Wanga Zembe-Mkabile

Wanga Zembe-Mkabile is a South African social policy researcher at the South African Medical Research Council, specializing in tracking food insecurity. She is known for working to develop research methods cooperatively with local communities.

Education Zembe-Mkabile earned her Bachelor of Social Science from the University of Cape Town. She has spoken about the discomfort and invasiveness of some part of her research on food security, and the difficulty of negotiating power dynamics between student researchers doing field work and their mentors who may not appreciate the sensitivity of research topics. In particular, she has advocated for community-aware and -involved research methods, stating that "Some questions are not worth exploring if they are going to trample on people's dignity."

Career Zembe-Mkabile is a specialist scientist at the South African Medical Research Council's Health Systems Research Unit. She has analyzed the experience of government grant recipients qualitatively on an individual level, capturing details that quantitative research misses. Furthermore, her work has shown that current grants and welfare efforts are inadequate in providing for children's basic nutritional needs.

In addition to her research, Zembe-Mkabile is also an advocate in the lay press for more effective social grants, in particular during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her recent work has focused on the effects of COVID-19 on food security for families in poverty or who lost work as a result of lockdowns in the Langa township of Cape Town, documenting how existing government measures have provided only inconsistent support for many parents and caregivers.