Jonathan Garcia is a doctoral researcher in the Economic Development and Food Security research group at the Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops (IGZ) and at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He is interested in improving food security interventions in fragile settings while conducting impact evaluations of humanitarian programs and studying the allocation and prioritization of humanitarian aid. Moreover, he is keen on investigating the link between climate-driven conflict and food insecurity. He is currently working on impact evaluations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Lebanon. His peer-reviewed work can be found in the Journal of Global Health, BMC Health Services Research, and the Central Bank in his home country, Nicaragua.
He worked for over seven years at the UN-World Food Programme in Nicaragua, Mozambique, Sudan, and the regional bureaus for Latin America (Panama) and for Southern Africa (Johannesburg). His last role was as an assessment, targeting, and research advisor for Southern Africa, leading a research agenda on targeting and food systems for WFP’s operations in the region. He also worked as a research assistant and field coordinator for impact evaluations at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, the Leibniz University Hannover, and the DIW. He obtained fully funded scholarships to complete a M.Sc. in Development Economics from the Georg-August University of Göttingen, a M.S. in Labour Economics from the University of Turin, and a B.A. in Applied Economics from the Central American University in Nicaragua.
