Announcing: 2020 EASST Research Grantees
East African investigators and CEGA affiliates collaborate on new research exploring financial behavior in Ethiopia, malaria treatment in Uganda, and gendered agricultural constraints in Kenya, among other projects.
This post was written by Senior Program Manager Maya Ranganath.
CEGA’s East Africa Social Science Translation (EASST) Collaborative — funded by the Hewlett Foundation and the National Institutes of Health — regularly funds collaborative research projects on development issues in East Africa (read about our 2019 grantees here, and see all EASST-funded research here). This year, we funded four full-scale studies and two pilot studies in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and (for the first time!) Burundi — with topics spanning from improving malaria treatment in private health facilities, to empowering female farmers, to increasing trust in formal savings products.
The research teams discussed below came together in different ways. In some instances, East African investigators were matched with CEGA affiliated faculty at the beginning of their EASST fellowship at UC Berkeley and collaborated on their projects throughout, some met during trips to affiliated campuses during their fellowship, and other times East African investigators reached out to CEGA staff to assist with finding a match. In all cases, funded research aims to be fully collaborative — contributing to the capacity of both parties — from the design of the study, to its implementation, and eventually, the publishing of a paper.
Below we summarize the six awarded projects (both pilots and full-scale grants), to offer insights on the new, collaborative work we’re supporting and the policy impacts it could drive.
Pilot Grants ($15,000):
Trust and Mobile Savings
East African Investigator: Eyoual Demeke (World Bank, EASST Fellow 2020)
CEGA Investigator: Paul Gertler (UC Berkeley), Sean Higgins (Northwestern University)
In low and middle-income countries (LMICs), only 35 percent of adults have a bank or mobile money account — making saving difficult. At the same time, take up and use of savings products is low among people experiencing poverty, who frequently cite a lack of trust in formal financial institutions as a principal barrier. This pilot study will conduct scoping work for a subsequent randomized evaluation aiming to build trust in banks. The pilot will measure whether cash transfer beneficiaries in low-income urban areas in Ethiopia are more likely to save if they receive a training session designed to build their trust in financial institutions and receive weekly text messages with information on their current balances. The research team will provide insights on how to increase savings to the Urban Job Creation and Food Security Agency in Ethiopia.
Understanding Gender-Specific Constraints to Agricultural Technology: Evidence from Cassava Farming in Kenya
East African Investigator: Muthoni N’gang’a (EASST Fellow 2018)
CEGA Investigator: Carly Trachtman (UC Berkeley), Ethan Ligon (UC Berkeley)
Women farmers in LMICs tend to have lower levels of agricultural productivity than men. This pilot study in Kenya explores two explanations for this: 1) that female farmers have less access to agricultural input technologies, and 2) that female farmers receive less information about these new technologies. This pilot will examine the feasibility of a randomized evaluation to measure the relative impact of providing female farmers with easy access to cassava seeds versus accessing extension information provided by female lead farmers.
The pilot activities and the full-scale study will provide policymakers with information on how to promote the use of cassava seeds (currently a priority in Murang’a County, where this study takes place), as well as important information on how to reach female farmers through extension services.
Full Scale Grants ($50,000-$75,000):
A piece of paper? The benefits of a secondary school certificate in Tanzania
East African Investigator: Christina Fille (University of Dar es Salaam, EASST Fellow 2019)
CEGA Investigator: Chad Hazlett (UCLA)
Overall enrollment and gender parity in primary school have improved in many LMICs, leading to a shift in attention to secondary schooling. In Tanzania, approximately 52 percent of the eligible student population is enrolled in lower-secondary schools as of 2016. This represents an enormous investment from the state and society, who forego income-earning opportunities in the expectation that secondary school will “pay off.” Does it? In what ways? For whom?
This study employs a regression discontinuity design to measure the effects of obtaining a secondary school certificate (awarded through a national examination), by looking at the outcomes of those who just barely passed, compared to those who just failed. Researchers will measure the signaling value of obtaining the secondary education certificate ten years later on livelihood outcomes. The study will provide important insights to researchers and policymakers on the heterogeneous effects of who is gaining the most or the least from education, with a focus on its value for women and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Written reports will be provided to Tanzania’s Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MoEST), among other government partners.
Do Financial Incentives change beliefs? A field experiment in Uganda
East African Investigator: JohnBosco Asiimwe (Makerere University, EASST Fellow 2015)
CEGA Investigator: Sarojini Hirschleifer (UC Riverside), Ketki Sheth (UC Merced)
Malnutrition is believed to be responsible for 45 percent of deaths among children under five, making it the leading cause of child mortality globally. Micronutrient powder (MNP) has shown to be an effective method of combating malnutrition — however, like other healthcare products, there is often low demand for them in LMICs as their immediate effects on health are not obviously apparent and a lack of knowledge of the benefits of the product may persist. One possible solution are financial incentives, which have the potential to serve an informational role in causing people to value the product more.
BRAC and the Ministry of Health in Uganda are working together to encourage the use of MNP to reduce malnutrition by mobilizing community health practitioners to sell the powder door-to-door. Researchers will conduct a randomized evaluation to quantify the signaling role of information in households’ willingness-to-pay for MNP. They hope that results will influence the design of incentives for not only MNP, but for health subsidies more broadly and across other settings such as education subsidies and conditional cash transfers.
Supportive Supervision and Behavior Change Communication in Uganda
East African Investigator: Ronald Mulebeke, (Makerere University, EASST Fellow 2019)
CEGA Investigator: Stefano Bertozzi (UC Berkeley), Brigid Cakourous (UC Berkeley)
According to the World Health Organization, 200 million malaria cases were reported in sub-Saharan Africa in 2017 and over 90 percent of Uganda is endemic to the disease. Private health facilities play an important role in malaria control and prevention — with between sixty and seventy percent of the Ugandan population seeking care at them. However, the quality of malaria care and data management in private facilities is highly variable and often suboptimal.
The research team will pilot an approach that combines supportive supervision to healthcare workers (guiding, training, and encouraging them to focus on problem-solving to assure the quality of malaria case management) with behavior change communication to patients (advocacy activities to provide information about malaria, create demand for change, and foster social mobilization), and will measure the effect on correctly treated malaria cases. This study will inform the design of a future effectiveness study and the Ministry of Health in Uganda’s malaria approach.
Missing Markets in Burundi
East African Investigator: Michel Ndayikeza (University of Burundi, EASST Fellow 2020)
CEGA Investigator: Jeremy Magruder (UC Berkeley), Nicholas Swanson (UC Berkeley), Luisa Cefala (UC Berkeley)
Missing markets (both output markets and input markets) often impede productivity and growth in LMIC’s, especially in countries like Burundi that have been recovering from decades of internal conflict. This project studies two barriers that may prevent smallholder farmers from participating in agricultural markets — 1) that buyers may have better information on the quality of goods than the seller, and engage in price-discrimination; and 2) that farmers may face problems in selling their products with incomplete contracts, making them vulnerable to buyers changing the price later on.
Together with One Acre Fund (OAF) in Burundi, researchers will run a large-scale randomized evaluation to test the presence of these potential market failures. They will attempt to overcome detected challenges by providing price information to farmers for different varieties of their product and by setting up a pricing platform in which OAF acts as a guarantor of the prices offered on the platform. This study has high potential to affect policies that improve farmers’ market integration, in order to improve the livelihoods of a population whose monthly income averages 50 USD.
