In this role, effective January 2025, Annah oversees the implementation and expansion of forest management certification and the FSC Ecosystem Services portfolio across the continent.
Her responsibilities include supporting the effective delivery and implementation of FSC policies, standards, and procedures; strengthening strategies to tackle labour issues in Africa; and fostering key collaborations to advance FSC's mission to promote responsible management of the world’s forests.
Annah brings a wealth of experience to the position. She recently served as the FSC Eastern Africa Sub-Regional Coordinator for six years (January 2019 – December 2024), where she provided technical support to governments, private sector companies, businesses, and stakeholders to promote and implement the FSC mission. Notably, she played a pivotal role in engaging Eastern African government agencies, some of which have already adopted FSC certification. She initiated smallholder group schemes across East Africa and helped smallholders such as the Uganda Timber Growers Association (UTGA) achieve the FSC certification. While taking on her new duties, Annah will continue to support the Eastern Africa sub-region as Coordinator.
Significant contributions to smallholder and community certification
Prior to this, Annah served as Projects Manager for the FSC Africa team (2016-2018) after a two-year period (2014-2015) as Smallholder Support Manager at FSC International Headquarters in Bonn, Germany. There, she was responsible for scaling up FSC certification for smallholders and communities globally, implementing strategies to improve access to local, regional, and global markets. She also managed communications on smallholder and community issues within the FSC system, including publishing quarterly stories gathered globally in collaboration with the FSC International communications team. In 2017, Annah pioneered the Continuous Improvement approach to certification for smallholders. This concept focuses on enabling smallholders and family forest owners to access the benefits of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification by progressively meeting the FSC standard's requirements. Adopted by the FSC, this initiative, after several stages of development has become the Continuous Improvement Procedure now implemented system-wide to support smallholder FSC certification.
24 years in the forestry business
Annah has 24 years of professional experience in forestry, natural resource management, and rural development. Before joining the FSC in 2014, she worked as a Technical Advisor, where she helped businesses in the private sector in Uganda mitigate their environmental footprint. She has also worked for international humanitarian NGOs such as Africare where she brought natural resource management and forestry at the fore of development assistance projects and programmes. Annah led projects that quantified carbon for payments for ecosystem services and drove other environmental protection projects in productive landscapes in Uganda.
Annah holds a Master of Science degree in Agroforestry and a Bachelor of Science degree in Forestry, both from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. She also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Project Planning and Management from the Uganda Management Institute (UMI).