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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.

researcher spotlight

Eliot Jones-Garcia

Eliot Jones-Garcia is a Senior Research Analyst with the Natural Resources and Resilience Unit based in Washington, DC. His research focuses on human-AI interaction, user-centered design, and the ethical and responsible development of AI. Eliot is currently finalizing a PhD on the digitalization of agricultural advisory services at Wageningen University & Research.

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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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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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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

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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

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Internal Document

Strategic plan of the IFPRI program on fragile and conflict-affected food systems (FCAS): 2026-2029

2025Kosec, Katrina; Ambler, Kate; Abay, Kibrom; Carrillo, Lucia; Gilligan, Dan
Details

Strategic plan of the IFPRI program on fragile and conflict-affected food systems (FCAS): 2026-2029

Humanitarian crises are becoming more frequent, protracted, and complex. Fragility, conflict, climate extremes, and displacement increasingly converge to undermine food security, disrupt livelihoods, and erode community resilience across dozens of countries. In these settings, humanitarian actors face enormous pressure to deliver assistance in ways that are timely, inclusive, accountable, and aligned with the needs and priorities of affected populations. Further, governments demand evidence on what policies, programming, and other investments can support prevention, recovery, and resilience. In the current funding environment, global humanitarian financing is stretched thinner than ever, making improvements in effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of humanitarian actions all the more urgent. The IFPRI Program on Fragile and Conflict-Affected Food Systems (FCAS) responds to these challenges by generating practical, policy-relevant evidence on what works to support food security and resilience in FCAS, with a focus on who benefits, under what conditions, and at what cost. Through long-standing engagement in countries such as Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Somalia, and Yemen, the Program supports governments, UN agencies, International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs), and local NGOs to strengthen food systems in fragile contexts and improve outcomes for crisis-affected children, women, households, and communities. To make the Program’s rigorous research and evidence generation effective, it relies on deep partnership, local engagement, and a commitment to translating evidence into real-world change. Its work spans crisis anticipation and prevention; monitoring and crisis response; and recovery and resilience. It also considers two key cross-cutting areas: governance and accountability; and gender equality and inclusion. Across all of these areas, the Program advances locally-led approaches and elevates the voices and leadership of affected populations. IFPRI’s institutional strategy and its four-pronged approach to research and impact guide the Program; its work in FCAS aims to: (1) position major development challenges on policy agendas, (2) build scalable high-impact solutions, (3) strengthen governance and financing mechanisms, and (4) deploy tools, methods, and capabilities for research and policy impact. The Program supports humanitarian systems reform by generating new evidence on effective program design features; exploring means of strengthening governance and social inclusion; and supporting coordination across humanitarian, development, and peace actors. This Strategic Plan outlines how the Program operates, what it contributes, and how it sustains a unique role for IFPRI within the global humanitarian ecosystem.

Year published

2025

Authors

Kosec, Katrina; Ambler, Kate; Abay, Kibrom; Carrillo, Lucia; Gilligan, Dan

Citation

Kosec, Katrina; Ambler, Kate; Abay, Kibrom; Carrillo, Lucia; and Gilligan, Dan. 2025. Strategic plan of the IFPRI program on fragile and conflict-affected food systems (FCAS): 2026-2029. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/178944

Keywords

Fragility; Conflicts; Food Systems

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Internal Document

Blogs

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.

Women at the center: Strengthening empowerment in fragile food systems
Event Post
 | 
December 03, 2025

Women at the center: Strengthening empowerment in fragile food systems

By Katrina Kosec

A key buffer against crises.

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Events

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 […]

Informing Crisis Response in Sudan
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

October 22, 2025, 3:00 – 4:30 pm

Informing Crisis Response in Sudan

The recent resurgence of armed conflicts in Africa is increasing the need and urgency for investments in shock-responsive humanitarian and social assistance programs. Armed conflicts both increase the need for aid and greatly complicate delivery of humanitarian services to vulnerable populations. In addition, humanitarian organizations are facing an increasing funding gap because of dwindling donor […]

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Our experts

Kibrom Abay

Kibrom Abay

Senior Research Fellow , Development
Strategies and Governance

Kate Ambler

Kate Ambler

Senior Research Fellow, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions

Katrina Kosec

Katrina Kosec

Senior Research Fellow, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion