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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

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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TOPIC

Fragility and Conflict

Fragile and conflict-affected settings (FCAS) face intersecting crises—political instability, violence, climate shocks, forced displacement, and weak institutions—that threaten food systems and the well-being of vulnerable populations. These compounding crises account for recent growth in poverty and malnutrition, and by 2030, nearly two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor are predicted to live in these contexts. Without action, those living in FCAS face spiraling risks, and resulting food crises that will entrench poverty and instability. Yet, with rigorous evidence and adaptable policy tools, these “frontier food systems” can offer critical opportunities to build resilience, stability, and recovery. Meeting this challenge requires solutions that cut across communities and geographies, linking humanitarian response with long-term transformation.

IFPRI’s integrated research agenda on fragility and conflict aims to inform monitoring, anticipation, prevention, crisis response, and long-term recovery strategies. Our researchers combine diverse expertise to generate evidence, inform policy, and design interventions that address urgent humanitarian needs in the short term while fostering resilient, inclusive food systems for the long term. Central to this approach are IFPRI’s country programs in FCAS, including Ethiopia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and Sudan, as well as substantial work in Mali, Myanmar, Somalia, and Yemen, among others. These programs incorporate strong partnerships with national and local governments, as well as long-standing partnerships with international development organizations. Our wide portfolio of activities includes innovative foresight tools; real-time monitoring and large-scale data collection; policy impact simulations; evaluations of social protection and livelihood support programs; and agricultural, value chain, governance, and institutional innovations to build resilience—all with attention to inclusion of women and marginalized groups.

IFPRI’s research on fragile and conflict-affected settings is closely aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals and with the core CGIAR Impact Areas, including Poverty Reduction, Livelihoods, and Jobs; Gender Equality, Youth, and Social Inclusion; Nutrition, Health, and Food Security; and Climate Adaptation and Mitigation.

Key Resources for Fragility and Conflict Research:

  • Research Concept Note [Link]
  • Policy Seminar Series [Link]
  • FCAS Strategic Plan [Link]

Photo Credit: EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid

topics

Publications

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Working Paper

Women’s empowerment and conflict in Burkina Faso: Learning from a randomized trial and non-random conflict

2025Heckert, Jessica; Sow, Doulo; Tranchant, Jean-Pierre; Paz, Florencia; Gelli, Aulo
Details

Women’s empowerment and conflict in Burkina Faso: Learning from a randomized trial and non-random conflict

Armed conflict has myriad negative consequences on the wellbeing of women and men, and its non-random nature makes it difficult to study its impacts. We examine the changes in empowerment during the period of 2017-2020 in western Burkina Faso as armed conflict moved closer. We combined data from the randomized-controlled trial of Soutenir l’Exploitation Familiale pour Lancer l’Elevage des Volailles et Valoriser l’Economie Rural (SELEVER) a gender- and nutrition-sensitive poultry production intervention, which collected the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index with geospatial- and date-specific data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project database. To evaluate the effect of conflict on empowerment, we estimated a continuous difference-in-difference model, separately for women and men, across multiple empowerment indicators, in which the primary explanatory variable describes the change in distance to conflict during this time period. Then, to determine if the SELEVER program had a protective effect when there was increased proximity to conflict, we estimated these models separately for the treatment and control groups and compare the difference in the coefficients. As conflict encroached, there was a shift in intrahousehold decision making that suggests less coordination between spouses and fewer decisions made jointly, along with a greater acceptance of intimate partner violence among women. We also found increases in other outcomes, such as men’s group membership, and women’s and men’s access to credit. These changes may be attributable to how communities responded and how humanitarian aid was delivered. We found that the SELEVER program had a protective effect on men’s work balance and the amount of time that both women and men spent working. Notably, however, women spent more time on childcare activities as conflict become closer.

