Alumni of the Month

Joyce Elzear Nyoni is UDSM’s ‘Alumna of the Month’ for January 2022. She is currently the Rector of the Institute of Social Welfare, a government-owned higher education institution located in Dar es Salaam. A Tanzanian—and of an indigenous south-Tanzanian progeny— Joyce was actually born in 1969 in Nairobi, Kenya. The apparent puzzle is settled by the fact that she was born at a time her dad was a professional working for the East African Common Services [precursor of today’s East African Community], at that time posted in Nairobi. She was enrolled at Oyster-bay Primary School in Dar es Salaam (for the final class of primary education), from where her academic journey proceeded toZanaki Girls secondary school for the first two years of ‘O-Level’(1984-85), then to Ashira Girls(in Moshi) for the remaining two years of ‘O-Level’ (1986-87) and, subsequently, to Msalato High School (in Dodoma) for the ‘A-Levels’ (1988-90).

With the requisite passes from the Advanced Certificate of Secondary Education Examinations (ACSEE) in 1991, she was admitted at the University of Dar es Salaam for an undergraduate study programme in Sociology, majoring in medical sociology. She completed the programme with an honours B.A. degree award in 1995, and, with the deserving qualifications, she was taken on by the Department of Sociology as a tutorial assistant and at the same time enrolled for a two-year postgraduate (master’s) degree programme. After acquiring the Master’s degree and for the ensuing period until 2000, she engaged herself in free-lance consultancy, particularly in areas of NGO-sponsored research investigations and rapid assessments for decision making in the social, health and related sectors. She formally re-joined the Department of Sociology in 2000. She was later to undertake a more specialised doctoral study from 2003 to 2008. Thus, clearly, Dr. Nyoni grew up steadily within the academic ranks from Assistant Lecturer (2000-08) to Lecturer (2009-19) and Senior Lecturer (April 2019). But also, Joyce offered the University her share of distinguished service as a Head of Department for four years from 2011 to July 2015.

In April 2016, Dr. Nyoni left University service upon getting an appointment from the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) as Director of Social Sciences. She served there for three years until March 2019, when, in April 2019, she was appointed to the position of Rector at the Institute of Social Work (ISW). This carries with it the position and responsibility as chief executive officer of this higher-education (training and research) institution. She is a full-time teacher and researcher as well. The Institute has an established point of anchorage in the long history of Tanzania. It was established through parliamentary Act No. 26 of 1973 with the purpose of training and preparing human resources [“manpower”] for strengthening the government’s social service delivery structure and system within the nation’s overall social and community development context.

The principal products expected of the Institute remain as stipulated in the 1973 Act (as amended by the Miscellaneous Act No. 13 of 2002), namely providing training in social service delivery, as well as conducting research and consultancy in the fields of social work, labour studies and human resource management. Yet, these ‘functional products’ provide the refinement of a people-development-oriented programme that was itself a progeny of nascent social welfare tenets dating back to 1961, with rudiments traceable even further back to the colonial social and labour conditions of the 1920s and ’30s. With the changing circumstances of modern society in Tanzania, it should not surprise anyone that the government has a long-rooted yet forward-focussed commitment to harnessing schemes and tools of social welfare for a healthy nation.

In view of this, the ISW has an increasingly growing research-cum-action agenda towards solutions to a myriad problem arising from—and oft accentuated by—issues in social change. Currently, the Institute conducts surveys as well as cutting-edge action-research programmes in such wide areas of concern as labour relations, social work delivery modes, public management and human resource management. In all these, there is an emphasis on collaboration and synergy between experienced senio staff talents and younger upcoming staff-in-training, as well as between indigenous knowledge-based solutions and external collaborator inputs. In the final analysis, the Institute is to provide leadership towards some of the problem mitigation efforts in the various sectors of the national economy as it addresses a myriad of interlocking issues in social-service delivery and others of immediate, medium term as well as ultimate importance.

A seasoned researcher and consultant, Dr. Joyce ElzearNyoniis well-known not only for her focused inclination towards multi-disciplinary research agenda for higher education institutions, particularly in the social-cultural arena, but, also, she has a rare skill of negotiation for investments into social welfare research. She has a credit for over 50 consultancy products, more than 20 formal publications, and many more works presented or discussed at a variety of forums. She has attracted external funding for research from as many as four international organisations such as the Foundation of AIDS Research (amfAR) (2009-2011), US National Institute of Mental Health (2011-14), Swedish Research Council (2015-2017) and Africa-UniNet (2021 ongoing). The University of Dar es Salaam, her alma mater does wish her the same spirit of determination and energy as she had always shown at her Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology.