimes when you’re trying to move on in your career, you feel like you owe your supervisor something, so it’s difficult to leave. But Professor Zuidgeest told me that for him to grow, he needed to leave his own mentor. He needed to discover things for himself. So that was really helpful advice.
Nothing is as painful as being a young academic and struggling with funding. So Carnegie’s funding helped me a lot. Secondly, it was critical to have a support system and people around me who trusted that I was going to do good work and that if I needed help, I would ask for it, but who didn’t impose their ideas on my research. And it was helpful to have the opportunity to do a bit of teaching. Again, that was through Mark — he set it up for three of us to teach in Namibia. It built my confidence: if you’re trusted with teaching at such a high level, it means you’re doing something right.
In terms of hindrances, my PhD journey was difficult in that there was a time when Mark and I could not do anything except wait because I was using software provided by a company in the Netherlands. They were focusing on other things and remembering the PhD student in Africa who needed help — that wasn’t always the case. I probably could have finished my PhD a lot earlier than I did and wouldn’t have had the thoughts of quitting that I had. Again, having Mark around helped a lot because he assured me that my problems were outside of my control.
Later, my contribution might be in mentoring students who are thinking of going into academia. And the best way to do that is if I’m in the system. Right now I think of myself as an active academic — maybe not fully in academia, but I’m still very active.
I want to keep one foot in academia, because I think going back is difficult if you’ve spent a lot of time outside of academia. But I’m doing a lot of reviews for journals and I’m still working with Mark and hoping to continue that in the future. My passion is in teaching, and also in doing research that will be impactful in Africa. But I feel that this is the time for me to develop myself and be financially stable so that I can do the things I love. Later, my contribution might be in mentoring students who are thinking of going into academia. And the best way to do that is if I’m in the system. Right now I think of myself as an active academic — maybe not fully in academia, but I’m still very active.
I would say it doesn’t mean you have to be on the continent. Sometimes doing valuable work for the continent means going to places where there is funding. A lot of funded centers outside of Africa do research that is directly focused on Africa. As Africans, we know about our continent and we need to influence the research that gets done there, especially when there is an opportunity for cross-continental collaboration.
I thought I would be a soccer player, and when I finished my undergraduate work I wanted to be a farmer. I actually took a gap year and did farming in Zimbabwe for one season. But I missed academic life, being in a system of rules and timetables. So I went back, and I wanted to work on something tangible to try to effect change. And land use and transport are very tangible. I am able to go outside and relate what I do to what’s actually going on in the world around me. I think that really sums it up.
I’ve been trying to hike every weekend, and I’m working out. There are some beautiful hikes in the Lake District or in the Peak District around Leeds. In 2021 I completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge, almost like a marathon, about 38.6 kilometers (24 miles) — including 1,585 meters of ascent.
I grew up in a semi-mountainous area, so going up and down a mountain was just something we did to get anywhere. I also enjoy trying out different food cultures. COVID really affected my joy in life there because I used to travel a lot — and one of the best parts of traveling is enjoying the different foods, even if it was a work trip.
Yes, I’ve always cooked but now I’m more adventurous. For example, I made a Taiwanese noodle soup, and I made my own noodles. And a friend said, “But you can buy those for like one pound at the grocery store.” — And I’m like, “But that’s not the point.”
I’m reading Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker because I have chronic insomnia. And it’s scaring me into sleep because he says lack of sleep may result in dementia. This is not what I want to be reading. But it literally scares me to sleep, so it’s working. Also I’m reading Good Economics for Hard Times by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, nonfiction and very educational.
My mom. Her formal education ended after Grade 5 because she grew up during the Rhodesian War when Zimbabwe was still colonized by Britain. The family priority was sending the male kids to school. But seeing what she has built through hard work and being self-employed is just amazing. Also my dad, because he was a teacher and somehow managed to send five kids to school on a teacher’s salary. That’s also how I got into farming because he did a lot of it to supplement his income to be able to send us to school. He would sell tomato seeds or vegetable seeds, but a lot of people buying them didn’t actually know how to grow these vegetables. So, he would sell the seeds, the plants would die, and the people would come back and buy vegetables from him.
They never really knew what I was up to because one minute I was doing economics and then I moved on to transport. My mom still doesn’t understand what I’m doing. It was one of my older brothers who pushed me to apply for the UCT master’s program. We had a fight about it because I was in Cape Town living with him, but I wasn’t doing anything. He was like, “You’re just sitting. You’re not doing anything. Just apply for this.”
And I remember looking him in the eye, which is disrespectful in my culture if it’s someone older than you, and I said, “I’m not gonna do it.” And he said, “Well, if you don’t do it, good for you, but you have to pack your bags and go back home,” which is to Zimbabwe. Then he said that when I figured out what I wanted to do, he would support whatever it was.
Exactly. He has always supported what I wanted to do. He paid my school fees at one point, and he set aside some of his own dreams so that mine could come true.
Yeah, definitely.
Alloya Elwadie was formerly a program analyst with the Corporation’s Higher Education and Research in Africa program. She came to the Corporation from DAL Group in Sudan where she served as a coordinator for various corporate social responsibility initiatives.
TOP: Hazvinei Tsitsi Tamuka Moyo, PhD (Credit: Aya Sinada)
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