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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.

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Danielle Resnick

Danielle Resnick is a Senior Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit and a Non-Resident Fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution. Her research focuses on the political economy of agricultural policy and food systems, governance, and democratization, drawing on extensive fieldwork and policy engagement across Africa and South Asia.

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Projects

This project provides technical, analytical, and capacity building support to enable African Union (AU) Member States and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) to domesticate the Kampala Declaration on Africa’s Food Systems Transformation and Resilience under the 2026–2035 Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Strategy and Action Plan.

Led by IFPRI in partnership with AGRA, the project supports evidence-based policy design and investment planning through the development of a results framework, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems, economywide modeling, policy reviews, and political economy analyses. The work focuses on defining harmonized indicators, benchmarks, and milestones for tracking progress on Kampala CAADP commitments; developing digital databases and dashboards for real-time monitoring; and generating actionable policy and program opportunities to guide national and regional agrifood investment plans.

Project duration: 2025 – 2026

Contact

John M. Ulimwengu

Funders

Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

Partners

African Union

AUDA-NEPAD

Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

Publications

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Book Chapter

Moving the technology frontiers in African agrifood systems: An analytical framework

2026Henning, Christian; Ulimwengu, John M.
Details

Moving the technology frontiers in African agrifood systems: An analytical framework

The transformation of African agrifood systems stands as one of the most urgent and complex development challenges of the 21st century. With over 60 percent of the continent’s population relying on agriculture for their livelihoods, the sector holds tremendous potential to serve as a catalyst for broad-based economic growth, poverty alleviation, and food and nutrition security. This potential, however, remains largely untapped. Agricultural productivity across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) continues to stagnate; despite decades of reform efforts and policy commitments, it lags significantly behind other regions of the world (Ulimwengu et al. 2025).

Year published

2026

Authors

Henning, Christian; Ulimwengu, John M.

Citation

Henning, Christian; and Ulimwengu, John. 2026. Moving the technology frontiers in African agrifood systems: An analytical framework. In Moving the Technology Frontiers in African Agrifood Systems, eds. Christian Henning, Menale Kassie, and Racine Ly. Chapter 2, Pp. 5-24. Kigali, Rwanda: AKADEMIYA2063. https://doi.org/10.54067/9798991636940

Keywords

Africa; Food Systems; Technology; Frameworks; Innovation

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.54067/9798991636940 Source record

Record type

Book Chapter

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Book Chapter

Africa in global agricultural trade and food security: Recent trends

2025Aboushady, Nora; Mamboundou, Pierre; Zaki, Chahir
Details

Africa in global agricultural trade and food security: Recent trends

Africa’s agricultural trade was largely shaped by the colonial division of the continent in the 19th century, when the agriculture of several African regions was transformed into monocrop, export-oriented sectors that catered to the growing European demand for food, luxury products such as chocolate, and manufacturing inputs such as rubber and cotton (Bjornlund et al. 2020; Akyeampong 2017). This shift occurred at the expense of the domestic agricultural diversity and intra-African trade complementarity that had long ensured food security, and continued even after African countries gained their independence. Several African governments pursued agricultural policies similar to those of colonial times and focused on the export of a few crops to generate sufficient revenue to fund their industrialization and development plans. Between 1966 and 1973, for instance, nearly one-half of sub-Saharan African governments depended on the export of a single commodity to secure 50 percent of their export revenues (Bjornlund et al. 2020). This concentration had two negative repercussions on food security: (1) increased vulnerability to fluctuations in global commodity prices; and (2) decreased local and traditional food production, which threatened the availability of food for the growing African population.

Year published

2025

Authors

Aboushady, Nora; Mamboundou, Pierre; Zaki, Chahir

Citation

Aboushady, Nora; Mamboundou, Pierre; and Zaki, Chahir. 2025. Africa in global agricultural trade and food security: Recent trends. In Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor 2025, eds. Sunday Odjo, Fousseini Traore, and Chahir Zaki. Chapter 1, Pp. 1-44. Kigali: AKADEMIYA2063; Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://doi.org/10.54067/9798991636919

Keywords

Africa; Trade; Agricultural Trade; Food Security; International Trade; Policies

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.54067/9798991636919 Source record

Record type

Book Chapter

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Brief

Lessons Learned from Implementing the CAADP Biennial Review Process Under the Malabo Declaration

2025Makombe, T.; Ulimwengu, John M.; Matchaya, Greenwell C.
Details

Lessons Learned from Implementing the CAADP Biennial Review Process Under the Malabo Declaration

The Biennial Review (BR), launched under the 2014 Malabo Declaration, serves as the African Union’s (AU) primary mutual accountability tool for tracking Member States’ progress in implementing the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). This brief, drawing lessons from four BR cycles, aims to inform the next phase of BRs in preparation for the domestication and implementation of the 2025 Kampala CAADP Declaration. While the BR has prompted policy and programmatic changes in several countries, its full impact is hindered by persistent challenges such as underfunding, weak monitoring and evaluation (M&E) capacities, and data quality issues. Despite these hurdles, innovations like the eBR and national data clusters have led to improvements in data quality and reporting rates. Still further improvements in data systems, capacities, and stakeholder engagement are urgently needed to strengthen the Biennial Review (BR) process. Key recommendations include adopting coherent data governance policies, promoting BR awareness and data utilization, refining the BR scorecard methodology, expanding data clusters to more countries, strengthening M&E capacities, ensuring inclusive BR validation, and integrating the BR database with M&E systems at both national and regional levels. Sustained political leadership, technical support, and domestic funding are critical to institutionalizing a robust, timely, high-quality, and impactful BR process that supports evidence-based decision-making and accelerates progress toward achieving the CAADP agrifood system transformation goals under the Kampala Declaration.

Year published

2025

Authors

Makombe, T.; Ulimwengu, John M.; Matchaya, Greenwell C.

Citation

Makombe, T.; Ulimwengu, John M.; Matchaya, Greenwell. 2025. Lessons Learned from Implementing the CAADP Biennial Review Process Under the Malabo Declaration. Kigali, Rwanda: AKADEMIYA2063. 16p. (Kampala Policy Brief Series 04). doi: https://doi.org/10.54067/kpbs.04

Keywords

Africa; Agricultural Development; Data Quality; Stakeholders; Monitoring and Evaluation; Agrifood Systems

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.54067/kpbs.04 Source record

Record type

Brief

Funders

Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

Team members

John M. Ulimwengu

John M. Ulimwengu

Senior Research Fellow, Africa,
Development Strategies and Governance

John M. Ulimwengu

John M. Ulimwengu

Senior Research Fellow, Africa,
Development Strategies and Governance

James Thurlow

James Thurlow

Director, Foresight and Policy Modeling (FPM), Foresight
and Policy Modeling

Steven Were Omamo

Steven Were Omamo

Director, Development Strategies and Governance (DSG); Director for Africa, Development
Strategies and Governance

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