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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

Khalid Siddig

Khalid Siddig is a Senior Research Fellow in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit and Program Leader for the Sudan Strategy Support Program. He is an agricultural economist with a focus on examining the impacts of potential shocks and the allocation of resources on economic growth, environmental sustainability, and income distribution through the lens of economywide and micro-level tools. 

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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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Development Strategies and Governance

Kibrom Abay

Senior Research Fellow

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Bio

Kibrom A. Abay is a Senior Research Fellow in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit, based in Washington, DC. He is a development and agricultural economist with research interests including rural development, agricultural transformation, urbanization, food and nutrition security, and behavioral economics. Most of his research involves impact evaluation methods. Some of his recent studies examine the behavioral and inferential implications of mismeasurement in household surveys. Much of his current research focuses on Africa south of the Sahara and the Middle East and North Africa region. Before joining IFPRI, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Kibrom received his PhD in Economics from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Publications

Google Scholar Citations

Publications

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Brief

Digital literacy training to promote diffusion of digital agricultural tools to smallholder farmers

2024Abdelaziz, Fatma; Abay, Kibrom A.
Details

Digital literacy training to promote diffusion of digital agricultural tools to smallholder farmers

Digital innovations hold significant potential to address multiple forms of market failures. However, their adoption remains low and heterogenous across Africa. Smallholder farmers face significant barriers in accessing essential information, limiting their ability to seize market opportunities and enhance profitability. While numerous digital tools have been developed for farmers in the region, most are still in pilot phases. The landscape of digital agricultural innovations in Egypt, the focus of this study, presents a similar outlook, whereby the Egyptian market has an array of innovative digital study, presents a similar outlook, whereby the Egyptian market has an array of innovative digital agricultural tools that offer different services to farmers (including digital advisory agricultural and market services). Several demand and supply-side factors contribute to the low adoption of these digital innovations and their disparities among smallholder farmers in Africa and Egypt. On the supply side, the most important challenges include inadequate public and private investment in complementary infra-structure, unsustainable business models, and a misalignment in the pace of innovation. The most important demand-side challenges include lack of digital literacy, insufficient context-specific needs assessments, digital divide, and accessibility, usability, and user trust. User confidence and trust in digital tools is another important but understudied topic.. However, we lack empirically grounded evidence on alternative supply and demand-side interventions to enhance the adoption and scaling of digital innovations in various contexts, including Egypt.

Year published

2024

Authors

Abdelaziz, Fatma; Abay, Kibrom A.

Citation

Abdelaziz, Fatma; and Abay, Kibrom A. 2024. Digital literacy training to promote diffusion of digital agricultural tools to smallholder farmers. Project Note September 2024. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/152495

Country/Region

Egypt

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Northern Africa; Agricultural Technology; Digital Agriculture; Digital Innovation; Smallholders

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility to Resilience in Central and West Asia and North Africa

Record type

Brief

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Working Paper

Cooperation among community leaders: The role of women’s leadership and exposure to conflict

2024Nigus, Halefom Yigzaw; Abay, Kibrom A.
Details

Cooperation among community leaders: The role of women’s leadership and exposure to conflict

In rural settings, community leaders play important roles in mobilizing resources and delivering public goods and services. However, little is known about their attributes and incentives in delivering these public goods and services. Exploiting survey, lab-in-the-field experiment, and geo-referenced data, we study the role of leaders, especially women’s leadership, and their exposure to conflict in explaining differences in cooperation among com-munity leaders in Ethiopia. We measure cooperation through a public-good experiment and examine the implications of community leaders’ characteristics. We then merge these lab-in-the field experimental data with geo-referenced data on conflict exposure to examine the implication of different types of conflict on community leaders’ cooperation behavior. We find that female leaders contribute more to public goods than their male counterparts. For example, compared to those assuming the highest official administrative responsibility in the village, women leaders contribute about 11 percent more to the public good. We also document nuanced findings that reconcile existing mixed evidence on the implication of exposure to conflict on cooperation: while conflict events that affect the whole community, such as political violence (including battles) are associated with higher cooperation, other types of conflict (e.g., demonstrations and riots) are associated with lower levels of cooperation. Finally, we identify additional predictors of cooperation among community leaders, including beliefs about other leaders’ cooperative behavior. These findings shed light on potential avenues for facilitating and fostering cooperation among community leaders.

Year published

2024

Authors

Nigus, Halefom Yigzaw; Abay, Kibrom A.

