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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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experts

Francisco Ceballos

Research Fellow

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Francisco

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Bio

Francisco Ceballos is a Research Fellow in IFPRI’s Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit. As a development economist specialized in agricultural risk management, resilience, and nutrition, his professional interests include the design, development, and evaluation of innovative agricultural risk management projects, strategies for improving sustainable nutrition in resource-poor environments, and the use of digital technologies for development. He co-leads the research program on picture-based crop insurance, which relies on smartphone pictures of crop fields taken by farmers to assess crop damage and provide complementary value-added services. He has over 20 years of research experience and has worked on projects across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. His work has been published in leading international journals and specialized books. Dr. Ceballos holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Göttingen in Germany.

Publications

Google Scholar Citations

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Publications

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Working Paper

Business aspects along the rural-urban continuum, outlet type, and gender of ownership among MSMEs in the Vietnamese food environment

2025Ceballos, Francisco; Aguilar, Francisco; de Brauw, Alan; Nguyen, Trang; van den Berg, Marrit
Details

Business aspects along the rural-urban continuum, outlet type, and gender of ownership among MSMEs in the Vietnamese food environment

Concurrent with its rapid economic growth, Viet Nam has been experiencing a food systems transformation. Broad changes in the food environment have been a key part of this transition. While the availability of processed food is ubiquitous, the food environment continues to be largely dominated by micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). So, to build strategies to improve the availability and affordability of healthy foods, MSMEs are a key entry point. In this paper, we use primary survey data to separate key sources of variation in MSMEs’ organizational dimensions and business practices by type of outlet, rural-urban location, and gender of the owners. We focus on outcomes related to employment, food sources, business finance, good business practices, and nutrition knowledge and attitudes. We find limited differences in this set of outcomes in terms of whether an outlet is located in a rural, peri-urban, or urban area, or in terms of the gender of its owners. Instead, most of the variation in outcomes can be linked to the type of outlet, raising specific types of outlets as a key focus when seeking to foster the supply of healthier foods in the food environment.

Year published

2025

Authors

Ceballos, Francisco; Aguilar, Francisco; de Brauw, Alan; Nguyen, Trang; van den Berg, Marrit

Citation

Ceballos, Francisco; Aguilar, Francisco; de Brauw, Alan; Nguyen, Trang; and van den Berg, Marrit. 2025. Business aspects along the rural-urban continuum, outlet type, and gender of ownership among MSMEs in the Vietnamese food environment. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2333. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174099

Country/Region

Vietnam

Keywords

Asia; South-eastern Asia; Enterprises; Food Environment; Food Systems; Gender

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Sustainable Healthy Diets

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Impacts of personalized picture-based crop advisories: Experimental evidence from India and Kenya

2024Ceballos, Francisco; Chugh, Aditi; Kramer, Berber
Details

Impacts of personalized picture-based crop advisories: Experimental evidence from India and Kenya

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has heightened interest in digital models to strengthen agricultural extension. Such tools could help provide personalized advisories tailored to a farmer’s unique conditions at scale and at a low cost. This study evaluates the fundamental assumption that personalized crop advisories are more effective than generic ones. By means of a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT), we assess the impact of personalized picture-based advisories on farmers’ perceptions, knowledge and adoption of recommended inputs and practices, and other downstream outcomes. We find that personalizing advisories does not significantly improve agricultural outcomes compared to generic ones. While farmers who engage relatively more with advisories (i.e., those who receive and read a substantial number of messages based on self-reports) tend to achieve better outcomes, this is irrespective of whether the advisories they receive are tailored to their specific situation or not. We conclude that investments in digital extension tools should aim to enhance engagement with advisories rather than focusing solely on personalization.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ceballos, Francisco; Chugh, Aditi; Kramer, Berber

Citation

Ceballos, Francisco; Chugh, Aditi; and Kramer, Berber. 2024. Impacts of personalized picture-based crop advisories: Experimental evidence from India and Kenya. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2322. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/169348

