Nabilah Kesington is a Researcher and Project Officer at Levin Sources. She delivers project management and research on a wide variety of topics related to raw materials and artisanal small-scale mining, especially across African countries.
Her projects have included:
- Research on minerals critical to the green transition such as graphite, lithium, rare earth elements and copper, to highlight investment opportunities for European-African partnerships.
- Research on raw materials such as leather, nickel, rhodium and platinum group metals, and magnesium, mapping their value chains and identifying the risks and impacts associated with their production.
- Programme management of the World Bank-funded project ‘Artisanal Small-Scale Mining Development Strategy Implementation Plan’ which looked to support ASM formalisation in Mozambique.
- Support to public and private financial institutions on human rights and environmental due diligence with their clients and investees.
Prior to Levin Sources, Nabilah worked as a Business Development Assistant at international development consulting firm Landell Mills, where she managed and administered ongoing project portfolios, the preparation of Expressions of Interests (EOIs) and tender proposals for donor-funded projects by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), European Commission and Department for International Development (DFID now FCDO). She supported the consultancy with marketing, communications, and knowledge management. In the Afghanistan, Pacific, and Asia Division at Landell Mills, she worked on a series of projects centring Asian and Pacific countries, value chains, natural resource management, and disaster risk reduction. These include the ADB-funded projects on coffee value chains, flood risk management and international food safety standards.
Nabilah holds a BSc in International Development with Economics from the University of Bath with expertise in postcolonial studies, the politics of international development and development economics. Her dissertation focused on whether the criteria of neo-colonialism (outlined by Kwame Nkrumah) could be applied to Structural Adjustment Programme policies undertaken in Nigeria between 1986 and 1993. She researched a variety of contemporary developmental topics and issues in African countries, such as the cocoa industry in Ghana, the rice market in Nigeria, the diamond sectors in Botswana and Sierra Leone, the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars, and gender disparities in Cote d’Ivoire. Nabilah is passionate about African countries navigating development and climate change, decolonising development, and equitable, participatory, and transformative approaches to development.
Nabilah has been working at Levin Sources since December 2021, works fluently in English and is based in Hertfordshire, UK
