Juan Bonilla

Managing Economist

Juan Bonilla is a managing economist and project execution lead for the International Development Division at AIR. He conducts research in the fields of agricultural development, nutrition, social protection, and education policy in developing countries. Dr. Bonilla has more than 15 years of experience designing and leading research projects of multipronged development programs that include rigorous mixed-methods impact evaluations and cost analysis. He is currently leading two experimental evaluations in Ethiopia for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation of a program that provides agricultural extension through digital advisory services in the wheat and dairy sectors. He is also leading a multiarmed experimental evaluation of a program that promotes the uptake of Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato in the Shinyanga region in Tanzania to improve young child and maternal nutrition. Dr. Bonilla also served as project director of USAID’s LAC Reads Capacity Program, a research and capacity building initiative in eight countries in Central America and the Caribbean that provides leadership and technical support on early grade literacy. In his role as project execution lead for the International Division, he leads and supports efforts to ensure that project work meet high standards.

Previously, Dr, Bonilla has led or co-led multiple projects in agricultural development. He conducted mixed-methods evaluations of the Plantwise program in Kenya and Pakistan, an initiative that aims to reduce crop losses through information provision by establishing networks of local plant clinics run by trained plant doctors. He has also led research projects that look at the impacts of agribusiness models in sub-Saharan Africa, including a quasi-experimental impact evaluation of 2SCALE, an agribusiness cluster program in Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, and Uganda for the International Fertilizer Development Center; a quasi-experimental impact evaluation of IFAD’s Smallholder Dairy Commercialization Program in Kenya; and IFC’s PIDMA project in Cameroon, which aim to integrate sorghum, cassava, and maize producers to markets.

Regarding social protection projects, Dr. Bonilla co-led a 24-month longitudinal and process evaluation of the UNICEF child grant “cash and care” program in four pilot districts in the province of Nampula, in Mozambique. He also co-led a study on the impacts of UNICEF’s Alternative Responses for Communities in Crisis program in the DRC. Dr. Bonilla has also participated in impact and process evaluations of cash transfer programs in Kenya and Zambia.

In education policy, Dr. Bonilla was a co-principal investigator of UNICEF’s Accelerated School Readiness Program in Zambezia, Mozambique, a program that implemented a low-cost early childhood intervention to prepare children for Grade 1. The evaluation was selected as one of the Best of UNICEF Research and Evaluation in 2020. He also co-led a quasi-experimental evaluation of an early childhood intervention implemented by the Ministry of Education of Peru in in the departments of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Huánuco. He also supported the evaluation of a pedagogical support program for the Ministry of Education in Peru and conducted an evaluation of a remedial reading program for a USAID intervention in Egypt. Dr. Bonilla conducted an evaluation of the Colegion en Concesión, a charter school program implemented in Bogota, Colombia. 

Before joining AIR, he taught at the Economics Department at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. He is also a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.

Juan Bonilla
Expertise
International

Ph.D., Economics, University of Maryland; M.A., Economics, New York University

Contact Juan Bonilla

+1.202.403.5000
Related Work
Portrait of an old man on an organic lettuce plantation

Agricultural Trade and Climate Smart Innovations (ATraCSI): A Food for Progress Intervention in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador

The World Trade Organization Trade Facilitation Agreement (WTO TFA), ratified in 2017, proposed regulations and harmonization of standards to decrease the non-tariff-based blocks to export and trade in the North Central America Region (NCAR). Through a comprehensive approach to trade in the horticultural sector, the U.S. non-profit organization, Improving Economies ...
Hands holding crops

Using Data to Respond to the Impacts of Climate Change

24 Oct 2022
The impacts of climate change are already affecting the health, economic well-being, and security of people across the globe. In this Q&A, Principal Economist Juan Bonilla describes AIR’s efforts to help governments and policymakers mitigate these effects and reduce the growing inequities that climate change can exacerbate. ...
Group of happy African children

