Biography
Ruvimbo Samanga studied Law at the University of Pretoria up to Masters Level. Her Masters dissertation was on the Investment and Space Policy aspects of satellite technology in Zimbabwe’s mining sector. She is the National Point of Contact for the UN Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) for Zimbabwe as well as the National Representative for Women in Aerospace Africa (WIAA), Zimbabwe chapter. Ruvimbo has attended various high- level forums on Space in Australia, Germany, Austria, South Africa, Botswana, Ethiopia and Nigeria, and has moderated the Space Law & Policy Working Group at the African Leadership Congress, Youth Forum in Ethiopia. She has been instrumental in planning some of these regional meetings.
Her interest in space law began when she participated as a semi-finalist in the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition in Adelaide, Australia, and was named Best African Speaker in 2017. The following year she coached the University of Pretoria team and won the World Finals in Bremen, Germany, held during the 68th International Astronautical Congress in 2018. This was the first African team to win since the inception of the competition in 1991. Since then Ruvimbo has received a number of awards in recognition of her endeavours in Space Law & Policy, including the prestigious Zimbabwean Achiever of the Year Award in the Young Achievers Category and was also recognized as one of the Top 10 under 30 in the African Space Industry in May of 2019.
Ruvimbo is a Ban Ki Moon Global Citizen Scholar for 2020. She is also a Mandela-Rhodes Scholar and was invited to the European Forum Alpbach as a Robert Bosch Scholar in 2019.
She holds membership in Banking on Africa’s 10’000 Points of Light Programme, a Pan-African Youth led development think tank. She was recently pre-selected for the European Commission’s Young Leaders Program at the Global EU Development Conference set for 2021 in Munich, Germany. She currently works as a researcher and freelance writer/policy analyst having contributed to a number of reports for GMES & Africa, the AU, as well as the annual African Space Industry report. She has published various journal and online articles on legal developments in the body of Space Law. She was recently selected for the Space Traffic Management Diverse Dozen inaugural cohort by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. In December of 2020 she received the Emerging African Space Leaders Award from the Space Generation Advisory Council for her contribution to the development of the African Space Industry.
She currently works as a Research Fellow with the Open Lunar Foundation on lunar governance for in-situ resource utilisation.
She is also a Research Fellow with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa on the integration of geospatial systems and statistical information in the Southern African Development Community.
She has also worked at Space in Africa as a Space Law & Policy Analyst. Her future interests lie in Trade, Investment, Sustainability and Development Studies, Human Rights and Space Law.
