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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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Michigan State University (MSU) is the United States’ pioneer land-grant university and one of the top research universities in the world. MSU College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR) is dedicated to creating solutions to today’s most difficult challenges related to food, health, and the environment. CANR helps to create solutions to address the world’s greatest problems related to food, health and the environment. The College includes facilities such as a meat lab, greenhouses, and horticultural gardens.

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Publications

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Preprint

Governing informality: Drivers of service provision in Nigeria’s food wholesale markets

2025Resnick, Danielle; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Chugh, Aditi
Details

Governing informality: Drivers of service provision in Nigeria’s food wholesale markets

How does governance affect service provision in Nigeria’s wholesale food markets? Sufficient services, such as water, waste collection, and toilet access, are essential for enhancing the safety of healthy and nutritious foods, such as vegetables and fish, and improving the welfare of those who depend on informal trade for their livelihoods. However, these are often substandard in many informal markets, exposing traders and consumers who rely on such markets to higher levels of foodborne hazards and undermining the efficacy of other food safety interventions. Using data from 299 wholesale markets across seven states and the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria, this paper examines how four governance mechanisms-incentives, information, authority, and capacity-are associated with five services: waste collection, market toilet access, water provision, electricity, and security. We find that having an elected, rather than appointed, market chairperson positively influences waste collection and provision of security. By contrast, larger utility investments, such as water and electricity, are less influenced by governance structures within the markets. Markets located in local government areas (LGAs) under appointed rather than elected governments are associated with worse performance across all services, demonstrating that efforts to address market service delivery need to be embedded in a holistic understanding of multi-level governance dynamics. The findings emphasize that improving food safety and traders’ welfare via better service delivery requires empowering stakeholders in informal market governance who not only hold the authority to deliver a diverse set of services but also possess the political incentives to do so.

Year published

2025

Authors

Resnick, Danielle; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Chugh, Aditi

Citation

Resnick, Danielle; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; and Chugh, Aditi. 2025. Governing informality: Drivers of service provision in Nigeria’s food wholesale markets. SSRN Preprint available online April 29, 2025. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5207422

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Food Safety; Governance; Markets; Waste Collection

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Preprint

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Journal Article

Correcting misperceptions about support for social distancing to combat COVID-19

2024Allen IV, James; Mahumane, Arlete; Riddell IV, James; Rosenblat, Tanya; Yang, Dean; Yu, Hang
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Correcting misperceptions about support for social distancing to combat COVID-19

Can informing people of high community support for social distancing encourage them to do more of it? We randomly assigned a treatment to correct individuals’ underestimates of community support for social distancing. In theory, informing people that more neighbors support social distancing than expected encourages free riding and lowers the perceived benefits from social distancing. At the same time, the treatment induces people to revise their beliefs about the infectiousness of COVID-19 upward; this perceived-infectiousness effect and the norm-adherence effect increase the perceived benefits from social distancing. We estimate the effects on social distancing, which are measured by using a combination of self-reports and reports of others. While experts surveyed in advance expected the treatment to increase social distancing, we find that its average effect is close to zero and significantly lower than expert predictions. However, the treatment’s effect is heterogeneous as predicted by theory: it decreases social distancing where current COVID-19 cases are low (where free riding dominates) but increases it where cases are high (where the perceived-infectiousness effect dominates). These findings highlight that correction of misperceptions may have heterogeneous effects depending on disease prevalence.

Year published

2024

Authors

Allen IV, James; Mahumane, Arlete; Riddell IV, James; Rosenblat, Tanya; Yang, Dean; Yu, Hang

Citation

Allen IV, James; Mahumane, Arlete; Riddell IV, James; Rosenblat, Tanya; Yang, Dean; and Yu, Hang. 2024. Correcting misperceptions about support for social distancing to combat COVID-19. Economic Development and Cultural Change 73(1): 221-242. https://doi.org/10.1086/727192

Keywords

Community Development; Covid-19; Behaviour; Physical Distancing; Infectious Diseases; Public Health; Health Policies; Behavioural Sciences

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.1086/727192 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

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Journal Article

Emerging outsource agricultural services enable farmer adaptation in agrifood value chains: A product cycle perspective

