IFPRI CGIAR
Subscribe

Back

What we do

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.

benin_samuel_0

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

Back

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.

IFPRI Regional Programs

IFPRI Country Programs

Research by country and region

Subscribe

experts

Markets, Trade, and Institutions

Gashaw Tadesse Abate

Research Fellow

Follow

Gashaw Tadesse

at:

ORCiD
abate_gashaw

Bio

Gashaw Tadesse Abate is a Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit. He joined IFPRI in 2016 and is currently based in Washington, DC. Gashaw’s research topics include agricultural value chains, technology adoption, agricultural extension and advisory services, producer organizations, economic inclusion, and survey methods and measurements. Most of his research involves impact evaluation methods, and he has extensive experience in designing and implementing large-scale household surveys and randomized controlled trials. Gashaw has been involved in several projects including Stiftungsallianz für Afrika (SAfA: Foundations Alliance for Africa); Digital Agricultural Advisory Services (DAAS); Research for Ethiopia’s Agriculture Policy (REAP); CGIAR Research Initiative: Rethinking Food Markets; and the CGIAR Research Initiative on Market Intelligence. Gashaw holds a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Trento.

Publications

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Buyers’ response to third-party quality certification: Theory and evidence from Ethiopian wheat traders

2024Abate, Gashaw Tadesse; Bernard, Tanguy; Bulte, Erwin; Miguel, Jérémy Do Nascimento; Sadoulet, Elisabeth
Details

Buyers’ response to third-party quality certification: Theory and evidence from Ethiopian wheat traders

When quality attributes of a product are not directly observable, third-party certification (TPC) enables buyers to purchase the quality they are most interested in and reward sellers accordingly. Beyond product characteristics, buyers’ use of TPC services also depends on market conditions. We study the introduction of TPC in typical smallholder-based agriculture value chains of low-income countries, where traders must aggregate products from many small-scale producers before selling in bulk to downstream processors, and where introduction of TPC services has oftentimes failed. We develop a theoretical model identifying how different market conditions affect traders’ choice to purchase quality-certified output from farmers. Using a purposefully designed lab-in-the-field experiment with rural wheat traders in Ethiopia, we find mixed support for the model’s prediction: traders’ willingness to specialize in certified output does increase with the share of certified wheat in the market, and this effect is stronger in larger markets. It, however, does not decrease with the quality of uncertified wheat in the market. We further analyze conditions where traders deviate from the theoretically optimal behavior and discuss implications for future research and public policies seeking to promote TPC in smallholder-based food value-chains.

Year published

2024

Authors

Abate, Gashaw Tadesse; Bernard, Tanguy; Bulte, Erwin; Miguel, Jérémy Do Nascimento; Sadoulet, Elisabeth

Citation

Abate, Gashaw T.; Bernard, Tanguy; Bulte, Erwin; Miguel, Jérémy Do Nascimento; and Sadoulet, Elisabeth. 2024. Buyers’ response to third-party quality certification: Theory and evidence from Ethiopian wheat traders. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2258. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/144973

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Agriculture; Certification; Markets; Quality; Smallholders

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Measuring land rental market participation in smallholder agriculture can survey design innovations improve land market participation statistics?

2024Abate, Gashaw Tadesse; Abay, Kibrom A.; Chamberlin, Jordan; Sebsibie, Samuel
Details

Measuring land rental market participation in smallholder agriculture can survey design innovations improve land market participation statistics?

The emergence of rural land rental markets in Sub-Saharan Africa is recognized as a key component of the region’s ongoing economic transformation. However, the evidence base on land market participation relies on survey-derived measures, which do not always cohere when compared and triangulated, suggesting the possibility of non-trivial measurement error. We report the results of a priming and list experiments designed to shed light on a persistent mystery in rural household survey data from Africa: why there are so many fewer self-reported landlords (renters-out) than tenants (renters-in)? Our design addresses two hypotheses using experimental data from Ethiopia. First, rented-out and rented-in land may be systematically underreported because enumerators and respondents are typically primed to emphasize parcels that are actively managed/cultivated by the household. Second, rented or sharecropped-out land may be systematically underreported because of respondents’ reluctance to acknowledge an activity for which public disclosure may have negative repercussions. We address the first hypothesis with a priming experiment by exposing a random subset of respondents to a nudge that explicitly reminded them to fully account for all land, including rented/sharecropped-in and rented/sharecropped-out. We address the second hypothesis with a double-list experiment, designed to elicit true rates of land renting and sharecropping-out. We find that nudging induces about 4 percentage points increase (or 13% in relative terms) in the share of households participating in renting in or sharecropping-in practices but has negligible effects on reported rates of renting and sharecropping-out. Interestingly, our list experiment indicates much higher revealed rates of renting-out (14-15%) than is reflected in the nominal parcel-roster responses (3%). The magnitude of the latter finding fully explains the apparent difference in renting in versus renting-out rates derived from the regular parcel roster responses. These results indicate that efforts to document land market participation rate and associated impacts must overcome large systematic reporting biases.

