Journal Articles

Maize yield responsiveness and profitability of fertilizer: New survey evidence from six African countries

Enhancing maize productivity growth is pivotal for revolutionizing the agrifood system in Africa, with inorganic fertilizer serving as a fundamental input for catalyzing this progress. However, concerns are mounting about the low and decreasing yield response and profitability of inorganic fertilizer use, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study aims to refine yield response and profitability models by incorporating recent data from nationally representative and panel datasets spanning six countries. Most countries exhibited low nitrogen yield responsiveness (4–7 kg), while Ghana and Uganda showed higher responsiveness (15–20 kg) per additional 1 kg of nitrogen. Analysis of fertilizer-to-maize price ratios from 2010 to 2023 showed a downward trend, with spikes in 2022 in Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania. Overall, except for those years, the data suggest a trend of increasingly favorable price incentives for fertilizer use. Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda experienced declines in the fertilizer-to-maize price ratio. Increasing inorganic fertilizer use would be profitable in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda at current market prices, but not in Malawi or Tanzania. Subsidies in Malawi and Tanzania have boosted profitability, but these may not be necessary in Ghana, Nigeria, or Uganda, which already have favorable price incentives; Malawi could benefit by substantially reducing its 80 percent subsidy while maintaining decent price incentives and farm profits. The paper proposes policy options based on factors influencing yield responsiveness and potential improvements drawn from new modeling and synthesis of the literature.

Seed certification, certified seeds use and yield outcomes in Nigeria: Insights from nationally-representative farm panel data and seed company location data

CONTEXT
Despite the importance of enhanced seed quality to agricultural productivity growth, evidence remains scarce regarding the nature and possible drivers of returns to formal sector quality assurance systems, including certified seeds production in countries like Nigeria that focus significantly on the formal-sector seed systems.
OBJECTIVE
This study narrows this knowledge gap by estimating the effect of the quantity of certified seeds produced and the spatial variations where they are produced on the use of certified seeds and yields. We also assess the yield effects of certified seeds use and their relationship with agroclimatic and socioeconomic conditions.
METHODS
We combine nationally-representative farm-household survey panel data with spatial data on the headquarters locations of seed companies, the quantity of certified seeds for maize, cowpea, and rice that they produce, and spatially explicit agroecological data. We apply panel fixed effects methods as well as instrumental-variable methods to address potential endogeneity associated with certified seeds use while also controlling for the use of improved varieties to separate their effects from the effects of certified seeds.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
Our findings indicate that the availability of certified seeds—captured by indicators of certified seeds produced by seed companies headquartered in the states of survey respondents—is associated with positive but declining marginal effects on certified seeds use and yields. These results are robust when we also consider the potential within-state heterogeneity in the proximity to seed company headquarters, as well as potential spillovers from the nearest adjacent states. The yield effects of certified seeds are heterogeneous and depend on agroclimatic conditions and farmers' socioeconomic characteristics. The use of certified seeds is somewhat higher in areas with higher yield effects after controlling for certified seeds production. These patterns partly lead to observed non-linearities in certified seeds use because certified seeds may be more likely to be used by farmers with higher expected returns than farmers with lower expected returns. These results underscore the importance of spatially targeted efforts in enhancing certified seeds production capacity, together with the exploration of intermediate quality standards in the short term where costs of seed certification are high relative to returns.
SIGNIFICANCE
The study provides unique quantitative evidence in a nationally representative framework in an African country that returns to seed certification systems in the current setting significantly vary depending on contexts, including agroclimatic conditions.

