Michael Agenbag joined Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) in 2013 as a lecturer. From 2018 to 2020, he headed the Environmental Health Programme in the Faculty of Applied Sciences. Before, he was the Manager for Municipal Health Services at the Joe Gqabi District Municipality in the Eastern Cape Province (South Africa) for 22 years, where he inaugurated the services. Since 1997, he has presented his experiences at various national and international conferences regarding the design and execution of rural environmental health services.
He also served on various national and regional environmental health task teams at the National Department of Health and the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) that dealt with, among others, the funding, consolidation, and improvement of local government environmental health services in the country. Since the inception of the National Alfred Nzo Achievement Award in 2002, he was twice (2002 and 2010) under the top three recipients to appraise outstanding work in the environmental health fraternity. Besides his work experience, he studied at the erstwhile Cape Technikon and Free State Technikon, where he obtained his National Diploma in Public Health (1987) and his B.Tech. Environmental Health (1999). He completed his PhD (environmental health) in 2023, with the topic ‘Towards effective local government environmental health services: A policy impact analysis approach’. Over the years, he published multiple articles in national and international peer-reviewed journals while also contributing to book chapters.