Blandina Kilama

Blandina Kilama is a PhD candidate with the Tracking Development Project at the African Studies Centre in Leiden. Her PhD research takes a case of cashew industry in Tanzania, comparing it with the same in Vietnam from 1960 to 2006. It seeks to draw lessons from agriculture diversification in alleviating poverty. Currently working as a researcher with Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA), policy research institute based in Tanzania, she has worked on various pieces of analytical research involving secondary and survey data, such as the poverty mapping, the poverty and human development reports, patterns of urban migration, etc. She has also implemented a number of field-based surveys at regional and national levels. She holds a Master's in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) from John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from University of Dar es Salaam.

On 7 March Blandina Kilama defended her PhD thesis on "The diverging South : comparing the cashew sectors of Tanzania and Vietnam".