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With research staff from more than 70 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

Lilia Bliznashka

Lily Bliznashka is a Research Fellow in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit. Her research focuses on assessing the effectiveness of multi-input nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific interventions and the mechanisms through which they work to improve maternal and child health and nutrition globally. She has worked in Burkina Faso, Burundi, Tanzania, and Uganda.

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Projects

In this project, IFPRI conducted a randomized trial evaluating the Ultra-Poor Graduation intervention in Baidoa, Somalia, designed to enable ultra-poor households who were internally displaced to graduate from extreme poverty. UPG was a multifaceted intervention centering around cash transfers, savings groups, and asset transfers or training, implemented by World Vision and funded by USAID. The RCT tracked 4000 households over three years and assessed the effectiveness of UPG in building household food security, reducing poverty, and increasing income, generating valuable new evidence about the effectiveness of a graduation model intervention in an urban humanitarian context.

Project duration: 2021 – 2024

Contact

Jessica Leight

Funders

United States of America

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Building pathways out of poverty in Baidoa: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial at endline

2024Leight, Jessica; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Hirvonen, Kalle; Rakshit, Deboleena
Details

Building pathways out of poverty in Baidoa: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial at endline

Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world, and severe poverty, ongoing armed conflict, and recurring droughts and floods have created a humanitarian crisis characterized by a high level of inter nal displacement. Baidoa city—the site of this evaluation—hosts 517 sites for internally displaced per sons (IDP), with almost 600,000 households, and 64 percent of the individuals living in these sites are women and girls. According to the second Somali High Frequency Survey (Pape and Karamba 2019), IDP settlements (along with rural areas) face a particularly high level of poverty, exacerbated by high unemployment rates and the absence of income-generating opportunities. This brief reports on endline findings from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluating the project Building Pathways Out of Poverty for Ultra-poor IDPs and Vulnerable Host Communities in Baidoa, an ultra-poor graduation (UPG) intervention implemented by World Vision and funded by the United States Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA). The project seeks to enable ultra-poor internally displaced households to graduate from extreme poverty and begin the upward trajectory to self-reliance for displacement-affected communities by enabling gender-sensitive, context-appropriate, and sustainable livelihoods in an urban setting. IFPRI is collaborating with World Vision to conduct the trial.

Year published

2024

Authors

Leight, Jessica; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Hirvonen, Kalle; Rakshit, Deboleena

Citation

Leight, Jessica; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Hirvonen, Kalle; and Rakshit, Deboleena. 2024. Building pathways out of poverty in Baidoa: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial at endline. Learning Brief December 2024. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/168400

Country/Region

Somalia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Poverty; Conflicts; Natural Disasters; Displacement; Women; Unemployment; Gender

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Brief

Resource thumbnail

Blog Post

Graduation from poverty: Can a big push program help conflict-affected households? Evidence from Somalia

2024Hirvonen, Kalle; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Leight, Jessica; Rakshit, Deboleena
Details

Graduation from poverty: Can a big push program help conflict-affected households? Evidence from Somalia

We are living in one of the most violent periods since the end of the Cold War. Of the 59 active conflicts worldwide, nearly half (28) are unfolding in Africa. Among these, Somalia stands out as a country enduring one of the continent’s longest-running conflicts, stretching back to the 1980s. Nearly 4 million people out of Somalia’s population of 18 million have been forced to flee their homes due to persistent violence and increasingly unstable climate conditions. Many of these internally displaced persons (IDPs) have sought refuge in unplanned, informal settlements in urban areas.