Conflicts, crop choice, and agricultural investments: Empirical evidence from Nigeria

Conflict remains a major driver of poverty in Africa. Conflicts and political instability in the region have been increasing recently and are drawing more attention in public discourse. While it is widely acknowledged that conflicts disrupt agricultural production and food systems, the full extent of the damage inflicted on the lives and livelihoods of farming households and the mechanisms to redress this harm remain poorly understood. In particular, the link between violent conflicts and households’ land allocation and related agricultural investment decisions remains understudied. In this study, we use geocoded longitudinal data along with detailed agricultural panel household surveys in Nigeria to assess the impact of violent conflicts on crop choice decisions and related agricultural investments. Specifically, we explore how farmers’ land allocation and agricultural investment decisions relate or respond to the outbreak and intensity of violent conflicts. We find that violent conflicts are associated with a reduction in the share of both land area cultivated and area harvested. We also find suggestive evidence that violent conflicts may shape farmers’ crop choices and related investments, as violent conflicts are associated with reduction in the share of land allocated to long-term crops (e.g., perennial crops, trees, roots and tubers). Overall, our findings suggest that violent conflicts can negatively influence farmers’ agricultural investments directly by affecting both land utilization patterns and portfolio allocation across activities with varying returns to investments.

Assessing global price shocks and mitigation policies on welfare and food security in Nigeria

Variations in agricultural and energy prices have direct and cascading effects on economic and agri-food systems. In this study, we developed a dynamic general equilibrium model to simulate the impact of the global price shocks induced by the Russia-Ukraine war on welfare and food security in Nigeria. In addition, we analysed the effectiveness of different policy options, specifically a reduction in indirect taxes and an increase in cash transfers to affected households, in the short and long term. The results showed that the shocks create opportunities for Nigeria, particularly in the trade, livestock, and agricultural sectors. This leads to an increase in GDP, employment, and incomes. However, these effects fade over time due to the rise in food prices that negatively affects food consumption and some food security indicators. Moreover, the comparative analysis of mitigation scenarios revealed that targeted public cash transfers to households are more effective than reduction in consumption taxes on food in mitigating the negative effects on households.

Vulnerability of Nigerian maize traders to a confluence of climate, violence, disease and cost shocks

Purpose
We study five exogenous shocks: climate, violence, price hikes, spoilage and the COVID-19 lockdown. We analyze the association between these shocks and trader characteristics, reflecting trader vulnerability.

Design/methodology/approach
Using primary survey data on 1,100 Nigerian maize traders for 2021 (controlling for shocks in 2017), we use probit models to estimate the probabilities of experiencing climate, violence, disease and cost shocks associated with trader characteristics (gender, size and region) and to estimate the probability of vulnerability (experiencing severe impacts).

Findings
Traders are prone to experiencing more than one shock, which increases the intensity of the shocks. Price shocks are often accompanied by violence, climate and COVID-19 shocks. The poorer northern region is disproportionately affected by shocks. Northern traders experience more price shocks while Southern traders are more affected by violence shocks given their dependence on long supply chains from the north for their maize. Female traders are more likely to experience violent events than men who tend to be more exposed to climate shocks.

Research limitations/implications
The data only permit analysis of the general degree of impact of a shock rather than quantifying lost income.

Originality/value
This paper is the first to analyze the incidence of multiple shocks on grain traders and the unequal distribution of negative impacts. It is the first such in Africa based on a large sample of grain traders from a primary survey.

Identification, characterization, and determinants of dietary patterns of low-income urban adults in Vietnam and Nigeria

Understanding dietary patterns and their determinants can steer efforts to food systems transformations required to provide sustainable healthy diets. Based on 24-h recall data and using latent class analysis, we characterized dietary patterns of adults from low-income neighborhoods in Hanoi, Vietnam and Ibadan, Nigeria (n = 385 and 344, age 18–49 years). We examined sociodemographic determinants and diet quality (diversity, non-communicable disease risk, and micronutrient adequacy) of these patterns. Three dietary patterns were identified in each country. Vietnamese patterns differed in sociodemographic characteristics and diet quality. Nigerian patterns differed in diet quality but not in sociodemographics. Understanding different consumer groups and the drivers of consumption helps to identify tailored interventions to diversify diets and improve diet quality.

