Subscribe

Back

Who we are

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.

researcher spotlight

Elodie Becquey

Elodie Becquey is a Senior Research Fellow in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit, based in IFPRI’s West and Central Africa office in Senegal. She has over 15 years of research experience in diet, nutrition, and food security in Africa, including countries such as Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, and Tanzania.

Back

What we do

Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

Research topics

Projects and impact

Modeling tools

Project microsites

AI search assistant

What’s new

Where we work

Back

Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

IFPRI Regional Programs

IFPRI Country Programs

Research by country and region

Subscribe

experts

Markets, Trade, and Institutions

Kate Ambler

Senior Research Fellow

Follow

Kate

at:

ORCiD

Bio

Kate Amber is a Senior Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit. Kate’s research broadly focuses on interventions that can increase incomes for smallholders and other microenterprises in agrifood value chains, with a specific focus on the inclusion of women. This includes work on programming in fragile settings, innovations in agricultural finance, and regulatory solutions for food safety. She also studies policies and programs that can improve women’s agency, migration and remittances, and measurement issues.

Kate has experience with research conducted using randomized controlled trials, framed field experiments, and secondary data, and she has worked on projects in Africa south of the Sahara, Central and South America, and Asia. She has also been an adjunct professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. She completed a PhD in economics at the University of Michigan, specializing in development economics and economic demography.

Personal Website

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Transfers, information and management advice: Direct effects and complementarities in Malawi

2026Ambler, Kate; de Brauw, Alan; Godlonton, Susan
Details

Transfers, information and management advice: Direct effects and complementarities in Malawi

We examine a program designed to alleviate credit, information, and farm management constraints among smallholder cash crop farmers through transfers and a cross-randomized program offering intensive agricultural extension. We document strong complementarities between the two sets of interventions. Investment driven by increased labor expenditures, production, and consumption are highest for farmers that received both transfers and intensive extension, a pattern that persists two and three years later. In the short run, transfers alone led to the reallocation of input expenditures into increased labor for cash crop cultivation, which led to increased production of project focal crops but not total crop production. While farmers in the transfers only group continue to spend more on labor in subsequent seasons, this does not lead to changes in production or consumption, suggesting that the support of the intensive extension was important for the generation of the largest welfare gains from the transfers.

Year published

2026

Authors

Ambler, Kate; de Brauw, Alan; Godlonton, Susan

Citation

Ambler, Kate; de Brauw, Alan; and Godlonton, Susan. 2026. Transfers, information and management advice: Direct effects and complementarities in Malawi. Journal of Development Economics 178(January 2026): 103601. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103601

Country/Region

Malawi

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Agriculture; Extension; Cash Transfers; Inputs; Smallholders; Advisory Services

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103601 Source record

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Increasing women’s empowerment: Evaluating two interventions in Uganda

2026Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly M.; O’Sullivan, Michael
Details

Increasing women’s empowerment: Evaluating two interventions in Uganda

We conduct a randomized controlled trial to test a novel intervention for increasing women’s empowerment in Uganda. The intervention includes a within-household transfer of a productive asset, which has a lower cost than an external transfer. We find that transferring control of some of the household’s sugarcane to the wife significantly increases her access to resources and decision-making power. We also document increases in women’s empowerment arising from a cross-randomized couples’ workshop that improved women’s self-concept and shifted beliefs in gender equality. We find no additional impacts from combining the two interventions. Importantly, neither intervention harms the household’s productivity or husbands’ welfare. In fact, men (and women) report higher marital quality and life satisfaction as a result. However, despite increasing women’s empowerment we find no evidence that the interventions increased measured household investment in food security, child health, or education.

Year published

2026

Authors

Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly M.; O’Sullivan, Michael

Citation

Ambler, Kate; Jones, Kelly M.; and O’Sullivan, Michael. 2026. Increasing women’s empowerment: Evaluating two interventions in Uganda. Journal of Development Economics 178(January 2026): 103575. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103575

Country/Region

Uganda

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Women’s Empowerment; Households; Assets; Sugar Cane; Workshops; Gender Equality; Gender; Randomized Controlled Trials

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-3.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103575 Source record

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Internal displacement and the measurement of women’s empowerment: Evidence from a test-retest survey experiment

2025Ambler, Kate; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Misra, Rewa S.
Details

Internal displacement and the measurement of women’s empowerment: Evidence from a test-retest survey experiment

Women’s empowerment includes the ability to participate in existing market activities, access and control the use of productive resources, obtain opportunities for decent work, control the use of time, and voice and participate in decision making within households and communities (United Nations 2018). Increasing women’s economic empowerment is relevant to several sustainable development goals (i.e., to achieve gender equality, promoting full and productive employment and decent work for all, and reducing existing inequalities). Given all of this, accurately measuring women’s empowerment systematically across a variety of settings is imperative. As such, studying innovations in measuring women’s agency, empowerment, or decision-making power is an active area of research (Malapit et al. 2019; Donald et al. 2020; Laszlo et al. 2020; Buvinic et al. 2020; Quisumbing et al. 2023; Jayachandran et al. 2023).

Year published

2025

Authors

Ambler, Kate; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Misra, Rewa S.

Citation

Ambler, Kate; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; and Misra, Rewa S. 2025. Internal displacement and the measurement of women’s empowerment: Evidence from a test-retest survey experiment. FCA Brief. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/178449

Keywords

Gender; Women’s Empowerment; Surveys; Decision-making; Displacement

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

Events

Mobility in a Fragile World: Evidence to Inform Policy
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

September 18, 2025, 9:30 – 11:00 am

Mobility in a Fragile World: Evidence to Inform Policy

Migration today reflects a complex interplay of demographic pressures, conflict, poverty, climate change, and economic shocks. Worldwide, one in every seven people is a migrant—that is, someone who changes his or her country of usual residence, irrespective of the reason for migration—or a refugee forced to leave his or her home, often without warning, for […]

From Relief to Resilience in Somalia: Harnessing Research to Inform Social Protection Policy and Practice
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

June 16, 2025, 3:30 – 5:00 pm

From Relief to Resilience in Somalia: Harnessing Research to Inform Social Protection Policy and Practice

Policymakers and program implementers in Somalia are increasingly recognizing the importance of complementing short-term support in the form of cash or in-kind transfers with interventions targeting longer-term development goals and poverty exit, a goal that cuts across both more traditional social protection systems and programming targeting internally displaced people. This webinar will bring together representatives […]

Rethinking Food Crisis Responses
Series/Special Event

 | 

May 11, 2023, 5:00 – 8:45 am

Rethinking Food Crisis Responses

Virtual Event: May 11, 2023 – 5:00 AM to 8:45 AM EDT. Please join the Nigeria presentation of the Report and the launch of the FCM Initiative on May 11 in Abuja, Nigeria, in person or virtually.

View all Events