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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.

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Development Strategies and Governance

Yumna Kassim

Program Manager

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Bio

Yumna Kassim is a Program Manager at IFPRI in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit, based in Cairo. She manages the CGIAR Research Initiative on National Policies and Strategies, which works across eight countries to build policy coherence, integrate policy tools into national and subnational institutions, and respond to policy demand and crises. Yumna has coordinated and managed major projects, including the Agricultural Investment Data Analyzer (AIDA), Evaluating Impact and Building Capacity (EIBC), and the qualitative evaluation of Egypt’s Takaful and Karama Cash Transfer Program, among others within the Egypt Strategy Support Program. She has co-built multiple mapping and online tools— including MAP Egypt, MAP Yemen, SPADE, Arab Spatial and AIDA Egypt, AIDA Yemen, AIDA Jordan, and AIDA Tunisia — and delivered their capacity building trainings, while working in collaboration with the ministries of agriculture and planning as well as various technical working groups and national and international partners. She also contributed to the set-up of the Sudan Strategy Support Program. Her research interests are in natural resource management and governance, including water resources management, and climate-smart and digital agriculture.

Before joining IFPRI, Yumna was a Junior Research Fellow at the European Institute of the Mediterranean and at the Union for the Mediterranean Secretariat in Barcelona. She previously worked with the Desert Development Center and the Research Institute for a Sustainable Environment at the American University in Cairo (AUC), as well as the Psychosocial Services and Training Institute for refugees in Cairo. She holds a BA in Middle East Studies from AUC and an MSc in Ecological Economics from the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Languages spoken: English, Spanish, and Arabic

Publications

Scopus Author Profile

CV

Publications

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Journal Article

From food subsidies to cash transfers: Assessing economy-wide benefits and trade-offs in Egypt

2024Breisinger, Clemens; Kassim, Yumna; Kurdi, Sikandra; Randriamamonjy, Josée; Thurlow, James
Details

From food subsidies to cash transfers: Assessing economy-wide benefits and trade-offs in Egypt

Food is a vital part of poor households’ budgets and so subsidizing staple foods would appear to be an obvious pro-poor policy. Indeed, most countries in North Africa have prioritized large national subsidy programs for staple foods and fuels as their main social safety net. However, these programs account for significant shares of government spending and often drive fiscal deficits, especially when import prices rise. In this paper we use a dynamic Computable General Equilibrium model to evaluate the trade-offs between reducing poverty and managing fiscal balances. The modeling framework allows us to measure the efficiency costs of subsidies compared to cash transfers – switching to the latter is an emerging regional trend. We analyze these issues through a detailed case study of Egypt, where efforts to replace food subsidies with cash transfers is already underway. Data is also available in Egypt to design scenarios that realistically reflect potential targeting effectiveness and administrative costs. We show that replacing broad food subsidies with targeted cash transfers of roughly equivalent fiscal costs can improve the welfare of the poorest households, but the continuation of fiscal deficits results in a deceleration of economic growth. The latter gradually reduces welfare gains for the poor and leads to substantial welfare losses for middle-income households who lose access to subsidies without benefitting from cash transfers. Our findings highlight the political challenges facing subsidy reform programs.

Year published

2024

Authors

Breisinger, Clemens; Kassim, Yumna; Kurdi, Sikandra; Randriamamonjy, Josée; Thurlow, James

Citation

Breisinger, Clemens; Kassim, Yumna; Kurdi, Sikandra; Randriamamonjy, Josee; and Thurlow, James. 2024. From food subsidies to cash transfers: Assessing economy-wide benefits and trade-offs in Egypt. Journal of African Economies 33(2): 109–129. https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejad006

Country/Region

Egypt

Keywords

Africa; Northern Africa; Food; Poor Households; Budgeting; Staple Foods; Policies; Subsidies; Social Safety Nets; Government Spending; Prices; Cash Transfers

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejad006 Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Journal Article

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Journal Article

Digital tools and agricultural market transformation in Africa: Why are they not at scale yet, and what will it take to get there?

2023Abate, Gashaw Tadesse; Abay, Kibrom A.; Chamberlin, Jordan; Kassim, Yumna; Spielman, David J.; Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul
Details

Digital tools and agricultural market transformation in Africa: Why are they not at scale yet, and what will it take to get there?

Despite enthusiasm for the potential of digital innovations to transform agricultural markets in Africa, progress made thus far has been limited to small-scale experiments that often fail to scale up. Realizing the full potential of digital innovations – tools, technologies, applications, and services – in Africa requires not just further development of these solutions at meaningful scales, but also more nuanced evidence from both successful and unsuccessful scaling efforts. This paper reviews the conceptual and empirical evidence on the transformative potential of digital innovations for African agricultural markets with an in-depth examination of solutions that have been rolled out to date in the continent. Specifically, the review addresses the following questions: (i) how can digital innovations improve the functioning of agricultural markets in Africa? (ii) what explains the apparent disconnect of most pilots to scale-ups? (iii) what is required to realize their full potential? and (iv) what are the emerging risks and opportunities associated with digital innovations for agricultural marketing? Although our review of the landscape and literature on market-focused digital innovations in Africa identifies several reasons to remain optimistic, the prevailing disconnect between pilots and scale-ups merits further evaluation. In particular, there is a need for more systematic assessments of both successes and failures at both the piloting and scaling stages.