To defer or to differ: Experimental evidence on the role of cash transfers in Nigerian couples’ decision–making

Monitoring biofortification program performance and potential for impact: Indicators, methods, and learnings from the commercialization of biofortified crops program in six countries across Africa and Asia

Background
Biofortification of staple crops is a food-based strategy to reduce the high global burden of micronutrient deficiencies. Monitoring program performance is essential to ensure biofortification programs have high potential for impact; however, few indicators and methods for doing so are publicly available.

Objective
We documented the set of standardized indicators and methods used to monitor the Commercialization of Biofortified Crops (CBC) program and reviewed their strengths and limitations.

Methods
Following the CBC program impact pathway, we identified and defined a set of indicators and corresponding methods. Country-level implementation teams contextualized and operationalized them to monitor 9 country-crop programs (i.e., high iron beans in Kenya and Tanzania, iron pearl millet in India, vitamin A maize in Nigeria and Tanzania, vitamin A cassava in Nigeria, zinc wheat in Pakistan and India, and zinc rice in Bangladesh) from 2020 to 2022.

Results
Twenty indicators were defined across domains of seed supply, production, availability, awareness, capacity development, advocacy, and consumption of biofortified foods. Data collection methods included external and internal document review, farmer household surveys, rapid market assessments, and modeling. The strengths of these methods were that they were rapid to conduct, low cost, and simple to use. For some methods, the limitations were the potentially reduced accuracy of some results due to the use of external data sources or secondary data inputs and unavailability of data.

Conclusions
The indicators and methods used in the CBC program are practical and cost effective for monitoring the implementation of biofortification programs because they generate the range of information necessary to understand how effectively a program is delivered and bolster plausibility arguments for attributing observed impacts to program activities. Further testing is needed to confirm their generalizability when applied to different contexts and paired with impact evaluations with the aim of producing publicly available global guidance documents.

Monitoring the cost and affordability of a healthy diet within Countries: Building systems in Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Viet Nam

Background
Governments around the world collect food price data on a frequent basis, often monthly, for the purpose of monitoring inflation. These routine economic data can be used with a nutrition-sensitive lens for understanding economic access to a healthy diet. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has adopted the cost and affordability of a healthy diet (CoAHD) for annual tracking alongside other food security indicators. This indicator is relevant in many countries for informed decision-making and accountability toward food systems summit pathways. National governments may wish to include this indicator in their own monitoring systems, using existing subnational price and income data.
Objectives
We describe emerging systems in several countries for monitoring CoAHD and analytical tools that facilitate the calculation of CoAHD. We discuss reasons why the indicator may differ when calculated using subnational data compared with the global monitoring system and how to interpret differences.
Methods
Between June 2016 and February 2024, 19 workshops were held in 7 countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Viet Nam), where stakeholder discussions covered sources of food price data, institutions involved, policy uses, and direct training in calculation of CoAHD. Food price data collected by national organizations were used to calculate CoAHD in partnership with government agencies.
Results
Calculating CoAHD using subnational data uses the same methods across settings, but the mechanisms for monitoring and dissemination are different in each country, illustrating heterogeneity in how the metric can most effectively be incorporated within existing structures. Results from national and global monitoring systems have expected differences based on data sources, healthy diet standards, and affordability standards.
Conclusions
CoAHD can be calculated with existing data and resources, facilitated by new software tools and user tutorials. In the future, it can be further streamlined, leveraging technical assistance from global institutions and aligning national and global monitoring systems.

