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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.

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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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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Reduce Poverty and End Hunger and Malnutrition

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Global, regional, and national food systems face major challenges and require fundamental transformations. More than ever, responding to these challenges will require a systems-oriented, multidisciplinary approach to reshape food systems so they work for all people sustainably.

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Meet a researcher

With his deep expertise in global agricultural policy, Joe Glauber has been a pivotal contributor to IFPRI’s Ukraine War blog series. Through his insightful analysis and nuanced understanding of the conflict’s impact on food systems, Joe has shed light on the intricate linkages between agriculture, geopolitics, and food security in the region. Don’t miss the opportunity to explore his thought-provoking contributions that offer invaluable perspectives on this complex issue.

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Joe Glauber

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Dan Gilligan, Unit Director (Introduction)

Dan Gilligan, the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion unit director discusses how PGI addresses gender, poverty, food insecurity, and low levels of nutrition, health, and education.

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Our Events

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    Africa Food Systems Forum 2025 Summit

    The Africa Food Systems Forum will host its annual summit in Dakar, Senegal, from August 31 to September 5, 2025. Africa’s Food Systems Forum, formerly AGRF, is the world’s premier forum for African agriculture and food systems, bringing together stakeholders to take practical actions and share lessons that will move African food systems forward. Africa…

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    2025 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting

    IFPRI is participating in the 2025 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Meeting on July 27– July 29, 2025. The Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) is a not-for-profit association serving the professional interests of members working in agricultural and broadly related fields of applied economics. AAEA members are primarily employed by academic departments…

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    4th International Conference on Financing for Development

    IFPRI is pleased to participate in the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4). This conference provides a unique opportunity to reform financing at all levels, including to support reform of the international financial architecture and addressing financing challenges preventing the urgently needed investment push for the SDGs. FFD4 Conference will be held in…

Recent publications

Journal Article

Fostering social inclusion in development-oriented digital food system interventions

2024Steinke, Jonathan; Schumann, Charlotte; Langan, Simon J.; Müller, Anna; Opola, Felix Ouko; Ortíz Crespo, Berta; Etten, Jacob van
Details

Fostering social inclusion in development-oriented digital food system interventions

CONTEXT Digital innovations can enhance the participation of often-marginalized social groups – including women and resource-poor farmers in low- and middle-income countries – in sustainable, profitable food systems. But digital interventions can also reinforce existing inequities by further increasing the competitive advantage of user groups privileged with literacy, access to smartphones, or high investment capacity. To ensure that the digital transformation in the Global South leaves no one behind, therefore, deliberate efforts are needed to promote the inclusivity of emerging digital innovations. To date, however, there is a lack of practical guidelines and tools to critically assess, demonstrate, and enhance the inclusivity of digital food systems interventions. Too often, inclusivity remains a blurry concept and distant objective. In result, digital development researchers and practitioners have limited incentives for investing time and effort into safeguarding inclusivity. OBJECTIVE With this short communication, we intend to contribute to future, practice-oriented discussions about social inclusivity in development-oriented digital interventions for sustainable food systems. We provide a critical reflection on the current discourse around digital inclusion in development context and outline challenges and opportunities for considering inclusivity in the design and deployment of digital food system innovations. METHODS Drawing on literature as well as the authors’ own experiences with the design and implementation of digital innovations within research-for-development, we highlight ‘blind spots’ in the current discourse around digital inclusion in low- and middle-income country context. We then develop practical suggestions for overcoming these limitations. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS We propose a concrete agenda for enabling researchers and other innovation stakeholders, including donors, to contribute to more inclusive digital food system innovation in low- and middle-income countries. First, a standard concept and procedure is required for transparently assessing the inclusivity of digital services. Second, as many digital development stakeholders work under resource constraints, simple design tools can help them effectively consider social inclusion criteria during the design of digital solutions. Lastly, a stronger emphasis on inclusivity is required throughout the research-for-development system, ensuring that design processes themselves are inclusive, rather than considering only the final digital products. SIGNIFICANCE As the importance of digital innovation keeps growing within the wider agricultural development discourse, this article helps researchers and practitioners gain conceptual clarity on the goal of digital inclusion. Through concrete suggestions on how inclusivity could be considered in practice, the article promotes a more equitable, inclusive digital transformation of food systems.

Year published

2024

Authors

Steinke, Jonathan; Schumann, Charlotte; Langan, Simon J.; Müller, Anna; Opola, Felix Ouko; Ortíz Crespo, Berta; Etten, Jacob van

Citation

Steinke, Jonathan; Schumann, Charlotte; Langan, Simon; Müller, Anna; Opola, Felix Ouko; Ortiz-Crespo, Berta; and van Etten, Jacob. 2024. Fostering social inclusion in development-oriented digital food system interventions. Agricultural Systems 215(March 2024): 103882. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2024.103882

Keywords

Design; Digital Divides; Intersectionality; Women; Women’s Empowerment

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2024.103882 Source record

Project

Digital Innovation

Record type

Journal Article

Journal Article

Causes and consequences of child growth faltering in low-resource settings

2023
Mertens, Andrew; Benjamin-Chung, Jade; Colford Jr, John M; Coyle, Jeremy; van der Laan, Mark; Hubbard, J. Alan E; Rosete, Sonali; Malenica, Ivana; Hejazi, Nima; Sofrygin, Oleg
…more Cai, Wilson; Li, Haodong; Nguyen, Anna; Pokpongkiat, Nolan N; Djajadi, Stephanie; Seth, Anmol; Jung, Esther; Chung, Esther O; Jilek, Wendy; Subramoney, Vishak; Hafen, Ryan; Häggström, Jonas; Norman, Thea; Brown, Kenneth H; The Ki Child Growth Consortium
Details

