Busara constantly navigates the dynamic tension between focusing on the individual and addressing the collective. We look at individual behaviour to understand communal challenges. We seek to individually behave in responsible and accountable ways in order to support our communities. But this also comes with pressure: individuals often feel—or are—powerless in the face of gigantic collective challenges. And at the same time, the science of human behaviour has come under tremendous scrutiny and is facing a credibility crisis just at the time when it might be most needed. This year, we published our inaugural Yearbook to address, scrutinise and unpack; ✅ The need to build community through individual contributions; ✅ Ways to strengthen the credibility of the research field in which we work as a communal effort through individual responsibility; ✅ Why we are taking an optimistic view–rooted in creativity and the belief in community– despite the fact that 2023 came at humanity and sometimes at Busara hard and fast. Download your copy here for more: https://lnkd.in/d7ttQWd5 Chaning Jang, Joel Wambua, Michael Onsando, Francis Meyo, Mareike Schomerus, Samantha Bastian, Wilson Mburu, Moh’ M. Alhaji, PhD, Stephen Wendel, Engy Saleh, Kriti Chouhan, Robert Nyaga, PhD, Araika-Zawadhafsa Mkulo, Prithika Mohan, Stanley Ngugi, Wendy Chamberlin, Gideon Too, Emiliano Díaz del Valle, Wairimu (Nimo) Muthike
Busara
Research Services
Nairobi, NBO 25,654 followers
We are a research and advisory firm dedicated to advancing and applying behavioral science in the Global South
About us
Busara is a nonprofit organization that uses social and behavioral science to solve problems in development and poverty alleviation. From our headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, we collaborate with organizations from around the world to implement world-class research and data-driven advisory and consulting. Busara has worked with a number of leading universities and research organizations around the world on projects related to savings, inequality, entrepreneurship, and other questions central to development economics. We also work with governments, NGOs and private companies to bring the latest in academic research into the hands of policy makers and agents for change. We use rigorous, data-driven techniques paired with the latest in local behavioral research to help design solutions to further your organization's goals. For more information, please visit www.busara.global
- Website
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https://www.busara.global
External link for Busara
- Industry
- Research Services
- Company size
- 51-200 employees
- Headquarters
- Nairobi, NBO
- Type
- Nonprofit
- Founded
- 2012
- Specialties
- Applied Behavioral Economics, Research, International Development, Impact Evaluation, Financial Inclusion, Agriculture, Health, Education, Environment, Energy & Resources, Product Design, and Policy Design
Locations
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Primary
38 Apple Cross Road
Lavington
Nairobi, NBO 00100, KE
Employees at Busara
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Mareike Schomerus
VP @Busara // Books: Lives Amid Violence (Bloomsbury) | The Lord's Resistance Army (CUP) // @Harris School
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Floriza Freire Gennari, DrPH
Behavioral Scientist & Gender Specialist
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Morgan Kabeer
Engagement Director at Busara
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Rahab Kariuki
I am reimagining insurance with at-risk communities. I share behaviour insights with insurers.
Updates
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Busara’s story started in Kenya in 2011 and expanded to India in 2019. After three years of applying behavioral science in India, making discoveries, stumbling and then learning from our failures, and striving for continued growth, we took a moment to pause. In this moment of reflection, spurred on by Dhwani Yagnaraman, we time travelled to our collective project experiences while on a hill in Uttarakhand. BeScights is a reflection on our germinating library of behavioral insights, that interrogates our responsibility as behavioral scientists in India, with all her pluralities and diversities. This curated compendium offers a glimpse of our work across 15 projects conducted in ten states of India from a team of early-career applied researchers who disentangle nuance from generalities and articulate the opportunities and challenges in practicing applied behavioral science in India. Download your free copy here: https://lnkd.in/dpvz_8mv
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Last year, we conducted an internal study to explore how our global staff composition influences our identity as an international Global South organization and shapes the research we do. The results of this study led us to do some reflecting on how we practice diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at Busara. In this Groundwork, Stanley Ngugi and Mareike Schomerus write about our approach to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at Busara. They outline our philosophy that highlighting differences first makes the conversation less open and as such, rather than thinking of apples and oranges, we should see it as comparing oranges to oranges. What does this mean? And how do we apply this to create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment for all our stakeholders? Read the Groundwork to find out: https://lnkd.in/gcYGiuXR
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Over the past decade, the nature of our work has evolved from simply supporting external research to taking a more active role in advisory and agenda-setting. We’ve worked across diverse sectors, including agriculture, inclusive finance, public and individual health, and good governance. In this storybook, our FaRM team invites you to explore the African food landscape, with insights from our projects in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya: https://lnkd.in/d_Vm_u4w Special thanks to the team members Digafe Maru, Fadila Jumare, Nengapate Kuria, Marilyn Moin, Zeena Oberoi, Wairimu (Nimo) Muthike, Wanjiku Kiarie, Laura Schun Geilager, Mugambi Murithi
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When Johannes Haushofer founded Busara a decade ago, it was the first behavioral science lab in the Global South operating outside a university. What began as a small, grant-funded project with 20 networked desktop computers and a team of enumerators and surveyors had a bold mission: to challenge the dominance of WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) perspectives in behavioral research. Read one of our earliest publications by Johannes Haushofer and Noémie Zurlinden (2013) here: https://lnkd.in/dTNHYfYM
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Ethnography is a methodology that allows researchers to immerse themselves into the lived experiences and daily lives of research participants, also known as interlocutors. Mario Schmidt and Ben Eyre write more about our ongoing citizen ethnography training in this article.
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Today, our citizen ethnographers from Kenya and Uganda visited Kibera for a capacity-building exercise, where they interviewed several field officers about their life experiences and living conditions. This exercise will help us understand and address the personal challenges field officers face during research, ensuring we collect high-quality data in our studies. Dr. Mario Schmidt Dr. Ben Eyre Dr. Teddy Atim Dr. Ben Jones University of East Anglia
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Field officers are crucial in the research process, but have you ever wondered how their personal and professional lives could affect the quality of data they collect? On Wednesday, Dr. Ben Jones and Dr. Ben Eyre took the time to train a group of ethnographers from Kenya and Uganda to conduct life history interviews as part of the ongoing citizen ethnography training at Busara. Here's a glimpse of how it went. Dr. Mario Schmidt Dr. Teddy Atim
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Apathy towards waste management leaves us with dire environmental, health, economic, and social consequences. In a recent partnership with TRANSFORM (Unilever, FCDO & EY), aimed at encouraging recycling behavior in the global south, we identified two key barriers that need to be addressed for different stakeholders to adopt recycling. Read more in this blog post by Aanchal Sharrma: https://lnkd.in/d2WxFtna
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Busara reposted this
Ethnographer focussed on impact investing, sustainable finance, resilient agriculture, agtech, financial inclusion
What does ethnography involve? Over the past year and a half I have been thrilled to work with a group of young Ugandans who combine deep ethnographic skills learned outside a university setting with lived experience of what we are studying. Here is a video about some of the work we have been doing: https://lnkd.in/e_hRHQMq Jaskaran Singh, Ben Jones, Mario Schmidt, Laury Ocen. We’ve had great insights, suggestions, and support from Feedback Labs, Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science, and Busara We grateful for support from University of East Anglia, UEA DEV, Lira University, The British Academy, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Ethnography - Listening and Learning Together
https://www.youtube.com/