Briefs and Factsheets

× Egypt’s national cash transfer program, Takaful, and its sister program Karama covered 17 million poor beneficiaries as of 2022, about 16 percent of the Egyptian population. Takaful was designed in 2015 as a conditional cash transfer program providing income support targeted to the most vulnerable, namely poor families with children under age 18. As one of the largest programs — both in absolute terms and in terms of share of the population covered — in the wave of national cash transfer programs spreading across Africa, as well as an innovator among countries in the Middle East, Egypt’s experience has the potential to serve as a model for these regions. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in collaboration with the Ministry of Social Solidarity, conducted a first-round evaluation of the program in 2017 to estimate its effects on household well-being (Breisinger et al. 2018). That evaluation found large positive impacts on several outcomes, most notably, household consumption. The second-round evaluation, conducted in 2022, found a shift toward greater investment in physical and human capital among program beneficiaries. This brief summarizes the main findings from that second-round evaluation, noting differences from the first evaluation results and providing key recommendations.

× Key Messages
• Yemen is experiencing one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises resulting from prolonged conflict, with about half the population suffering from food insecurity.
• Food availability and affordability in Yemen is extremely vulnerable to external shocks because of the fragility of the national food system and its heavy dependence on food imports by the private sector and international humanitarian agencies.
• A recent workshop jointly organized by IFPRI and HSA Group reviewed the state of collaboration between key actors in Yemen’s food system and discussed avenues to building strong cross-sector partnerships for ending the current food crisis and strengthening food system resilience.
• Limited collaboration among the public, private, and third sectors (for example, in the form of collective action, multistakeholder partnerships) contributes to inefficiencies in food supply chains and food aid delivery.
• Currently, collaborations are often ad hoc, limited to peer-to-peer partnerships, and constrained by a siloed mentality.
• With a potential peace agreement, new opportunities for cross sector collaboration and strategic partnerships between food system actors are emerging.
• Enhanced communication among the public, private, and third sectors is an important first step toward improving mutual understanding, building trust, exchanging critical information and ideas, and realizing opportunities for effective collective action.

× Global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices have witnessed rapid and significant increase in recent months, driven largely by the fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine and associated sanctions im-posed on Russia. Other factors, including governments’ responses and export bans, have also con-tributed to rising prices (Laborde and Mamun 2022). Palm oil and wheat prices increased by 56 and 100 percent in real terms, respectively, between June 2021 and April 2022, with most of the in-crease occurring since February 2022.

× The long partnership between the Government of Egypt and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) began in the late 1970s but became much more active with the launch of IFPRI’s Egypt Strategy Support Program (ESSP) in 2016. Over the years, IFPRI’s research, with support from PIM since 2012, has informed important decisions on Egypt’s key safety net programs, including the food subsidy and the national cash transfer programs. This note summarizes some of the most recent outcomes of this work.

× Agricultural research and experimental development (R&D) investment is positively associated with high returns, but these returns take time—often decades—to develop. Consequently, the inherent lag from the inception of research to the adoption of new technologies calls for sustained and stable R&D funding. In 2016, Africa invested just 0.39 percent of its agricultural gross domestic product (AgGDP) in agricultural R&D, down from 0.54 percent in 2000. Furthermore, only a handful of African countries invest at least 1 percent of their AgGDP in agricultural research; the target set by New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Even though in absolute terms total R&D investment has increased since the turn of the millennium—after a period of stagnation—most of the funds have been directed toward research staff expansion, salary increases, and rehabilitation of derelict research infrastructure and equipment, rather than actual research programs. In fact, in a large number of African countries, the national government funds the salaries of researchers and support staff, but little else, leaving nonsalary-related expenses highly dependent on donors and other funding sources.

× According to the United Nations, the world’s population will grow by 2 billion people over the coming decades to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 (UNDESA-DP 2019a). The dignity and life prospects of those additional 2 billion people will depend on their ability to meet basic needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter, and their access to adequate employment. The most pressing need for jobs will be felt in those regions and countries that have not yet gone through the demographic transition, and where the cohort of young people is growing rapidly. The challenge will be compounded by an increasingly crowded, more competitive world with fewer natural resources per capita, and by the threat of climate change, which is projected to affect every sector of the economy (Arent 2014).