2024Reardon, Thomas; Awokuse, Titus; Belton, Ben; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Minten, Bart; Nguyen, Genevieve; Qanti, Sara; Swinnen, Johan; Vos, Rob; Zilberman, David
Details

Emerging outsource agricultural services enable farmer adaptation in agrifood value chains: A product cycle perspective

Outsource agricultural service enterprises emerged a century ago in high-income countries and in the past several decades in developing regions. We contribute by analyzing and illustrating the emergence of these services from the perspective of phases of the Product Cycle. These services help farmers adapt to international and domestic agrifood value chains: (1) in the commoditization phase, e.g., with rice combine harvesting services in China and Myanmar for domestic and export markets; (2) in the early product differentiation phase into quality traits, e.g., with horticultural services to Ethiopian and Indonesian farmers for urban wholesale markets; (3) in the advanced product differentiation phase into environmental traits, e.g., with A-Z services to help French farmers grow eco-labeled vegetables for supermarkets. These services addressed farmers’ shortfalls in information, skills, labor, and equipment. The services are supplied by medium/large farmers with excess capacity say of a combine; by wholesalers who want to reduce search costs and risks; by input “agro-dealers”; and by agribusinesses servicing their outgrowers. In new cases shown in France, outsource firms partner with farm input companies such as Bayer or with robot/drone companies. Governments have – and can do much more to – support the emergence of these services such as in developing regions today through: (1) promotion of a business ecosystem, based on policies of investment in hard and soft infrastructure, favoring the coadaptation of these firms with farmers’ needs; (2) policies facilitating access, such as through import liberalization, of equipment and seeds and chemicals.

Year published

2024

Authors

Reardon, Thomas; Awokuse, Titus; Belton, Ben; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Minten, Bart; Nguyen, Genevieve; Qanti, Sara; Swinnen, Johan; Vos, Rob; Zilberman, David

Citation

Reardon, Thomas; Awokuse, Titus; Belton, Ben; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Minten, Bart; Nguyen, Genevieve; et al. 2024. Emerging outsource agricultural services enable farmer adaptation in agrifood value chains: A product cycle perspective. Food Policy 127(August 2024): 102711. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102711

Country/Region

China; Myanmar; Ethiopia; France; Indonesia

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Africa; Eastern Africa; Europe; Eastern Asia; South-eastern Asia; Western Europe; Adaptation; Value Chains; Agrifood Systems; Farmers; Rice; Vegetables

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102711 Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Journal Article

Events

Assessments of the Impacts of COVID-19 on Myanmar's food security and welfare
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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November 11, 2020, 2:00 – 3:30 pm

Assessments of the Impacts of COVID-19 on Myanmar’s food security and welfare

While a much stronger second wave of COVID-19 cases poses a serious and sustained threat to the health of the Myanmar population, it also brings renewed economic disruptions and poses new challenges for efforts to avert poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition. To generate evidence that can better inform the design of emergency response and economic […]

COVID-19 and Food Market Disruptions in Myanmar
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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October 15, 2020, 9:00 – 10:30 am

COVID-19 and Food Market Disruptions in Myanmar

The rise of COVID-19 infections and policies imposed to control the spread of the disease might have created significant food market disruptions. Disruptions in food markets are an obvious concern, given the importance of agricultural prices for the income of farmers and food prices for the already lower purchasing power – due to reduced incomes […]

Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on Food and Nutrition Security in Myanmar
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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September 15, 2020, 9:00 – 10:30 am

Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on Food and Nutrition Security in Myanmar

The impacts of the COVID-19 economic crisis are threatening the livelihoods and welfare of vulnerable households in Myanmar. Declining household income, from increases in unemployment and declines in remittances, can have negative long-term effects on the food and nutrition insecurity of households and the overall welfare of vulnerable populations. A deeper understanding of the social […]

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Blogs

High pesticide use among smallholders in Africa south of the Sahara poses risks for health, environment
IFPRI Blog
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November 14, 2018

High pesticide use among smallholders in Africa south of the Sahara poses risks for health, environment

By Jenny Smart, Jason Snyder, Joey Goeb, and David Tschirley

As demand for their crops rises, horticultural farmers in particular are employing hazardous pesticides. What can be done?