Dr. Joy Asongazoh Alemazung is the Mayor of the town of Heubach in Baden-Württemberg. He is the first African-born mayor of a German town and was elected in the first round of voting with over 66 percent of the vote against five competitors. His work combines municipal political responsibility with academic expertise and international experience.
Dr. Alemazung completed his school education and Abitur in Cameroon. His studies brought him to Germany. He earned his doctorate at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in political science and sociology, focusing on state-building, governance, and political transformation processes in Sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, he studied sociology and political science at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen–Nürnberg.
Professionally, he served as a senior civil servant at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and as a project manager at Engagement Global gGmbH. In these roles, he was responsible for programmes on municipal development policy, migration, civil society, and international cooperation.
He also served as a lecturer at universities and as a speaker and moderator at national and international conferences.
The political and social actions of Dr. Joy Asongazoh Alemazung are fundamentally shaped by his Christian faith. He understands leadership as service to people, not as the exercise of power. This attitude is guided by the Christian-Western tradition of responsible leadership, as articulated by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, among others: leadership means responsibility for the common good, moderation in action, and respect for the dignity of every person.
This understanding of values is complemented by the upbringing of his father, who instilled in him early on a sense of responsibility, humility, and readiness to serve.
From this conviction arose his campaign motto:
“Leadership is the privilege of serving people – not the right to rule over them.”
For Alemazung, politics therefore means making decisions with sound judgment, enabling dialogue, and creating trust through reliability and integrity – especially where politics has the most immediate impact: in municipalities.
Dr. Alemazung is married and father of three children. Family, faith, and social cohesion form the foundation of his personal and political actions.