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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.

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researcher spotlight

Samuel Benin

Samuel Benin is the Acting Director for Africa in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. He conducts research on national strategies and public investment for accelerating food systems transformation in Africa and provides analytical support to the African Union’s CAADP Biennial Review.

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.

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TOPIC

COVID-19

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) poses a new global threat. As the world battles this pandemic and as economies and livelihoods are disrupted, the poor and vulnerable are likely to suffer most. The COVID-19 crisis is challenging food systems and health systems around the world, and its unprecedented impacts on livelihoods raise serious concerns about food and nutrition security for many of the world’s poor.

IFPRI is actively working to support evidence-based policymaking in the context of COVID-19 at national, regional, and global levels. Please visit the spotlight page for IFPRI’s ongoing analysis of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food and nutrition security and development, including blog posts, publications, events, data tools, and more. IFPRI’s COVID-19 research is closely aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 1, SDG 2, SDG 3, SDG 8, SDG 10, and SDG 17.

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topics

Publications

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Working Paper

Africa cannot achieve the Malabo Declaration commitments: Statistical impossibility or logical fallacy

2024Benin, Samuel
Details

Africa cannot achieve the Malabo Declaration commitments: Statistical impossibility or logical fallacy

The results of the recently released Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) 4th Biennial Review (BR) report indicate that Africa’s performance in 2023 toward achieving the Malabo Declaration commitments by 2025 has strayed farther away from being on-track. Using a scorecard method to review progress in 58 indicators that represent the commitments, previous BR reports show that the number of countries assessed to be on-track to achieve the commitments has dwindled over time, from twenty in 2017 to four in 2019 and only one in 2021. In the 4th BR in 2023, none of the 49 participating countries was on on-track. This seems to conflict with evidence of positive trends in other continent-level reports on related development indicators. According to the African Economic Outlook for example, the contribution of agriculture to overall economic growth in Africa has remained stable, especially as growth in the services and industry sectors has been irregular—and even negative in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest editions of the Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor, Africa Agriculture Status Report, and Annual Trends and Outlook Report5 also show substantial progress in terms of expansion of agricultural investments, trade, and growth and improvement in poverty and nutrition outcomes, amid challenges associated with the pandemic, climate change, conflicts, and epidemics such as the locust and fall armyworm infestations. The BR scoring method and data have some issues that contribute to the seemingly worsening performance.

Year published

2024

Authors

Benin, Samuel

Citation

Benin, Samuel. 2024. Africa cannot achieve the Malabo Declaration commitments: Statistical impossibility or logical fallacy. AFR Project Note 2. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute

Keywords

Africa; Development; Indicators; Agriculture; Economic Development; Covid-19; Trade; Climate Change; Conflicts

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Data Paper

Tracking Maternal and Child Anthropometric Outcomes, Early Childhood Development, Maternal Mental Health and Household Welfare in urban Yangon and rural Ayeyarwady: A Description of the 11th Round of The Rural-Urban Food Security Survey (RUFSS) conducted in October-November 2023

2024Myanmar Agriculture Policy Support Activity
Details

Tracking Maternal and Child Anthropometric Outcomes, Early Childhood Development, Maternal Mental Health and Household Welfare in urban Yangon and rural Ayeyarwady: A Description of the 11th Round of The Rural-Urban Food Security Survey (RUFSS) conducted in October-November 2023

Myanmar’s population has become increasingly at risk of malnutrition due to political turmoil, armed conflicts, the COVID-19 pandemic, economic disruptions, price fluctuations, and erratic weather patterns (MAPSA 2024; MAPSA 2023). However, given the fragile situation with respect to conflict, crime and poor governance, conducting face-to-face data collection is challenging (Lambrecht et al. 2023; Boughton et al. 2023), and there is a particular scarcity of anthropometric data since this cannot be collected via phone surveys. To redress this knowledge gap, IFPRI partnered with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)- Myanmar to conduct an in-person survey that revisited households previously surveyed in 2020-2021 by phone. This Rural-Urban Food Security interviewed mothers or caregivers of young children and collected anthropometric measurements in-person between October – November 2023. Out of approximately 1,500 mothers who participated in at least one round of the previous phone survey, we successfully followed up with 702 mother-child pairs located mainly in peri-urban Yangon, with a small subset of households in rural Ayeyarwady. This paper describes the implementation of this survey and the reports key results from the questionnaire in order to provide readers with a clear understanding of the sample and its key socioeconomic characteristics, as well as comparability to two national surveys with representative Yangon sub-samples: the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS) conducted in 2023 and Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) conducted in 2015-16. Results of this comparison suggest that the RUFSS sample of caregivers (mostly mothers) is broadly comparable to the DHS in terms of education levels. Thus, while the RUFSS sample should not be interrupted as representative of mothers of young children in Yangon or their households – because we oversample peri-urban households – it nevertheless appears to be broadly comparable to the DHS in terms of caregiver education levels, which would one not expect to change rapidly over 2015-16 to 2023.

Year published

2024

Authors

Myanmar Agriculture Policy Support Activity

Citation

Myanmar Agriculture Policy Support Activity. 2024. Tracking Maternal and Child Anthropometric Outcomes, Early Childhood Development, Maternal Mental Health and Household Welfare in Urban Yangon and Rural Ayeyarwady: A Description of the 11th Round of the Rural-Urban Food Security Survey (RUFSS) Conducted in October-November 2023. Data Paper. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://hdl.handle.net/10568/148763.