Year published

2025

Authors

Heckert, Jessica; Sow, Doulo; Tranchant, Jean-Pierre; Paz, Florencia; Gelli, Aulo

Citation

Heckert, Jessica; Sow, Doulo; Tranchant, Jean-Pierre; Paz, Florencia; and Gelli, Aulo. 2025. Women’s empowerment and conflict in Burkina Faso: Learning from a randomized trial and non-random conflict. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2403. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/180989

Country/Region

Burkina Faso

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Africa; Gender; Women’s Empowerment; Conflicts; Randomized Controlled Trials; Fragility

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Working Paper

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Brief

Internal displacement and the promotion of bundled agricultural technologies: Evidence from a fragile setting in Nigeria

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

Internal displacement and the promotion of bundled agricultural technologies: Evidence from a fragile setting in Nigeria

Fragile regions within Nigeria face multiple, overlapping challenges including climate volatility, violent conflict, widespread displacement, and persistent malnutrition. These pressures can constrain agricultural production and compromise household welfare, particularly for internally displaced households, who face depleted assets and repeated exposure to shocks. Within the context of Nigeria, addressing these constraints requires interventions that improve access to agricultural technologies and strengthen food systems. This brief summarizes experimental evidence from Gombe State, Nigeria, where we implemented an intervention promoting the adoption of a bundle of agricultural technologies. The intervention specifically disentangled the effects of price discounts and information campaigns on bundle adoption. We collected data on the use of each of the bundle components as well as the implementation of agronomic practices recommended for achieving agricultural intensification benefits, enabling us to document adoption beyond the initial purchase of the bundle in a detailed way. The bundle—which includes biofortified seeds, fertilizers, crop protection products, and weather-risk insurance—was designed to generate an intensification response among farmers and address micronutrient deficiencies among adopting households. In principle, biofortified crops—such as vitamin A maize and high-iron millet—offer a dual benefit: improved crop productivity and improved access to nutritious foods. While Nigerian agricultural policies encourage biofortification, sustained adoption remains limited, and existing studies overwhelmingly focus on peaceful and stable settings. We aim to addresses existing knowledge gaps by implementing a randomized control trial in Gombe State, Nigeria—a fragile and conflict-affected setting with a relatively large displaced population. Existing evidence shows that bundled input packages, rather than interventions promoting a single agricultural input, can generate productivity gains associated with agricultural intensification. Adoption is often hindered by liquidity constraints, perceived risk, and weak extension systems. Moreover, displaced households can face additional barriers due to asset loss and insecure land tenure. This motivates us to specifically investigate whether displaced households respond differently to our intervention than households from the host population.

Year published

2025

Authors

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

Citation

Amare, Mulubrhan; Ambler, Kate; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; and Misra, Rewa S. 2025. Internal displacement and the promotion of bundled agricultural technologies: Evidence from a fragile setting in Nigeria. FCA Brief. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/179196

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Africa; Fragility; Displacement; Dispossession; Agricultural Technology; Internally Displaced Persons; Bundling

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Community health worker caseloads, home visits, and child survival: Experimental evidence of heterogenous effects from Mali

2025Allen IV, James
Details

Community health worker caseloads, home visits, and child survival: Experimental evidence of heterogenous effects from Mali

I examine whether the effectiveness of community health worker (CHW) home visits in reducing under-five mortality varies with the population-to-CHW ratio in rural, fragile, and conflict-affected Mali. Muso, a global health NGO focused on reducing child and maternal mortality, recently signed a data use agreement with IFPRI to enable study of new research questions using data from its recent randomized controlled trial (RCT) of proactive home visits in Mali’s Bankass region. The original trial found that proactive home visits by professional CHWs did not lead to detectable reductions in child mortality relative to fixed-site care, although health infrastructure improvements in both treatment arms likely led to experienced large declines in under-five mortality across all study communities amid ongoing conflict. In this project note, I study heterogeneous effects of the proactive home visit model by population-to-CHW ratios using nearly census level baseline population data and administrative records on CHW assignment. I test the hypothesis that home visits may operate differently when CHWs face particularly high or low caseloads. In theory, CHWs serving small populations may not be necessary for improving access because travel distances to fixed sites are already short, whereas CHWs serving very large populations may be unable to conduct sufficiently frequent and high-quality home visits. If both mechanisms operate, an optimal population-to-CHW ratio may exist. Instead, I find evidence that CHW home visits are more effective when the population-to-CHW ratio is high. At 900 people per CHW (about the 90th percentile in the trial data), children in control clusters experience significantly higher mortality risk. This elevated risk, however, is offset in clusters assigned to proactive home visits. Additional checks indicate that this is driven by CHW coverage rather than underlying population size. These findings suggest that proactive home visits may be most beneficial in areas where fixed-site CHWs otherwise face heavy caseloads.

