CEGA Remembers BRAC Colleague Sheikh Tariquzzaman
This post was co-authored by CEGA affiliates Ethan Ligon (UC Berkeley), Manisha Shah (UCLA), and Ketki Sheth (UC Merced) to commemorate their colleague, SK Tariquzzaman, Country Research Coordinator at BRAC Tanzania, who passed away unexpectedly this December 2020.
It is with a heavy heart that we mourn the untimely passing of SK Tariquzzaman, Country Research Coordinator at BRAC Tanzania. Tariq’s research helped define the direction of BRAC’s programs, a leading global development organization and long-time partner of CEGA’s, and contributed valuable insights to the broader development community’s knowledge base. Tariq was a frequent collaborator with CEGA affiliates, and an integral player in helping us provide evidence to inform development initiatives. As a tribute to Tariq’s dedication to improving the lives of the poor, we at CEGA wanted to highlight some of the projects that would not have been possible without his involvement.
A signature theme in Tariq’s work was improving the opportunities and lives of adolescent girls. In Tanzania, where Tariq had spent the last 3 years, less than a third of girls who enter secondary school graduate. However, students do have the opportunity to take and pass the secondary exit exam, similar to earning a GED in the United States. “Getting Girls Back in School” explores the returns to a BRAC program that prepares female adolescent dropouts to pass the secondary school exit exam, asking: do these girls reintegrate and invest in higher education? earn higher wages? exhibit higher levels of confidence and greater aspirations? have improved marital outcomes? While a significant body of research has recently been amassed to improve our understanding of the effects of investment in primary education, secondary school has been much less explored. This project aims to help fill that gap by understanding the investment and return to education during adolescence.
In addition to making educational investment decisions, adolescence is also a time when girls begin making key decisions about romantic relationships. Adolescent girls in Sub-Saharan Africa experience one of the highest rates of intimate partner violence, HIV, and other sexually transmitted infections (STI) in the world. Because programs to improve supply (e.g. access to contraceptives) and programs to increase demand (e.g. education) are typically bundled together, it is difficult to discern which types of interventions are most effective in improving sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes. “Promoting Safe Sex Among Adolescents in Tanzania” provides guidance on how to improve the efficacy of Sexual and Health Reproductive (SRH) trainings. The research asks whether BRAC’s SRH training can increase impact by targeting and including romantic partners, especially given descriptive data which suggests that males may have more control over important sexual and reproductive health decisions. The project also examines whether goal setting and increasing girls’ aspirations can bolster the effect of the SRH trainings, while disentangling the effects of demand side education from supply side contraception availability. BRAC’s adolescent girls groups, through which SRH initiatives are implemented, already operate in six countries, highlighting the scale of the research’s impact.
In addition to Tariq’s contributions in these collaborations, his mark was also felt in other BRAC-CEGA projects. For example, he was an important part of the field team on a project in South Sudan that compared interventions targeting the ultra poor. He was also an active participant at the BRAC-CEGA Research Matchmaking Conference in 2018, helping grow and foster the collaboration to build the knowledge base of development policy. In fact, two of us met Tariq for the first time at the conference and recalled being impressed with his infectious enthusiasm and energy. He was simply fun to be around, took obvious pleasure in the exchange of ideas, and was full of ambitious plans.
A common theme for all of us has been Tariq’s integral role in bringing research to development and helping make these projects happen. Many research projects, particularly field experiments, often fail to progress for a myriad of reasons, but the person on the ground is often the most critical determinant of a project’s success. Without Tariq’s leadership and innovative problem solving in “Getting Girls to School” and “Promoting Safe Sex Among Adolescents in Tanzania”, these studies would not have been possible nor progressed as far as they have. Tariq worked tirelessly to ensure surveys went into and out of the field in a timely fashion, and managed enumerators with grace and strength. When projects faced unexpected challenges in the field or the research dictated shifts in strategy, Tariq was always willing to help figure out ways to do more with the same amount of money! Because of Tariq, we were able to accomplish so much on BRAC related projects, and we are forever indebted to him.
The loss of someone so young and promising is always tragic; in Tariq’s case his friends and family are unexpectedly bereft. He also leaves a gap in the global development community that would have been filled with his ideas for new research and his energetic work to implement them. Those who would have collaborated with him in pursuing the research he loved are also bereft, and we will miss him.
BRAC is raising funds to support Tariq’s children's education. Please consider donating at this link.
