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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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Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

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Natural Resources and Resilience

Bedru Balana

Senior Research Fellow

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Bio

Bedru Balana is a Senior Research Fellow in IFPRI’s Agrifood Innovation and Resilience (AIR) Unit. He received his PhD in Agricultural Economics from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), specializing in applied microeconomic research for development. His works focus on addressing key constraints facing smallholder farmers, including agricultural technology adoption (esp. small-scale irrigation), natural resource management, climate resilience, food security, and poverty reduction across Africa. He leads several research-for-development projects, overseeing applied field research including household surveys and capacity strengthening efforts, while engaging closely with policymakers, partners, and donors to translate evidence into practical, scalable solutions. His research contributes to the design of programs, interventions, and investments that enhance sustainable food systems, household food security and reduce poverty. Bedru has published more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles in high-impact journals, along with book chapters, technical reports, blogs, and policy outputs, and has extensive field experience in sub-Sharan African countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso. Prior to joining IFPRI, he worked at Mekelle University (Ethiopia), the James Hutton Institute (UK), and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

CV

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Uncovering bottlenecks and innovative solutions for scaling small-scale irrigation through a system approach and design thinking: Evidence from Nigeria

2026Iraoya, Augustine Okhale; Balana, Bedru
Details

Uncovering bottlenecks and innovative solutions for scaling small-scale irrigation through a system approach and design thinking: Evidence from Nigeria

CONTEXT Small-scale irrigation (SSI) is central to food system transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa, yet its scaling remains low in Nigeria despite the apparent demand and policy narratives. OBJECTIVE Examine intermediary ‘missing middle’ barriers to SSI scaling and co-create solutions for socially inclusive, environmentally sustainable, and institutionally coherent scaling of SSI. METHODS We integrated Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) theory with a Human-Centered Design (HCD) approach to examine SSI diffusion in a Responsible Scaling lens. For qualitative study, a series of HCD workshops were conducted in three geographies (Kano, Oyo, and FCT) with a total of 85 stakeholders drawn from government institutions, financial organizations, and private irrigation technology suppliers. To complement qualitative insights, we analyzed the 2023 National Agricultural Sample Survey microdata to generate a national snapshot of irrigation prevalence, methods, and water sources. This is a nationally representative data from sample of 152,485 households and over 76 million agricultural plots included in the Nigeria National Agricultural Sample Survey (NASS) 2022/2023. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS The study demonstrates that Nigeria’s SSI bottlenecks stem not simply from farmer reluctance or technological ignorance but primarily from systemic intermediation failures across policy coordination, finance, and market supply chains—producing a “missing-middle” ecosystem. These failures include fragmented government mandates, high lender risk perceptions, weak supplier networks, gendered exclusion, and pervasive information gaps. Applying responsible scaling (RS) we show how scaling of SSI is being hindered by institutional fragmentation, liquidity constraints, gender exclusion, and data/information deficiency. SIGNIFICANCE The study presents co-created innovation pathways, including a national SSI coordination platform, blended-finance mechanisms, supplier hub models, and gender-responsive financing, mapped to AIS functions to guide responsible, inclusive, and climate-resilient scaling. The integrated AIS–HCD–RS approach advances system learning and participatory co-design and offers a practical methodology for responsible scaling of agricultural innovation.

Year published

2026

Authors

Iraoya, Augustine Okhale; Balana, Bedru

Citation

Iraoya, Augustine Okhale; and Balana, Bedru. 2026. Uncovering bottlenecks and innovative solutions for scaling small-scale irrigation through a system approach and design thinking: Evidence from Nigeria. Agricultural Systems 236(June 2026): 104742. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2026.104742

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Africa; Capacity Building; Innovation Scaling; Small-scale Irrigation; Irrigation; Systems Analysis; Design; Agricultural Innovation Systems

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2026.104742 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

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Working Paper

Spatial disparity, information, and the economics of cool transportation: Insights from a randomized controlled trial in Nigeria

2026Yamauchi, Futoshi; Balana, Bedru; Bawa, Dauda; Edeh, Hyacinth O.; Shi, Weilun
Details

Spatial disparity, information, and the economics of cool transportation: Insights from a randomized controlled trial in Nigeria

Food loss is a significant source of economic inefficiency in value chains. In many developing countries, including Nigeria, a majority of fruits, vegetables, and other perishable foods are lost after harvest, due in large part to inadequate postharvest handling or low adoption of post-harvest management technologies, particularly cooling technologies such as temperature-controlled transportation and cold storage. To examine the economic impacts of cool transportation connecting vegetable-producing states in northeast Nigeria to large demand centers in Nigeria’s southern regions, we introduced a randomized controlled trial. Cool transportation was found to have a large and statistically significant impact: sales price, revenues, and profits increased substantially for the origin-state marketers. A larger portion of sales price increase at the destination market is attributed to refrigeration, that is, quality preservation through cooling. About 66 percent of this increase comes from cooling, with an additional 34 percent from transportation. An information experiment further showed that improved quality information through labelling that identifies the origin of the produce creates price premiums at the destination market. This implies that significant economic gains can be generated not only from narrowing supply–demand gaps in different markets but also, potentially, through mitigating spatial asymmetric information.