× Rapid urbanization in Africa south of the Sahara continues to highlight the importance of informal retailers as a source of both food and employment for the urban poor. The most recent Africa Agriculture Status Report emphasizes that, due to demographic and socioeconomic transformation in the region, the center of gravity of Africa’s food system is shifting to urban areas (AGRA, 2020). Informal retailers—including those who vend in open-air wet markets and hawk on pavements and streets—provide a critical link between agricultural producers and consumers. While the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically highlighted the vulnerability of this constituency (Resnick et al., 2020), informal traders have long been victims of other public health, economic, and climate shocks (Battersby & Watson, 2019). To build the resilience of informal traders and enhance their contributions to urban food security, fundamental governance issues need to be addressed. This brief synthesizes research on informal traders conducted under the “Economywide Factors Affecting Agricultural Growth and Rural Transformation” flagship of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) led by IFPRI. The research spanned Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Zambia and involved comparative analysis across capital cities based on media events data, surveys with traders, and interviews with urban bureaucrats. In this way, traders’ experiences could be complemented with policymakers’ insights about bottlenecks and opportunities for reform

× International trade of food and agricultural products plays a major role in ensuring food security and livelihoods across the African continent. Yet formal intracontinental trade data give only a glimpse of trade’s importance for African consumers and producers because—depending on the country and border—up to 99 percent of agricultural trade crosses borders informally. In West Africa, for example, an estimated 30 percent of staple foods evade formal customs, and the proportion can be much greater for highly perishable fruits and vegetables. Consequently, formal trade data paint only a limited picture of COVID-19’s disruptive effect on trade within the African continent—and of related nutrition and livelihood consequences. To better understand the current and future impacts on African food producers and consumers, we must examine both the magnitude and unique mechanisms of informal cross-border trade (ICBT).

× An impact evaluation of Yemen’s Cash for Nutrition program provides new evidence of the benefits of “cash plus” transfer programs to meet nutritional needs in conflict situations. Conflict has become a major driver of humanitarian crises globally, requiring responses that not only meet people’s immediate need for calories, but also ensure that aid recipients, especially children and pregnant women, receive adequate diet to avoid long-term impacts of malnutrition. The program in Yemen combined cash transfers with nutritional education using soft conditionality, with significant positive impacts on maternal and child dietary diversity, children’s height and weight measures, and the likelihood of children being diagnosed with moderate or severe acute malnutrition.

× Egypt has been providing cash to poor households through its first conditional cash transfer program, Takaful and Karama, a social protection program run by the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MoSS), since March 2015. Takaful (“Solidarity”) supports poor families with children under 18, while Karama (“Dignity”) supports the elderly poor and people living with disabilities. The cash transfer program has enrolled 2.25 million families across all of Egypt’s governorates. The amount of the Takaful cash transfer provided to households depends on the number of children and their school level. The Karama program provides a set amount per individual. In order to reach the poorest households, participants are selected using a proxy means test. In the Takaful program, 89 percent of recipients are women, while only 11 percent are men. Beginning in 2018, Takaful will also begin implementing conditionalities, requiring households in the program to ensure their children attend school and participate in health screenings, added to antenatal care for pregnant women and post-natal care. The Takaful and Karama program was evaluated by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) using both quantitative statistical methods (simple questions asked to many households during a survey) and qualitative methods (more in-depth questions asked to fewer households in longer interviews). The evaluation was designed to measure and explain the impacts of the cash transfers on household welfare, and to examine whether the program’s criteria for household selection were effective in identifying poor households. This brief, which focuses on the Takaful component of the program, summarizes the main findings from the evaluation and key recommendations.

× Egypt faces two nutritional challenges. The first is the “growth-nutrition disconnect.” High economic growth has not been accompanied by reduction in chronic child malnutrition, at least throughout the 2000s. Instead, the prevalence of child stunting increased during this decade—an atypical trend for a country outside wartime. The second challenge is the simultaneous presence of chronic undernutrition and overnutrition (due to excess consumption of calories). This “double burden of malnutrition” exists not only at the national level but also within families and even individual children. Both challenges are exceptionally pronounced in Egypt compared to other developing countries. Nutrition and Economic Development: Exploring Egypt’s Exceptionalism and the Role of Food Subsidies examines the two nutritional challenges in depth and their relationship to public policy.

× This country factsheet presents key agricultural R&D indicators in a highly accessible visual display. The publication also feature a more in-depth analysis of some of the key challenges that the country’s agricultural R&D system is facing, and the policy options to address these challenges.

× This country factsheet presents key agricultural R&D indicators in a highly accessible visual display. The publication also feature a more in-depth analysis of some of the key challenges that the country’s agricultural R&D system is facing, and the policy options to address these challenges.

× The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

× The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

× The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

× The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

× The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

× The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

× The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

× The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

× The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

× The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

× The subregion profiles capture the status and progress of all countries within the region, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

× One and a half billion people still live in fragile, conflict affected areas. People in these countries are about twice as likely to be malnourished and to die during infancy as people in other developing countries.2 This outcome is often a direct consequence of conflict: conflict reduces food availability by destroying agricultural assets and infrastructure.