Year published

2023

Authors

Abate, Gashaw Tadesse; Abay, Kibrom A.; Chamberlin, Jordan; Kassim, Yumna; Spielman, David J.; Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul

Citation

Abate, Gashaw Tadesse; Abay, Kibrom A.; Chamberlin, Jordan; Kassim, Yumna; Spielman, David J.; and Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr. 2023. Digital tools and agricultural market transformation in Africa: Why are they not at scale yet, and what will it take to get there? Food Policy 116: 102439. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2023.102439

Keywords

Africa; Agriculture; Digital Innovations; Experimentation; Technology; Product Development

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2023.102439 Source record

Project

Digital Innovation

Record type

Journal Article

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Book Chapter

Regional developments [in 2022 Global Food Policy Report]

2022
Njuki, Jemimah; Benin, Samuel; Marivoet, Wim; Ulimwengu, John M.; Mwongera, Caroline; Breisinger, Clemens; Elmahdi, Amgad; Kassim, Yumna; Perez, Nicostrato D.; Akramov, Kamiljon T.
…more Djumaboev, Kahramon; Romashkin, Roman; Mukherji, Aditi; Kishore, Avinash; Rashid, Shahidur; Chen, Kevin Z.; Zhan, Yue; Díaz-Bonilla, Eugenio; Navarrete-Frias, Carolina; Piñeiro, Valeria
Details

Regional developments [in 2022 Global Food Policy Report]

Climate change is a truly global threat, but its impacts differ around the world. Regions and countries urgently need to identify and implement policy responses that reflect local needs and opportunities. This section examines the effects of climate change on national and regional food systems in Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, East and Southeast Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. For each major region, promising innovations and policy directions to promote the resilience and sustainability of food systems are considered: – Scaling up social protection programs in Africa south of the Sahara – Strengthening the focus on climate adaptation in Africa – Rethinking water use in the Middle East and North Africa – Promoting climate-smart practices and crop diversification in Central Asia – Reforming agricultural support policies in South Asia – Improving financing for climate change mitigation and adaptation in East and Southeast Asia – Supporting global food security and sustainability in Latin America and the Caribbean

Year published

2022

Authors

Njuki, Jemimah; Benin, Samuel; Marivoet, Wim; Ulimwengu, John M.; Mwongera, Caroline; Breisinger, Clemens; Elmahdi, Amgad; Kassim, Yumna; Perez, Nicostrato D.; Akramov, Kamiljon T.; Djumaboev, Kahramon; Romashkin, Roman; Mukherji, Aditi; Kishore, Avinash; Rashid, Shahidur; Chen, Kevin Z.; Zhan, Yue; Díaz-Bonilla, Eugenio; Navarrete-Frias, Carolina; Piñeiro, Valeria

Citation

Njuki, Jemimah; Benin, Samuel; Marivoet, Wim; Ulimwengu, John M.; Mwongera, Caroline; Breisinger, Clemens; Elmahdi, Amgad; Kassim, Yumna; Perez, Nicostrato D.; Akramov, Kamiljon T.; Djumaboev, Kahramon; Romashkin, Roman; Mukherji, Aditi; Kishore, Avinash; Rashid, Shahidur; Chen, Kevin Z.; Zhan, Yue; Diaz-Bonilla, Eugenio; Navarrete-Frias, Carolina; and Piñeiro, Valeria. 2022. Regional developments [in 2022 Global Food Policy Report]. In 2022 Global Food Policy Report: Climate Change and Food Systems. Chapter 13, Pp. 114-141. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/9780896294257_13

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Middle Africa; Eastern Africa; Northern Africa; Southern Africa; Western Africa; Asia; Central Asia; Southern Asia; Eastern Asia; South-eastern Asia; Latin America; Caribbean; Innovation; Mitigation; Policies; Food Systems Transformation; Nutrition; Food Security; Resilience; Food Systems; Climate Change

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.2499/9780896294257_13 Source record

Record type

Book Chapter

Blogs

Cash transfers and women’s decision-making in Egypt: Still a man’s world
IFPRI Blog
 | 
December 21, 2021

Cash transfers and women’s decision-making in Egypt: Still a man’s world

By Hoda El-Enbaby, Daniel O. Gilligan, Naureen Karachiwalla, Yumna Kassim, and Sikandra Kurdi

The role of gender norms in household dynamics.

Events

The E-FooD Dataset and Food Security Simulators for Kenya and Nigeria: Innovative Tools to Support National Policies and Strategies
IFPRI Policy Seminar

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December 7, 2023, 8:00 – 9:00 am

The E-FooD Dataset and Food Security Simulators for Kenya and Nigeria: Innovative Tools to Support National Policies and Strategies

Virtual Event: December 7, 2023 – 8:00 AM- 9:00 AM EST. This webinar, organized by the CGIAR Initiative on National Policies and Strategies (NPS), introduces the E-FooD dataset and FSS for Kenya and Nigeria, showcases their applications, and discusses the role that such tools can play in policymaking.

National Policies and Strategies for Food, Land and Water Systems Transformation (NPS)
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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May 17 to 18, 2022

National Policies and Strategies for Food, Land and Water Systems Transformation (NPS)

Virtual Event: May 17, 2022 – 9:00 AM to May 18, 2022 – 2:00 PM EAT. This event will introduce the NPS initiative and bring together key stakeholders to help plan a specific work program for Kenya in the next three years.

Inside Track with IFPRI
Series/Special Event

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December 9 to 21, 2021

Inside Track with IFPRI

Virtual Event: Dec 9, 2021 – 12:00 PM to Dec 21, 2021 – 12:30 PM EST. During this special event, several young researchers will share stories on getting started and their current research.