ILRI MSc Graduate Fellowship: Making Index Insurance Fully Available for Women (MIIFAW)

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) seek to recruit an MSc graduate fellow to work on Making Index Insurance Fully Available for Women (MIIFAW). The successful fellow will be hosted by the Sustainable Livestock Systems (SLS) program at ILRI.             

ILRI works to improve food and nutritional security and reduce poverty in developing countries through research for efficient, safe and sustainable use of livestock. It is the only one of 15 CGIAR research centers ( ) dedicated entirely to animal agriculture research for the developing world. Co-hosted by Kenya and Ethiopia, it has regional or country offices in East, South and Southern Asia as well as Central, East, Southern and West Africa.  

The SLS program brings together technologies and approaches in a systems context to address synergies and trade-offs to optimize the economic, social and environmental roles of livestock. It also addresses the two-way interactions between livestock and the environment; while livestock production is often a driver of environmental change, future climate change will have significant impacts on livestock production.

Scope of Work

The project titled “Making Index Insurance Fully Available for Women (MIIFAW)“ is implementing a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with pastoralists women savings and business groups in Kenya. These groups have graduated from BOMA’s Rural Entrepreneur Access Program (REAP). 200 groups were randomly assigned into the treatment group and another 200 groups into control. Groups belonging to the treatment group are encouraged to create an additional savings account where money is deposited by group members for purposes of purchasing insurance. In addition, the project developed and rolled out a curriculum for training the women.

The MIIFAW project promotes a new insurance product aimed at helping women secure their households’ needs and assets from the impact of drought. While there is an existing insurance product commercially available to households in the region, that product provides coverage for drought-related livestock forage scarcity. But drought can impact individuals that do not herd, either because someone else in their household generates a large component of the household’s income herding animals or because they have an alternative livelihood strategy that, while not herding, relies on the income of herders, for example local businesses. In developing a product that can provide households and businesses coverage against drought shocks, we hope to make insurance fully available to women.

The graduate fellow will support the implementation of the project including data collection. He/she is expected to utilize project data for thesis. This fellowship will further strengthen collaboration with local academic institutions.

Responsibilities of the fellow:

1. Clean and analyze experimental data to assess the effect of village insurance savings account (VISA) on insurance uptake and welfare of pastoralists.
2. Monitor data quality and facilitate coordination with the field teams.
3. Implement field work as assigned by the supervisors.
4. Co-author reports and manuscripts.
5. Preparation of research proposal and thesis for purposes of academic attainment

Requirements & qualifications:

1. Completed BSc in development related studies.
2. Newly enrolled into an MSc program to an MSc program in Agricultural and Applied Economics in a recognized university.
3. Demonstrated experience in organizing and coordinating fieldwork.
4. Possess experience in data collection using digital surveys and basic data analysis in the form of summary statistics.
5. Proficiency in written and spoken English language.
6. Have good working knowledge of MS Office packages.

Location: ILRI, Nairobi.

Duration: 2 years.

Terms of appointment and stipend

ILRI will offer a competitive stipend to cover living expenses in the project location, medical insurance cover, university tuition costs and meet research expenses. The successful candidate will be supervised jointly by an ILRI scientist and university/academic supervisor/s.

How to apply: All applications MUST include the following (applications without the below documents will not be considered):

• A cover letter expressing their interest in the fellowship position and what they can bring to the fellowship.
• CV including names and addresses (including telephone and email) of three referees who are knowledgeable about the candidate’s professional qualifications and work experience.
• Academic qualification certificates/transcripts.

Applications should be sent to the Capacity Development Manager, ILRI, by clicking on the tab "APPLY NOW" on or before 13th October 2023 . The position title and reference number REF: GF/SLS /02/2023 should be clearly marked on the subject line of the cover letter.

We thank all applicants for their interest in working for ILRI. Due to the volume of applications, only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

ILRI does not charge a fee at any stage of the recruitment process (application, interview meeting, processing or training). ILRI also does not concern itself with information on applicants' bank accounts.

To find out more about ILRI visit our websites at