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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.

Ahmed Akhter

researcher spotlight

Akhter Ahmed

Akhter Ahmed is a Senior Research Fellow in the IFPRI’s Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit and Country Representative for IFPRI Bangladesh. He has worked on strategies for agricultural and rural development, social protection, and women’s empowerment to reduce poverty, food insecurity, and undernutrition in developing countries including Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Malawi, the Philippines, and Turkey.

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What we do

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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Where we work

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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partnerships

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), one of fifteen CGIAR Research Centers, develops crops, agricultural practices, interventions, and policies to maximize health and nutrition benefits. CIAT works in collaboration with hundreds of partners to help developing countries make farming more competitive, profitable, and resilient through smarter, more sustainable natural resource management. CIAT helps policymakers, scientists, and farmers respond to some of the most pressing challenges of our time, including food insecurity and malnutrition, climate change, and environmental degradation.

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Publications

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Working Paper

Commercialization and dietary diversity of Rwandan smallholder farmers: A focus on women and youth headed households

2025Mukangabo, Emerence; Warner, James
Details

Commercialization and dietary diversity of Rwandan smallholder farmers: A focus on women and youth headed households

Using a household dietary diversity score as a proxy for household access to nutritious foods, this paper assesses the relationship between commercialization and nutritional outcomes of Rwandan smallholder farmers, with a particular emphasis on women and youth headed households. The results indicate that commercialization has a strong, positive effect on household dietary diversity but mixed results between sub-categories of households. For instance, male-headed households have higher overall dietary diversity compared to female-headed ones, but much of that variation can be explained by higher asset ownership and income. However, relative to male headed households, female headed households appear to respond to increasing levels of commercialization by consuming more diverse foods, an insight that could be useful for targeted interventions. Importantly, youth-headed households exhibit greater household dietary diversity than those households headed by older individuals, despite having both lower levels of assets and crop commercialization. General determinants that positively influence household dietary diversity include the level of commercialization, household non-farm assets, market access, education of the household head, the presence of children under five in the household, irrigation use, land size, and livestock holdings. The goal of this research is to enable policy makers to better identify the drivers of household dietary consumption, particularly among more vulnerable households, and how to encourage a more diverse diet for better nutritional outcomes.

Year published

2025

Authors

Mukangabo, Emerence; Warner, James

Citation

Mukangabo, Emerence; and Warner, James. 2025. Commercialization and dietary diversity of Rwandan smallholder farmers: A focus on women and youth headed households. Rwanda SSP Working Paper 16. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/173175

Country/Region

Rwanda

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Nutrition; Dietary Diversity; Commercialization; Gender; Youth; Households; Smallholders

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Farming for the future: Prioritization of climate-smart agriculture technologies in SAARC countries

2024Kapoor, Shreya; Sma, Abdelkarim; Pathak, Himanshu; Pradhan, Mamata
Details

Farming for the future: Prioritization of climate-smart agriculture technologies in SAARC countries

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is pivotal in combating the impacts of climate change on global agriculture and food security. It has increasingly gained prominence as an adaptation strategy against the adverse impacts of climate change on agriculture, particularly in South Asia. However, scaling up the adoption of CSA interventions becomes critical, due to predominantly small and marginal nature of landholdings in the region, various institutional and policy constraints, and trade regulations and barriers. Another significant challenge lies in categorizing and prioritizing the multitude of technologies considered to be climate smart. Therefore, this study attempts to explore the different CSA technologies within the socio-economic context of six South Asian countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, with the main objective of proioritization and scaling-up of these methods. The study begins by compiling an inventory of existing technologies and subsequently prioritizing them by using the World Bank (WB) CSA Technology Index. Secondly, the study tries to address the key challenges and propose policy measures to upscale the adoption of CSA technologies in these countries using participatory research conducted with the key stakeholders in these countries. The participatory research provided valuable insights, revealing critical policy and institutional barriers, and providing a basis for framing strategies and policy solutions to facilitate wider adoption of CSA technologies in the region.

