Alex is a researcher at UNU-MERIT focusing on social protection research. He is part of the team under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Franziska Gassmann and Dr Sonja Fransen engaged in a four-year evaluation of WFP's relief, recovery and livelihood activities in Kenya's refugee camps and host settlements as well as cash transfers in Nairobi and Mombasa. He has recently worked on a project to improve Malawi's Social Cash Transfer Programme for rural poor households for UNICEF and evaluated the WFP and USDA/McGovern-Dole school feeding programme in 13 Districts in Malawi.

Alex's research interests include understanding the implications of different targeting methodologies, how machine learning can have distributional implications, social protection in humanitarian situations, and building the case for social protection for refugees.
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00:00 Background & experience
3:50 What is happening in Afghanistan?
7:33 What is UNU-Merit doing there?
11:06 How does the cash transfer initiative work?
21:38 Challenges in policy building
25:20 Challenges of leaving your home behind
30:40 How is the private sector participating?
37:17 Investing for Impact
41:15 What is it like to stay in Kabul?
44:50 The compound economy
49:40 Outro
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