Stevier Kaiyatsa

School of Economics

PhD student

Stevier Kaiyatsa profile
Profile picture of Stevier Kaiyatsa profile
SKaiyatsa1@sheffield.ac.uk

Full contact details

Stevier Kaiyatsa
School of Economics
9 Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 4DT
Profile

Research project title: Transport cost as a determinant of prices of nutrient-dense foods across the markets and household dietary quality in rural Malawi.

Qualifications

Stevier Kaiyatsa is a Principal Economist at the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development in Malawi. He holds a Master of Science Degree in Agricultural and Applied Economics jointly from the University of Malawi, Bunda College of Agriculture and the University of Pretoria in the Republic of South Africa. He has particular interest in conducting scientific research at the intersection of agriculture, food, nutrition and health, and on technology adoption, market access, impact assessments and quantitative methods. He has a good publishing record with top journals like Journal of Agricultural Economics, and Agricultural Economics. Mr. Kaiyatsa has served as a Team Member for “Changing Access to Nutritious Diets in Africa and South Asia (CANDASA)” research project, which the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University in the USA implemented in collaboration with the International Food Policy Research Institute from 2018 to 2020. Further, he has served as an Agricultural Economist for “Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA)” research project, which the Institute of Development Studies in the UK implemented in collaboration with the Centre for Social Research at the University of Malawi.

Research interests

My research project involves assessment of how transport cost affects prices of nutrient-dense foods across the markets in Malawi. Given that not all foods are produced within the locations the markets operate, market traders transport food from areas of high production to areas of low production, which involves transport cost. However, the larger share of marketing cost that market traders incur is transport cost (Fafchamps & Gabre-Madhin, 2006). Increase in transport cost impedes market traders to transport food items from markets in surplus areas to markets in deficit areas. This increases price dispersion across the markets, which increases food prices and reduces food availability in markets located in deficit areas. I’m using monthly consumer price monitoring time series data that the National Statistical Office collects to compute the monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) to better understand how transport cost affects price dispersion of nutrient-dense foods across the markets. The dataset has monthly retail prices for 27 homogeneous food items that were consistently collected across 29 rural markets from January 2007 to July 2021. I classify the 27 food items into animal source foods, vegetables, fruits, legumes and nuts, and staples including roots and tubers using FAO and FHI 360 (2016) categories of nutrient-dense foods. Animal source foods, vegetables, fruits, and legumes and nuts are nutrient-dense than staples including roots and tubers.

Publications

Journal articles

Research group

Supervisors:

Professor Bhavani Shankar

Dr Nicolas Van De Sijpe