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With research staff from more than 70 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

Timothy Thomas

Timothy Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow in the Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit. His research focuses on the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity. Tim’s work involves developing innovative methods for simulated climate futures and model coordination between climate, crop, water, energy, and economics.

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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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experts

Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Naureen Karachiwalla

Research Fellow

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Bio

Naureen Karachiwalla is a Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. She is also a Non-Resident Fellow at both the Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR) and the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP). Naureen’s research uses experimental and quasi-experimental methods to examine how public policy design can improve public service delivery and reduce poverty. She studies the role of career incentives in improving the quality of public services; the design, implementation, and market effects of public programs in reducing poverty; and the role of public and private investments in human capital with regards to education, mental health, and nutrition.

Before starting her PhD, she worked as an Economist/ODI Fellow at the Ministry of Education in Ghana. She obtained her PhD in Economics at the University of Oxford and was an AMID Fellow at Bocconi University in Milan. She also holds a master’s degree in Economics for Development with Distinction from the University of Oxford, and a bachelor’s degree with honors from McGill University, Montreal. Visit Naureen’s website here.

Languages spoken: English, French

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Publications

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Count on me: Shocks and formal versus informal assistance in Somalia

2026Karachiwalla, Naureen; Leight, Jessica; Zafar, Sarim
Details

Count on me: Shocks and formal versus informal assistance in Somalia

Somali households face repeated drought, conflict, and price shocks, and rely on both formal and informal support to manage these shocks—but existing evidence only examines one channel at a time. We find that informal support reaches twice as many households as formal support (64 versus 32 percent), with 29 percent of households receiving neither. IDP residence raises formal receipt by 36 percentage points; consumption poverty predicts neither channel. Only informal support tracks local conditions: a one standard deviation rise in produced staple prices raises informal receipt by 6.5 percentage points. There is little evidence of pronounced gender heterogeneity in these patterns.

Year published

2026

Authors

Karachiwalla, Naureen; Leight, Jessica; Zafar, Sarim

Citation

Karachiwalla, Naureen; Leight, Jessica; and Zafar, Sarim. 2026. Count on me: Shocks and formal versus informal assistance in Somalia. IFPRI Project Note. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/184744

Country/Region

Somalia

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Eastern Africa; Development Aid; Shock; Households; Informal Sector; Social Safety Nets

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

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Journal Article

Man vs. machine: Multi-country experimental evidence on the quality and perceptions of AI-generated research blog content

2026Keenan, Michael; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Koo, Jawoo; Mwangi, Christine Wamuyu; Breisinger, Clemens; Kim, MinAh
Details

Man vs. machine: Multi-country experimental evidence on the quality and perceptions of AI-generated research blog content

Academic research is not always available in a form that is accessible or engaging to a non-academic audience, hindering readers’ engagement with it. Non-academics, even if highly educated and policy experts in their fields, tend to need research to be presented in a more accessible way than peer-reviewed articles — one example being non-technical blogs. However, writing these requires some effort from researchers. Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools can make academic research easier to understand by summarizing and simplifying academic papers much more quickly than researchers can, making it easier for researchers to produce such summaries. However, disclosure of AI use may lower readers’ perceived quality of and trust in the blog, generating a trade-off for the researcher. In this paper, we evaluate an 11-country experiment cross-randomizing a blog’s actual and reported author as AI or human. We find that research stakeholders rate the quality of AI-generated blogs marginally lower than human-written ones (p 0.1), but disclosure of AI use offsets the negative effect (p 0.1). The study sample consists of policy-relevant stakeholders who typically engage with academic research; they are highly educated and include thematic specialists. Indeed, findings indicate that this audience interprets “accessibility” differently, preferring slightly more technical summaries of research. The nature of the respondents may thus explain the particular findings in this study, suggesting that researchers should tailor their prompts for their intended audience. There are no effects on readers’ reported likelihood of engaging with the blog or on beliefs about others predicted engagement with it. Consequently, we hypothesize that researchers can leverage AI to communicate their research more easily without a penalty from disclosing its use.

