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Zaki Wahhaj

Funded Projects


Study of Millet Processing by Women’s SHGs in India

Funder: International Initiative for Impact Evaluation

Principal Investigator: Dr Apurba Shee (NRI, University of Greenwich)

Co-Investigators: Dr Manoj Dora (Brunel U.), Dr Srijit Mishra (IGIDR), Dr Zaki Wahhaj

Project Partners: WASSAN

Project Period: 2021-2024

Funding Amount: 980,000 USD

 

Millet is an important crop in arid and semi-arid regions of India, tolerant of extreme weather and nutritionally superior to major cereals with respect to protein, energy, vitamins, and minerals. Yet, millet is considered as an inferior food source due to inadequate post-harvest technologies for processing. The project will promote the production and consumption of millet through women’s collective enterprises in India. It involves an intervention in the Indian state of Odisha, in which randomly selected women’s self-help groups across 75 villages will be offered training and technical support on processing millet and developing millet-based products for the consumer market. The intervention will be conducted with an experimental research design to allow the research team to assess the impact on women’s entrepreneurial activities and the welfare of the participating households.


Birth Registration Records for Adolescent Girls

Funder: Grand Challenges Canada

Co-Investigator: Dr Abu S Shonchoy

Project Partners: MOMODa Foundation

Project Period: 2019-2021

Funding Amount: 99,340 CAD

 

Many children and adolescents around the world today lack official birth records, which may be key to accessing publicly provided health and education services and state protection against the abuse of child rights. In places where birth registration systems have been introduced recently, parents may not be able to bear the costs or lack the necessary information to carry out the registration process. The project investigates how birth registration of adolescent girls in developing countries can be accelerated with the aim of disrupting the traditional practice of female early marriage.


Agricultural Insurance and Migrant Networks

Funder : International Initiative for Impact Evaluation

Co-PI: Dr Harounan Kazianga

Project Partners: Innovations for Poverty Action/PlaNet Guarantee

Project Period: 2018-2023

Funding Amount: 430,000 USD

 

The project will investigate the impact of rainfall index insurance, marketed to urban migrants in Burkina Faso, on investment, production and consumption choices of their rural relatives. The intervention will be randomised at the village-level, with treatment arms where rainfall index insurance is marketed (i) only to farmers within the village, (ii) only to their urban migrant relatives and (iii) both, and control villages where no marketing takes place.


Child Marriage Law, Gender Norms and Marriage Customs

Funder: Economic Development and Institutions (DfID Research Programme)

Co-Investigators: Professor Niaz Asadullah, Dr Amrit Amirapu

Project Partners: DATA/BLAST

Project Period: 2017-2019

Funding Amount: 54,500 GBP

 

The project examines whether marriage laws can affect marriage customs, specifically those relating to child marriage practices, in a setting where formal institutions are weak, and whether there are peer effects in this process. For this purpose the project will make use of a new child marriage law in Bangladesh, field experiments where rural women and men are given information about child marriage cases, and a number of measures designed to capture their beliefs and attitudes.


Agricultural Insurance and Migrant Networks

Funder : International Initiative for Impact Evaluation

Co-PI: Dr Harounan Kazianga

Project Partners: Innovations for Poverty Action/PlaNet Guarantee

Project Period: 2016-2017

Funding Amount: 70,000 USD

 

The project investigates a new strategy for making rainfall index insurance available to small-holder farmers in rural Burkina Faso. Following a survey of rural farming households, urban migrants who share family ties with rural farmers were tracked and offered insurance policies to cover the rainfall risk of their farming relatives. Findings from the first phase of the project are discussed in a report here.


Female Schooling, Gender Norms and Long-term Opportunities of Rural Women in Bangladesh

Funder: Australian Aid

Co-Investigator: Professor Niaz Asadullah

Project Partners: DATA/Brac University

Project Period: 2013-2016

Funding Amount: 576,000 AUD

 

The project explores a range of issues related to gender norms and social customs that affect economic opportunities and outcomes for rural women in Bangladesh, including female schooling, marriage, migration, labour force participation, fertility and investment in children. The project included a large-scale nationally representative survey of rural women which constitutes the 2014 Women’s Life Choices and Attitudes Survey. Further information is available at www.integgra.org .


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