Evaluation Partner for CASCADE Nutrition Program

Despite modest progress, maternal and child undernutrition remains a major health concern for many countries in the world and especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. With funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and CARE are leading the implementation of ...
Customer making a cash payment

Evaluation of the Nutritional Improvements Through Cash and Health Education (NICHE) Program

UNICEF Kenya contracted AIR to conduct a mixed-methods formative evaluation of the Nutritional Improvements through Cash and Health Education program, part of Kenya’s initiative to enhance access to social and economic inclusion services within safety nets for poor and vulnerable households.
Image of schoolgirls in Haiti

USAID/Latin America and Caribbean Reads Capacity Program (LRCP)

Literacy is a fundamental skill that serves as the foundation for an individual’s future learning and, collectively, for a country’s social and economic development. The USAID/LAC Reads Capacity Program aims to increase the impact, scale, and sustainability of early grade reading interventions in the Latin American and Caribbean region through ...
Harvesting in Shinyanga Tanzania

Testing an Agriculture Intervention’s Effect on Maternal and Infant Health in Tanzania

Vitamin A deficiency is a significant public health issue, especially in Africa and South-East Asia. In addition to visual impairment, the lack of vitamin A in children significantly increases the risk of severe illness and even death from common infections such as diarrhea and measles. AIR is working with the ...
Image of mothers and young children outside in Mozambique

Accelerated School Readiness in Mozambique

Despite efforts by the Mozambican government to improve access to pre-primary education, many challenges remain in the education system overall and in pre-primary education. AIR conducted a mixed-methods experimental evaluation of a pilot program being implemented to improve children’s educational outcomes through a pre-primary intervention in target districts and communities ...

Cash for Women's Empowerment? A Mixed-Method Evaluation of the Government of Zambia's Child Grant Programme

30 Jan 2016
Despite the promise and potential of cash transfers to empower women, the evidence supporting this outcome is mixed. This paper based on an evaluation of the Government of Zambia’s Child Grant Programme, a transfer given to mothers or primary caregivers of young children aged 0 to 5, shows there is ...

Cultivating Success: Is the Jury Still Out on Demand-Driven Extension Services?

16 Oct 2015
New types of agricultural advisory systems for farmers in Kenya set up plant clinics, like those for human health, where trained plant doctors provide farmers with science-based diagnoses and advice. AIR experts Juan Bonilla and Andrea Coombes comment on the latest evaluation of the Plantwise program and indications that it ...

2SCALE/Contract Farming in Africa

Despite the increasing demand for food in both developed and developing counties, smallholder farmers are not able to integrate to local markets because of low capital, limited access to credit, and risk aversion. AIR is evaluating the 2SCALE agribusiness project, which was designed to help rural smallholders move from subsistence ...

Smallholder Dairy Commercialisation Programme

Smallholder dairy farmers in Kenya rely on livestock for income and food security. However, milk production is regularly threatened by a number of factors. The overall goal of the Smallholder Dairy Commercialisation Programme is to increase the income of poor rural households that depend substantially on production and trade of ...
Women and young boy in Democratic Republic of Congo

Mixed Methods Evaluation of the Alternative Responses for Communities in Crisis (ARCC) II Program in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Although there has been less experience with universal cash transfers (UCTs) in Africa, particularly in humanitarian settings, they are among the more promising options for delivering assistance. In order to help fill the evidence gap on cash transfers in humanitarian settings, AIR partnered with UNICEF-DRC to compile and analyze data ...
Smallholder Farms

Impact Evaluation of the Intervention Towards Sustainable Clusters in Agribusiness through Learning in Entrepreneurship

Between 2015 to 2018, AIR evaluated the impacts of 2SCALE on farm income and food security for participating farmers. The impact evaluation studies were carried out in five countries: Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Benin, and Mali to determine to what extent observed benefits can be attributed to program interventions. ...