2018 Ifpri Annual Report

IFPRI’s 2018 Annual Report shares highlights of our work, which together with partners has helped to develop and tailor knowledge to local contexts, build human and institutional capacity, and support development strategies in many countries around the world. Research findings and policy developments related to fostering climate resilience, agricultural transformation, healthy diets, inclusive and efficient markets, institutions and governance, and gender are presented, along with updates on other IFPRI areas of work.

In recent years, the world has seen unprecedented attention and political commitment to addressing malnutrition. Milestones such as the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, the Lancet Maternal and Child Nutrition Series, and the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) have marked the rapid rise of nutrition on the global policy and research agenda. These developments reverse years of relative neglect for nutrition. Undernutrition is a global challenge with huge social and economic costs. It kills millions of young children annually, stunts growth, erodes child development, reduces the amount of schooling children attain, and increases the likelihood of their being poor as adults, if they survive. Stunting persists through a lifetime and beyond—underweight mothers are more likely to give birth to underweight children, perpetuating undernutrition across generations. Undernutrition reduces global gross domestic product by US$1.4–$2.1 trillion a year—the size of the total economy of Africa south of the Sahara.

IFPRI’s 2019 Annual Report presents highlights from our research work around the world. Cutting-edge research on climate resilience and sustainability, healthy diets and nutrition, inclusive and efficient food systems, institutions and governance, and rural transformation, as well as cross-cutting work on gender, is helping to inform policies and programs to end hunger and malnutrition.

IFPRI’s 2020 Annual Report presents highlights from our research work around the world. Cutting-edge research on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and related policies, and on our strategic research areas—climate resilience and sustainability, healthy diets and nutrition, inclusive and efficient food systems, institutions and governance, and rural transformation, as well as cross-cutting work on gender—is helping to inform policies and programs to end hunger and malnutrition.

Many development programs that aim to alleviate poverty and improve investments in human capital consider women’s empowerment a key pathway by which to achieve impact and often target women as their main beneficiaries. Despite this, women’s empowerment dimensions are often not rigorously measured and are at times merely assumed. This paper starts by reflecting on the concept and measurement of women’s empowerment and then reviews some of the structural interventions that aim to influence underlying gender norms in society and eradicate gender discrimination. It then proceeds to review the evidence of the impact of three types of interventions—cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs—on women’s empowerment, nutrition, or both. Qualitative evidence on conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs generally points to positive impacts on women’s empowerment, although quantitative research findings are more heterogenous. CCT programs produce mixed results on long-term nutritional status, and very limited evidence exists of their impacts on micronutrient status. The little evidence available on unconditional cash transters (UCT) indicates mixed impacts on women’s empowerment and positive impacts on nutrition; however, recent reviews comparing CCT and UCT programs have found little difference in terms of their effects on stunting and they have found that conditionality is less important than other factors, such as access to healthcare and child age and sex. Evidence of cash transfer program impacts depending on the gender of the transfer recipient or on the conditionality is also mixed, although CCTs with non-health conditionalities seem to have negative impacts on nutritional status. The impacts of programs based on the gender of the transfer recipient show mixed results, but almost no experimental evidence exists of testing gender-differentiated impacts of a single program. Agricultural interventions—specifically home gardening and dairy projects—show mixed impacts on women’s empowerment measures such as time, workload, and control over income; but they demonstrate very little impact on nutrition. Implementation modalities are shown to determine differential impacts in terms of empowerment and nutrition outcomes. With regard to the impact of microfinance on women’s empowerment, evidence is also mixed, although more recent reviews do not find any impact on women’s empowerment. The impact of microfinance on nutritional status is mixed, with no evidence of impact on micronutrient status. Across all three types of programs (cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs), very little evidence exists on pathways of impact, and evidence is often biased toward a particular region. The paper ends with a discussion of the findings and remaining evidence gaps and an outline of recommendations for research.

The year 2017 was marked by increasing uncertainty amid mixed signs of progress. The world enjoyed a strong economic recovery, but global hunger increased as conflicts, famine, and refugee crises persisted. With the withdrawal of the United States from major international agreements, Britain's “Brexit,” and rising anti-immigration rhetoric in many countries, the world began to step away from decades of global integration that have yielded unprecedented reductions in poverty and malnutrition. This synopsis of the 2018 Global Food Policy Report reviews the events of 2017, including the impact of rising antiglobalism, and looks at how global integration—through trade, investment, migration, open data, developed country policies, and governance—can be harnessed to benefit our global food system.

Informal cross-border trade (ICBT) represents a prominent phenomenon in Africa. Several studies suggest that for certain products and countries, the value of informal trade may meet or even exceed the value of formal trade. This paper provides a review of existing efforts to measure informal trade. We list 18 initiatives aimed at measuring ICBT in Africa. The paper also summarizes discussions conducted with many stakeholders in Africa between December 2016 and May 2018 regarding the measurement, the determinants, and the implications of ICBT. The methodologies used to measure ICBT in Africa differ widely, but they do confirm that informal trade in Africa is both sizeable and volatile. Both evidence on the determinants of ICBT and discussions with stakeholders suggest that policies should aim to reduce the existing costs associated with formal trade and provide positive incentives for traders and producers to move into the formal economy in order to avoid the loss of economic potential stemming from informal trade.