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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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Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Lucy Billings

Program Manager

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Bio

Lucy Billings is a Senior Project Manager in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit, where she provides management and research support to research projects and programs on social protection, nutrition, and gender equity. Lucy joined IFPRI as a Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellow and continued with IFPRI at the conclusion of the Fellowship program. She has been posted to IFPRI’s Uganda, Ghana, and US offices. She holds an MS in Food and Agriculture Policy and an master’s of public health from Tufts University.

Publications

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Leveraging social protection for women’s engagement in sustainable land management: IPSR Innovation Profile. First edition, March 2024

2024Gilligan, Daniel O.; Billings, Lucy; Kalva, Parthu; Leight, Jessica; Tambet, Heleene; Bahiru, Kibret; Mulford, Michael; Bekele, Kalkidan
Details

Leveraging social protection for women’s engagement in sustainable land management: IPSR Innovation Profile. First edition, March 2024

This sustainable land management (SLM) innovation draws on qualitative formative research, co-design of an innovation with partners, a quantitative impact evaluation testing the innovation, and resulting guidance for partners on implementing the innovation. This project is delivered as part of a multifaceted graduation model social protection program, SPIR II (Strengthen Productive Safety Net Program Institutions and Resilience II) that seeks to further sustain nutrition security and reduce risks to livelihoods for households participating in the Ethiopia’s national safety program, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), which provides consumption support in the form of cash and food transfers. The goal of the SLM innovation being tested is to leverage social protection to promote women’s engagement in sustainable land management practices. Strengthening women’s involvement in sustainable land management is seen as potentially important given that extreme weather events pose risks for poor households in rural Ethiopia and women may be disproportionately at risk from these shocks. For example, Kato et al (2021) find that plots controlled by women in Ethiopia are more prone to soil erosion and of poorer quality in terms of soil depth, and women’s participation in watershed committees is low. The sustainable land management practices being introduced may help protect women and their families from these shocks over the longer term as well as introduce an additional livelihoods avenue. The innovation tested includes providing training (to either women only or to both men and women from same households) and free inputs (tree seedlings, vegetable seeds and tools for home gardening) among participants of the PSNP public works program, thus helping to address constraints to accessing information and inputs, and assessing whether spousal cooperation is important for successful adoption of these technologies.

Year published

2024

Authors

Gilligan, Daniel O.; Billings, Lucy; Kalva, Parthu; Leight, Jessica; Tambet, Heleene; Bahiru, Kibret; Mulford, Michael; Bekele, Kalkidan

Citation

Gilligan, D., Billings, L., Kalva, P., Leight, J., Tambet, H., Bahiru, K., Mulford, M., Bekele, K. 2024. Leveraging social protection for women’s engagement in sustainable land management: IPSR Innovation Profile. First edition, March 2024. Montpellier: CGIAR System Organization. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/152234

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Social Protection; Women’s Empowerment; Gender; Gender Equality; Sustainable Land Management

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Brief

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Journal Article

Stories of Change in Nutrition in Ghana: A focus on stunting and anemia among children under-five years (2009–2018)

2022Aryeetey, Richmond; Atuobi-Yeboah, Afua; Billings, Lucy; Nisbett, Nicholas; van den Bold, Mara; Touré, Mariama
Details

Stories of Change in Nutrition in Ghana: A focus on stunting and anemia among children under-five years (2009–2018)

The current study aimed to understand why child stunting and anemia (CS&A) rates declined in Ghana between 2009 and 2018, and which priority policies and programs will further improve nutrition outcomes. Trends and potential drivers of stunting (height-for-age z-score < -2.0 SD) and anemia (hemoglobin < 11.0 g/dL), and decomposition analysis of DHS data (2003 to 2014) were conducted. The quantitative evidence was triangulated with Net-Map analysis of nutrition stakeholder relationships and influence, desk review of policies and programs 2009–2019, and in-depth interviews with 25 stakeholders who provided additional insights to explain CS&A trends. Declines in stunting (29.6%) and anemia (14.1%) in children were observed at the national level, but with important subgroup variations. Decomposition analyses identified changes in the household, maternal, and child characteristics (including wealth, use of antenatal services, maternal education, and immunization) as correlates of anemia reduction. Stunting reduction was linked with changes in bed-net utilization, household wealth, and pregnancy care service utilization. Additionally, multiple policies and programs initiated/implemented across multiple sectors were considered potentially relevant to CS&A reduction over time, including those focused on infant and young child feeding, water and sanitation, social protection, and health care access. Initiation/strengthening of these interventions was stimulated by awareness creation and subsequently increased prioritization of stunting. However, program delivery was limited by deficits in government funding, perceived low priority of child anemia, low implementation capacity and coverage, and weak coherence across sectors. Reduced CS&A resulted from improved access to services implemented across multiple sectors, albeit limited by implementation scale and capacity. Further reduction in CS&A requires enhanced multi-sectorally coordinated actions and capacity.

