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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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Projects

CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health‘s (A4NH) flagship program focuses on food systems through the agri-food value chains impact pathway and the associated policy enabling required to accelerate food system innovation, scaling, and anchoring. A food system is the full set of processes, activities, infrastructure, and environment that encompass production, processing, distribution, waste disposal, and food consumption. Food systems are multidimensional, including sociocultural, economic, environmental, and political aspects, and complex, with multiple actors (food producers, food-chain actors, and consumers) managing multiple linked and nested agri-food value chains within dynamic and interactive food environments.

Learn more about A4NH’s work on food systems here.

Project duration: 2017 – 2022

Funders

CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) led by IFPRI

Publications

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Brief

Methodology [of the PEDAL project]

2025Resnick, Danielle
Details

Methodology [of the PEDAL project]

Large-scale food fortification (LSFF) is considered one of the most cost-effective ways of addressing micronutrient deficiencies. The intervention involves adding essential minerals and vitamins to widely consumed foods and requires minimal changes to consumption patterns while relying on existing food delivery systems. However, there is a lot of variability across countries in the adoption of mandatory and voluntary LSFF standards, that is, the government legislation requiring that specific staple foods or condiments be fortified. In fact, there are more than 80 countries where micronutrient deficiencies are widespread but a mandatory fortification standard has not been adopted. Even in countries where standards have been adopted, implementation could not be financially sustained over the years or laboratory tests revealed that designated food vehicles lacked the stipulated micronutrients. The Political Economy Diagnostic for Assessing Large-Scale Food Fortification (PEDAL) is designed to identify the ways in which political and institutional factors may contribute to differences in the uptake and implementation of LSFF standards. While political economy is acknowledged to be an important factor underlying the success or failure of LSFF, few studies on LSFF explicitly incorporate it into their analyses. By reducing LSFF to a purely technical intervention, bottlenecks to policy traction can worsen and derail uptake. In contrast, PEDAL offers a systematic diagnostic of the political economy environment for LSFF to identify these bottlenecks ex ante and to calibrate policy interventions accordingly. In doing so, PEDAL aims to help countries advance toward achieving healthier diets and reducing micronutrient deficiencies. PEDAL focuses on two core elements of the enabling environment: political will and implementation capacity (see Figure 1). Political will consists of the range of interests that motivate different stakeholders, the ideational goals that underlie their policy preferences, and their degree of leverage to exert their preferences. Implementation capacity consists of both the institutional architecture established to make continuous decisions related to LSFF policy and the technical capacity to ensure regulations are adhered to at the processing and retail levels. Across both dimensions, the diagnostic examines three sets of actors: the public sector (including government ministries, agencies, executives, legislators, and bureaucrats), the private sector (such as food producers, processors, and retailers) and civil society (including consumers, research institutes, universities, journalists, and nongovernmental organizations). The remainder of this brief examines these components in more detail and highlights how they can be assessed by researchers and practitioners.

Year published

2025

Authors

Resnick, Danielle

Citation

Resnick, Danielle. 2025. Methodology. PEDAL Brief 1. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/172758

Keywords

Economics; Food Fortification; Implementation; Micronutrient Deficiencies

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

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Book Chapter

Advancing nutrition: Food system policies and actions for healthy diets

2024Menon, Purnima; Olney, Deanna K.
Details

Advancing nutrition: Food system policies and actions for healthy diets

Hunger, food insecurity, and unhealthy diets underpin many critical public health challenges, including all forms of malnutrition and diet-related noncommunicable diseases. These health outcomes, in turn, have short- and long-term impacts on the well-being and productivity of human populations worldwide. Amid these complex, interconnected challenges, the global focus on how to leverage food systems for nutrition has shifted toward sustainable healthy diets that promote well-being for both people and the planet. This chapter provides an overview of the thematic chapters of the 2024 Global Food Policy Report, which look at food demand and affordability, food environments, plant- and animal-source foods, and governance for sustainable healthy diets.

Year published

2024

Authors

Menon, Purnima; Olney, Deanna K.

Citation

Menon, Purnima; and Olney, Deanna K. 2024. Advancing nutrition: Food system policies and actions for healthy diets. In Global food policy report 2024: Food systems for healthy diets and nutrition. Chapter 1, Pp. 8-17. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/141883

Keywords

Nutrition; Food Systems; Policies; Healthy Diets

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Book Chapter

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Working Paper

Implications of urbanization, consumer awareness, and income trends on future food supplies in Senegal

2024Marivoet, Wim
Details

Implications of urbanization, consumer awareness, and income trends on future food supplies in Senegal

This research report aims to identify major food supply implications and potential entry points for a more efficient, nutritious, sustainable, and equitable transformation of Senegal’s food system. Inspecting key indicators from the FSD, Senegal’s food system is indeed failing to provide healthy diets to the population in an inclusive and sustainable manner. For example, total food supplies are estimated to be energy insufficient (below 2,500 kilocalories (kcal) per capita per day in 2013), lacking diversity (especially in terms of fruit and pulses, with supplies of only 53 and 15 grams (g) per capita per day in 2019, respectively), and potentially threatening soil biodiversity. Therefore, it is unsurprising to observe that 46 percent of the population in 2020 was unable to afford a healthy diet and 49 percent was moderately or severely food insecure. This is also reflected in the poor performance of dietary indicators for infants and children, as well as the high anemia prevalence in women. For data: Senegal PAPA household survey (2017/18), see: https://www.papa.gouv.sn

Year published

2024

Authors

Marivoet, Wim

Citation

Marivoet, Wim. 2024. Implications of urbanization, consumer awareness, and income trends on future food supplies in Senegal. SFS4Youth Working Paper 1. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/140728

Country/Region

Senegal

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Food Systems; Healthy Diets; Income; Urbanization

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

Funders

CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) led by IFPRI

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