Year published

2026

Authors

Keenan, Michael; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Koo, Jawoo; Mwangi, Christine Wamuyu; Breisinger, Clemens; Kim, MinAh

Citation

Keenan, Michael; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Koo, Jawoo; Mwangi, Christine Wamuyu; Breisinger, Clemens; and Kim, MinAh. 2026. Man vs. machine: Multi-country experimental evidence on the quality and perceptions of AI-generated research blog content. PLoS One 21(3): e0342852. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0342852

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence; Generative Artificial Intelligence; Research; Quality

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0342852 Source record

Project

Digital Innovation

Record type

Journal Article

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Journal Article

The effect of teacher training and community literacy programming on teacher and student outcomes

2026Chimbutane, Feliciano; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Herrera-Almanza, Catalina; Leight, Jessica; Lauchande, Carlos
Details

The effect of teacher training and community literacy programming on teacher and student outcomes

Motivated by extremely low levels of basic reading skills in sub-Saharan Africa, we experimentally evaluate two interventions designed to enhance students’ early-grade literacy performance in rural Mozambique: a relatively light-touch, scalable teacher training in early-grade literacy including the provision of pedagogical materials, and teacher training and materials in conjunction with community-level reading camps. Using data from 1,596 third graders in 160 rural public primary schools, we find no evidence that either intervention improved teachers’ pedagogical knowledge or practices or student or teacher attendance following two years of implementation. There are some weak positive effects on student reading as measured by a literacy assessment, primarily observed in a shift away from scores of zero, and these effects are consistent across arms. Our findings are aligned with the growing consensus that more intensive school- and/or community-based interventions are required to meaningfully improve learning.

Year published

2026

Authors

Chimbutane, Feliciano; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Herrera-Almanza, Catalina; Leight, Jessica; Lauchande, Carlos

Citation

Chimbutane, Feliciano; Karachiwalla, Naureen; Herrera-Almanza, Catalina; Leight, Jessica; and Lauchande, Carlos. 2026. The effect of teacher training and community literacy programming on teacher and student outcomes. Journal of Development Economics 178(January 2026): 103578. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103578

Country/Region

Mozambique

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Education; Learning; Literacy; Teacher Training

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103578 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Events

From Relief to Resilience: Supporting Displaced and Shock-Affected Households in Somalia
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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October 20, 2026, 10:00 – 11:00 am

From Relief to Resilience: Supporting Displaced and Shock-Affected Households in Somalia

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 present evidence on […]

IFPRI @ CGIAR Science Week
IFPRI at External Event

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April 7 to 12, 2025

IFPRI @ CGIAR Science Week

When humanity has faced its greatest challenges, science and innovation have provided solutions. Today, major and connected global challenges threaten the sustainability of food, land, and water systems, with the most vulnerable people and communities at greatest risk. Recognizing the urgency of these challenges, CGIAR and the Kenyan Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) are […]

National Policies and Strategies for Food, Land and Water Systems Transformation (NPS)
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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May 17 to 18, 2022

National Policies and Strategies for Food, Land and Water Systems Transformation (NPS)

Virtual Event: May 17, 2022 – 9:00 AM to May 18, 2022 – 2:00 PM EAT. This event will introduce the NPS initiative and bring together key stakeholders to help plan a specific work program for Kenya in the next three years.

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News

April 04, 2023 | In the News

The education spending multiplier: Evidence from schools in Pakistan (VoxDev) 

“Grants given to public schools in Pakistan increase test scores in both public and private schools as a result of increased competition,” writes IFPRI research fellow Naureen Karachiwalla and her co-authors in an article published by VoxDev.  The authors evaluate the LEAPS (Learning and Educational Achievement in Pakistan Schools) study which demonstrates the existence of a large […]

March 04, 2019 | In the News

What happens when you incentivise primary education in Uganda (VoxDev)

VoxDev published an op-ed regarding primary education incentivez in Uganda by Deputy Division Director Daniel Gilligan and Research Fellow Naureen Karachiwalla. Their research found that incentivizing teachers for achievement can increase education attainment when paired with adequate instructional resources.