Citation

Nigus, Halefom Yigzaw; and Abay, Kibrom A. 2024. Cooperation among community leaders: The role of women’s leadership and exposure to conflict. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2273. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/152266

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Conflicts; Cooperation; Leaders; Public Goods; Women; Women’s Empowerment; War

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Estimating multidimensional development resilience

2024Lee, Seungmin; Abay, Kibrom A.; Barrett, Christopher B.; Hoddinott, John F.
Details

Estimating multidimensional development resilience

Resilience measurement has received substantial attention over the past decade or so. Existing measures, however, relate resilience to a single well-being indicator. This may be problematic in contexts where households face deprivations in multiple dimensions. We explore how sensitive estimates of household-level resilience are to the specific well-being indicator used and show that measures are only weakly correlated across different, reasonable indicators based on expenditure-based poverty, dietary diversity, and livestock asset holdings. We then introduce a multidimensional resilience measure, integrating the probabilistic moment-based resilience measurement approach of Cissé and Barrett (2018) with the multidimensional poverty measurement method of Alkire and Foster (2011). Applying the new method to household panel data, we show that univariate and multidimensional resilience measures can yield varied inferences on the ranking of households as well as potential impact of development interventions.

Year published

2024

Authors

Lee, Seungmin; Abay, Kibrom A.; Barrett, Christopher B.; Hoddinott, John F.

Citation

Lee, Seungmin; Abay, Kibrom A.; Barrett, Christopher B.; and Hoddinott, John F. 2024. Estimating multidimensional development resilience. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2268. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/151999

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Assets; Consumption; Dietary Diversity; Livestock; Nutrition; Poverty; Resilience

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Working Paper

Blogs

Unleashing the potential of Generation Z for food system transformation in Africa
IFPRI Blog
 | 
October 28, 2024

Unleashing the potential of Generation Z for food system transformation in Africa

By Kibrom Abay, Clemens Breisinger, Harriet Mawia, Joyce Maru, Dorah Momanyi, and Boniface Munene

A new research agenda.

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.

Fertilizer policies amid global supply and price shocks
IFPRI Blog
 | 
December 11, 2023

Fertilizer policies amid global supply and price shocks

By Kibrom Abay, Jordan Chamberlin, Pauline Chivenge, Charlotte Hebebrand, and David J. Spielman

Global prices have moderated but many countries still face difficulties.

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Events

Agronomy and Policy Solutions for Effective Implementation of the African Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan
Series/Special Event

 | 

September 10, 2024, 9:30 – 11:30 am

Agronomy and Policy Solutions for Effective Implementation of the African Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan

CGIAR is pleased to support our regional and national partners in their implementation of the action plan emerging from the May 2024 African Fertilizer and Soil Health (AFSH) Summit. As the seventh policy seminar in the CGIAR series on Strengthening Food Systems Resilience, this event will examine the outcomes of the AFSH Summit and consider […]

32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

August 2 to 7, 2024

32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists

The triennial International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE-2024), centred on the theme “Transformation Towards Sustainable Agri-Food Systems” is scheduled from August 2-7, 2024, in New Delhi, India. The conference offers a distinctive platform, providing a golden opportunity for the agricultural academic institutions and researchers to convene in person, exchange knowledge, and actively contribute to the […]

Food Systems for Healthy Diets and Nutrition: The MENA launch of IFPRI’s 2024 Global Food Policy Report
Series/Special Event

 | 

July 8, 2024, 9:00 – 11:30 am

Food Systems for Healthy Diets and Nutrition: The MENA launch of IFPRI’s 2024 Global Food Policy Report

Unhealthy diets are a major driver of all forms of malnutrition, including undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight and obesity. Despite increasing global efforts to address malnutrition, as many as 3 billion people globally cannot afford healthy diets. The need to transform our food systems to ensure sustainable healthy diets for everyone is more urgent than […]

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News

March 18, 2022 | In the News

Russia-Ukraine crisis poses a serious threat to Egypt – the world’s largest wheat importer (The Conversation)

The Conversation published an op-ed by IFPRI researchers, Kibrom Abay, Clemens Breisinger, David Laborde Debucquet, Joseph Glauber, and Lina Alaaeldin Abdelfattah. The authors write that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could create a global food security crisis. It is disrupting agricultural production and trade from one of the world’s major exporting regions. This threatens to drive […]

Research

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