× The 2014 Global Hunger Index (GHI) report—the ninth in an annual series—presents a multidimensional measure of national, regional, and global hunger. It shows that the world has made progress in reducing hunger since 1990, but still has far to go, with levels of hunger remaining “alarming” or “extremely alarming” in 16 countries. This year’s report focuses on a critical aspect of hunger that is often overlooked: hidden hunger. Also known as micronutrient deficiency, hidden hunger affects more than an estimated 2 billion people globally. The repercussions of these vitamin and mineral deficiencies are both serious and long-lasting. Where hidden hunger has taken root, it not only prevents people from surviving and thriving as productive members of society, it also holds countries back in a cycle of poor nutrition, poor health, lost productivity, persistent poverty, and reduced economic growth.

× Owing to a succession of crises and worsening poverty, food security in Egypt started to deteriorate as early as 2005. These crises included the avian influenza epidemic in 2006; the food, fuel, and financial crises of 2007-2009; a further rallying of global food prices starting in late 2010; and the challenging macroeconomic context that followed political instability in the wake of the 2011 revolution (see Figure 1). Egypt’s net food-importing status (that includes importing 45-55 percent of its wheat needs) makes it vulnerable to fluctuations in international food prices.

× The 2013 Global Hunger Index (GHI) report-the eighth in an annual series- presents a multidimensional measure of national, regional, and global hunger. It shows that the world has made some progress in reducing hunger since 1990, but still has far to go. The 2013 GHI report focuses on resilience in theory and in practice. The relief and development communities have long struggled to understand why some people fare better than others when confronting stresses or shocks. Given that world hunger remains “serious” according to the index, resilience-building efforts are much needed to help poor and vulnerable people cope with hunger seasons, droughts, and other natural and manmade disasters both short-term and long-term. Building resilience will involve boosting food and nutrition security. In order to achieve that goal, the humanitarian and development communities must work together.

× The 2012 Global Hunger Index (GHI) report—the seventh in an annual series—presents a multidimensional measure of global, regional, and national hunger. It shows that progress in reducing the proportion of hungry people in the world has been tragically slow. According to the index, hunger on a global scale remains “serious.” The 2012 GHI report also focuses particularly on how to ensure sustainable food security under conditions of land, water, and energy stress. The stark reality is that the world needs to produce more food with fewer resources, while eliminating wasteful practices and policies.

× Few observers would have predicted the dramatic changes over the past few months in the Arab world. Arab governments appeared to be in tight control, and many Arab economies were growing around or above the world average over the past few years. Annual growth rates in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, and Sudan averaged more than 6 percent between 2005 and 2010; and Syria, Tunisia, and Libya grew at about 5 percent on average during the same period of time. Official poverty rates in most Arab countries are lower than in many Asian and Latin American countries. However, experts have long identified slow progress in economic diversification and job creation, social inequalities, and persistent food insecurity as major development challenges for Arab countries. Did these factors and, more broadly, people’s dissatisfaction with their living standards contribute to the recent uprisings? At first glance, the sudden turn of events and the generally low coverage, quality, and accessibility of data in the Arab world make it difficult to find answers to this question. By looking beyond more conventional data, however, this policy brief provides some insights into the potential role of economics in the ongoing uprisings. It also reviews major policy responses of Arab governments and provides a new narrative of Arab development that is based on inclusive economic transformation, food security, and decisionmaking.

× Household food security is an important measure of well-being. Although it may not encapsulate all dimensions of poverty, the inability of households to obtain access to enough food for an active, healthy life is surely an important component of their poverty. Accordingly, devising an appropriate measure of food security outcomes is useful in order to identify the food insecure, assess the severity of their food shortfall, characterize the nature of their insecurity (for example, seasonal versus chronic), predict who is most at risk of future hunger, monitor changes in circumstances, and assess the impact of interventions. However, obtaining detailed data on food security status—such as 24- hour recall data on caloric intakes—can be time consuming and expensive and require a high level of technical skill both in data collection and analysis. This paper examines whether an alternative indicator, dietary diversity, defined as the number of unique foods consumed over a given period of time, provides information on household food security. It draws on data from 10 countries (India, the Philippines, Mozambique, Mexico, Bangladesh, Egypt, Mali, Malawi, Ghana, and Kenya) that encompass both poor and middle-income countries, rural and urban sectors, data collected in different seasons, and data on calories acquisition obtained using two different methods. ....[D]ietary diversity would appear to show promise as a means of measuring food security and monitoring changes and impact, particularly when resources available for such measurement are scarce.

