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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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University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global and Public Health is a dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of individuals around the world. The school believes that public health is accountable and responsible for to communities and should work collaboratively. The school seeks to create sustainable and positive change in health through their program of collaborative teaching, research and service.

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Publications

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Journal Article

African domestic supply booms in value chains of fruits, vegetables, and animal products fueled by spontaneous clusters of SMEs

2024Reardon, Thomas; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Belton, Ben; Dolislager, Michael; Minten, Bart; Popkin, Barry; Vos, Rob
Details

African domestic supply booms in value chains of fruits, vegetables, and animal products fueled by spontaneous clusters of SMEs

There is an international consensus that Africans consume less fruits and vegetables (FV), and animal products (AP) than they need for adequate nutrition, and that production and supply chains of these products are constrained. Yet, in this paper, we show that despite these problems, there is a lot of dynamism in demand and supply of these nutrient-dense products in Africa: (1) macro evidence of “domestic supply booms”—with supply growing as fast as or faster than in Asia and Latin America; (2) only 2–4% of FV, and 10% of AP consumption in Africa is imported, and only about 1–2% of the output of FV and AP is exported: the supply booms have thus been overwhelming domestically sourced, not imported; (3) micro evidence of substantial shares of consumption of FV and AP in total food consumption, similar to Asia’s; (4) evidence of rapid development of spontaneous clusters of farms and off-farm SMEs (output wholesalers, logistics, processors, and agro-dealers supporting farmers). These clusters are important in fueling the supply booms. Illustrative cases from Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia are presented. We recommend that African governments and international partners: (1) internalize the fact that these spontaneous clusters are forming and already fueling supply booms; (2) note that important drivers of the booms have been government investments in wholesale markets, roads, and other infrastructure like electrification, and agricultural research/extension; (3) leverage and support existing spontaneous clusters and help new ones to form by greatly increasing those three types of public investments. JEL Codes: O20, Q13, Q18

Year published

2024

Authors

Reardon, Thomas; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Belton, Ben; Dolislager, Michael; Minten, Bart; Popkin, Barry; Vos, Rob

Citation

Reardon, Thomas; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Belton, Ben; Dolislager, Michael; Minten, Bart; Popkin, Barry; and Vos, Rob. 2024. African domestic supply booms in value chains of fruits, vegetables, and animal products fueled by spontaneous clusters of SMEs. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 46(2): 390-413. https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13436

Country/Region

Ethiopia; Nigeria; Zambia

Keywords

Tanzania; Africa; Eastern Africa; Western Africa; Southern Africa; Animal Products; Enterprises; Fruits; Vegetables; Value Chains

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13436 Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Journal Article

Article has an altmetric score of 13
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Working Paper

The rapid rise in domestic value chains of nutrient-dense foods (fruits, vegetables, and animal products) in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policy implications

2023Reardon, Thomas; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda; Belton, Ben; Dolislager, Michael; Minten, Bart; Popkin, Barry M.; Vos, Rob
Details

The rapid rise in domestic value chains of nutrient-dense foods (fruits, vegetables, and animal products) in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policy implications

Despite African consumers under-consuming nutrient dense fruits and vegetables (FV) and animal products (AP), and the farm production and supply chains of these products are fraught with constraints that keep them from operating optimally, we find abundant recent evidence of dynamism in these sectors. To wit: (1) consumption of these products in levels and shares is already substantial and growing rapidly; (2) supply of these products is growing rapidly, just not yet much faster than population growth; (3) supply growth is manifested in a number of countries by dynamic “meso booms” with diffusion of farming and growth in midstream (“Hidden Middle”) value chain segments; these booms are “grassroots” driven, without subsidy or management by government or NGOs or large companies. We reviewed recent survey-based evidence of these booms and discussed the drivers. The policy implications are the need for governments to invest in the conditions we found to be enabling these booms, that is, roads and wholesale markets and electrification and other infrastructure hard and soft.

Year published

2023

Authors

Reardon, Thomas; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda; Belton, Ben; Dolislager, Michael; Minten, Bart; Popkin, Barry M.; Vos, Rob

Citation

Reardon, Thomas; Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda; Belton, Ben; Dolislager, Michael; Minten, Bart; Popkin, Barry M.; and Vos, Rob. 2023. The rapid rise in domestic value chains of nutrient-dense foods (fruits, vegetables, and animal products) in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policy implications. Rethinking Food Markets Initiative Technical Paper 1. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.136841.

Keywords

Africa; Supply Chains; Foods; Agricultural Production; Vegetables; Nutrients; Fruits; Infrastructure; Consumers; Farm Production; Food

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.136841 Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Working Paper

Article has an altmetric score of 6
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Working Paper

Large-scale school meal programs and student health: Evidence from rural China

2021Wang, Jingxi; Hernandez, Manuel A.; Deng, Guoying
Details

Large-scale school meal programs and student health: Evidence from rural China

Reducing urban-rural gaps in child health and nutrition is one of the most difficult challenges faced by many countries. This paper evaluates the impact of the Nutrition Improvement Program (NIP), a large-scale school meal program in rural China, on the health and nutritional status of compulsory education students aged 6-16. We use data from multiple rounds of the China Health and Nutrition Survey between 2004-2015 and implement a quasi-experimental approach exploiting cross-county variations in program implementation. We find that NIP participation is, on average, associated with a higher height-for-age z-score in the order of 0.22-0.42 standard deviations. The impacts are larger among students in a better health condition but small or not significant among the most disadvantaged. We do not observe heterogeneous effects across several individual and household characteristics. We also do not find significant effects on Body Mass Index-for-age and weight-for-age z scores. The results suggest that NIP partially improved students’ health over the first years of implementation, but more support is needed to achieve broader impacts that effectively reach all vulnerable students. Several robustness checks support our findings.

Year published

2021

Authors

Wang, Jingxi; Hernandez, Manuel A.; Deng, Guoying

Citation

Wang, Jingxi; Hernandez, Manuel A.; and Deng, Guoying. 2021. Large-scale school meal programs and student health: Evidence from rural China. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2009. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.134319.

Country/Region

China

Keywords

Eastern Asia; Asia; Child Nutrition; Health; School Feeding; Nutrition; Children; Rural Areas; Project Evaluation

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.134319 Source record

Record type

Working Paper

Article has an altmetric score of 6

Events

Boosting Growth to End Hunger by 2025 in Africa: The Role of Social Protection
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

May 2, 2019, 12:15 – 1:45 pm

Boosting Growth to End Hunger by 2025 in Africa: The Role of Social Protection

Africa has the world’s largest proportion of poor and hungry people, but the lowest rate of coverage by social protection programs. Demand for social protection is growing in Africa, reflecting faster economic growth, rapid urbanization, and more open and pluralistic societies. In the 2014 Malabo Declaration, African leaders called for integrating social protection with measures […]

Blogs

Africa’s processed food revolution and the double burden of malnutrition
IFPRI Blog
 | 
March 11, 2021

Africa’s processed food revolution and the double burden of malnutrition

By Swati Malhotra and Rob Vos

Rapid changes in markets and food systems create a new set of problems.