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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. 

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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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experts

Samuel Benin

Acting, Director for Africa

Bio

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. Sam originally joined IFPRI in 2004 as a Research Fellow and Leader of the Uganda Strategy Support Program for the design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of key agricultural and rural development strategies. He later relocated to the Washington, DC, office to lead the research program on Pro-Poor Public Investment, focusing on assessing the impact of public investments, policies, and programs on poverty reduction, growth, and other human development indicators in Africa. He then managed the inter-Center Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS) for the implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) and the Statistics on Public Expenditures for Economic Development (SPEED) database. Sam then became a Senior Research Fellow in 2017 and Deputy Division Director of the Africa Regional Office later that year, assisting the Director in managing the office’s research portfolio and providing intellectual leadership and guidance for strategic research areas and capacity building activities. Sam earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Ghana, Legon, a master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a PhD from the University of California, Davis, specializing in Econometrics, Natural Resource Economics, and Development Economics.

Publications

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Publications

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Working Paper

Making the CAADP BR forward looking: A decision support tool for transforming African agrifood systems

2024Benin, Samuel
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Making the CAADP BR forward looking: A decision support tool for transforming African agrifood systems

This paper presents an Excel-based interactive decision-support tool that policymakers and development practitioners can use to evaluate policy options to achieve targeted outcomes of the Malabo Declaration at the country level. The tool is based on a partial equilibrium simulation model that allows the user to simulate different scenarios based on the desired level of change in one outcome or more. For each scenario that is created, the simulated results provide information on the level of change required in each of the policies included in the model, the level of change in the other outcomes included in the model, and the allocation of the resources provided, including reallocation of some of the existing resources. A prototype of the tool that is developed using the fourth biennial review (BR) data on Ghana, which has some quality issues, is presented to demonstrate the potential features and utility of the tool. Limitations of the model and further work that is required to develop the actual tool for reliable policy evaluation are discussed. The latter includes using accurate data on the various indicators and expanding it to cover more years, in addition to developing a web-based interactive version of the tool.

Year published

2024

Authors

Benin, Samuel

Citation

Benin, Samuel. 2024. Making the CAADP BR forward looking: A decision support tool for transforming African agrifood systems. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2270. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/152192

Keywords

Africa; Caadp; Agrifood Systems; Decision Support; Policy Analysis; Public Expenditure

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Two decades after Maputo, What’s in the CAADP ten percent? Determinants and effects of the composition of government agriculture expenditure in Africa

2024Benin, Samuel
Details

Two decades after Maputo, What’s in the CAADP ten percent? Determinants and effects of the composition of government agriculture expenditure in Africa

This paper analyzes the determinants of the composition of government agriculture expenditure (GAE) in Africa and estimates the effect of the composition on agricultural productivity using cross-country annual data from 2014 to 2020 and structural equations modeling methods. It includes different specifications of the explanatory variables to assess the sensitivity of the results to different assumptions of the conceptual variables that are hypothesized to affect the composition and pathways of impact of government expenditure. The results show that there is a wide variation in GAE across African countries, and few have achieved the 10 percent CAADP agriculture expenditure target. Most African countries spend much smaller proportions of the national budget on agriculture than the sector’s share in the economy, and total agriculture expenditure seems to be allocated across subsectors according to their relative contribution to the sector’s output, with forestry and fisheries being slightly favored compared with crops and livestock, which dominate the sector. The allocation is also affected by several factors, such as past output and size of the subsector, official development assistance, education, irrigation, and state of agricultural transformation, although there are cross-subsector differences in their influence. There are also subsector differences in the estimated effect of GAE on land productivity: 0.06 to 0.08 for expenditure on the total sector, 0.02 for research, 0 to 0.09 for crops, 0 to 0.08 for livestock, and 0 to 0.07 for fisheries. The lower bound of zero means that the estimated effect is not statistically significant in some of the model specifications, such as whether cross-subsector expenditure effects are considered. We discuss implications of the results and suggestions for future research.

Year published

2024

Authors

Benin, Samuel

Citation

Benin, Samuel. 2024. Two decades after Maputo, What’s in the CAADP ten percent? Determinants and effects of the composition of government agriculture expenditure in Africa. Discussion Paper 2260. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/148782

Keywords

Africa; Agricultural Productivity; Agriculture; Caadp; Data; Expenditure

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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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

Blogs

Ghana’s ten percent agricultural expenditure saga: Why reported government expense shares are less than meets the eye
IFPRI Blog
 | 
July 17, 2019

Ghana’s ten percent agricultural expenditure saga: Why reported government expense shares are less than meets the eye

By Samuel Benin and Ernesto Tiburcio

A look inside how Ghana calculates its overall support for agriculture.

Events

Extra-Ordinary Summit on Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programmes (CAADP)
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

January 9 to 11, 2025

Extra-Ordinary Summit on Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programmes (CAADP)

IFPRI is pleased to participate in the Extraordinary Summit on Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), organized by the African Union Commission and hosted by the Government of Uganda on January 9 to 11, 2025. The summit will focus on adopting the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Strategy and Acton Plan for 2026-2035. This […]

Africa’s Food Systems Forum (AGRF) 2023 Summit
IFPRI at External Event

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September 5 to 8, 2023

Africa’s Food Systems Forum (AGRF) 2023 Summit

Event: September 5, 2023 – 3:00 AM to September 8, 2023 – 7:30 AM EDT. IFPRI is participating in Africa’s Food Systems Forum (AGRF) 2023 Summit.

IFPRI’s 2023 Global Food Policy Report: Rethinking Food Crisis Responses – Considerations for Africa
Series/Special Event

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June 22, 2023, 9:00 – 10:30 am

IFPRI’s 2023 Global Food Policy Report: Rethinking Food Crisis Responses – Considerations for Africa

Virtual Event: June 22, 2023 – 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM EDT. The virtual Africa discussion will feature a distinguished panel of experts to discuss the report’s key findings and recommendations and implications for Africa and its regions.

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