IFPRI has impact when hungry and poor people in developing countries benefit from its research findings and/or when key stakeholder groups in developing and developed countries turn to IFPRI as a prime resource for factual, timely, and competent information on questions related to food and nutrition security, poverty eradication, and natural resource management.

Goals and Objectives

The general objectives of the Communications Division are to communicate high-quality scientific research results that provide policy solutions to poverty, hunger and malnutrition and to engage in and contribute to policy dialogues on these issues with government bodies, other researchers, and members of civil society.

The goal of policy communications at IFPRI is to support IFPRI’s research and outreach activities by (a) disseminating research findings, (b) enhancing IFPRI’s credibility, (c) improving IFPRI’s accountability to the public and to donor institutions that provide the resources for its work, (d) improving research quality and effectiveness, (e) providing input to ensure continued relevance, and (f) promoting strategic thinking in a learning organization. IFPRI’s Communications Division has segmented its audiences and produces materials based on research results to reach these audiences at multiple levels. The pyramid figure below illustrates how IFPRI segments its audience according to the perceived strength of interest in the details and methodology, understanding of the issues involved, and preferred style of communication; the respective items produced to respond to those needs are noted as well.


Project Rationale

IFPRI will seek to achieve broad impact by generating and communicating timely information on emerging issues and long-term scenarios through its strategic communication activities. IFPRI’s policy communications activities are undertaken through its Communications Division (CD) which works closely with the research and outreach divisions and the 2020 Vision Initiative. State-of-the-art research needs state-of-the-art communications to achieve maximum impact. Increasingly, the Communications Division focuses on two-way communications through vehicles such as multi-stakeholder dialogues and web-based feedback. A new focal area for the policy communications and several other IFPRI research projects will be to assess who the key actors are and the decisionmaking processes that influence food policy decisions that affect the poor.