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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

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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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Publications

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Working Paper

Tajikistan’s agrifood system: The past performance and future opportunities and challenges

2025Diao, Xinshen; Khakimov, Parviz; Ashurov, Timur; Aliev, Jovidon; Fang, Peixun; Randriamamonjy, Josee; Pauw, Karl; Thurlow, James
Details

Tajikistan’s agrifood system: The past performance and future opportunities and challenges

This study analyzes the past performance and future opportunities and challenges of Tajikistan’s agrifood system (AFS). The study measures the current size and structure of AFS and its historical contribution to economic growth and transformation through a data-driven exercise. A forward-looking economywide model is used to assess the effectiveness of future AFS growth (led by agricultural productivity gains in different value chains) in promoting multiple development outcomes. The findings of the study indicate that AFS transformation is an important part of Tajikistan’s economic transformation and structural change. Because of lower growth contributions from AFS’s off-farm components as well as fewer farm workers moving from primary agriculture to off-farm activities within AFS, Tajikistan’s AFS did not grow as quickly as the broader economy. Expanding off-farm activities to boost on-farm productivity growth remains a challenge for sustainable transformation of Tajikistan’s AFS. Using an economywide model, we find that there is no single value chain group that would most effectively achieve all desired development outcomes including broad economic growth, job creation, declining poverty, and improved diets. Livestock value chains, however, have the most potential to contribute to multiple development outcomes, particularly to dietary improvement, and these value chains also performed impressively during the study period. Moreover, most cattle and ruminants are owned by household farms, and their growth could contribute to broader agricultural transformation. The maize value chain also ranks high in the model-based comparison, but it seems to only modestly contribute to job creation and diet quality and had performed disappointingly during the study period. While growth in livestock and maize value chains face a series of challenges and constraints, promoting them together seems to offer an effective way to broadly achieve important development outcomes.

Year published

2025

Authors

Diao, Xinshen; Khakimov, Parviz; Ashurov, Timur; Aliev, Jovidon; Fang, Peixun; Randriamamonjy, Josee; Pauw, Karl; Thurlow, James

Citation

Diao, Xinshen; Khakimov, Parviz; Ashurov, Timur; Aliev, Jovidon; Fang, Peixun; Randriamamonjy, Josee; Pauw, Karl; and Thurlow, James. 2025. Tajikistan’s agrifood system: The past performance and future opportunities and challenges. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2329. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/173731

Country/Region

Tajikistan

Keywords

Asia; Central Asia; Agrifood Systems; Diet; Economic Growth; Poverty

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Foresight

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Soft-skills training, locus of control, and labor market outcomes of youth: Evidence from a randomized intervention in Kenya

2024Abay, Kibrom A.; Alzua, Maria Laura; Barasa, Laura; Machio, Phyllis Mumia; Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.
Details

Soft-skills training, locus of control, and labor market outcomes of youth: Evidence from a randomized intervention in Kenya

Africa has the youngest population in the world, but African economies are not creating enough high-productivity jobs, and rates of youth unemployment thus remain a major challenge in the region. Several supply- and demand-side factors may explain these trends, including skill gaps. While traditional technical and vocational education and training (TVET) centers address important gaps in hard (technical) skills, soft-skills trainings have not yet received sufficient attention in the African context. We evaluate the overall and heterogenous impact of a gender-sensitive soft-skills training that aimed to address youths’ unique interests, preferences, and labor market constraints in Kenya. We also examine whether the presence (or absence) of complementary noncognitive skills, such as locus-of-control skills, moderates the impact of the soft-skills training. We use a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a soft-skills training to support young men and women in making the transition from school to work in Kenya. Our evaluation combines baseline, midline, and endline data to understand the dynamics of labor market transitions for youth. We find that although the soft-skills training prepared youth for the labor market by improving their willingness, expectations, and preparedness for jobs, the impact of the soft-skills training on ultimate labor market outcomes varies across individuals with varying psychological traits. The training improved labor market outcomes for those with internal locus of control but not for individuals who lack these attributes. One standard deviation increase in (internal) locus of control is associated with a 5 percentage-point increase in the impact of the soft-skills training on probability of participation in income-earning activities. We also find that returns to locus of control and the soft-skills training are higher for females than males.

Year published

2024

Authors

Abay, Kibrom A.; Alzua, Maria Laura; Barasa, Laura; Machio, Phyllis Mumia; Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.

Citation

Abay, Kibrom A.; Alzua, Maria Laura; Barasa, Laura; Machio, Phyllis Mumia; and Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr. 2024. Soft-skills training, locus of control, and labor market outcomes of youth: Evidence from a randomized intervention in Kenya. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2294. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/162738

Country/Region

Kenya

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Communication; Labour Market; Skill Training; Youth

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Working Paper

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Book Chapter

Crop production: An engine in need of an upgrade

2024Aung, Nilar; San, Cho Cho; Boughton, Duncan; Minten, Bart; Naing, Phyo Thandar; Belton, Ben; Lambrecht, Isabel B.
Details

Crop production: An engine in need of an upgrade

According to the Myanmar Living Conditions Survey (MLCS) undertaken in 2017, 54 percent of rural households and 8.4 percent of urban households earn some of their income from crop farming (CSO, UNDP, and World Bank 2020). As seen in Chapter 2, crop production has important value-added and employment linkages upstream and downstream from farms, including in fertilizer and chemical input supply, mechanization services, transport, processing, wholesale and retail distribution, and exports. Crop production also provides the majority of the nation’s calorie intake as well as raw material for processed animal feed. However, as Chapter 3 shows, with maize as the one exception, the crop sector itself has not grown in recent years due to decades of underinvestment in agricultural research, limited transport infrastructure, and highly variable prices for export crops. This chapter provides a more detailed picture of the spatial distribution of crop production and production technologies, which is relevant to the discussion in Chapter 18 on regional variations in rural livelihoods.

Year published

2024

Authors

Aung, Nilar; San, Cho Cho; Boughton, Duncan; Minten, Bart; Naing, Phyo Thandar; Belton, Ben; Lambrecht, Isabel B.

Citation

Aung, Nilar; San, Cho Cho; Boughton, Duncan; Minten, Bart; Naing, Phyo Thandar; Belton, Ben; and Lambrecht, Isabel. 2024. Crop production: An engine in need of an upgrade. In Myanmar’s agrifood system: Historical development, recent shocks, future opportunities, Duncan Boughton, Ben Belton, Isabel Lambrecht, and Bart Minten, eds. Chapter 8, Pp. 201-220. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/155184

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

Asia; Agrifood Systems; Crop Production; Development; Economic Shock; Governance; Spatial Distribution

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Book Chapter