Itumeleng Mafatshe joins ILRI as a graduate fellow

Itumeleng Mafatshe is an MSc. Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security student at the National University of Ireland Galway. She has recently joined the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) as a graduate fellow for three months under two programs: Livelihoods, Gender and Impact (LGI) and the Livestock Systems and Environment (LSE).

Mafatshe has a background in Political Science and is interested in how political theory meets developmental practice from a gender perspective. Her research interests are climate change, food security, sustainable development and gender politics.

Her MSc. project in collaboration with ILRI is on ‘a gender analysis of dairy intensification and climate change adaptability of men and women farmers in Morogoro and Tanga in Tanzania’, a case of the More Milk in Tanzania (MoreMilkiT) project. This investigative study will use qualitative research methods to give insight on gendered capacities to climate change adaptation among dairy farmers, and how these are affected by dairy intensification in the context of increasing drought.