Year published

2024

Authors

Kapoor, Shreya; Sma, Abdelkarim; Pathak, Himanshu; Pradhan, Mamata

Citation

Kapoor, Shreya; Sma, Abdelkarim; Pathak, Himanshu; and Pradhan, Mamata. 2024. Farming for the future: Prioritization of climate-smart agriculture technologies in SAARC countries. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2285. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/155261

Country/Region

Bangladesh; Bhutan; India; Nepal; Pakistan; Sri Lanka

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Climate Change; Climate-smart Agriculture; Prioritization; Scaling Up

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Strengthening women’s empowerment, climate resilience, and nutrition along the goat value chain in Senegal: A qualitative study

2024Kane, Papa Abdoulaye; Barry, Mamadou Bobo; Eissler, Sarah; Tall, Thiané; Camara, Astou Diao; Sall, Moussa; Fass, Simone; Bryan, Elizabeth; Ringler, Claudia
Details

Strengthening women’s empowerment, climate resilience, and nutrition along the goat value chain in Senegal: A qualitative study

Goats are an important source of income, nutrition and resilience in Senegal. This study assesses opportunities to strengthen women’s agency, increase resilience to climate change, and improve nutrition along the various stages of goat value chains from the acquisition of feed resources and other inputs to processing, marketing and consumption of various goat products. The qualitative study finds that even though goats are more climate resilient than other livestock, climate change impacts on goat production and productivity are increasingly felt, particularly through impacts on feed resources. The study identified opportunities to strengthen women’s roles along the goat value chain, particularly in goat production and, to a lesser extent, in processing of goat products. Women and their families also benefit from the consumption of goat milk and women have some degree of control over income from the sale of goat products. Strengthening women’s agency in these nutrient-rich and relatively climate-resilient value chains will require improving their access to land resources and better animal feeds, supporting women’s groups and building women’s capacity for processing and marketing goat products, improving access to electricity for cold storage of goat products, and raising awareness regarding the nutritional benefits of goat products, especially for women and children.

Year published

2024

Authors

Kane, Papa Abdoulaye; Barry, Mamadou Bobo; Eissler, Sarah; Tall, Thiané; Camara, Astou Diao; Sall, Moussa; Fass, Simone; Bryan, Elizabeth; Ringler, Claudia

Citation

Kane, Papa Abdoulaye; Barry, Mamadou Bobo; Eissler, Sarah; Tall, Thiané; Camara, Astou Diao; Sall, Moussa; et al. 2024. Strengthening women’s empowerment, climate resilience, and nutrition along the goat value chain in Senegal: A qualitative study. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2274. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/152294

Country/Region

Senegal

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Climate Change; Goats; Nutrition; Climate Resilience; Value Chains; Women’s Empowerment; Gender

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

Events

Transforming Africa’s Food System with Digital Technologies
IFPRI Policy Seminar

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November 26, 2019, 9:30 – 11:00 am

Transforming Africa’s Food System with Digital Technologies

African countries have made considerable progress in increasing agricultural productivity and reducing hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. But  continued population growth, urbanization, changing diets, and climate change are putting pressure on food systems not only to provide more food but also to make more diverse and nutritious foods available and accessible. New digital technologies and services […]

Crafting the Next Generation of CGIAR Gender Research
IFPRI Policy Seminar

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October 30, 2019, 12:15 – 1:45 pm

Crafting the Next Generation of CGIAR Gender Research

How can agriculture and natural resource management advance gender equality? Asking this question rather than only its inverse — what does gender analysis bring to agriculture and natural resource management? — elevates the objective of gender equality within CGIAR, challenges boundaries in thinking about gender in agriculture, and stimulates new and creative perspectives. Gender researchers […]

CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture Convention
IFPRI at External Event

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October 3 to 5, 2018

CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture Convention

IFPRI Staff are participating in the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture co-hosted by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) taking place October 3-5, 2018 at the Campus of the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya. This convention is the second yearly event to bring together the people and organizations that make the […]

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Blogs

Understanding what impacts last, after the project ends
IFPRI Blog
 | 
October 08, 2019

Understanding what impacts last, after the project ends

By Alan de Brauw

A biofortification project in Mozambique shows lasting nutrition benefits.

How climate change will impact agricultural productivity in Central America and the Andean Region
IFPRI Blog
 | 
August 19, 2019

How climate change will impact agricultural productivity in Central America and the Andean Region

By Timothy S. Thomas, Ana María Loboguerrero RodrÍguez, Ana R. Rios, Deissy Martínez Barón, Graciela Magrin, and Vicente Barros

Central America will be particularly hard-hit by declining yields of rainfed maize, modeling shows.