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Who we are

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.

Aulo Gelli

Aulo Gelli is a Senior Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. His main interests and experience are in the intersection of food policy and nutrition, with a particular focus on evaluating the impact of child health and nutrition interventions. Prior to working at IFPRI, Aulo worked as a Research Fellow at Imperial College, as a Policy Analyst at the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences, and as a Statistician at the World Food Programme. 

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What we do

Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

Where we work

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Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

Policy Research for Evolving Food Systems Needs

Looking Toward 2050

What’s New


Journal Article

Sustainable poverty reduction through social assistance: Modality, context, and complementary programming in Bangladesh

2025Ahmed, Akhter; Hidrobo, Melissa; Hoddinott, John; Kolt, Bastien; Roy, Shalini; Tauseef, Salauddin

Sustainable poverty reduction through social assistance: Modality, context, and complementary programming in Bangladesh

Social assistance programs can increase consumption and reduce poverty, but less is known about whether these impacts are sustained after programs end, or how design and context influence sustainability. Using data collected in two regions of Bangladesh four years after a randomized intervention ended, we find that combining cash transfers with complementary programming led to sustained increases in consumption and reductions in poverty. Combining food transfers with complementary programming showed similar patterns, to a lesser extent. Cash alone had context-specific sustained effects; food alone had no sustained impacts. Results suggest that context, modality, and complementary programming matter for sustained impacts.

Year published

2025

Authors

Ahmed, Akhter; Hidrobo, Melissa; Hoddinott, John; Kolt, Bastien; Roy, Shalini; Tauseef, Salauddin

Citation

Ahmed, Akhter; Hidrobo, Melissa; Hoddinott, John; Kolt, Bastien; Roy, Shalini; and Tauseef, Salauddin. Sustainable poverty reduction through social assistance: Modality, context, and complementary programming in Bangladesh. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Article in Press. First online on December 5, 2024. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20230108

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Southern Asia; Aid Programmes; Poverty; Sustainability; Cash Transfers; Food; Social Protection

Language

English

Access/Licence

Limited Access

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Journal Article

Journal Article

Adapting the women’s empowerment in nutrition index: Lessons from Kenya

2025Lentz, Erin; Jensen, Nathan; Lepariyo, Watson; Narayanan, Sudha; Bageant, Elizabeth

Adapting the women’s empowerment in nutrition index: Lessons from Kenya

Women face a disproportionate burden of malnutrition and food insecurity. Research has shown that women’s empowerment can buffer women against nutritional problems. This paper contributes to ongoing efforts to measure women’s empowerment that are both context-sensitive and universal, focusing on the recently developed Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI). Earlier research has shown it is both a valid construct and positively related to dietary and nutritional outcomes of women in South Asia. We establish that WENI is generalizable to agropastoral and pastoral Kenya, an area with substantially different livelihoods, food system, norms, and institutions than South Asia. We find that a locally contextualized WENI is strongly associated with women’s body mass index and dietary diversity as well as household level food insecurity. We also present findings for two shorter variations of WENI: an abbreviated WENI (A-WENI) and a cross context WENI (CC-WENI). A-WENI contains a small subset of WENI indicators identified using machine learning with South Asian data and therefore is context-specific. CC-WENI does not contain indicators specific to the validation context. We find that they perform comparably well with caveats. Thus, as use of WENI expands we recommend adapting WENI for in-depth analyses of women’s nutritional empowerment; using CC-WENI for cross-context comparisons; and using A-WENI for rapid appraisals of community level progress in a given context.

