My research work thus draws from a rich educational background plus rich experience amassed, among several other things, from farming, university teaching (with University of Glasgow, University of Malawi, and LUANAR) as well as managing development projects in the United Nations for over four years – as Programme Analyst (UNDP) then as Programme Policy Officer (WFP/UNICEF/UNFPA). The development projects had agriculture, ENRM and climate resilience at the core. This work in programme management involved field stationing in a local district, Mangochi, managing an annual budget of about USD 1.5 mn, and overseeing the work of about 15 implementing partners including government departments and non-governmental organizations (under a WFP/UNICEF/UNFPA-supported Joint Programme on Girls’ Education; see https://mptf.undp.org/fund/jmw10 and https://malawi.un.org/en/46829-fact-sheet-un-joint-programme-girls-education-jpge); and an annual budget of about USD 600K in the Poverty Environment Initiative whilst with UNDP (see https://www.undp.org/malawi/projects/joint-undp-unep-poverty-and-environment-initiative). Whilst with UNDP, I also made significant implementation, monitoring and evaluation contributions into the Sustainable Land Management (SLM) project (see https://erc.undp.org/evaluation/evaluations/detail/5473). Among several of my key achievements were successful implementation of the projects and programmes which entailed providing investment, budget and policy guidance, as well as coordination, knowledge management and M&E support, for national and district governments as well as development partners and the private sector; the generation of key knowledge products for environmental and natural resources management advocacy (including investment, budget and policy guidance) at national and international levels whilst with PEI/SLM; and significant improvements in basic education indicators whilst with JPGE. I also contributed into the design of successor projects, and a successor environment and natural resources management programme for UNDP (see https://info.undp.org/docs/pdc/Documents/MWI/ENRM%202015%20%20AWP%20signed.pdf).

With a proven track record of completing work to standard, on time and within budget; my recent research (and evaluation) experience thus includes the national baseline study of nutrition governance in Malawi (for Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH); a gender-sensitive cowpea value chain analysis for Malawi (with input into Mozambique and Tanzania analyses) with the Center of Innovation for Crop Improvement for East and Southern Africa (CICI-ESA); the Ex-post Evaluation of the Project “Strengthening Kakungu Community Resilience to Climate Change through Development of Sustainable Livelihoods” (for Plan International German National Office); a Continental In-depth Study on the Situation of Teenage Pregnancy in Africa – Malawi Component (for African Child Policy Forum [ACPF], Ethiopia); final evaluation of the 5-district Agro-Ecology for Communities Resilience to Climate Change in Malawi Project (A4CRCC) (for Churches Action in Relief and Development, CARD); management of a conceptual and empirical research project, “Personal Identity, Conflict & Human Security: Reimagining the Family, Friendships, Worship & Youthhood”, for TRACK-IT Limited; management for Point Media Limited of the research project, “The impact of international migration on Malawi economy”; development and management of a research database including setting up for computer assisted personal interviews (CAPI), for the project “Placing Communities at the Heart of Drone use in Malawi”, for Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) in association with University of Glasgow; the Mid-Term Evaluation of the Project “Strengthening Kakungu Community Resilience To Climate Change Through Development of Sustainable Livelihoods” for Plan International Germany. August 2018 – September 2019, I was part of a team that developed an Impact Evaluation Framework and conducted a Comprehensive Baseline Assessment for the Project titled “Saving Lives and Protecting Agriculture-Based Livelihoods in Malawi: Scaling Up the Use of Modernized Climate Information and Early Warning Systems (M-Climes)”, for UNDP and Government of Malawi. November – December 2018, for the Southern Africa Foundation for Agriculture and Climate Change (SAFFACC), I contributed to a Literature Review in Support of a Study on Transitioning Smallholder Tobacco Farmers to Alternative Value Chains, Malawi. I developed and wrote the section focusing on transitioning of women and youth, including recommending value chain development models.

Let me add that I have experience with content analysis, critical discourse analysis, econometric panel data analysis, general equilibrium modelling, choice experiment analysis, impact evaluation; and the associated data collection. I have received training in the fundamentals of computer programming and GIS; I am a proficient user of Stata, NVivo, and CAPI programming and database management using various packages including CSPro and ODK/KOBO. I usually work in Python for content and discourse analysis, besides N'Vivo and Atlas.ti. I am comfortable with SPSS, MS Excel, Google Earth Pro and MS Access. I have a basic understanding of Java, R, Eviews, GAMS, Q-GIS and ArcGIS. I am also happy to learn more software as necessary. With more or less common fundamentals across various software used for spatial modelling, econometric analysis, and/or machine learning methods, I find learning new software easy as well as enjoyable.

I hold a PhD in Human Geography, majoring in Economic Geography, from the University of Glasgow, UK, where I have also taught. My PhD research critically examined the epistemic dimensions of agrarian governance in Malawi, highlighting how high modernist agricultural policies erase Indigenous knowledge and sustain racialized epistemic hierarchies, while advocating for a decolonial paradigm shift in agricultural development. Centred on Malawi’s National Agricultural Policy, and decolonial, political economy and Indigenous knowledges (IK) discourses among others; I investigated the dynamics (and mechanisms) that underpin a key finding from my MSc thesis research - namely, the supremacy of mixing IK and modernity for agricultural resilience, on the one hand, and the rather nihilistic promotion of modernity by 'the state', on the other hand. My PhD research methodology comprised a blend of qualitative research methods to critically examine agricultural identities and agricultural data science (see a sample writing at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003082798). I also hold a Master’s degree in Agricultural and Applied Economics (specializing in environmental and natural resources management). For my MSc research project, I applied the method of seemingly unrelated regression to a panel dataset of 124 countries mainly over the period 1981-2005 to estimate meta-production functions. The estimated coefficients were then used to evaluate series of values of the marginal physical/value productivity of agricultural land for each country. These values were used as indicators of agricultural resilience (see https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/157594). The blend of qualitative and quantitative research skills helps me navigate through the development and use of various analytical frameworks, and analysis.

I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Agribusiness Management, where my research project comprised a value chain finance analysis. Among many other trainings, I have also received special training in the evaluation of development projects and programmes, offered by ‘EvalPartners’; the Human Rights Based Approach and Results-Based Management, offered by the United Nations; and gender-poverty-environment analysis offered by the Poverty Environment Initiative Africa in collaboration with the UNDP-led Gender Economic Policy Management Initiative (GEPMI) with support from UN-Women. Further, I participated in the 2018 African Union (AU-STRC) Capacity Building Workshop on Community-Based Innovations (CBI).

In addition to the themes engaged on this site, my research interests include the issue/question of researcher positionality and ethics in Artificial-Intelligence-based spatial economic modelling for agricultural development.