Anthony Wagacha and Elaine Mungai from the School of Finance and Applied Economics (SFAE) were honoured to present their paper “Adopting Derivative Instruments in Managing Drought Catastrophic Risk for Large Scale Farmers in Kenya’’ at the Centre for Study of African Economies (CSAE) conference. The acceptance of their paper by the conference conveners was not only humbling to the two graduate assistants, but an honorary gesture as their paper was the only entry in the Undergraduate level. The two were fully funded to attend this year’s convention which ran from March 22^nd – 24^th .

 

Discussing their work was Stefanija Veljanoska, a PhD student at Paris School of Economics, with the two being assigned discussants role to Dr. Alberto Zezza’s paper “Income diversification patterns in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Reassessing the evidence” with Alemayehu Taffesse, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Institute, chairing their plenary session. Dr. Alberto Zezza is a Senior Economist, Development Research Group -World Bank.

 

Following their exemplary performance and fete, they were challenged to undertake PhD studies promptly from majority of the conference attendees ranging from accomplished policy makers to award winning professors.

 

During their visit, they also attended a conference on ‘Improving institutions for pro-poor growth’ which was funded by the UK Department for International Development, held in March 20^th -21^st, in the same institution.

 

Both Wagacha and Elaine remain grateful to SFAE’ faculty; Dr. John Olukuru, Mr. Ferdinand Othieno and Mr. John Ocheche for their supervisory role and guidance towards getting their paper accepted at the conference. Both Ferdinand Othieno and John Ocheche are co-authors of the paper.

 

Link to the conference: 

http://editorialexpress.com/conference/CSAE2015/program/CSAE2015.html