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

South-eastern Asia; Asia; Malnutrition; Instability; Armed Conflicts; Covid-19; Periurban Areas; Rural Areas; Children; Weather; Anthropometry; Food Security; Education; Mothers

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Data Paper

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Journal Article

Social protection amid a crisis: New evidence from South Africa’s Older Person’s Grant

2024Alloush, Mo; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Malacarne, J. G.
Details

Social protection amid a crisis: New evidence from South Africa’s Older Person’s Grant

This study estimates the effects of South Africa’s Older Person’s Grant on well-being amid the COVID-19 pandemic. With household-level data collected before and during the pandemic, it leverages the age-eligibility threshold of the grant to estimate its effects on households in both periods. Prior to the pandemic, this study finds that grant receipt substantially improves economic well-being and decreases adult hunger at the household level. During the first 18 months of the pandemic, this study finds larger effects on both economic well-being and hunger than prior to the pandemic. In particular, recipient households were less likely to report running out of money for food and hunger among either adults or children. These results, which are stronger when pandemic-related lockdown policies are in place and for more vulnerable households, provide critical insight into the effectiveness of one of the world’s most well-known cash-transfer programs during a massive global health crisis.

Year published

2024

Authors

Alloush, Mo; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Malacarne, J. G.

Citation

Alloush, Mo; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; and Malacarne, J. G. 2024. Social protection amid a crisis: New evidence from South Africa’s Older Person’s Grant. World Bank Economic Review 38(2): 371-393. https://doi.org/10.1093/wber/lhad037

Country/Region

South Africa

Keywords

Africa; Southern Africa; Cash Transfers; Coronavirus; Coronavirus Disease; Coronavirinae; Covid-19; Data; Households; Hunger

Language

English

Access/Licence

Limited Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.1093/wber/lhad037 Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Journal Article

Blogs

COVID-19 in South Asia: Lessons from a time of upheaval
IFPRI Blog
 | 
November 15, 2023

COVID-19 in South Asia: Lessons from a time of upheaval

By Kalyani Raghunathan

How food systems fared amid disruption.

Tropentag 2023: Battling the global 3Cs (climate change, COVID-19, conflict) through food systems transformation
IFPRI Blog
 | 
October 27, 2023

Tropentag 2023: Battling the global 3Cs (climate change, COVID-19, conflict) through food systems transformation

By Mary Grace Barbacias

Encouraging scientific understanding for sustainability.

Lanzamiento del Informe Global de Políticas Alimentarias 2023 en América Latina: Políticas para construir resiliencia ante los shocks
IFPRI Blog
 | 
July 07, 2023

Lanzamiento del Informe Global de Políticas Alimentarias 2023 en América Latina: Políticas para construir resiliencia ante los shocks

By Brian McNamara

A region key to feeding the world faces an era of global crisis.

Events

Nourish the Dialogue: Investing in nutrition and diets as significant determinants of health
Series/Special Event

 | 

April 19, 2024, 11:30 – 12:30 pm

Nourish the Dialogue: Investing in nutrition and diets as significant determinants of health

Hybrid Special Event: April 19, 2024 – 11:30 PM- 12:30 PM EDT. This special event will convene nutrition and climate experts to discuss the vital role of healthy diets; showcase a suite of proven solutions across the agrifood value chain for improving diets in low- and middle-income countries; and examine how best to scale these solutions so that everyone can reap the benefits of sustainable healthy diets.

5th Global Food Security Conference
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

April 9 to 12, 2024

5th Global Food Security Conference

Conference: April 9-12, 2024 – 7:30 AM- 6:00 PM CET. Building on the momentum from the UN Food System Summit and recognizing that the 2030 target year of the Sustainable Development Goals is on the horizon, this 5th Global Food Security Conference will bring together science, business, and policy to address this need.

From Commitments to Impact: Analyzing the Global Commitments Toward Promoting Food Security and Healthy Diets
Series/Special Event

 | 

February 6, 2024, 9:00 – 10:30 am

From Commitments to Impact: Analyzing the Global Commitments Toward Promoting Food Security and Healthy Diets

Hybrid Event: February 6, 2024 at 9:00am-10:30am EST. This event will shed light on commitments already made, share research results on the potential of current commitments to achieve a focused set of food and nutrition security goals, and foster continued dialogue with global advocacy partners.

News

February 10, 2023 | In the News

Food and biofuels in debate (Agri Dees) 

Agri Dees published a summary of an IFPRI seminar. Agri Dees states that the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered deep geopolitical upheavals and a crisis on the food and energy security fronts. Agriculture is at the center of this crisis issue: to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, can we dedicate part of agricultural production to […]

February 10, 2023 | In the News

Top food exporter Argentina confronts rising hunger and poverty (The New Humanitarian) 

The New Humanitarian interviewed Valeria Piñeiro, IFPRI’s acting head for Latin America, for the article about the worsening situation with hunger and poverty in Argentina. Piñeiro is asking the international community not to neglect Argentina and Latin America. In the decade up to 2015, the region was hailed for outperforming others in reducing hunger and poverty, but […]

January 03, 2023 | In the News

Food price spike may fuel nutrition crisis (The Nation) 

Growing food crises with spiking prices will have an impact on poor and food insecure populations writes the Nation (Nigeria), quoting a recent analysis by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) which notes that food inflation poses larger wasting risks for children of poor and landless rural households, exacerbating existing inequalities.  According to IFPRI, food prices […]

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