× This paper uses a panel data of 347 households in Egypt to measure changes in household consumption between 1997 and 1999 and to identify causes behind the changes. Per capita consumption decreased for the households during this time and, while not dramatic, it occurred at all points along the distribution. Over the two-year period, the number of households that fell into poverty was over twice as large as the number of households that climbed out of poverty. About two-thirds of overall poverty was chronic (average consumption over time was below the poverty line), and almost half of all poor were always poor. We use quantile regression methods to identify the factors that explain total, chronic, and transitory poverty. While our analysis ably documents the extent of transitory poverty, it does not explain well the determinants of this type of poverty. The predominantly chronic nature of poverty in the sample, and our ability to identify associated characteristics, strengthens the case for targeting antipoverty interventions such as food subsidies.

× Despite achieving a significant cost reduction over the past two decades, the absolute cost of food subsidies in Egypt is still high relative to the benefits received by the poor. There is scope for better targeting food subsidies, in particular those for rationed cooking oil and sugar, both because reforms in this area are perceived to be far less politically sensitive than adjusting subsidy policies for bread and wheat flour and because higher income groups presently receive a significant percentage of the benefits. Targeting the high-subsidy green ration cards to the poor and the low-subsidy red ration cards to the nonpoor will require identification of both poor and nonpoor households. An International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) research team in Egypt, in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Trade and Supply, developed a proxy means test for targeting ration cards. This paper describes the process of moving from the optimal income-predicting model to the final model that was both administratively and politically feasible. An ex-ante evaluation of the levels of accuracy of the proxy means testing model indicates that the model performs quite well in predicting the needy and nonneedy households. An effective and full implementation of this targeting method would increase the equity in the ration card food subsidy system and, at the same time, lower the total budgetary costs of rationed food subsidies. Moreover, the experience gained under this reform would facilitate targeting future social interventions to reduce and prevent poverty in Egypt.

× This policy brief is designed to help policymakers and practitioners understand the financial services needed by the poor. It is framed within lessons learned from a five-year IFPRI research program that examined, among other issues, the roles government should play in providing financial services to meet the needs of the poor. Insights presented here are based on a series of detailed household surveys conducted in nine countries of Africa and Asia: Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, and Pakistan.... [The brief asks us to consider these questions:] What kinds of financial services do the poor value? What economic activities are the poor engaged in, and what implications does this have for the type of services to be provided? What are existing sources of financial services, and how do the poor use them? What combination of financial instruments—credit, savings, insurance — are best developed, given specific demand from different types of clients? Do delivery systems (credit union, village banking, group-based lending) take into account the prevailing socioeconomic environments or local organizational systems? What unconventional methods do the poor use to secure loans? Can these collateral substitutes be used within a more formalized banking system? In the lending or granting of public resources, are incentives in place to encourage competitive, sustainable, efficient, and entrepreneurial microfinance institutions? Are regulations in place that govern mutually supportive transactions between the clients (borrowers) and institutions (lenders), such as deposit insurance and contract enforcement? Are prudential regulations, such as accounting practices and reporting requirements, balanced so that they ensure sustainability, good management, and accountability of microfinance institutions without stifling innovation? Would the introduction or expansion of microfinance services in a region be one of the most socially cost-effective ways to alleviate poverty there, given the state of infrastructure and markets, the availability of services, and the existence of other antipoverty and development programs in the region?" -- Text

× Since the transition to democracy, South African public works programs are to involve community participation, and be targeted to the poor and women. This paper examines the targeting performance of seven programs in Western Cape Province, and analyzes the role of government, community-based organizations, trade unions, and the private sector in explaining targeting outcomes. These programs were not well-targeted geographically in terms of poverty, unemployment, or infrastructure. Within localities, jobs went to the poor and unemployed, though not always the poorest. They did well in reaching women, despite local gender bias. Targeting guidelines of the state are mediated by diverse priorities that emerge in programs with multiple objectives, local perceptions of need and entitlement, and competing voices within civil society.

× Egyptian labor market is moving from a period of high overall unemployment to one where unemployment is increasingly concentrated among specific groups whose access to the private-sector labor market is limited. Educated young women are more adversely affected than their male counterparts by the transition to a private-sector-led economy. There is no systematic link between youth unemployment among new entrants and poverty unless it is the head of the household who is unemployed. An economic policy environment that is favorable for labor-intensive, export-oriented industries would help absorb the new entrants into the labor market, and the prospect is particularly good for young female workers. Policymakers should consider a reduction in the female-specific employer mandates (such as the existing provision for a generous maternity leave) that raise the cost of hiring women.

× In looking toward 2020, one of the most severe problems to be faced is an impending shortage of adequate supplies of fresh water essential for drinking and for growing crops. The Middle East, where a few waterways serve large areas of land belonging to a number of nations, is the place where strife over water is most likely to erupt. This paper examines the past--how water in the Middle East came to be divided as it is today--and looks at possible solutions for alleviating a water crisis and the resulting political tensions.