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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.

researcher spotlight

Liangzhi You

Liangzhi You is a Senior Research Fellow and theme leader in the Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit, based in Washington, DC. His research focuses on climate resilience, spatial data and analytics, agroecosystems, and agricultural science policy. Gridded crop production data of the world (SPAM) and the agricultural technology evaluation model (DREAM) are among his research contributions. 

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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experts

Markets, Trade, and Institutions

Alan de Brauw

Senior Research Fellow

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Bio

Alan de Brauw is a Senior Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit at IFPRI, and a Fellow of the Global Labor Organization. At IFPRI, he previously worked in the leadership of two CGIAR research programs and has managed several multi-country projects. Much of his research involves primary source data collection, and he has helped design, plan, and conduct multi-topic household surveys in 15 different countries in the developing world. His research agenda has focused on understanding both the impacts of agricultural interventions and the effects of migration on source households in rural areas of developing countries. His research has been published widely in development economics, agricultural economics, and nutrition journals and he recently co-authored a book on smallholders and agricultural value chains in Africa. Prior to joining IFPRI, Alan was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Williams College. He has a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California at Davis.

Publications

Personal Website

RePEc Author Profile

Google Scholar Citations

CV

Publications

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Working Paper

Catalyzing financial inclusion: Using incentives to promote mobile money use in Ethiopia

2024de Brauw, Alan; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Herskowitz, Sylvan; Roy, Shalini
Details

Catalyzing financial inclusion: Using incentives to promote mobile money use in Ethiopia

Mobile money can be a vehicle for improving financial access, particularly among disadvantaged populations. For mobile money systems to play this role, though, members of disadvantaged groups must both enroll in and begin to use mobile money systems. In this paper, we describe a randomized trial conducted in collaboration with a bank in Somali region, Ethiopia, that attempted to stimulate use among recent mobile money enrollees in areas near refugee camps. We provide one group with a small transfer to their mobile money account and another group is told they will receive a small transfer if they first make three transactions of any type within a promotional period. The unconditional transfer induces a 9.3 percentage point increase in customers making at least one transaction, while the conditional transfer has no significant effect. The effect is larger among men, but there is evidence that it also induces use among women.

Year published

2024

Authors

de Brauw, Alan; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Herskowitz, Sylvan; Roy, Shalini

Citation

de Brauw, Alan; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Herskowitz, Sylvan; and Roy, Shalini. 2024. Catalyzing financial inclusion: Using incentives to promote mobile money use in Ethiopia. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2295. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Eastern Africa; Africa; Access to Finance; Refugees; Gender; Digital Technology; Currencies; Finance; Mobile Phones

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Policies, Institutions, and Markets

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

MSMEs in the Food Environment in urban and peri-urban Ethiopia

2024de Brauw, Alan; Hirvonen, Kalle; Mekonnen, Daniel; Chege, Christine
Details

MSMEs in the Food Environment in urban and peri-urban Ethiopia

In late 2023, a unique survey was fielded in Ethiopia to study micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) selling food directly to consumers in two locations in Ethiopia (a woreda of Addis Ababa, and Butajira). The survey was unique as it combines a listing exercise, which attempted to list all businesses selling food directly to customers within a specific area, and a business-oriented survey, which enumerated information about management characteristics, the use of healthy foods, nutritional awareness, and the constraints businesses might face in selling more healthy foods. We find that businesses rarely follow good business practices, they have poor access to capital, and supply challenges and variable quality are major constraints to expanding their businesses. Finally, we find many vendors are not aware of nutritional content of specific foods they might sell. From the business perspective, business trainings could help vendors become better businesses, but helping deal with supply challenges earlier in the value chain could also allow them to sell more, with consistently higher quality.

Year published

2024

Authors

de Brauw, Alan; Hirvonen, Kalle; Mekonnen, Daniel; Chege, Christine

Citation

de Brauw, Alan; Hirvonen, Kalle; Mekonnen, Daniel; and Chege, Christine. 2024. MSMEs in the Food Environment in urban and peri-urban Ethiopia. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/155237

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Enterprises; Food Environment; Nutrition; Surveys

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Sustainable Healthy Diets

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

The unmet financial needs of intermediary firms within agri-food value chains in Uganda and Bangladesh

2024Adong, Annet; Ambler, Kate; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; de Brauw, Alan; Herskowitz, Sylvan; Islam, AHM Saiful; Wagner, Julia
Details

The unmet financial needs of intermediary firms within agri-food value chains in Uganda and Bangladesh

Intermediary firms within agri-food value chains operating between the farmgate and retailers typically account for at least as much, if not more, value added as the primary agricultural production sector of the economy, but little is known about how these small and largely informal firms conduct their business. Drawing on a set of innovative surveys implemented amid the arabica coffee and soybean value chains in Uganda and the rice and potato value chains in Bangladesh, we describe the financial activities of the firms that transform agricultural produce into food. We document four sets of results. First, across all intermediary actors in our data the overwhelming majority of transactions are cash-based. Second, although many intermediary actors are un-banked, access to financial accounts varies considerably by value chain segment, commodity, and country. Third, while most intermediary actors report using mobile money for personal purposes, especially in Uganda, very few use mobile money to facilitate business transactions. Fourth, although intermediary actors frequently report exposure to risk, very few effectively manage this risk. We conclude by discussing how intermediary agri-food value chain actors represent an underappreciated population for the promotion of new technologies both to improve the stability of the agricultural sector and to improve outcomes among smallholder farmers.