Year published

2025

Authors

Lentz, Erin; Jensen, Nathan; Lepariyo, Watson; Narayanan, Sudha; Bageant, Elizabeth

Citation

Lentz, Erin; Jensen, Nathan; Lepariyo, Watson; Narayanan, Sudha; and Bageant, Elizabeth. 2024. Adapting the women’s empowerment in nutrition index: Lessons from Kenya. World Development 188: 106887. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106887

Country/Region

Kenya

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Women’s Empowerment; Malnutrition; Food Security; Livelihoods; Food Systems; Indicators

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Project

Livestock

Record type

Journal Article

Journal Article

Conflicts, crop choice, and agricultural investments: Empirical evidence from Nigeria

2025Amare, Mulubrhan; Abay, Kibrom A.; Berhane, Guush; Andam, Kwaw S.; Adeyanju, Dolapo

Conflicts, crop choice, and agricultural investments: Empirical evidence from Nigeria

Conflict remains a major driver of poverty in Africa. Conflicts and political instability in the region have been increasing recently and are drawing more attention in public discourse. While it is widely acknowledged that conflicts disrupt agricultural production and food systems, the full extent of the damage inflicted on the lives and livelihoods of farming households and the mechanisms to redress this harm remain poorly understood. In particular, the link between violent conflicts and households’ land allocation and related agricultural investment decisions remains understudied. In this study, we use geocoded longitudinal data along with detailed agricultural panel household surveys in Nigeria to assess the impact of violent conflicts on crop choice decisions and related agricultural investments. Specifically, we explore how farmers’ land allocation and agricultural investment decisions relate or respond to the outbreak and intensity of violent conflicts. We find that violent conflicts are associated with a reduction in the share of both land area cultivated and area harvested. We also find suggestive evidence that violent conflicts may shape farmers’ crop choices and related investments, as violent conflicts are associated with reduction in the share of land allocated to long-term crops (e.g., perennial crops, trees, roots and tubers). Overall, our findings suggest that violent conflicts can negatively influence farmers’ agricultural investments directly by affecting both land utilization patterns and portfolio allocation across activities with varying returns to investments.

Year published

2025

Authors

Amare, Mulubrhan; Abay, Kibrom A.; Berhane, Guush; Andam, Kwaw S.; Adeyanju, Dolapo

Citation

Amare, Mulubrhan; Abay, Kibrom A.; Berhane, Guush; Andam, Kwaw S.; and Adeyanju, Dolapo. 2025. Conflicts, crop choice, and agricultural investments: Empirical evidence from Nigeria. Land Use Policy 148(January 2025): 107391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2024.107391

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Africa; Conflicts; Investment; Smallholders; Decision Making; Gender

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Journal Article

2024 Year in Review

Explore highlights from IFPRI’s 2024 research and outreach, including our work on food security and healthy diets, responding to conflicts and building resilience, and major outputs from our regional and country programs. Click through the interactive review to view videos, blogs, events and more.

Experts in Our Field

IFPRI’s experts work around the world to provide the evidence that supports effective policies to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition.

600+

staff across the world

80+

countries where we work

#1

in the field of Agricultural Economics

20,000+

research outputs

Meet a Researcher

Tim 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. This work has expanded recently to include evaluating the fuller impact of climate change by accounting for uncertainty and interannual variability, especially in regard to extreme events and low-productivity years. Tim’s work involves developing innovative methods for simulated climate futures; generating crop yield emulators to provide intuition and to speed simulations; and model coordination…

Timothy Thomas

From our video channel

Faces of IFPRI: Kalyani Raghunathan

In this video, Kalyani Raghunathan, an IFPRI Research Fellow based in New Delhi, India, describes her work and research interests, including research on social protection and empowering women and youth in agrifood systems. She also shares her advice for the next generation of young researchers and explains what keeps her passionate about her work at IFPRI.

“Faces of IFPRI” is a new series of interviews with IFPRI colleagues around the world, showcasing the diversity of talent, geographies, and research interests across the Institute.

Our Events

Making a Difference Blog Series

Africa’s agriculture sector, particularly south of the Sahara, has enormous potential to provide jobs and food for a growing population—and thus contributing to food security, economic growth, and poverty reduction. To realize this potential, farmers across Africa have increasingly turned to mechanization.

In 2011, at the request of the Ghanaian government, IFPRI began work to assess the impacts and progress of mechanization programs in Ghana. These assessments shaped reforms and policies, helping farmers reduce drudgery and improve efficiency and yields.

Tamsin Zandstra, Sam Benin, and Seth Asante outline how farmers have benefited from Ghana’s Agricultural Mechanization Services Enterprise Centers Program.