Governor Arlindo da Costa Chilundo, Lichinga, Mozambique

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Arlindo da Costa Gonçalo Mazungane Chilundo, born in 1962 in Quissico-Zavala, Inhambane Province, Mozambique, is currently the Governor of Niassa Province, Mozambique. He served as Deputy Minister of Education, responding for Higher Education, in the period between 2010 and 2015.

Governor Chilundo holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Minnesota, USA (1995) in African Social and Economic History. He is Associate Professor in the History Department at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM). He has been lecturing since 1986, after his graduation with distinction from Charles University in the former Republic of Czechoslovakia.

As a visiting Professor he has lectured at Colgate University in the USA. He has also taught at the University of Minnesota and delivered lectures at McGill University in Canada and at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, USA. He has also served as an external examiner at Agostinho Neto University in Angola.

His publications include books and articles on social and economic history as well as on land use and higher education issues.

Apart from teaching at the university, between 2001 and 2015 he has been involved in the management of higher education at the national level in Mozambique. First as the Coordinator of Higher Education (2001-2005) in the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology, then as an adviser to the Minister of Education and Culture on higher education matters (2005-2010), and finally as Deputy Minister of Education responding for Higher Education (2010-2015). Previously he had served as the Planning Director at Eduardo Mondlane University between 1997 and 2001.

Between 2006 and 2012 he was part of the ADEA Working Group on Higher Education, which he chaired from 2009 to 2012.

On a part-time basis he chaired the Land Studies Unit, known in Portuguese, as Núcleo de Estudos de Terra e Desenvolvimento, between 1997 and 2006, which was responsible for research on land and environmental issues, including gender in rural areas. Funded initially by USAID, then by Ford and Kellogg Foundations, this Unit was responsible for recommending new land legislation and its dissemination throughout the country, for training many young Mozambicans in research leading to scientific essays for the completion of the first degrees, and for sending abroad students for their M.A. degrees. Later the Unit led the process that established the first M.A. degree in Mozambique in Rural Sociology and Development.