As part of efforts towards strengthening Nigeria’s capacity for greater evidence-based policy processes in agriculture by increasing the capacity of Nigerian analysts to undertake and make widely available relevant evidence-based policy analysis, on 7-9 May 2018, a team of three (3) trainers from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)’s Nigeria Strategy Support Program (NSSP) facilitated a training course on “Econometrics for policy analysis using Stata” in Abuja for 21 (19 males and 2 females) faculty and senior members of staff from State Ministries and Agricultural Development Programmes of the seven Feed The Future states.
As a result of this training, participants’ capacity in handling data for evidence-based decision making was enhanced. Following this training participants from each state will also collectively produce a policy brief on priority agricultural issues that support the government’s agricultural priorities.
According to Dr Chukwuma Okereke, a participant from Ebonyi State, “Fellow course participants, it will be immodest of us to simply walk away from this hall without expressing our appreciation to the organizers and funders of this training programme as well as our instructors. I will like to say without fear of contradiction that the training programme has been quite rewarding in every respect. Personally, it has added more feathers to my wings and I can now fly. Our instructors were quite expertly (sic) in delivering the lectures. They demonstrated a very high level of dexterity and professionalism such that all the participants were carried along irrespective of our different levels of understanding. Indeed, they deserve a lot of accolades. In a similar vein the level of commitment of the organizers in terms of both financial and material resources invested in the training program is simply overwhelming. Indeed, we remain eternally grateful to USAID, IFPRI and other partners in the Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Policy Project for all the care. Thanks and God bless you for everything”.
This training course was organized by the Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Policy Project, which is jointly implemented by IFPRI and Michigan State University (MSU) with funding from USAID.
