Dear members of the Chronic Poverty Network: we have been deeply saddened and shocked with the news of Flora Kessy’s passing earlier this month, which was completely unexpected. Flora was a very important member of the network, its key researcher in Tanzania, with us since 2008. She edited the book ‘Translating Growth into Poverty Reduction: Beyond the Numbers’, published by Mkuti Na Nyota Publishers, led the writing of several reports on poverty dynamics, and was a contributor to the 2014-5 Chronic Poverty Report. She was a great fieldworker and companion. She passed while writing an article for a World Development Special Issue on Sustained Escapes from Poverty. We will dedicate the Special Issue to her memory. She is survived by a son.

Flora Kessy was a true leader in research on chronic poverty and poverty dynamics in Tanzania. Instead of succumbing to pressures to pursue safer, more conventional approaches to development research, Flora, a trained economist, pursued a mixed method approach that involved in-depth cross-disciplinary qualitative research using longitudinal and contextually based interviews to understand the deeper and more complex causes of chronic poverty, escaping poverty and staying out of poverty. When conventional development practice employs junior researchers to gather qualitative data, she instead assembled highly qualified teams of senior researchers. Each had considerable academic and field research experience in diverse areas, including political economy, agriculture, gender, public services, corruption, and nuanced cultural and historical contexts in Tanzania.

When conventional approaches in development focussed on field research in or near capital cities. Flora and the team would travel to those far-flung and understudied areas of Tanzania, often under dangerous and arduous conditions. Most of all, Flora would insist on gathering the voices and experiences of the chronically poor as directly and truthfully and comprehensively as possible to represent their voices in both research and policy discussions.