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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.

Erick Boy

researcher spotlight

Erick Boy

Erick Boy is the Chief Nutritionist in the HarvestPlus section of the Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit. As head of nutrition for the HarvestPlus Program since 2008, he has led research that has generated scientific evidence on biofortified staple crops as efficacious and effective interventions to help address iron, vitamin A, and zinc deficiency in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and South Asia.

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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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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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Development Strategies and Governance

Aboubacar Hema

Research Analyst

Bio

Aboubacar Hema is a Research Analyst in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. He is a data scientist, statistician, and software developer. Prior to joining IFPRI, Aboubacar worked as a data analyst with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), where he successfully implemented and analyzed the MHPSS surveys (round 1-3) as well as the endline surveys for Senegal, Guinea, Nigeria, and Gambia. He also worked as a statistician with the Senegalese Institute for Agricultural Research (ISRA-BAME), as well as with the Consortium for Economic and Social Research (CRES), where he was involved in the design, implementation, and analysis of various household surveys, and as an R developer (sdmApp package) with the French Agricultural Research Center for International Development (CIRAD).

Aboubacar earned a MicroMaster in Statistics and Data Science at MIT, where he learned the foundations of data science, statistics, and machine learning, using big data and probabilistic modelling to extract meaningful information for decision-making. He graduated from the National School of Statistics and Economic Analysis in Dakar and has a license 3 in Computer Science from the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

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Publications

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Brief

Informing CAADP 2026–2035: What a decade of IFPRI Research in Africa tells us

2025Ulimwengu, John M.; Hema, Aboubacar; Marivoet, Wim; Omamo, Steven Were
Details

Informing CAADP 2026–2035: What a decade of IFPRI Research in Africa tells us

This policy brief distills insights from a decade of IFPRI’s research and engagement across 54 African countries, offering a strategic synthesis to inform the Kampala 2026–2035 implementation phase of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). Drawing from almost 5,700 publications between 2015 and 2025, and using a combination of natural language processing (NLP), deep learning algorithms and rule-based approaches, the review maps key findings against CAADP’s six strategic objectives: (1) intensifying sustainable food production, agro-industrialization, and trade; (2) boosting investment and financing for agrifood systems transformation; (3) ensuring food and nutrition security; (4) advancing inclusivity and equitable livelihoods; (5) building resilient agrifood systems; and (6) strengthening agrifood systems governance. By aligning evidence with strategic priorities, this synthesis aims to sharpen the research and policy agenda needed to accelerate agricultural transformation, ensure food security, and deepen resilience across the continent. The review reveals areas of significant progress—such as advances innovative finance, nutrition policy, social protection design, gender equity, and market functioning—while also exposing enduring gaps in data, investment diagnostics, and imple mentation capacity. The brief is thus both a stocktaking and a springboard, harnessing what is known to guide the next phase of CAADP.

Year published

2025

Authors

Ulimwengu, John M.; Hema, Aboubacar; Marivoet, Wim; Omamo, Steven Were

Citation

Ulimwengu, John M.; Hema, Aboubacar; Marivoet, Wim; and Omamo, Steven Were. 2025. Informing CAADP 2026–2035: What a decade of IFPRI Research in Africa tells us. IFPRI Policy Brief May 2025. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174708

Keywords

Africa; Research; Caadp; Food Systems; Development; Social Protection; Food Security; Livelihoods

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

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Brief

Unique datasets on shocks, food security, and household coping strategies: Creating new analytical playgrounds to study coping behavior in the multi-shock environments of Mali, Chad, Niger, and Burkina Faso (2018-2023)

2025Marivoet, Wim; Sib, Ollo; Samake, Aliou Badara; Dieme, Ndeye Fatou; Hema, Aboubacar; Doehnert, Federico; Suzuki, Mina
Details

Unique datasets on shocks, food security, and household coping strategies: Creating new analytical playgrounds to study coping behavior in the multi-shock environments of Mali, Chad, Niger, and Burkina Faso (2018-2023)

To inform the Cadre Harmonisé process in West Africa, large-scale national household surveys are usually implemented twice a year to capture data on household food security and several forms of consumption- and livelihood-based coping strategies. These cross-sectional surveys typically take place around February-March (before the start of the lean season) and September-October (at the end of the lean season or beginning of the harvesting period), and they are generally representative at the second-tier administrative level. Despite their different names (that is, ENSAN in Mali, ENSA in Chad, EVIAM in Niger, and ENISAN in Burkina Faso) and the methodological revisions introduced over the years, these surveys have a large common set of variables that were pooled together by standardizing the modalities of all common variables found across the multiple survey waves between 2018 and 2023. Apart from reconsolidation and reprocessing of initial data files, this process also involved the re-computation of several key indicators on food security and household coping as to assure maximum methodological consistency over time.

Year published

2025

Authors

Marivoet, Wim; Sib, Ollo; Samake, Aliou Badara; Dieme, Ndeye Fatou; Hema, Aboubacar; Doehnert, Federico; Suzuki, Mina

Citation

Marivoet, Wim; Sib, Ollo; Samake, Aliou Badara; Dieme, Ndeye Fatou; Hema, Aboubacar; Doehnert, Federico; and Suzuki, Mina. 2025. Unique datasets on shocks, food security, and household coping strategies: Creating new analytical playgrounds to study coping behavior in the multi-shock environments of Mali, Chad, Niger, and Burkina Faso (2018-2023). CGIAR Initiative on Fragility, Conflict, and Migration. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/173063

Country/Region

Mali; Chad; Niger; Burkina Faso

Keywords

Western Africa; Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Datasets; Shock; Food Security; Households

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Brief

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Report

How did households in Mali cope with covariate shocks between 2018 and 2023? Exploration of a unique dataset

2024Marivoet, Wim; Hema, Aboubacar
Details

How did households in Mali cope with covariate shocks between 2018 and 2023? Exploration of a unique dataset

The objective of this analysis is to gain more insight into the coping behavior of households in Mali when facing covariate shocks and stressors of different kinds. To achieve this, we rely on a unique dataset, which consists of eleven waves of cross-sectional household data combined with an extensive list of shock indicators compiled from external sources. Apart from a detailed profiling of both dimensions, this analysis relies on a data mining algorithm to uncover interesting associations between covariate shocks and coping strategies. Among the main findings of this study is the pronounced diversity in shock and coping profiles observed across time and place, which in turn complicates any straightforward identification of common and consistent patterns in household coping behavior. This said, political violence has increased over time; food prices hiked in 2018, 2022 and 2023; rainy seasons were underperforming in 2021 and 2023; extreme weather events reached a peak in 2021; while the Gao region in 2023 suffered from all five shock domains at the same time. While fewer households resorted to coping over time, those who did combined slightly more strategies – which either points to increased inequality or generalized depletion of coping potential. Further, poor and erratic weather conditions appear to be important triggers for households to disinvest in farming and livestock activities, with food secure people being more inclined to resort to emergency coping when shocks prevail. This analysis also very much reveals the need for additional research on the same integrated and enhanced dataset.

Year published

2024

Authors

Marivoet, Wim; Hema, Aboubacar

Citation

Marivoet, Wim; and Hema, Aboubacar. 2024. How did households in Mali cope with covariate shocks between 2018 and 2023? Exploration of a unique dataset. Fragility, Conflict, and Migration Initiative Report. CGIAR System Organization. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/158282

Country/Region

Mali

Keywords

Western Africa; Households; Shock; Violence; Conflicts; Food Prices; Extreme Weather Events; Farming Systems; Livestock; Food Security

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Report

Research

Topics/Countries