Leader in Education

Zacharie Tsala Dimbuene is a Researcher in Population Studies. He taught Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry at a High School level in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He also taught Sampling Design, Demographic Analysis Techniques, Mathematics and Probability at the Department of Demography, University of Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo). Previously, he worked as an Associate Research Scientist at African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) in Nairobi, Kenya working in the Statistics and Surveys Unit. He is also an Assistant Professor at the Department of Population Studies and Development at the University of Kinshasa and Part-Time Lecturer at the University of Ottawa.

Dr. Dimbuene’s research interests comprise methodological, theoretical and empirical projects. The methodological research brings together propensity score matching, quantile regression and rural-urban differences in child outcomes, including school performance and reproductive health outcomes. His works fall in the area of family environment, poverty and their influences on child well-being in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). He recently analyzed, using 175 Demographic and Health Surveys in developing countries, the causal effect of urbanization on fertility.

He deeply believes that transparency in the social sciences, including in Demography, is a critical step to establish the credibility of findings which in turn is important for building “evidence-based knowledge” that informs sound policies in developing countries. In Francophone Africa, transparency in the social sciences is under-developed. Dr. Dimbuene proactively intends to use his knowledge and experience to foster transparent norms among graduate students and faculty staff in Francophone Universities in sub-Saharan Africa, a desire which arose after the 2016 BITSS workshop on transparency in the social sciences.

Dr. Tsala Dimbuene has led research transparency training efforts in francophone Africa. He is a Catalyst and has translated BITSS materials for French-speaking African scholars. Dr. Tsala Dimbuene plans to use the funds awarded to him to institutionalize a prize for students at the University of Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) whose work shows exceptional dedication to transparency in their own research.

2016 Annual Meeting Leamer-Rosenthal Prize Winner Interview