Yarri Kamara

International fellow

Yarri Kamara's picture
Yarri is an economist and international development specialist and her areas of expertise include small and medium enterprises, private sector development and non-timber forest products. Yarri works primarily with the Natural Resources research group at IIED.

Yarri is an economist and international development specialist and her areas of expertise include small and medium enterprises, private sector development and non-timber forest products.

She has been programme manager for the Burkinabe consultancy firm, Initiatives Conseil International, in Ouagadougou since 2009, working with clients such as the World Bank, AFD, the European Union and UN agencies in West Africa and other parts of Africa.

From 2007-09 she was Enterprise Support Manager for Tree Aid West Africa, Ouagadougou, a British NGO focused on the environment and rural development with interventions in Burkina Faso, Mali and Ghana. While at Tree Aid, Yarri participated in the Forest Connect initiative launched by the IIED and FAO; she was involved in the drafting of a toolkit for the facilitation of support to small and medium forest enterprises and served as a member of the international Forest Connect steering committee.

Yarri has also worked for the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) in Ouagadougou as Regional Knowledge Management officer for the West and Central Africa office, with a focus on encouraging capitalisation of experiences and exchange of knowledge in areas such as value chain development, local governance and natural resource management.

She has a Masters in Development Studies from Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, and a BA in Economics and French from University of Virginia, USA. She has also studied International Economics at Oxford University, UK, and Enterprise Development at the International Training Centre of the ILO, Torino, Italy.

Yarri works primarily with the Natural Resources research group at IIED.