Year published

2026

Authors

Yamauchi, Futoshi; Balana, Bedru; Bawa, Dauda; Edeh, Hyacinth O.; Shi, Weilun

Citation

Yamauchi, Futoshi; Balana, Bedru B.; Bawa, Dauda; Edeh, Hyacinth; and Shi, Weilun. 2026. Spatial disparity, information, and the economics of cool transportation: Insights from a randomized controlled trial in Nigeria. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2410. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/182475

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Africa; Food Losses; Food Waste; Food Preservation; Fruits; Vegetables; Solar Energy; Evaporative Cooling; Cooling; Cold Storage; Randomized Controlled Trials

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Cooling technologies and long-term efficiency improvement of horticulture market agents: Panel data evidence from a solar-powered cold storage intervention in Nigeria

2026Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Yamauchi, Futoshi; Bawa, Dauda; Balana, Bedru
Details

Cooling technologies and long-term efficiency improvement of horticulture market agents: Panel data evidence from a solar-powered cold storage intervention in Nigeria

Modern cooling technologies that use renewable energy sources have been increasingly recognized as a promising tool to address a multitude of challenges emerging in progressively complex food systems in developing countries. When provided as cold storage inside horticulture markets, cooling technologies can contribute to improved quality of products and strengthened vertical linkages. Knowledge gaps about the medium- to long-term impacts of these technologies in developing countries remain, especially in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA). This study partly fills this knowledge gap by revisiting the 2021 short-term impact evaluation study (Takeshima et al. 2023) to assess the medium- to longer term impacts of interventions in northeast Nigeria in which 7 small solar-powered cold storages were installed across 7 horticulture markets. Combinations of difference-in-difference and variants of propensity score-based methods suggest that using cold storage significantly increased horticulture sales volumes and revenues of market agents. Using cold storage also reduced the share of food loss and lengthened the products’ shelf-life while raising prices received by both market agents and farmers, which were associated with improved product quality, expanded value-adding activities by market agents, and increased use of advance payments. We find no evidence of negative spillover effects inside horticulture markets. Observed effects are driven by the technical improvements that raise the efficiency of the use of purchased raw commodities, enabled by cold storage, based on modified efficiency analyses. At the same time, the efficiency of cold storage use remains low despite some improvement over time, and scopes exist to enhance this efficiency.

Year published

2026

Authors

Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Yamauchi, Futoshi; Bawa, Dauda; Balana, Bedru

Citation

Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Yamauchi, Futoshi; Bawa, Dauda; and Balana, Bedru B. 2026. Cooling technologies and long-term efficiency improvement of horticulture market agents: Panel data evidence from a solar-powered cold storage intervention in Nigeria. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2409. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/182199

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Africa; Solar Energy; Cold Storage; Horticulture; Markets; Efficiency; Food Storage; Food Preservation; Food Losses; Food Systems

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Working Paper

Events

WFP Climate Impact Evaluation Forum
IFPRI at External Event

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October 7 to 9, 2024

WFP Climate Impact Evaluation Forum

Extreme weather events pose one of the biggest threats to global food security. Increasingly, climate disasters like floods, droughts, and cyclones, are striking regions previously unaccustomed to such crises. In the Asia Pacific region, the United Nations World Food Programme work hand-in-hand with several partners to support vulnerable communities preparing, responding, and recovering from climate shocks […]

Africa Food Systems Forum 2024 Summit
IFPRI at External Event

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September 2 to 6, 2024

Africa Food Systems Forum 2024 Summit

The Africa Food Systems Forum 2024 annual summit will be a timely opportunity to convene diverse stakeholders, including world leaders, investors, academia, farmers’ organizations, and the private sector, to spotlight innovations, technologies, best practices, business models, policy delivery mechanisms, and investments to accelerate food systems transformation in Africa and beyond, with youth and women at […]

WFP Impact Evaluation Forum
IFPRI at External Event

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December 4 to 7, 2023

WFP Impact Evaluation Forum

Event: December 4, 2023 – 09:00 AM to December 7, 2023 – 6:30 PM CET. IFPRI is participating in the first United Nations World Food Programme Impact Evaluation Forum in Rome, Italy.

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News

August 27, 2022 | In the News

FG inaugurates six-year policy to promote innovation, investment in agric sector (The Cable) 

The Cable (Nigeria) published an article announcing the six-year national agricultural technology and innovation policy (NATIP) from 2022 to 2027 to enhance agribusiness in the country. The policy also aims to increase resilience and digital agriculture, thereby, promoting agricultural investments.   Bedru Balana, country program leader, IFPRI, said women and youth should be mainstreamed across the […]

August 26, 2022 | In the News

Untapped potential in agriculture can help food security – USAID/Nigeria (News Agency Nigeria) 

News Agency Nigeria posted an article on the launch of the National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy (NATIP) 2022 – 2027.  Agriculture is important to the growth and development of the economy, adding that in 2020, agriculture contributed over 25 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The new policy is a deliberate effort by […]

July 26, 2019 | In the News

Irrigation earns flood-prone farmers US$4,344 a hectare (SciDev.Net)

Promoting flood-recession agriculture could reduce seasonal migration during the dry season, helping farmers increase production, income, and food security. 

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