Earlier this year, SPIA invited early-career researchers and PhD students to study how CGIAR engages with stakeholders to inform national and regional policy with its first round of SPIA Small Grants. We identified six cases in the areas of fisheries, taxation, social protection, forestry, food safety, and long-term institutional engagement, each building directly on a SPIA country study.
We’re pleased to introduce our inaugural cohort of grantees, who will carry out this research over the next six months. Read about their backgrounds, research interests, and SPIA projects below.
Saadan Edson: Investigating aflatoxin control strategies in East Africa
Saadan is an agricultural research and agribusiness professional with over eight years of experience in seed systems, agricultural market development, and policy analysis in Tanzania and across Africa. His research examines how farmer preferences, willingness to pay, market incentives, and institutional and policy frameworks shape agricultural technology demand, adoption, variety turnover, and market performance.
He has hands-on experience applying the AIS-PPI tool to assess fertilizer policy and regulatory frameworks in Tanzania. Previously, he worked with East-West Seed International on product development and the International Potato Center (CIP) on strengthening root, tuber, and banana (RTB) seed systems.
He holds a BSc in Horticulture and an MBA in Agribusiness from Sokoine University of Agriculture and is pursuing a PhD at Wageningen University & Research, investigating mismatches between sweet potato seed demand and supply in Tanzania’s Lake Zone. His research interests include development economics, agricultural markets, technology adoption, and evidence-based policy.
His SPIA Policy Grant project examines how CGIAR research contributed to aflatoxin prevention and control policy in Uganda and the East African Community.
Trang Le: Following pathways of policy influence in Viet Nam
Trang completed her doctoral education at the Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden. Her work focuses on assessing interventions to improve food safety along the traditional pork value chain in low- and middle-income countries.
She is particularly interested in understanding food systems through a One Health perspective, with a focus on sustainable and context-specific solutions.
Her SPIA Small Grants study examines ow CGIAR's long-term engagement with Viet Nam's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) — now the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment (MAE) — has shaped agricultural policy over time, through what pathways and under what conditions, and the factors that determine whether policy influence becomes institutionalized and sustained over time.
Eshrat Mahfuza: Tracing policy influence through hilsa conservation reforms
Eshrat Mahfuza is a PhD Candidate in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Western Australia (UWA) and an Assistant Professor at Bangladesh Agricultural University, currently on study leave. Her research interests include digital agriculture, technology adoption, agricultural economics, and development studies. She has experience in mixed-methods research, survey design, fieldwork, and econometric analysis.
She holds a B.Sc. in Agricultural Economics and an M.Sc. in Agricultural Economics (Agribusiness and Marketing) from Bangladesh Agricultural University. She has also published research on food consumption, agricultural markets, fisheries value chains, and rural livelihoods.
Her SPIA Policy Grant project examines how research generated through WorldFish’s ECOFISH project contributed to hilsa conservation reforms in Bangladesh and how these reforms have been implemented and sustained beyond the project period. Using the Chandpur Hilsa Sanctuary as a case study, the research will trace evidence-to-policy pathways and explore the institutional, political, and contextual factors shaping long-term policy influence and sustainability. Through this work, Eshrat hopes to better understand not only whether research contributes to policy change, but also what helps evidence remain relevant and influential after a research project has ended.
Mathias Nigatu Bimir: Tracing the effects of evidence on agricultural policy in Ethiopia
Dr. Mathias Nigatu Bimir is an interdisciplinary academic and policy researcher based at Kotebe University in Ethiopia. He teaches public management, policy analysis, and environmental policy. His research interests focus on public policy processes, policy integration, sustainability transitions, and the science-policy interface.
Dr. Bimir’s SPIA research project explores the evidence-policy intersection in the design, adoption, and subsequent revision of Ethiopia's agricultural tax exemption policy. The study pursues a process-tracing method focusing on IWMI’s and ATA’s evidence on agricultural mechanization.
Raghav Raghunathan: Drawing connections between evidence and program design in Ethiopia
Raghav Raghunathan is an external PhD candidate in the Development Economics Group at Wageningen University & Research, and a Senior Research Manager at Precision Development (PxD) in India.
His dissertation looks at frictions in smallholder decisions across Sub-Saharan Africa and India. It covers planning horizons and hunger seasons, and the adoption of drought-tolerant maize and index insurance in Tanzania. Before the PhD he worked at the World Bank. He was also Principal of the Farmers' Segment at NCDEX, where he built digital FPO and warehouse-receipt infrastructure nationally, and was on the founding team of RamRahim Pragati Producer Company. He holds an MPP from UC Berkeley, where he was a Fulbright-Nehru scholar, and an MS from UC Davis.
Raghav's SPIA project traces how evidence shaped the design of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). Instead of asking what share of PSNP's design came from CGIAR research, it takes specific dated design decisions on nutrition, graduation and transfer adequacy. For each one it asks which actors aligned behind it, and where evaluation evidence sat in that alignment.
Nikos Therapos: Examining the effect of evidence on aflatoxin policy in Nigeria
Nikos Therapos is the Managing Director of DOTANK Plus. He is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Management Science and Technology, Hellenic Mediterranean University, and a Visiting PhD Scholar at the Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Bocconi University.
His expertise spans impact investing, sustainable finance, policy development, impact assessment, strategic partnerships, and the design and implementation of international development and environmental programs. He has extensive experience working across academia, civil society, the private sector and international organisations, bridging research, policy and practice.
His SPIA research examines how CGIAR/IITA research and innovations have influenced aflatoxin policy and control in Nigeria, focusing on the pathways through which scientific evidence informs policy development, institutional decisions and implementation. The study explores the contribution of research to policy outcomes and the factors enabling or constraining its uptake and practical application.
