Neville Gabriel is the Founding Executive Director of the Southern Africa Trust, an independent regional agency that supports deeper and wider policy engagement between governments and non-state actors to overcome poverty in Southern Africa. He is also a non-executive director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and the African Forum on Debt and Development (AFRODAD), a Board Member of the Goedgedacht Forum for Social Reflection, and a Senior Fellow of the Synergos Institute.
Prior to founding the Southern Africa Trust, Mr. Gabriel worked at Oxfam as its Southern Africa Regional Media and Advocacy Coordinator as well as at the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC), where he held a number of positions, including SACBC Secretary for Economic Justice, Coordinator of the Justice and Peace Department, and part of the founding team of the SACBC Parliamentary Liaison Office in Cape Town. He also co-founded the Jubilee 2000 South Africa coalition for debt cancellation as part of the global Jubilee movement, serving as its national secretary, national executive committee member and spokesperson.
Neville Gabriel was born in Durban, South Africa. He matriculated with distinction before completing a BA in Social Sciences at the University of Cape Town. After a year’s retreat and community service in an impoverished rural village in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, he returned to study philosophy at the University of Natal and theology at St Joseph’s Theological Institute concurrently, graduating with Honours in Social Sciences (cum laude) from the University of Natal.
