• Pilar Ouro, International Business Economics alumna, impact evaluation coordinator for the World Bank (Nairobi, Kenya)

When Pilar Ouro Paz came from Lleida (the city where she grew up) to Barcelona to study International Business Economics at UPF (from 2010 to 2014), she did not imagine that in 2019 should would be working in Panama on the assessment of an education project or that, beginning in early 2020, she would be working in Nairobi (Kenya), coordinating impact assessments for the World Bank in the sub-Saharan country.

‘Studying at UPF and living in Barcelona exposed me to a lot of people, ideas, contexts and new opportunities. I have a lot of positive memories and a lot of friends from those years’, she says. During that period, she decided that she wanted to work in the development sector and look for opportunities that combined a scientific and economic approach with social goals.

After earning a master’s degree in Business and International Trade at the ICEX-CECO Business School in Madrid and working at various jobs, she had the option of going to Central America to work for Innovations for Poverty Action. ‘The opportunity in Kenya came up when I was working in Panama. It is my first time in sub-Saharan Africa and, also, my first time working on agricultural projects, so I am learning a lot’, she says.

Her job is to help design and develop research projects to evaluate World Bank programmes, specifically in agriculture and climate change adaptation. ‘We use experimental, or quasi-experimental, methods to see how effective different projects or policies are, which allows us to compare countries and identify best practices.’ Data analysis, academic literature review, the initial development of studies and relations with the government and other local partners are some of the processes that take up her time.

“Pilar wants to continue to feel curiosity to learn and work on projects with a positive impact”

Pilar wants to continue to feel curiosity to learn and work on projects that have a positive impact. She thinks that the opportunities in the development sector in Catalonia and Spain (especially in research) are very limited, and she does not want to return in the short term. She thinks that much remains to be done to strengthen institutions, improve public policies and development programmes, and produce a positive change in people and the environment.

In sub-Saharan Africa in particular, she explains, more than half the population depends on agriculture for a living. ‘That makes it a key sector to improve quality of life for people with the fewest resources.’ She explains that a high percentage of farming in Kenya is subsistence and small-scale agriculture, so people suffer from economic and food insecurity. The challenge is twofold: to modernize the primary sector, in order to increase quality of life and, at the same time, to seek to adapt to new climate patterns and respect the environment, with sustainable practices. 

Photo gallery

Pilar Ouro at UPF and Kenya, with different colleagues from their promotion and work.