Year published

2024

Authors

Adong, Annet; Ambler, Kate; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; de Brauw, Alan; Herskowitz, Sylvan; Islam, AHM Saiful; Wagner, Julia

Citation

Adong, Annet; Ambler, Kate; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; de Brauw, Alan; Herskowitz, Sylvan; Islam, AHM Saiful; and Wagner, Julia. 2024. The unmet financial needs of intermediary firms within agri-food value chains in Uganda and Bangladesh. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2266. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/151859

Country/Region

Bangladesh; Uganda

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Asia; Southern Asia; Agrifood Systems; Finance; Mobile Phones; Technology; Value Chains

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Working Paper

Blogs

Agrifood Value Chains are Complex Transaction-Linked Networks
IFPRI Blog
 | 
March 11, 2024

Agrifood Value Chains are Complex Transaction-Linked Networks

By Kate Ambler, Jeff Bloem, Alan de Brauw, and Julia Wagner

Why simplified linear approaches may fall short.

Bridging the smallholder finance gap: Collaborative research with WeGro in Bangladesh
IFPRI Blog
 | 
December 12, 2023

Bridging the smallholder finance gap: Collaborative research with WeGro in Bangladesh

By Kate Ambler, Mehrab Bakhtiar, Alan de Brauw, and Mohammad Riad Uddin

Helping farmers purchase and sell livestock.

Addressing the knowledge gap on the financial needs of firms in the midstream of agricultural value chains
IFPRI Blog
 | 
June 27, 2023

Addressing the knowledge gap on the financial needs of firms in the midstream of agricultural value chains

By Kate Ambler, Jeffrey R. Bloem, Alan de Brauw, and Sylvan Herskowitz

Shedding light on a key segment of the food system.

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Events

Learning Support for a Multi-Country Climate Resilience Programme for Food Security
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

November 5, 2024, 9:00 – 10:30 am

Learning Support for a Multi-Country Climate Resilience Programme for Food Security

The Learning Support for a Sub-Saharan Africa Multi-Country Climate Resilience Program for Food Security, launched in 2023, aims to enhance food security and climate resilience across 14 African countries. This collaboration among CGIAR, the World Food Programme, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) has three pillars: scaling disaster risk financing, transforming food systems […]

Micronutrient Forum: 6th Global Conference
IFPRI at External Event

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October 16 to 20, 2023

Micronutrient Forum: 6th Global Conference

Hybrid Conference: October 16, 2023 – 8:30 AM to October 20, 2023 – 5:00 PM CEST. IFPRI is pleased to participate in this year’s Micronutrient Forum 6th Global Conference, being held at the World Forum in The Hague October 16–20, with a focus on “Nutrition for Resilience (N4R).

Irregular Migration and Food Security: A View from West Africa
IFPRI Policy Seminar

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July 20, 2023, 9:30 – 11:00 am

Irregular Migration and Food Security: A View from West Africa

Event: July 20, 2023 – 9:30 AM- 11:00 AM EDT. This seminar will present study results and the website, with discussion by researchers from IFPRI, WFP, and MIT as well as other experts.

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News

November 10, 2022 | In the News

New research initiative for healthy diets in Bangladesh (Dhaka Tribune) 

Poor-quality diets are associated with all forms of malnutrition-including undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight and obesity as well as around 1.1 million premature adult deaths each year. Dhaka Tribune reports on the launch of CGIAR’s Initiative on Sustainable Healthy Diets through Food Systems Transformation (SHiFT). This initiative will work closely with local, national, regional, and […]

November 20, 2019 | In the News

Food loss and waste and key to achieving SDG 2

Financial Nigeria published an article on how Nigeria is dealing with food loss and waste. An IFPRI report was quoted about food loss in developing countries. “Food loss during production, trade, and processing tends to outweigh food waste occurring at the retail and consumer stages of the supply chain.”

October 09, 2018 | In the News

Great Expectations from Ethiopia’s Wheat Initiative (Thomson Reuters Foundation News)

Thomson Reuters Foundation News published an op-ed by several IFPRI researchers including Gashaw Tadesse Abate, Tanguy Bernard, Alan de Brauw, and Nicholas Minot, who examined the impact of Ethiopia’s Wheat Initiative on farmers’ yields to understand how programs can boost wheat yields in underperforming areas. 

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