Country/Region

India; Kenya

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Africa; Eastern Africa; Agricultural Extension; Artificial Intelligence; Farmers; Inputs

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Diversification in East and Southern Africa

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Empowerment after migration: Exploring the association between migration and the empowerment of women who stay behind

2024Ceballos, Francisco; Heckert, Jessica; Hernandez, Manuel A.; Paz, Florencia
Details

Empowerment after migration: Exploring the association between migration and the empowerment of women who stay behind

Migration is a recurrent global phenomenon that has rapidly increased over the past decades. As of 2020, there were 281 million international migrants (equivalent to 3.6 percent of the global population), a 27 percent increase compared to the 221 million in 2010 (UN DESA 2020). Even though COVID-19 slowed international migration, it is quickly returning to pre-pandemic levels. Approximately half of migrants are men, and a third are youth (15-24 year olds). Western Europe and the United States receive the most international migrants, and most migrants originate from rural areas, which receive around 40% of international remittances (Food and Agriculture Organization 2018). Domestically, there were around 763 million of internal migrants as of 2013, equivalent to around 12 percent of the global population (United Nations Population Division, 2013). Whether international or domestic, a large share of migrants is forced to leave their homes due to multiple reasons that include socioeconomic, climatic, and conflict factors, which may also act as compound shocks, such that migration similarly represents an important adaptation strategy that can help improve livelihoods, build resilience, and protect against fragility.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ceballos, Francisco; Heckert, Jessica; Hernandez, Manuel A.; Paz, Florencia

Citation

Ceballos, Francisco; Heckert, Jessica; Hernandez, Manuel; and Paz, Florencia. 2024. Empowerment after migration: Exploring the association between migration and the empowerment of women who stay behind. Fragility, Conflict, and Migration Initiative. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/168433

Keywords

Migration; Women’s Empowerment; Gender; Livelihoods; Resilience

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Working Paper

Events

30th International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE)
IFPRI at External Event

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July 28 to August 2, 2018

30th International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE)

IFPRI is participating extensively in the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE) 30th Conference of Agricultural Economists. The (IAAE) is a worldwide association of agricultural economists and others concerned with agricultural economic problems, including problems related to the use of renewable resources and the environment. Its broad goal is to make a difference through the following: IFPRI Participants: Pre-Conference Workshops  […]

Food Industries for People and Planet
IFPRI Policy Seminar

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June 26, 2018, 9:00 – 5:30 pm

Food Industries for People and Planet

The International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) new research program on “Food industries for people and planet” (FIPP) will expand traditional ways of thinking about the global food system and will provide evidence-based policy assessments aimed at making agri-food industries and food systems more inclusive in terms of employment and income opportunities, more efficient in […]

2018 International Consortium on Applied Bioeconomy Research Conference (ICABR)
IFPRI at External Event

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June 12 to 15, 2018

2018 International Consortium on Applied Bioeconomy Research Conference (ICABR)

IFPRI is participating extensively in the International Consortium on Applied Bioeconomy Research (ICABR) conference. Multiple changes in the structure of the food system and agriculture raise new opportunities and challenges for the agricultural sector.  In the developing world, these changes started in Asia and Latin America, and are rapidly emerging in Africa.  Urbanization and increased urban […]

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News

July 16, 2019 | In the News

Making crop insurance work for Indian farmers

Live Mint published an overview article on crop insurance. The article highlighted an IFPRI study that demonstrates how to capitalize on the availability of low-cost internet and the rising use of smartphones. The novel picture-based insurance (PBI) product welds technology with weather index-based insurance (WBI).

July 24, 2018 | In the News

Photo-based crop insurance could debut in Kenya in 2019 (SciDev)

The Science Development Network reported on developments in crop insurance.

Research

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Topics/Countries

Awards

  • 2017 Ernst Meyer Prize of The Geneva Association for his doctoral thesis on “Demand and Design Considerations for Smallholder Farmers’ Weather Index Insurance Products.”