From streets to tables: Bottom-up cocreation case studies for healthier food environments in Vietnam and Nigeria

Current food systems fail to provide equity, sustainability, and positive health outcomes, thus underscoring the critical need for their transformation. Intervening in food environments holds substantial promise for contributing to this much-needed transformation. Despite scholars and practitioners often recognizing the necessity for bottom-up approaches, there is a dearth of empirical investigations evaluating the potential of these approaches to contribute to food system transformations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Our study aims to address this research gap, providing a unique perspective in this regard. Drawing on evidence from two co-creation case studies conducted with small-scale informal fruit and vegetable vendors and poor consumers in Vietnam and Nigeria from January 2020 to December 2021, we explore the relevance of bottom-up community-engaged co-creation processes in intervening within LMICs’ food retail environments. Employing a mixed-methods approach that includes quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews, participatory workshops, and focus group discussions, we demonstrate that bottom-up co-creation processes involving marginalized socioeconomic groups can generate retail-level innovations that are tailored to informal retail contexts, while remaining aligned with established top-down theories and literature pertaining to food environments and healthy diets. We provide empirical evidence highlighting how both vendors and consumers respond positively to the co-created innovations. Expanding upon our results, we offer methodological insights applicable to interventions targeted at food environments in LMICs, and considerations for future research or development initiatives in this domain. Our findings reveal the capacity of vulnerable stakeholders to actively engage in public health initiatives and contribute to developing innovative solutions that are context-specific and conducive to the adoption of healthier dietary practices. These results confirm the potential of bottom-up, co-creation, real-world interventions within informal settings to contribute towards fostering inclusive transformation of food systems.

Voice, access, and ownership: Enabling environments for nutrition advocacy in India and Nigeria

What constitutes an enabling environment for nutrition advocacy in low- and middle-income countries? While a sizeable body of scholarship considers the enabling environment for nutrition policy, we focus specifically on the necessary conditions for advocacy. We argue that three factors—voice, access, and ownership—provide a useful lens into the advocacy enabling environment. These are operationalized, respectively, as the space to articulate and frame policy positions, entry points to interact with policy decision makers, and the existence of committed decision makers rather than those responding to pressures from external actors. These three factors are explored vis-à-vis a comparative analysis of two federal democracies—India and Nigeria—that each have vibrant advocacy communities confronting persistent malnutrition. Drawing on more than 100 structured interviews with nutrition advocates, government actors, donors, and researchers in the two countries, we highlight the ways in which voice, access, and ownership interactively shape advocacy efforts. In doing so, we find that Nigeria has a less ideological approach to certain nutrition issues than in India but also perceived to be more beholden to external actors in defining its nutrition actions. Recent restrictions on freedom of speech and association shrunk the civic space in India but these were less problematic in Nigeria. In both countries, the multi-tiered, multi-party system offers many different points of access into the policy arena, with sometimes negative implications for coordination. Overall, the paper contributes more broadly to the literature on enabling environments by highlighting potential indicators to guide nutrition advocates in other settings.

Harnessing the job creation capacity of young rural agripreneurs: A quasi-experimental study of the ENABLE program in Africa

With evidence of increasing investment in youth agribusiness empowerment programs across Africa, employment discussions and strategies are increasingly focusing on how youth-owned agribusinesses can facilitate long-term job creation and contribute to revitalizing rural economies in the coming years. In light of these changing employment dynamics, we assessed the evolving role of youth and small agribusinesses in employment creation in rural areas. Further, we assessed the impact of agribusiness empowerment programs in unlocking the job creation capacity of young agribusiness owners, taking evidence from the youth component of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) program, Empowering Novel Agribusiness-Led Employment (ENABLE) implemented in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda. A total of 1435 respondents, comprising 737 participants and 698 non-participants were surveyed across the three countries. An Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model was used to identify factors that determined program participation, and factors influencing job creation, and assess the program's impact on job creation. The results validate our assumption of changing employment dynamics in the rural areas where youth-owned small agribusinesses hired an average of 4 employees. The ESR results show the significance of the program on the job creation capacity of participants across the three countries. Also, we found that non-participants could potentially increase their job creation capacity if they had participated in the program. Factors that influence job creation include socio-economic, such as age and marital status, business attributes including agribusiness experience, business level, income, and access to land. These results indicate that continuous concerted efforts on agribusiness empowerment will have a notable impact in generating more jobs and reducing the rates of unemployment, particularly among young people. Thus, more investment should be directed towards empowering young people in agribusiness in the study countries, and elsewhere in Africa.