Year published

2025

Authors

Allen IV, James

Citation

Allen IV, James. 2025. Community health worker caseloads, home visits, and child survival: Experimental evidence of heterogenous effects from Mali. FCA Brief. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/178959

Country/Region

Mali

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Africa; Community Organizations; Health Care; Child Health; Fragility

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

Blogs

When caseloads matter: Community health workers, home visits, and child survival in Mali
Research Post
 | 
February 06, 2026

When caseloads matter: Community health workers, home visits, and child survival in Mali

By James Allen IV

What works best when resources are stretched?

Navigating data collection in data-constrained settings: Reflections from the field in Uzbekistan
Research Post
 | 
January 16, 2026

Navigating data collection in data-constrained settings: Reflections from the field in Uzbekistan

By Sharanya Rajiv and Tushar Singh

Overcoming challenges of geography, language, and other issues.

Violent conflicts reshape input use and productivity in smallholder farming: Findings from Nigeria
Research Post
 | 
December 31, 2025

Violent conflicts reshape input use and productivity in smallholder farming: Findings from Nigeria

By Mulubrhan Amare, Kwaw Andam, Bedru Balana, Steven Were Omamo, and Opeyemi Olanrewaju

Complex impacts on agricultural production.

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Events

Promoting Resilience through Improved Varieties, Quality Seed, and Better Seed Systems: Lessons from Nigeria
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

February 11, 2026, 9:30 – 11:00 am

Promoting Resilience through Improved Varieties, Quality Seed, and Better Seed Systems: Lessons from Nigeria

Across sub-Saharan Africa, small-scale, resource-poor farmers are disproportionately affected by climatic and market shocks. Providing them with the tools and technologies to manage these shocks is critical to building resilience, especially in Nigeria, with its considerable diversity. This seminar will showcase novel evidence of how improved crop varieties, quality seed, and better seed systems can […]

Advancing Poverty Graduation in Fragile Contexts: A New Agenda for Research and Policy
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

January 21, 2026, 9:30 – 11:00 am

Advancing Poverty Graduation in Fragile Contexts: A New Agenda for Research and Policy

Multifaceted livelihoods interventions that target households in extreme poverty are extremely effective in reducing extreme poverty, with consistent gains in income, consumption, savings, and psychosocial well-being. These interventions, often called graduation models, have been widely evaluated, but most evidence comes from stable rural settings. In fragile and conflict-affected environments where poverty is increasingly concentrated, household-level […]

Empowerment in Crisis: Gender-Responsive Solutions for Fragile Food Systems
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

November 12, 2025, 9:00 – 10:30 am

Empowerment in Crisis: Gender-Responsive Solutions for Fragile Food Systems

Crises—whether driven by conflict, climate shocks, or economic instability—rarely affect everyone equally. Women and girls often bear the heaviest burdens, facing heightened food insecurity, disrupted livelihoods, and increased risks to their health and safety. Yet, women are not only victims of crisis—they are powerful drivers of resilience and recovery. “Empowerment in Crisis: Gender-Responsive Solutions for […]

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News

February 04, 2026 | In the News

Anti-poverty programmes can change how people see the state and each other (The Conversation)

Katrina Kosec and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo examine whether social transfer programs—beyond their economic benefits—also help build states and societies that sustain development.

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