Year published

2022

Authors

Aryeetey, Richmond; Atuobi-Yeboah, Afua; Billings, Lucy; Nisbett, Nicholas; van den Bold, Mara; Touré, Mariama

Citation

Aryeetey, Richmond; Atuobi-Yeboah, Afua; Billings, Lucy; Nisbett, Nicholas; van den Bold, Mara; and Touré, Mariama. 2022. Stories of Change in Nutrition in Ghana: A focus on stunting and anemia among children under-five years (2009–2018). Food Security 14(2): 355–379. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-021-01232-1

Country/Region

Ghana

Keywords

Western Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Africa; Anaemia; Programmes; Policies; Malnutrition; Nutrition; Child Feeding; Children; Child Stunting

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-021-01232-1 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Report

Impact evaluation of the strengthen PSNP4 institutions and resilience (SPIR) development food security activity (DFSA): Endline report

2021Alderman, Harold; Billings, Lucy; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Hidrobo, Melissa; Leight, Jessica; Taffesse, Alemayehu Seyoum; Tambet, Heleene
Details

Impact evaluation of the strengthen PSNP4 institutions and resilience (SPIR) development food security activity (DFSA): Endline report

The Strengthen PSNP4 Institutions and Resilience (SPIR) Development Food Security Activity (DFSA) in Ethiopia is a five-year project (2016-2021) supporting implementation of the fourth phase of the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP4) as well as providing complementary livelihood, nutrition, gender and climate resilience activities to strengthen the program and expand its impacts. The main objectives of SPIR are to enhance livelihoods, increase resilience to shocks, and improve food security and nutrition for rural households vulnerable to food insecurity. Activities under SPIR are organized into four Purposes: 1) livelihoods, 2) nutrition, 3) women’s and youth empowerment, and 4) climate resilience. Across these Purposes, SPIR provides community-level programming, training of government staff involved in public service delivery at the woreda (district) and kebele (subdistrict) level, and targeted livelihood transfers. IFPRI is conducting an experimental, quantitative impact evaluation of SPIR designed to measure the causal impact of multisectoral “graduation model” packages of livelihoods, nutrition, gender equity, and mental health interventions for improving outcomes in several domains, including livelihoods, food security, child nutrition, women’s empowerment, mental health, and intimate partner violence (IPV). The impact evaluation uses a clustered randomized controlled trial (RCT) design with four intervention arms (three treatments and a control group) to test the relative effectiveness of these packages of interventions to improve outcomes for PSNP4 beneficiaries. This endline report of the impact evaluation presents evidence on the impact of three combinations of packages of core or enhanced gender-sensitive livelihood and nutrition activities on all primary and secondary outcomes for the evaluation after three years of implementation.1 The endline survey for the impact evaluation was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic from mid-2020 and was conducted in February and April 2021, during which time a total of 3,812 households were interviewed out of the target of 3,996 households for the entire study sample.

Year published

2021

Authors

Alderman, Harold; Billings, Lucy; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Hidrobo, Melissa; Leight, Jessica; Taffesse, Alemayehu Seyoum; Tambet, Heleene

Citation

Alderman, Harold; Billings, Lucy; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Hidrobo, Melissa; Leight, Jessica; Taffesse, Alemayehu Seyoum; and Tambet, Heleene. 2021. Impact evaluation of the strengthen PSNP4 institutions and resilience (SPIR) development food security activity (DFSA): Endline report. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/143065

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Sub-saharan Africa; Africa; Eastern Africa; Women’s Empowerment; Climate; Social Protection; Empowerment; Nutrition; Livelihoods; Resilience

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Report

Events

SPIR II Learning Event
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

May 16 to 17, 2023

SPIR II Learning Event

May 16 and 17, 2023 (9:00am – 5:00pm Addis Ababa): The Strengthen PSNP5 Institutions and Resilience (SPIR II) Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA) in Ethiopia is a five-year project (2021-2026) that supports implementation of the fifth phase of the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP5) in Amhara and Oromia regions and provides additional graduation model programming through complementary gender-sensitive livelihood, nutrition, and climate resilience activities to strengthen the program and expand its impacts.