Year published

2024

Authors

Abate, Gashaw Tadesse; Abay, Kibrom A.; Chamberlin, Jordan; Sebsibie, Samuel

Citation

Abate, Gashaw Tadesse; Abay, Kibrom A.; Chamberlin, Jordan; and Sebsibie, Samuel. 2024. Measuring land rental market participation in smallholder agriculture can survey design innovations improve land market participation statistics? IFPRI Discussion Papers 2255. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/144206

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Land; Households; Survey Design; Surveys

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Book Chapter

Digital innovations and agricultural transformation in Africa: Lessons from Kenya

2023Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.; Abate, Gashaw Tadesse; Abay, Kibrom A.; Spielman, David J.
Details

Digital innovations and agricultural transformation in Africa: Lessons from Kenya

Digital innovation is a key feature in the global and national discourse on food systems transformation. Efforts to better integrate food systems—defined here as the constellation of actors and their activities originating from agriculture, livestock, forestry, or fisheries, as well as the broader economic, societal, and natural environments in which they operate, including the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food products (Dwivedi et al. 2017; FAO 2018; Njuki et al. 2021)—will depend partly on how digital technologies can be used to bolster engagement, coordination, and innovation among a wider and more inclusive set of actors, including marginalized and vulnerable groups (Benfica et al. 2021).

Year published

2023

Authors

Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.; Abate, Gashaw Tadesse; Abay, Kibrom A.; Spielman, David J.

Citation

Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr.; Abate, Gashaw Tadesse; Abay, Kibrom A.; and Spielman, David J. 2023. Digital innovations and agricultural transformation in Africa: Lessons from Kenya. In Food Systems Transformation in Kenya: Lessons from the Past and Policy Options for the Future, eds. Clemens Breisinger, Michael Keenan, Juneweenex Mbuthia, and Jemimah Njuki. Part 6: Toward more sustainable food systems, Chapter 18, Pp. 469-492. 10.2499/9780896294561_18

Country/Region

Kenya

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Eastern Africa; Technology Adoption; Food Systems; Smallholders; Agriculture

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.2499/9780896294561_18 Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Book Chapter

Blogs

The importance of the agricultural transformation agency in Ethiopia
IFPRI Blog
 | 
May 24, 2024

The importance of the agricultural transformation agency in Ethiopia

By Tamsin Zandstra, Gashaw Tadesse Abate, Shahidur Rashid, and Nicholas Minot

IFPRI’s work in catalyzing innovation.

Grappling with compounding crises in domestic fertilizer markets in Africa: The case of Ethiopia
IFPRI Blog
 | 
January 16, 2024

Grappling with compounding crises in domestic fertilizer markets in Africa: The case of Ethiopia

By Kibrom Abay, Thomas W. Assefa, Guush Berhane, Gashaw Tadesse Abate, and Charlotte Hebebrand

Local effects of global shocks persist.

Survey: Despite COVID-19, food consumption remains steady in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
IFPRI Blog
 | 
October 02, 2020

Survey: Despite COVID-19, food consumption remains steady in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

By Alan de Brauw, Kalle Hirvonen, and Gashaw Tadesse Abate

Results suggest phone surveys reporting falling incomes in the pandemic should be viewed with caution.

Events

31st International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE)
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

August 17 to 31, 2021

31st International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE)

Virtual Event: AUG 17, 2021 – 08:00 AM to AUG 31, 2021 08:00 PM EDT. IFPRI is participating in the 31st Conference of Agriculture Economists organized by the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE). 

2020 ReSAKSS Conference -- Sustaining Africa's Agrifood System Transformation: The Role of Public Policies
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

November 3 to 5, 2020

2020 ReSAKSS Conference — Sustaining Africa’s Agrifood System Transformation: The Role of Public Policies

IFPRI is participating in the 2020 ReSAKSS Annual Conference, which will bring together state and nonstate actors to deliberate on the key findings and policy recommendations of the ReSAKSS 2020 Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR). The report reviews how policy regimes have evolved in recent decades; examines the extent to which current policies for agrifood […]

17th International Conference on the Ethiopian Economy
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

July 18 to 20, 2019

17th International Conference on the Ethiopian Economy

IFPRI is participating in the Ethiopian Economic Association (EEA) 17th International Conference on the Ethiopian Economy. The EEA is a not-for-profit association serving the professional interests of members working in agricultural and broadly related fields of applied economics.  Members of the EEA are employed by academic or government institutions, as well as in industry and not-for-profit […]

News

July 31, 2020 | In the News

Hunger spectre casts long, ominous shadow. Time to get ready (Addis Fortune) 

Addis Fortune published an article writing, challenges from COVID-19 and the effect on poor and fixed-income households is often unfortunately lost in the attention given to the macroeconomy. The COVID-19 pandemic is contributing to food insecurity as incomes are affected. Gashaw T. Abate et al. conducted a survey of around 600 households and found that among the households surveyed between […]

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. 

July 05, 2018 | Press Release

Modern Technologies Increase Ethiopian Small Farmers’ Wheat Yields by 14 percent

Washington, D.C: Usage of certified seeds, improved farming techniques and a guaranteed market for the wheat crop led to an increase in smallholder Ethiopian farmers’ wheat yields by an average 14 percent, according to a new study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).     “Overall, the 14 percent increase in yields is relatively substantial, since farmers were encouraged to simply use existing […]