SPIRIT project strengthens research on gender disparities in Rwanda

The project Inference for Small Area Estimation through Generative Methods: A Focus on Gender Disparities (SPIRIT) has been awarded CHF 453,270 by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under the SPIRIT programme. Running from June 2025 for 43 months, the collaboration involves researchers from the University of Geneva and the University of Rwanda. The project aims to develop new statistical inference methods to improve the reliability of Small Area Estimation (SAE), with a particular focus on producing accurate confidence intervals for data used in policymaking.

Focusing on gender disparities in health, employment, and income in Rwanda, the project will apply these methods to real-world challenges and deliver open-source tools for evidence-based decision-making. It also strongly supports capacity building through the involvement of three PhD students from the University of Rwanda, who will benefit from funding, international mobility, and research training, further strengthening Africa–Europe collaboration within the CoRE-Math network.