I’m a Zimbabwean lady with a Master of Science in Agricultural and Applied Economics, a joint degree program between the University of Pretoria and University of Zimbabwe. In addition, I have more than three years of agricultural research and community development work. During my studies, I specialized in environmental management and natural resources economics where I acquired a strong background in agricultural production economics across different agro-ecosystems and climatic regions. My work and research interests broadly seek to apply optimal management options that improve profitability of smallholder crop production and uplifting of rural livelihoods. I am also interested in community development, livelihoods, survival strategies, gender issues, sustainable development, and monitoring, evaluation and learning of projects.
Previously, I have worked as a Research Fellow for African Climate Change Fellowship Program (ACCFP) hosted at University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Through this fellowship and exposure, I gained in-depth knowledge of conducting socio-economic surveys, natural resources management and agricultural production economics. Later on, as an M&E officer I was exposed to data collection, collation and analysis, facilitating and promotion of capacity building farmer trainings mostly in rural Zimbabwe. Between January 2011 and August 2011, I worked as a capacity builder/facilitator for EU/Government of Zimbabwe’s Smallholder Micro-Irrigation Development Support Program (SMIDSP) on Agribusiness and contract farming training.
I am comfortable with several computer software packages among them Microsoft Excel, Stata and IBM SPSS Statistics, and have used these packages for data analysis during my studies, as well as for work. I can interpret statistical outputs and write good technical reports.