He has built iRise Carbon's HR infrastructure across 12 districts in three months. His standard: he would not put anyone through a process he could not defend to them face to face.
This week, Monday opened with SDG 8 — Decent Work and Economic Growth — and the four mechanisms through which iRise Carbon delivers formal employment, transferable skills, supply chain activity, and economic multipliers in rural Malawi. Wednesday's article asked the larger question: why does iRise Carbon exist, and what is the obligation that Africa's carbon opportunity carries?
Both articles pointed to the same foundation: that none of it works without the people infrastructure underneath it. The formal contracts, the fair wages, the onboarding processes, the HR systems that travel from headquarters in Blantyre to field districts that iRise Carbon entered last month — all of that is Gibby Musukwa's work.
Meet Gibby Musukwa — HR & Payroll Manager at iRise Carbon, based in Blantyre, Malawi.
“I would not put someone through a process I could not defend to them face to face.”
— Gibby Musukwa, HR & Payroll Manager, iRise Carbon
The engine room
Ask Gibby what surprises people about his role, and the answer cuts straight to the point.
My role is as much about culture-building and talent strategy as it is about contracts and compensation. In just three months, we have expanded our team across 12 districts, which means HR is not a back-office function here — it is the engine room of everything we are building.
The scale of what that means becomes clear quickly. iRise Carbon has grown from a small team to employees across 12 districts — Kasungu, Mchinji, Namwera, and beyond — each requiring onboarding, employment documentation, policy application, and ongoing HR support. Gibby has designed and deployed the systems that make that possible, in real time, at a pace that most organisations would not attempt.
What drew him to iRise Carbon
What drew him to iRise Carbon was the scale of the ambition and the sincerity behind it.
When I learned that this organisation was not just talking about carbon and climate but actually building formal employment in communities across Malawi, I felt something shift.
The decisive moment was meeting the leadership team.
When I met Alex and the leadership team, I understood immediately where that drive comes from — this is a CEO who genuinely believes that how you treat people is inseparable from the mission. For me, as someone who has spent my career in HR, that alignment between leadership values and people practice is rare.
For Gibby, the rarity of that alignment was the draw: 'I knew I wanted to be part of building something that could become a model not just for Malawi, but for how mission-driven organisations operate across the continent.'
On integrity
We asked Gibby what integrity means in his work. His answer does not reach for abstraction.
Integrity in HR means every person who joins iRise Carbon — whether they are a district field officer or a headquarters analyst — is treated with the same fairness, dignity, and transparency from day one. It shows up in how we write job descriptions, how we run interviews, how we onboard people into a rapidly growing team now spread across 12 districts, and how we make sure compensation is accurate and delivered on time.
The standard is personal.
Our CEO Alex sets a standard of absolute accountability at the top, and my job is to make sure that same accountability runs through every HR process we have. I would not put someone through a process I could not defend to them face to face.
SDG 8 from the inside
iRise Carbon's SDG 8 contribution is documented externally in monitoring reports. Gibby describes what it looks like to build it from the inside.
Decent work at iRise Carbon is something I see being built in real time. In three months, we have gone from a small team to employees across 12 districts, and every single one of those people has a formal contract, a defined role, a fair wage, and access to HR support. That is not accidental — it is the result of deliberate HR architecture that we have had to build fast and build well.
The significance of that architecture is not lost on him.
iRise Carbon is, as far as I know, the largest organisation of its kind in southern Africa — possibly the world — doing this kind of carbon and community work at scale. That means the HR standards we set here matter beyond our borders. SDG 8 is not a reporting framework for us. It is the operating standard.
On managing consistency across 12 districts
Managing HR consistency across 12 districts requires you to build systems that travel. I have designed our HR framework around portability: every policy, every onboarding document, every employment record follows the same standard whether someone is based in Lilongwe or working in a field district we entered last month.
I cannot be everywhere, so I have invested heavily in making sure that managers at district level understand their HR responsibilities and have clear escalation paths back to me. The framework is national; the relationship is personal.
On decent work for field workers and headquarters staff
Decent work means identical principles applied to different realities. A team member at our headquarters and a field worker in a rural district we just entered both deserve a formal contract, clarity on their role, fair compensation, and the knowledge that HR is genuinely accessible to them.
The principle is non-negotiable: 'iRise Carbon's mission is to make a difference in communities, and that mission starts internally. If we do not treat our own people with the same dignity we are advocating for externally, nothing else holds.'
On payroll and the communities where the team lives
At iRise Carbon, payroll accuracy is non-negotiable, and so is timeliness. But payroll is one part of a much larger HR commitment to our people. Getting compensation right is the baseline; what sits above it is the full architecture of good employment: clear job descriptions, structured onboarding, professional development, fair treatment, and open HR communication.
The stakes are clear: 'Our people live in the communities where they work. A late payment or an HR process that fails them is not an administrative error — it is a breach of the trust that Alex and the leadership team have worked hard to build.'
What makes iRise Carbon different
What makes iRise Carbon genuinely different is that the passion is real and it starts at the top. Alex drives this organisation with a conviction that is impossible to fake, and it creates a culture where people are not just doing jobs — they are part of something they believe in.
From an HR perspective, that changes everything. My job is to protect and scale that culture as we expand, and to make sure that every person we bring into the team across our 12 districts carries that same commitment to the mission. Finding people worthy of that is not a recruitment task — it is a calling.
To anyone considering iRise Carbon
I would tell them: iRise Carbon is the kind of organisation you will look back on and say you were proud to have been part of. We are operating at a scale that no comparable organisation in southern Africa has reached, expanding across 12 districts and growing our team rapidly, but the culture has not been diluted by that growth.
What I look for in every person we hire is not just competence, but genuine belief in what we are building. If that is you, you will find your people here.
Gibby Musukwa is HR & Payroll Manager at iRise Carbon. Follow iRise Carbon on LinkedIn for the next article in the Meet the Team series — every Friday for 15 weeks.
www.irisecarbon.com · Carbon with Integrity · Measured. Transparent. Community-driven.
iRise Carbon
Published 29 May 2026
Week 9 · All Three Articles
Explore the full week's content
MondaySDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth — Carbon Finance as Africa's Job Creation Engine
Read
WednesdayAfrica: The Opportunity and the Obligation — Why iRise Carbon Exists
ReadFridayYou're hereMeet Gibby Musukwa — The Engine Room of iRise Carbon
