Alfred Odindo is an Associate Professorr (Crop Scientist/Agronomist) in the School of Agricultural, Earth and Environmental Sciences (SAEES), University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in South Africa. His responsibilities include teaching undergraduate courses, postgraduate supervision, and research and community engagement. His current research interests fall within the emerging field of sustainability science. He focuses on understanding the interactions between engineering (sanitation innovations), agriculture and social systems and their application in seeking practical solutions to the global challenges of water, energy, food security and environmental pollution. He is currently leading a WRC project investigating sustainable waste/wastewater management practices that allow plant nutrient recovery and their agricultural reuse, exploring the integration of sustainable agricultural production in the design of low cost sanitation technologies by using plant nutrients and wastewater recovered from human excreta-derived materials (HEDM).

Odindo is Principal Investigator for the South African component of the Swiss funded project titled the rural-urban nexus: Establishing a nutrient loop to improve city region food system resilience. This project, using a transdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder development process, aims to establish a circular economy for resilient city region food systems in South Africa, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda by applying waste-recycling and small-scale processing innovations.