Causes and consequences of child growth faltering in low-resource settings

Growth faltering in children (low length for age or low weight for length) during the first 1,000 days of life (from conception to 2 years of age) influences short-term and long-term health and survival1,2. Interventions such as nutritional supplementation during pregnancy and the postnatal period could help prevent growth faltering, but programmatic action has been insufficient to eliminate the high burden of stunting and wasting in low- and middle-income countries. Identification of age windows and population subgroups on which to focus will benefit future preventive efforts. Here we use a population intervention effects analysis of 33 longitudinal cohorts (83,671 children, 662,763 measurements) and 30 separate exposures to show that improving maternal anthropometry and child condition at birth accounted for population increases in length-for-age z-scores of up to 0.40 and weight-for-length z-scores of up to 0.15 by 24 months of age. Boys had consistently higher risk of all forms of growth faltering than girls. Early postnatal growth faltering predisposed children to subsequent and persistent growth faltering. Children with multiple growth deficits exhibited higher mortality rates from birth to 2 years of age than children without growth deficits (hazard ratios 1.9 to 8.7). The importance of prenatal causes and severe consequences for children who experienced early growth faltering support a focus on pre-conception and pregnancy as a key opportunity for new preventive interventions.

Year published

2023

Authors

Mertens, Andrew; Benjamin-Chung, Jade; Colford Jr, John M; Coyle, Jeremy; van der Laan, Mark; Hubbard, J. Alan E; Rosete, Sonali; Malenica, Ivana; Hejazi, Nima; Sofrygin, Oleg; Cai, Wilson; Li, Haodong; Nguyen, Anna; Pokpongkiat, Nolan N; Djajadi, Stephanie; Seth, Anmol; Jung, Esther; Chung, Esther O; Jilek, Wendy; Subramoney, Vishak; Hafen, Ryan; Häggström, Jonas; Norman, Thea; Brown, Kenneth H; The Ki Child Growth Consortium

Citation

Mertens, Andrew; Benjamin-Chung, Jade; Colford Jr, John M.; Coyle, Jeremy; van der Laan, Mark; Hubbard, J. Alan E.; et al. 2023. Causes and consequences of child growth faltering in low-resource settings. Nature 621: 568-576. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06501-x

Keywords

Child Growth; Health; Stunting; Anthropometry

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06501-x Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Journal Article

“It doesn’t matter at all—we are family”: Titling and joint property rights in Myanmar

2024Lambrecht, Isabel B.; Synt, Nang Lun Kham; Ei Win, Hnin; Mahrt, Kristi; Win, Khin Zin
Details

“It doesn’t matter at all—we are family”: Titling and joint property rights in Myanmar

Many policy makers and academics striving for more gender equality consider joint property rights as preferable over sole rights, since the latter often discriminate against women. Several governments in low-, middle- and high-income countries have therefore imposed joint rights through modifications of statutory law or mandatory joint property registration. We first discuss a general theoretical framework of determinants of property rights with a focus on jointness and the interplay between statutory law, customary law and religious norms, as well as the importance of gendered customs, norms and perceptions around household, family and community arrangements. We then also relate this specifically to the case of Myanmar—based on literature and original qualitative data collected with men and women across all four agro-ecological zones in rural Myanmar. We find equal customary and statutory joint property rights regime upon marriage where inheritance rights are not different for men and women, but only one name is generally recorded on land use certificates. A strong sense of “togetherness”, including a custom of income pooling and rare occurrence of divorce, limits the rationale of marital partners to exercise rights solely rather than jointly. Nevertheless, which household members’ name is on a document is important for accessing credit or engaging with officials and government authorities, and strong patriarchal norms guide official and administrative procedures. Whereas short-term impacts of sole land titling seem limited, the extent to which sole or joint titling might affect gender equality in the longer term remains a topic of future research.

Year published

2024

Authors

Lambrecht, Isabel B.; Synt, Nang Lun Kham; Ei Win, Hnin; Mahrt, Kristi; Win, Khin Zin

Citation

Lambrecht, Isabel B.; Synt, Nang Lun Kham; Win, Hnin Ei; Mahrt, Kristi; and Win, Khin Zin. “It doesn’t matter at all—we are family”: Titling and joint property rights in Myanmar. Land Use Policy 139: 107089. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2024.107089

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; South-eastern Asia; Marital Property Rights; Women’s Empowerment; Agriculture; Land Rights; Gender

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2024.107089 Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Journal Article

Child Nutrition in Malawi

Community-based childcare centers (CBCCs) are a key platform to roll out Malawi’s National Early Childhood Development policy. At these centers, families and community members come together to provide childcare services and meals for young children. The Nutrition Embedded Evaluation Program (NEEP) intervention was developed to use CBCCs for promoting child health and nutrition. The approach integrated local knowledge and guidance from experts at the University of Malawi and Save the Children to provide trainings on nutrition and agricultural production, linking with micro-lending program, and distributing seeds of nutritious foods to households.

IFPRI and Save the Children implemented a rigorous impact evaluation to see whether this approach was effective and could be replicated or scaled up across Malawi. In a new visual story, Aulo Geli, Amy Margolies, and Brian McNamara review the significant positive impacts of this program and lessons for the future.

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