Silas Majambere

Silas is the Director of Scientific Operations at the Pan-African Mosquito Control Association (PAMCA), an African professional body that brings together players in the field of mosquito and mosquito-borne disease control. He is a medical entomologist with 15 years experience in the study and control of malaria mosquitoes. He started working on malaria vectors during his Master’s degree at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, where he worked on the ecology of larval stages of malaria mosquitoes. He did his PhD at Durham University in UK focusing on the ecology and control of malaria vectors using microbial larvicides in The Gambia.

He continued his research based at the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI) in Tanzania where he worked on a project that aimed at improving larviciding efficacy for malaria control by co-opting adult mosquitoes to carry larvicides into their breeding habitats (autodissemination of insecticides). During that time he also participated in a project aiming at designing cheap housing for itinerant rice-farmers who are at high risk of malaria transmission in Tanzania.

Silas has also played a role in supporting National Malaria Control Programs in Zanzibar and Burundi in the area of entomological monitoring, and is a great champion of building the capacity of Africans to address the problems of the continent. He later on worked for the Innovative Vector Control Consortium supporting research projects developing new tools for the control of outdoor malaria transmission. He is supporting a project in Mali investigating the impact of Attractive Toxic Sugar Baits on malaria incidence, and a project in Zanzibar developing Spatial Intelligence Systems (drones and mobile technology) to improve the cost-effectiveness of larviciding operations for malaria elimination.
For the past five years Silas has been co-chairing the Larval Source Management workstream of the Roll Back Malaria Vector Control Working Group. He has been supporting the PAMCA Secretariat for the past two years and will now manage PAMCA’s Scientific Operations.