PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] – Recent exploratory visits to the PSTC from two African scholars are producing collaborative fruit in the areas of food poverty and urban tree planting. As part of an initiative to bring African scholars to the PSTC, Yonas Alem spent a week at the Center this fall, attending seminars and working on developing a project with PSTC Director and Professor of Economics and Community Health Andrew Foster.

“My visit at Brown was great!” he said. “In fact, I drafted a research proposal in the area of poverty analysis that is promising to be a collaborative work with Andrew, dealing with the measurement of food poverty and arguing that existing measures underestimate food poverty in developing countries. We have the perfect detailed panel data from Ethiopia to explore our idea.”

Alem, from Ethiopia, is a postdoctoral researcher in Economics at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the research director of the Environment for Develpoment initiative (EfD). He serves as a supervisor for Remidius Ruhinduka, a doctoral candidate in Economics at Gothenburg and assistant lecturer at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, who spent four weeks at the PSTC this fall. 

Ruhinduka used his visit to share research ideas with faculty and other Ph.D. students, forging collaborative projects “to a very large extent,” he said. One thing he planned to initiate upon his return to Gothenburg is a Development Economics Breakfast modeled after the one he attended during his visit. The weekly breakfast provides a friendly environment for students to share research ideas in the early stages of development and to interact with faculty in an informal setting, he said.

A major result of Ruhinduka’s visit is a collaborative project with Foster, who served as a mentor for both visitors. Following the completion of his Ph.D. this year, Ruhinkuka plans to return to Tanzania to undertake an urban tree planting project that he anticipates will have a triple advantage. The project would help communities through changing (cooling) and beautifying the environment, have a global environmental impact, and provide solid research data to advise policy should the government decide to scale up this kind of intervention.

The impact of his visit to the PSTC was “enormous,” Ruhinduka said. “I ended up with some very big outcomes and received great feedback and comments on my work.

The visits were sponsored by The Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) through the generosity of the Hewlett Foundation. Foster currently serves as president of BREAD.