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Deadline is Today for Stockholm Environment Institute PhD Research opportunity: building climate resilience among farmers in sub-Saharan Africa

Apply for Stockholm Environment Institute PhD Research opportunity: building climate resilience among farmers in sub-Saharan Africa

Location

Norwich, UK/Mount Elgon, Uganda

Host Organization

Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)

Application Deadline: 18 January 2023

Overview

The successful PhD research candidate will join a research team that, apart from their supervisors, consists of two leading experts from the Stockholm Environment Institute on co-designing effective products and services to better meet the needs of individuals, the head of agricultural insurance from an Ugandan insurer and the managing director of a Ugandan ag tech firm.

Type of contract: Full- or part-time 4-year studentship covering tuition fees, maintenance stipend (£16,062 per year in 2022/23) and research and training support grant

Start date: October 2023

Background

Sub-Saharan Africa’s rural population of some 700 million people is largely dependent on small-scale farming and extraordinarily vulnerable to the greater rainfall unpredictability, more droughts and new plant and livestock pests and diseases that climate change brings. Potential solutions exist in the form of meteorological services, weather insurance, climate-resilient crops and climate-smart agricultural practices, but the most vulnerable farmers lack sufficient access to the markets, services and knowledge required for achieving adequate protection against climate-change related risks.

University of East Anglia (UEA) researchers and partners are helping develop an ICT powered village agent model, operational in embryonic form in rural Uganda, for building climate resilience among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. The model has been created by m-Omulimisa, a Ugandan ag-tech company, and has exciting potential for scaling up. The reason for this is that village agents may be drawn from an abundant pool of talent on the sub-continent, of young well-educated people who after completing tertiary education return to their villages of origin and become involved in local institutions and services.

PhD research importance

Climate change brings unprecedented risks for farmers in Africa. Most sub-Saharan African farmers are smallholders and climate change poses new threats to their livelihoods: more frequent droughts and floods, greater rainfall unpredictability, new plant and livestock pests and diseases, and so on. Now is a critical time for building climate resilience among them to prevent a devastating collapse of livelihoods and food security.

Knowledge sharing for building climate resilience. UEA researchers are building a knowledge sharing platform for building climate resilience for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on current, observable trends in weather shifts and new pests and diseases, information is offered to farmers about products and services that protect against these, and information is gathered from farmers to refine knowledge of these trends and improve the products and services.

Village agents are at the heart of the knowledge-sharing platform. Farmers share information with village agents who are equipped with a smartphone app through which weather insurance, weather forecasts, agricultural inputs such as resilient seed, and advice on climate-smart agronomic practices is offered.

Research project

Your PhD will help build the knowledge-sharing platform. For a selected research site on the foothills of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda, you would do research that helps build the platform. The main tasks will be to:

  • Digest meteorological information for assisting farmers and improving weather insurance;
  • Identify agricultural inputs suitable for changing growing conditions;
  • Test farmers’ preferences for features of the knowledge-sharing platform;
  • Help pilot, implement and evaluate promising design features.

The successful PhD research candidate will join a research team that, apart from their supervisors, consists of the head of agricultural insurance at the leading provider of agricultural insurance in Uganda, the managing director of a Ugandan ag tech company specialising in making technology work for smallholder farmers, two leading experts from the Stockholm Environment Institute on co-designing effective products and services to better meet the needs of individuals, households and communities in the global south, and an expert on bridging digital divides in Uganda from top African university Makerere.

PhD research supervisory team and expertise

The supervisory team consists of researchers at the School of International Development (DEV) and School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia.

  • Arjan Verschoor is Professor of Economics at UEA’s School of International Development. His expertise on (a) decision making under risk among smallholder farmers, (b) choice experiments, (c) service design methodology, and (d) weather insurance are directly relevant for the PhD project. For a project that resulted in weather index insurance for 220,000 Ugandan farmers, Arjan and Ben d’Exelle (UEA) received the prestigious 2020 ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize. Arjan will use this experience to guide the student in how to increase the likelihood to have impact from research.
  • Stephen Dorling is a Chartered Meteorologist and Professor of Meteorology in the UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences. He has previous experience working on East African agro-climate in Kenya and will guide the student in applying meteorology for the benefit of Ugandan farmers.
  • Maren Duvendack  is a Professor of Evaluation in Economics in the UEA’s School of International Development and will provide expertise on impact evaluation methods required for the PhD project

Who should apply

The ideal candidate is somebody who would relish the challenge of combining meteorology, development economics and impact evaluation in a transdisciplinary research project. A master’s degree in one of these disciplines (2:1 or above) is required, as well as strong demonstrated research potential.

Additional details

Successful candidates who meet eligibility criteria will be awarded a 4-year studentship covering tuition fees, a maintenance stipend (£16,062 per year in 2022/23) and a research and training support grant. This round of recruitment is only open to Home fee status candidates.

This project is part of the Critical Decade for Climate Change PhD programme. Please visit https://www.uea.ac.uk/climate/show-and-tell/leverhulme-doctoral-scholars-applicant-information for more information about the project and making an application.

VISIT THE PAGE HERE AND APPLY

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