Dr. Aziz Karimov

Head of the Regional office for Central Asia and South Caucasus

Dr. Aziz Karimov joined ICBA in July 2019 as Head of the ICBA Regional representative office for Central Asia and South Caucasus.

He has 16 years of professional experience, of which 12 years are with international research organizations abroad. He has a field experience in Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa.

Prior to joining ICBA, he worked for four years as an agricultural and market economist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Turkey. He was co-leading the cluster of activities within the Adoption and Impact Assessment and Market/Value Chain packages within Global WHEAT CGIAR research program. Dr. Aziz Karimov was also the Wheat focal point (2015-2017) at the Standing Panel on Impact Assessment, which is a sub-group of the CGIAR Independent Science and Partnership Council. Prior to CIMMYT, he had worked as an agricultural and market economist for the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) at ILRI’s regional office for East and Southeast Asia based in Hanoi, Vietnam. He contributed to the CGIAR Research Program on Integrated Systems for the humid tropic regions.

Between 2011 and 2014, he worked as a research fellow at the United Nations University – World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) in Finland, where he contributed to the Environment and Climate Change theme of the Research and Communication of Foreign Aid program and co-supervised UNU-WIDER – African Economic Research Consortium’s (AERC) Climate Change and Green Growth projects. He also coordinated joint Helsinki School for Economic Research (HECER) and UNU-WIDER's Master’s programme in Development Economics.

From 2005 to 2007, he was a Lecturer in Economics at Westminster International University in Tashkent and started his career as an Economist at the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Dr. Aziz Karimov’s main expertise and research interests lie in agricultural and development economics, particularly in areas of agri-food systems, value chain analysis, impact assessment and sustainable use of agricultural resources. He is also keen to explore opportunities in managing programs/projects related to adaptation to climate change, rural development, natural resource management, food, water and energy nexus in marginal environments through research, innovation and partnership.

Dr. Aziz Karimov has a doctoral degree (magna cum laude) from Bonn University, Germany, received under the umbrella of a ZEF/UNESCO project on the Economic and Ecological Restructuring of Land and Water Use in the Aral Sea region. He also holds a MA in Economics from Northeastern University, Boston, USA. He earned bachelor’s degree in Finance (Faculty of Business Management) from Tashkent State Technical University.

Dr Aziz Karimov is a recipient of the Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship (USA) and DAAD scholarship (Germany). He holds a PMD Pro (Project Management for Development Professionals certificate accredited by APM GROUP, UK). He received trainings in systematic review and meta-analysis (University of Glasgow, Scotland), gender capacity strengthening program (KIT, Netherlands), productivity and efficiency analysis (Wageningen University, Netherlands), Impact Assessment (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, USA) and TOA-MD Modelling (Oregon State University, USA). He is a silver winner (SDG 12) of the Global Innovation Lab competition (2017) held in Denmark.