Esther Leah Achandi

Esther holds a PhD in Economics from University of Dar es Salaam and has over ten years of research experience in Eastern Africa covering the countries of Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda with experience in gender, women's empowerment, social and gender norms, market value chains and consumer preferences within agricultural value chains. Currently, Esther is a Research Scientist in gender, at The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) within the People, Policies and Institutions (PPI) program, following a post doctoral engagement with the same program. Her work at ILRI is to analyse the role of different livestock species in endowing women with financial autonomy and deliver evidence on how such autonomy contributes to women empowerment. She also works with different partners and communities to develop and implement interventions aimed at supporting more gender equitable engagement in, and sharing of benefits from livestock systems. Her work mainly extends across the countries of Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Vietnam. In terms of research networking, Esther is an alumni of the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) fellowship, and the European Investment Bank- Global Development Network (EIB-GDN) Research Fellowship in Applied Development Finance (2019-2021).