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Who we are

With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Lina Alaaeldin Abdelfattah

Lina Alaaeldin Abdelfattah is a Senior Research Associate in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit, based in Cairo. Her research interests include applied economic development, trade, and spatial economics, with a focus on topics relevant to social protection, food, nutrition, and agriculture in the Middle East and Africa. 

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Reduce Poverty and End Hunger and Malnutrition

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What’s New

Limiting deforestation involves complex tradeoffs: Results from a global land-use model
IFPRI Blog
 | 
September 13, 2024

Limiting deforestation involves complex tradeoffs: Results from a global land-use model

By Abhijeet Mishra and Eleanor Jones

Many dimensions of combating climate change.

Tale of two villages: In Malawi, farmers point the way as drought drives hunger (WFP/AllAfrica/Relief Web)
In the News

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September 12, 2024

Tale of two villages: In Malawi, farmers point the way as drought drives hunger (WFP/AllAfrica/Relief Web)

The WFP story shared by All Africa and Relief Web quotes Jan Duchoslav and Joachim De Weerdt (IFPRI Malawi) on the food security crisis in the country.

Beyond the Health Extension Program: Developing a focused approach to improve nutrition in Ethiopia
IFPRI Blog
 | 
September 11, 2024

Beyond the Health Extension Program: Developing a focused approach to improve nutrition in Ethiopia

By Taddese Zerfu

A study points to reforms.

Enhancing milk quality in Uganda: Challenges and innovations in the dairy value chain
IFPRI Blog
 | 
September 09, 2024

Enhancing milk quality in Uganda: Challenges and innovations in the dairy value chain

By Richard Ariong, Bjorn Van Campenhout, Sarah W. Kariuki, and Jordan Chamberlin

Improving market incentives.

Pathway to Brewing Success: Engaging with Coffee Growers to Understand Production Challenges in Papua New Guinea's Highlands
Interactive
 | 
September 04, 2024

Pathway to Brewing Success: Engaging with Coffee Growers to Understand Production Challenges in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands

Coffee is one of the most important smallholder cash crops in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Despite coffee’s economic importance, growers face production challenges and, on average, still struggle to meet household needs.

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Journal Article

Toilet construction under the Swachh Bharat Mission and infant mortality in India

2024Chakrabarti, Suman; Gune, Soyra; Bruckner, Tim A.; Strominger, Julie; Singh, Parvati

Toilet construction under the Swachh Bharat Mission and infant mortality in India

Improvement of water and sanitation conditions may reduce infant mortality, particularly in countries like India where open defecation is highly prevalent. We conducted a quasi-experimental study to investigate the association between the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM)—a national sanitation program initiated in 2014—and infant (IMR) and under five mortality rates (U5MR) in India. We analyzed data from thirty-five Indian states and 640 districts spanning 10 years (2011–2020), with IMR and U5MR per thousand live births as the outcomes. Our main exposure was the district-level annual percentage of households that received a constructed toilet under SBM. We mapped changes in IMR and U5MR and toilet access at the district level over time. We fit two-way fixed effects regression models controlling for sociodemographic, wealth, and healthcare-related confounders at the district-level to estimate the association between toilets constructed and child mortality. Toilet access and child mortality have a historically robust inverse association in India. Toilets constructed increased dramatically across India following the implementation of SBM in 2014. Results from panel data regression models show that districts with > 30% toilets constructed under SBM corresponds with 5.3 lower IMR (p < 0.05), and 6.8 lower U5MR (p < 0.05). Placebo, falsification tests and robustness checks support our main findings. The post-SBM period in India exhibited accelerated reductions in infant and child mortality compared to the pre-SBM years. Based on our regression estimates, the provision of toilets at-scale may have contributed to averting approximately 60,000–70,000 infant deaths annually. Our findings show that the implementation of transformative sanitation programs can deliver population health benefits in low- and middle-income countries.

