NEEMA ASENGA KYANDO

Chemistry professor at Dar es Salaam who made clean water her life's work

On the shelf in Professor Neema Kyando's office at Mlimani stood two jars: one of cloudy river water, and one of clear water, labelled in her firm hand 'Before' and 'After'. Every visitor was handed the clear one to taste. 'That,' she would say, 'is a village you will never have to visit with a coffin.' She spent forty years making that jar possible.

Neema was born in 1952 in Tukuyu, in the green highlands of Mbeya, the daughter of a Moravian schoolteacher who believed science was a form of prayer. She studied chemistry at the University of Dar es Salaam, took her master's at the University of Nairobi and her doctorate at the University of Birmingham, and returned to Mlimani in 1979 as a lecturer. She rose to Professor in 1996 and served as Head of the Department of Chemistry from 2001 to 2007. Her research on natural water purification using crushed moringa seeds has been used in dozens of villages along the shores of Lake Nyasa and Lake Victoria.

She supervised thirty-one master's and doctoral students, many of them women, whom she hosted in her home on Sunday evenings with ugali, fried dagaa and ruthless questions about their data. She was a soprano in the choir at Azania Front Lutheran Church, wore bright kanga to every faculty board and sent a handwritten thank-you note after every conference she attended. She was widowed in 2010 and spent her retirement tutoring secondary school girls in science at her kitchen table.

Neema died in Dar es Salaam in June 2024, aged seventy-two, after a short illness. She leaves her son, her daughter, seven grandchildren and thousands of former students who still carry her voice into the laboratory.

“A clear jar of water is the shortest proof that chemistry loves people.”