Dr Megan Harrington

Anthropologist and Managing Director at Kamili Development

Speaker

Dr Megan Harrington is an anthropologist and development consultant, specialising in the anthropology of sugar in Africa. Megan is Managing Director of Kamili Development, a Tanzania-based consultancy working across Eastern and Southern Africa. She has 20 years’ experience working in rural development, over a decade working within African agribusiness, and researches and consults on the social and development dynamics of African sugar production.

Megan holds a PhD in International Development from the University of Edinburgh, based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork living in a village outside Nchalo Sugar Estate, Malawi. In her doctoral work, Megan examined the social and economic development dynamics of sugar production across the complete value chain. Megan continues to research global production systems in Africa, with particular attention to the lived experience of labour, livelihoods, and production dynamics, and in understanding the sustainable development implications of global trade, global value chains, and corporate capital in African agribusiness.

Alongside her academic work, Megan has worked for the ABF Sugar group, leading group-level strategy on grower agriculture and social development across the Groups’ African operations. Through her consultancy, Megan supports organisations to translate complex social realities into practical, context-sensitive strategies for more inclusive and sustainable agricultural systems.

As part of this year’s Africa Sugar Conference, Megan aims to bring a social science lens to exploring the utility of Africa’s sugar sector to drive sustainable development agendas across the continent, and seeks to encourage business leaders and policymakers in the sector to act with intentionality as they address the social dynamics of their ESG and supply chain strategies.