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Shamira is a seasoned trade and development economist. She has a versatile skill set and broad research expertise,which she gained from working as a research consultant at a multinational consultancy firm, as a trade economist in the public sector, and in her current role as senior economist at Research ICT Africa—a policy research think tank that conducts human rights-based research on information and communications technology for development (ICT4D). Shamira has extensive experience conducting evidence based trade related research on sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies, adapting global trade and development policy challenges to benefit diverse African contexts, as well as providing multi-sector technical expertise related to (digital) trade in goods and services and industrial policy and economic regulation reform, for equitable economic growth and development from the multilateral trading system. Shamira is an Australia Awards Africa Scholarship recipient, she has a quantitative economics and econometrics academic background obtained from a Masters Degree in International and Development Economics (Applied and Theoretical Quantitative Economics) from the Australian National University, a BCom Honours in International Trade and Finance, and a BCom in Economics and Econometrics (Quantitative Economics) , both from the University of Johannesburg. She is currently pursuing a certificate in Data Science from Harvard University to enhance her strong econometrics foundation, to better understand machine learning algorithms, and improve on her existing practical experience on how value is created from data.