Mona Dhamankar
- Department
- Inclusive Food Systems
- Title
- Senior Advisor
- Phone
- +31 (0)20 568 8316
- M.Dhamankar@kit.nl
Mona Dhamankar is a development sociologist with extensive experience in rural development management, particularly in livestock-based interventions that promote individual livelihoods. She is committed to improving the participation of women in crop and livestock value chains and is heavily involved in projects designed to integrate gender and nutrition into agriculture and livestock development. Her current work focuses on inclusive food systems, developing an approach to carry out food systems analysis as a framework to assist food and nutrition security programming.
Along with IFAD, she developed an approach and methodology to analyse value chains using a nutrition-gender lens to help identify intervention options to achieve nutrition outcomes. The methodology is based on mixed participatory research methods and focuses on opportunities and constraints to increase supply, improve consumption and market demand, and enhance the nutrition value of locally available food. Her field experience primarily covers East and West Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zambia) and Asia (India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, Philippines).
Prior to KIT, Mona was a long-term consultant with the National Dairy Development Board in India where she worked with cooperative milk unions to make smallholder dairy value chains more inclusive, formulate strategies for participatory extension and set up revenue models for community-based advisory services. She also worked with women self-help groups to promote good animal husbandry practices, and developed a cadre of community level paravets to provide advisory services. Earlier she led a management training centre promoted by a large Indian NGO implementing large land and livestock-based livelihood programmes in several states of India.
She has worked with government and non-government development organisations in sub Saharan Africa and Asia in project formulation and capacity building. She has extensive experience supporting field teams in project implementation; designing approaches, tools and methodologies for situation analysis and applied research; facilitating write-shops for analysing and documenting field experiences; and supporting collaboration with other stakeholders. She is well versed in qualitative data collection methods and has conducted impact assessments and evaluation missions for numerous funding agencies and private foundations.
Projects
Publications
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An external review of the PlantwisePlus proof-of-concept phase, 2021-2023
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Report
Launched in mid-2020, CABI’s PlantwisePlus programme builds on the organization’s previous Plantwise and Action on Invasives initiatives. It comprises new elements developed from the learnings of these two earlier programmes, which are designed to fill in any gaps and respond to identified opportunities PlantwisePlus is striving to help sustainably produce more and safer food for […]
- Year of publication
- 2023
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Livestock research for development: lessons learned from the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock agri-food systems
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Report
The CGIAR Research Program on Livestock provided research-based solutions to help smallholder farmers, pastoralists, and agro-pastoralists transition to sustainable and resilient livelihoods, and to profitable enterprises that will help feed future generations. The aim of the program was to increase the productivity and profitability of livestock agri-food systems in sustainable ways, making meat, milk, and […]
- Year of publication
- 2022
Downloads
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Applying a Theory of Change based approach to Livestock Research for Development: Learnings from the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock agri-food systems
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Report
The CGIAR Research Program on Livestock provided research-based solutions to help smallholder farmers, pastoralists, and agro-pastoralists transition to sustainable and resilient livelihoods, and to profitable enterprises that will help feed future generations. An important component of the CRP Livestock research agenda is to demonstrate how livestock research can translate into impact through livestock value chain […]
- Year of publication
- 2022
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Bringing agriculture and nutrition together using a gender lens
Working Paper Series 2015 – 6 The feminization of agriculture is well recognized: women are acknowledged as the main food producers in mainstream development policy and practice. However, women are disproportionally affected by hunger and malnourishment. A growing body of literature focuseson how to contribute to improved nutrition through agricultural interventions. ‘Women’s empowerment’ is often […]
- Year of publication
- 2015
Downloads
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Enhancing Food Systems in Nigeria
The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs aspires to enhance its trade and investment programme in support of the agri-food sector of Nigeria. The Multi-Annual Country Strategy for Nigeria identifies the following main objective: to support Nigeria in its diversification strategy from reliance on oil revenues to economic growth and job-creation based on a sustainable and […]
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A decision-support tool for the design of food & nutrition security programming
Food & nutrition security is an important policy goal for national governments in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Government policy makers, donors and other key actors are confronted with the complexity of factors that influence food security. These factors originate from different levels, from macro-economy and national policy, to a diversity of local actors. This complexity […]