Year published

2024

Authors

Chakrabarti, Suman; Gune, Soyra; Bruckner, Tim A.; Strominger, Julie; Singh, Parvati

Citation

Chakrabarti, Suman; Gune, Soyra; Bruckner, Tim A.; Strominger, Julie; and Singh, Parvati. 2024. Toilet construction under the Swachh Bharat Mission and infant mortality in India. Scientific Reports 14(2024): 20340. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-71268-8

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Hygiene; Infants; Mortality; Water

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-71268-8 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Journal Article

Emerging outsource agricultural services enable farmer adaptation in agrifood value chains: A product cycle perspective

2024Reardon, Thomas; Awokuse, Titus; Belton, Ben; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Minten, Bart; Nguyen, Genevieve; Qanti, Sara; Swinnen, Johan; Vos, Rob; Zilberman, David

Emerging outsource agricultural services enable farmer adaptation in agrifood value chains: A product cycle perspective

Outsource agricultural service enterprises emerged a century ago in high-income countries and in the past several decades in developing regions. We contribute by analyzing and illustrating the emergence of these services from the perspective of phases of the Product Cycle. These services help farmers adapt to international and domestic agrifood value chains: (1) in the commoditization phase, e.g., with rice combine harvesting services in China and Myanmar for domestic and export markets; (2) in the early product differentiation phase into quality traits, e.g., with horticultural services to Ethiopian and Indonesian farmers for urban wholesale markets; (3) in the advanced product differentiation phase into environmental traits, e.g., with A-Z services to help French farmers grow eco-labeled vegetables for supermarkets. These services addressed farmers’ shortfalls in information, skills, labor, and equipment. The services are supplied by medium/large farmers with excess capacity say of a combine; by wholesalers who want to reduce search costs and risks; by input “agro-dealers”; and by agribusinesses servicing their outgrowers. In new cases shown in France, outsource firms partner with farm input companies such as Bayer or with robot/drone companies. Governments have – and can do much more to – support the emergence of these services such as in developing regions today through: (1) promotion of a business ecosystem, based on policies of investment in hard and soft infrastructure, favoring the coadaptation of these firms with farmers’ needs; (2) policies facilitating access, such as through import liberalization, of equipment and seeds and chemicals.

Year published

2024

Authors

Reardon, Thomas; Awokuse, Titus; Belton, Ben; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Minten, Bart; Nguyen, Genevieve; Qanti, Sara; Swinnen, Johan; Vos, Rob; Zilberman, David

Citation

Reardon, Thomas; Awokuse, Titus; Belton, Ben; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Minten, Bart; Nguyen, Genevieve; et al. 2024. Emerging outsource agricultural services enable farmer adaptation in agrifood value chains: A product cycle perspective. Food Policy 127(August 2024): 102711. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102711

Country/Region

China; Myanmar; Ethiopia; France; Indonesia

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Africa; Eastern Africa; Europe; Adaptation; Value Chains; Agrifood Systems; Farmers; Rice; Vegetables

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102711 Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Journal Article

Journal Article

Women improving nutrition through self-help groups in India: Does nutrition information help?

2024Kumar, Neha; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Scott, Samuel P.; Menon, Purnima; Thai, Giang; Gupta, Shivani; Nichols, Carly; WINGS study team

Women improving nutrition through self-help groups in India: Does nutrition information help?

Women’s self-help groups (SHGs) are an important platform for reaching poor women in India. Despite SHGs’ women-focused programming, evidence of the impact of SHG-based interventions on nutrition outcomes is limited, and most evaluations of nutrition interventions have not examined intermediate outcomes along the impact pathways or outcomes for women themselves. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of an integrated agriculture-nutrition intervention delivered through women’s SHGs in five states in central and eastern India. The interventions involved the delivery of nutrition behavior change communication to groups through participatory approaches, community engagement around key issues, and the strengthening of collective organizations. Our analysis is based on three rounds of rich panel data on close to 2700 rural women and their households from eight districts in these five states and qualitative work from an accompanying process evaluation. Using difference-in-difference models with nearest neighbor matching methods, we present results on women’s anthropometry and diet-related outcomes. We do not observe any improvements in women’s BMI or overall dietary diversity. Although more women in the nutrition intensification arm consumed animal source foods, nuts and seeds, and fruits, this was not enough to increase overall dietary diversity scores or the proportion of women achieving minimum dietary diversity. We measure intermediate outcomes along the program’s impact pathways and find improvements in household incomes, cultivation of home gardens, and utilization of government schemes but not in women’s empowerment. The lack of improvement in anthropometry and diets despite changes in some intermediate outcomes can be attributed to several factors such as low implementation intensity, poor facilitator capacity and incentives, the lack of relevance of the BCC topics to the average SHG member, and resource and agency constraints to adoption of recommended practices. Although we do not have data to test the parallel trends assumption and so do not interpret our results as causal, these findings do suggest that optimism about using group-based platforms needs to be tempered in resource-poor contexts.

