Christopher Manyamba, who is a research officer at ReSAKSS-SA based in IWMI, has been awarded one of the four Ph.D. dissertation research fellowships on the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) by IFPRI and its partners.

As a Malawian native, Christopher is going to take a participatory approach in the design and implementation of a household survey in his home country and to use robust statistical models in computing the WEAI and aggregating Food Security Score, in order to understand if empowering women in agriculture plays a critical role in agricultural growth and food security. There is a potential of conducting a cross country comparison of the analysis with other sub Saharan African countries which will conduct similar studies in the same period; these include Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Mozambique, Kenya, and Senegal. His proposed study was chosen from a strong pool of applications focused on 19 Feed the Future countries, as a result of empirical and multidimensional utilization of the WEAI.

Released on February 28, 2012, the WEAI is a partnership among IFPRI, the US Government's Feed the Future initiative of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) of Oxford University. The objectives of the fellowship are to strengthen understanding and evidence of the WEAI; to expand understanding of WEAI dynamics through complementary qualitative and ethnographic work; and to support promising researchers interested in gender and agriculture. Read more about the WEAI.

Big Congratulations to Chris!

>> Read the press release