I am an applied microeconomist interested in using administrative data, text, historical maps, and GIS data to study development-related topics. My current research focuses on mobile money adoption, artisanal mining economics, higher-education policy analysis, decentralization, and the long-term impacts of early-life circumstances across Africa.
I completed my Master’s in Economics at Universidade Nova de Lisboa — Nova SBE, where my thesis was supervised by Prof. Catia Batista.
I previously worked as a Research Assistant at the Yale Economic Growth Center, and have over four years of experience designing surveys and analyzing data on projects across Africa (Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Mozambique), MENA (Lebanon, Palestine), and Europe (Italy, Portugal).
I co-founded Move Network International (MNI), a youth-led organization that operates in my community of Luzira, a suburb of Kampala, Uganda. As part of MNI, I recently secured a $1,500 grant to launch a financial empowerment program benefiting over 35 teenage mothers in our community. This project is highlighted in The 2024 Little Big Fund Impact Report, showcasing community-led social change-makers around the world.
I also founded The Economic Misfit, a platform dedicated to supporting economists in navigating careers and opportunities.
Education
- MA in Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa · Nova SBE, Portugal (2024 — present)
- BA in Development Economics, Makerere University, Uganda
- Diploma in Civil Engineering, Uganda Technical College Bushenyi, Uganda
Fields of Interest
- Primary: Development Economics, Economics of Education
- Secondary: Political Economy, Environmental Economics
Tools
- Survey design: SurveyCTO, ODK, KoboCollect, Qualtrics
- Analysis: Python, Stata, R
- Geospatial: GeoPandas, Shapely, Rasterio, QGIS
Professional Experience
- Research Assistant, Yale Economic Growth Center (2026 — present)
- Research Assistant — Midline Evaluation of EQIE Project, Learn More (2024 — 2025)
- Founder & Editor, The Economic Misfit (2022 — present)
- Co-founder & Program Lead, Move Network International (MNI) (2023 — present)
Recent Training
- Wheeler Institute — GIS for Quantitative Spatial Data Analysis (2025)
- Manage Successful Field Research — Certificate
- Reproducible Research Fundamentals — Certificate
- CITI Program — Social-Behavioral-Educational Researchers (Basic/Refresher)
- Nova SBE PhD Summer School 2022 — Political Economy and Development (Claudio Ferraz); Practical Issues in Designing and Analyzing Field Experiments (David McKenzie)
The fastest way to reach me is by email: jemo44t@gmail.com.