Year published

2024

Authors

Kumar, Neha; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Scott, Samuel P.; Menon, Purnima; Thai, Giang; Gupta, Shivani; Nichols, Carly; WINGS study team

Citation

Kumar, Neha; Raghunathan, Kalyani; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Scott, Samuel P.; Menon, Purnima; Thai, Giang; Gupta, Shivani; Nichols, Carly; and WINGS study team. 2024. Women improving nutrition through self-help groups in India: Does nutrition information help? Food Policy 128(October 2024): 102716. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102716

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Agriculture; Body Mass Index; Maternal Nutrition; Self-help Groups; Women; Nutrition Education

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102716 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Journal Article

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The 2024 Global Food Policy Report

Food systems and diets underpin many critical challenges to public health and environmental sustainability, including malnutrition, noncommunicable diseases, and climate change, but healthy diets have the unique potential to reshape the future for both human and planetary well-being. Drawing on recent evidence and experience, the 2024 Global Food Policy Report highlights opportunities for transforming food systems to ensure sustainable healthy diets for all.

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IFPRI and CGIAR

IFPRI is a Research Center of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future. IFPRI researchers work in close partnership with researchers from other CGIAR Centers and partners through many CGIAR Research Initiatives and Platforms. Our work contributes to the CGIAR mission of delivering science and innovation that advance the transformation of food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.

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Experts in Our Field

IFPRI’s experts work around the world to provide the evidence that supports effective policies to reduce poverty and end malnutrition.

600+

staff across the world

80+

countries where we work

#1

in the field of Agricultural Economics

20,000+

research outputs

Meet a Researcher

Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse is a Senior Research Fellow in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit, based in Ethiopia. He is a development economist whose recent research covered agricultural transformation; impact evaluation (including impact evaluation of large multi-year public programs); social protection; individual psycho-social characteristics, behaviour, and well-being outcomes; risk and insurance, consumption patterns and demand elasticities; cooperatives; and inter‐sectoral linkages and growth. The bulk of Alemayehu’s research focuses on Ethiopia, with ongoing contributions to studies on Sudan and earlier work…

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Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse

From our video channel

Telling the stories of women in Odisha State, India, who were able to exercise their voice and obtain assets to improve their livelihoods within the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA) program
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Our Events

Debt Distress and the Right to Food in Africa
IFPRI Policy Seminar

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October 2, 2024, 9:30 – 11:00 am

Debt Distress and the Right to Food in Africa

Also streaming on Please type your questions into the chat box with name, affiliation, and country. The event video, presenter slides, and podcast will be available in the days following the event. More than half of low-income countries are at risk of debt distress or have already defaulted. The debt crisis, while exacerbated by recent […]

The Role of Private Philanthropy in Funding Climate Solutions
IFPRI at External Event

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October 23, 2024, 12:00 – 5:00 pm

The Role of Private Philanthropy in Funding Climate Solutions

The Linkages Series is a mini-conference format designed to spark learning and action around current issues shaping the field. Together, they bridge funder, practitioner, & network constellations. Join this virtual conference for a deep dive into how and where private philanthropy plays a key role in funding climate change solutions globally and hear from leaders […]

Supporting and shaping the global nutrition agenda with evidence: A three-decade journey of research and partnerships for impact
IFPRI Policy Seminar

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October 30, 2024, 10:00 – 11:30 am

Supporting and shaping the global nutrition agenda with evidence: A three-decade journey of research and partnerships for impact

Also streaming on Please type your questions into the chat box with name, affiliation, and country. The event video, presenter slides, and podcast will be available in the days following the event. This year’s Forman Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Marie Ruel, Senior Research Fellow in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit at IFPRI. […]

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Making a Difference Blog Series

For more than three decades, IFPRI has worked with the Government of Ethiopia to provide evidence-based advice on the development of the country’s agricultural sector.

IFPRI’s research and policy recommendations led to the establishment of Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) in 2010, which continues to play a critical role in guiding the country’s agricultural development and sustainability.

Tamsin Zandstra, Gashaw T. Abate, Shahidur Rashid, and Nicholas Minot outline how IFPRI’s long-term strategic research support to the ATA has led to several tangible government policy outcomes.

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