Dr Precious Tirivanhu is African Research Fellow with the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES) Research Division. He holds a PhD in Sustainable Agriculture form the University of Free State, MA in Environmental Policy and Planning and BSc Honours in Agricultural Economics from the University of Zimbabwe. He specialises in community operational research, food systems and agricultural development, community driven development, gender and youth inclusion, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E).
Experience and special projects: He has close to twenty years? experience in rural development programming and consulting work in several African countries including Benin, Botswana, Eswatini, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, with a number of funding agencies including the WK Kellogg Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Sida, DFID, IOM and USAID among others. This experience spans across various areas including monitoring and evaluation (M&E); agricultural value chain development; food security; institutional development for local authorities; youth and gender inclusion; building community resilience to external shocks; small and medium enterprise development; and community driven development. He sits on a number of Boards including Africa Centre for Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation (ACPC) www.acpc.org.zw and is a Founding Trustee of Pathways Autism Trust www.pathwaysautismtrust.org
He was Co-Principal Investigator for a study on the Socio-economic impacts of liquor in Mpumalanga Province between 2019-2020, commissioned by Mpumalanga economic Regulator (MER). Currently he is involved as an M&E expert for the Schools Out project that aims to create safer and more inclusive environments for learners by linking schools across Eastern and Southern Africa to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) support. Dr Tirivanhu was part of the HSRC team of researchers that reviewed the South African National Youth Policy 2020-2030 as well as development of the Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.
Before joining the HSRC, Dr Tirivanhu spent more than 15 years as a Rural Development Practitioner in a number of southern African countries. He was also a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results for Anglophone Africa (CLEAR-AA), at the University of Witwatersrand. During the past decade he has mostly conducted his research in the area of food systems and agricultural development, community operational research, monitoring and evaluation, systems thinking, and gender and women inclusion.
Publications: Dr Tirivanhu has published more than 20 scientific articles in both local and international peer-reviewed academic journals and 5 book chapters. He co-edited a book entitled Evaluation Landscape in Africa: Context, Methods and capacity, which was published by Sun Press in 2019. He is a peer reviewer for a number of journals including South African Journal for Agricultural Extension, Community Development Journal, Development in Practice Journal, Development Southern Africa and Systemic Practice and Action Research Journal (SPAR).