Year published

2024

Authors

Hirvonen, Kalle; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Leight, Jessica; Rakshit, Deboleena

Citation

Hirvonen, Kalle; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Leight, Jessica; and Rakshit, Deboleena. 2024. Graduation from poverty: Can a big push program help conflict-affected households? Evidence from Somalia. IFPRI Blog. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://www.ifpri.org/blog/graduation-from-poverty-can-a-big-push-program-help-conflict-affected-households-evidence-from-somalia/

Country/Region

Somalia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Poverty; Conflicts; Displacement; Climate; Food Security

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Blog Post

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Building pathways out of poverty in Baidoa, Somalia: Qualitative evidence around resilience in the context of flood shocks

2024Magan, Mohamed; Hassan, Hashi; Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Rakshit, Deboleena
Details

Building pathways out of poverty in Baidoa, Somalia: Qualitative evidence around resilience in the context of flood shocks

Somalia is among the most impoverished nations globally, grappling with severe poverty, persistent armed conflicts, and recurrent droughts and floods, leading to a humanitarian crisis marked by substantial internal displacement. The site of this evaluation, Baidoa, has 517 sites for internally displaced persons (IDPs), housing nearly 600,000 households. Notably, 64% of the residents in these sites are women and girls. The 2nd Somali High-Frequency Survey revealed that poverty is particularly pronounced in IDP settlements, compounded by high unemployment rates and a lack of income-generating opportunities, thereby exacerbating the challenging circumstances in this area. This brief reports findings from a qualitative assessment conducted in January 2024 exploring the effects of severe floods in Baidoa and the role of the Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) intervention in protecting households from these shocks.

Year published

2024

Authors

Magan, Mohamed; Hassan, Hashi; Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Rakshit, Deboleena

Citation

Magan, Mohamed; Hassan, Hashi; Leight, Jessica; Hirvonen, Kalle; Karachiwalla, Naureen; and Rakshit, Deboleena. 2024. Building pathways out of poverty in Baidoa, Somalia: Qualitative evidence around resilience in the context of flood shocks. Learning Brief April 2024. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/141613

Country/Region

Somalia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Conflicts; Flooding; Households; Poverty; Women

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Brief

Blogs

Graduation from poverty in a changing and fragile world
Research Post
 | 
January 13, 2026

Graduation from poverty in a changing and fragile world

By Jeeyon Kim and Jessica Leight

Emerging frontiers for research and learning.

Graduation from poverty: Can a big push program help conflict-affected households? Evidence from Somalia
Research Post
 | 
December 17, 2024

Graduation from poverty: Can a big push program help conflict-affected households? Evidence from Somalia

By Kalle Hirvonen, Naureen Karachiwalla, Jessica Leight, and Deboleena Rakshit

Moving from assistance to self-sufficiency.

Events

Advancing Poverty Graduation in Fragile Contexts: A New Agenda for Research and Policy
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

January 21, 2026, 9:30 – 11:00 am

Advancing Poverty Graduation in Fragile Contexts: A New Agenda for Research and Policy

Multifaceted livelihoods interventions that target households in extreme poverty are extremely effective in reducing extreme poverty, with consistent gains in income, consumption, savings, and psychosocial well-being. These interventions, often called graduation models, have been widely evaluated, but most evidence comes from stable rural settings. In fragile and conflict-affected environments where poverty is increasingly concentrated, household-level […]

From Relief to Resilience in Somalia: Harnessing Research to Inform Social Protection Policy and Practice
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

June 16, 2025, 3:30 – 5:00 pm

From Relief to Resilience in Somalia: Harnessing Research to Inform Social Protection Policy and Practice

Policymakers and program implementers in Somalia are increasingly recognizing the importance of complementing short-term support in the form of cash or in-kind transfers with interventions targeting longer-term development goals and poverty exit, a goal that cuts across both more traditional social protection systems and programming targeting internally displaced people. This webinar will bring together representatives […]

Building pathways out of poverty: Midline findings from a randomized controlled trial
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

July 31, 2024, 9:00 – 10:00 am

Building pathways out of poverty: Midline findings from a randomized controlled trial

This webinar will provide evidence around the effects of the Ultra Poor Graduation program implemented in Baidoa, Somalia by World Vision and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA). The project seeks to enable ultra-poor internally displaced households to graduate from extreme poverty and begin an upward trajectory […]

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News

May 04, 2026 | In the News

Anti-poverty program is effective even in one of the world’s toughest settings (NPR)

Research shows that the “graduation” anti-poverty approach can be effective even in world’s hardest humanitarian contexts. NPR interviews IFPRI’s Jessica Leight, co-author of the study.

Funders

United States of America

Team members

Other

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