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Global development professional who is passionate about employing M&E for organizational learning and stakeholder accountability. 12 years of experience in M&E, disease surveillance and epidemiology, and capacity building in the public health, nutrition, food security, agriculture, land, and education sectors at community and national levels. Key Qualifications: • 12 years of experience in global M&E, including results frameworks, indicator design, data systems design, study design, sampling, quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and data collection, management, analysis, and visualization. Proudly and persistently promoting knowledge management for continuous program improvement. • Experience designing and operationalizing monitoring systems for USG-funded projects in the health, nutrition, food security, agriculture, land, and education sectors. • Experience designing, conducting, and managing performance and quasi-experimental impact evaluations for USG-funded projects in in the health, nutrition, food security, agriculture, land, and education sectors. • Experience conducting M&E on projects funded by USAID, USDA, UkAid, CDC, and foundations. • 5 years of resident field experience in developing nations (Botswana, South Sudan, Zimbabwe). Short-term work in several other African and Asian nations. • Experience building capacity among evaluation teams of up to 30 people, as well as frequent mentoring of M&E specialists, technical leads, and senior managers.
This article explores the informal seed business, focusing on the yellow bean in Tanzania. The yellow bean is a major bean type traded, yet little is known about the seed supply that fuels it. The survey research in 2019 encompassed larger grain traders, informal seed traders, and retailers, covered major production, distribution and sale hubs, and was complemented by GIS mapping of seed and grain flows and DNA fingerprinting of yellow bean samples. Results showed that traders buy and sell grain and informal seed: it is not one business or the other, but both. Informal seed is an important moneymaker, representing between 15 and 40% of trader business in non-sowing and sowing periods, respectively. In the year monitored, 100% of the yellow bean seed was drawn from the informal sector, amounting to $US 4.35 million just among those sampled. Nevertheless, the informal and formal sectors are clearly linked, as over 60% of the beans sampled derived from modern varieties. Informal traders prove key for: sustaining the grain business, serving the core of the seed business, and moving varieties at scale. More explicit efforts are needed to link the informal sector to formal research and development partners in order to achieve even broader impacts.
Louise Sperling; Eliud Birachi; Sylvia Kalemera; Mercy Mutua; Noel Templer; Clare Mukankusi; Kessy Radegunda; Magdalena William; Patrick Gallagher; Edith Kadege; Jean Claude Rubyogo. The Informal Seed Business: Focus on Yellow Bean in Tanzania. Sustainability 2021, 13, 8897 .
AMA StyleLouise Sperling, Eliud Birachi, Sylvia Kalemera, Mercy Mutua, Noel Templer, Clare Mukankusi, Kessy Radegunda, Magdalena William, Patrick Gallagher, Edith Kadege, Jean Claude Rubyogo. The Informal Seed Business: Focus on Yellow Bean in Tanzania. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (16):8897.
Chicago/Turabian StyleLouise Sperling; Eliud Birachi; Sylvia Kalemera; Mercy Mutua; Noel Templer; Clare Mukankusi; Kessy Radegunda; Magdalena William; Patrick Gallagher; Edith Kadege; Jean Claude Rubyogo. 2021. "The Informal Seed Business: Focus on Yellow Bean in Tanzania." Sustainability 13, no. 16: 8897.
To work well and be sustainable, seed systems have to offer a range of crops and varieties of good quality seed and these products have to reach farmers, no matter how remote or poor they may be. Formal seed sector interventions alone are not delivering the crop portfolio or achieving the social and geographic breadth needed, and the paper argues for focus on informal seed channels and particularly on traders who move ‘potential seed’ (local seed) even to high stress areas. This paper provides the first in-depth analysis on potential seed trader types and actions, drawing on data collected on 287 traders working in 10 African countries. The research delves into four themes: the types and hierarchies of traders; the technical ways traders manage seed using 11 core practices; the price differential of +50% of potential (local) seed over grain, and the pivotal roles which traders play in remote and crisis contexts. Traders are the backbone of smallholder seed security and need to be engaged, not ignored, in development and relief efforts. A detailed action framework for leveraging seed trader skills is presented, with the paper addressing possible legal and donor constraints for engaging such market actors more fully.
Louise Sperling; Patrick Gallagher; Shawn McGuire; Julie March; Noel Templer. Potential Seed Traders: The Backbone of Seed Business and African Smallholder Seed Supply. Sustainability 2020, 12, 7074 .
AMA StyleLouise Sperling, Patrick Gallagher, Shawn McGuire, Julie March, Noel Templer. Potential Seed Traders: The Backbone of Seed Business and African Smallholder Seed Supply. Sustainability. 2020; 12 (17):7074.
Chicago/Turabian StyleLouise Sperling; Patrick Gallagher; Shawn McGuire; Julie March; Noel Templer. 2020. "Potential Seed Traders: The Backbone of Seed Business and African Smallholder Seed Supply." Sustainability 12, no. 17: 7074.