African domestic supply booms in value chains of fruits, vegetables, and animal products fueled by spontaneous clusters of SMEs

There is an international consensus that Africans consume less fruits and vegetables (FV), and animal products (AP) than they need for adequate nutrition, and that production and supply chains of these products are constrained. Yet, in this paper, we show that despite these problems, there is a lot of dynamism in demand and supply of these nutrient-dense products in Africa: (1) macro evidence of “domestic supply booms"—with supply growing as fast as or faster than in Asia and Latin America; (2) only 2–4% of FV, and 10% of AP consumption in Africa is imported, and only about 1–2% of the output of FV and AP is exported: the supply booms have thus been overwhelming domestically sourced, not imported; (3) micro evidence of substantial shares of consumption of FV and AP in total food consumption, similar to Asia's; (4) evidence of rapid development of spontaneous clusters of farms and off-farm SMEs (output wholesalers, logistics, processors, and agro-dealers supporting farmers). These clusters are important in fueling the supply booms. Illustrative cases from Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia are presented. We recommend that African governments and international partners: (1) internalize the fact that these spontaneous clusters are forming and already fueling supply booms; (2) note that important drivers of the booms have been government investments in wholesale markets, roads, and other infrastructure like electrification, and agricultural research/extension; (3) leverage and support existing spontaneous clusters and help new ones to form by greatly increasing those three types of public investments.

JEL Codes: O20, Q13, Q18

Building organizational resilience of public extension system during pandemic in Enugu State Nigeria

The study identified potential changes in the public extension system that could contribute to food system transformation during the pandemic. Document reviews, surveys, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews were used to achieve the study objectives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, most (96.0%) rural households had no extension contact resulting in challenges within the food production system. The annual quantity of yam produced by the respondents declined from an average of 5,700kg pre-pandemic era to 5,100kg during the pandemic. As a result of the pandemic, the already weak extension system was exposed to greater vulnerability due to weak capacity, poor competence, and technical know-how needed to drive the food production system transformation. Policy interventions are recommended to ensure that extension services are digitalized, human capacities are improved and adequate funding is available.

Rapid transformation in aquatic food value chains in three Nigerian states

Introduction: Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, third largest fish producer, and second largest aquaculture producer. There have been numerous studies of aquaculture and fisheries in Nigeria, but no study to date has analyzed aquaculture and capture fisheries value chains together, while giving equal weight to all value chain segments and systematically capturing information on temporal trends in value chain structure, conduct, and performance. This paper does so.

Methods: We conducted a structured, qualitative, rapid reconnaissance survey of 180 actors from eight segments of the aquatic food value chain in three Nigerian states with contrasting geographies, Ebonyi, Kebbi, and Oyo.

Results: Results particularly important for future research and policy are as follows. (1) Partial vertical integration is a common feature of the organization of firms in all value chain segments, as a risk reduction strategy to overcome market imperfections and frictions. Scarcity and high cost of imported intermediate inputs is stimulating local innovation and import substitution manufacturing of feeds and fabricated items. (2) Inter-sectoral spillovers from the poultry industry have hastened the development of fish value chains, while improvements in power supply have enabled the expansion of cold storage capacity, facilitating the geographical lengthening of frozen fish value chains. (3) Rapid technological and/or institutional change is occurring in all value chain segments, including those usually viewed as traditional, such as processing and fishing. Logistics services are becoming more specialized and sophisticated, and digital communications technologies including social media play an increasingly important role in value chain coordination and marketing. (4) Increasing opportunity costs of time drive demand for convenience foods such as smoked and fried fish, which require little further preparation and can be stored at room temperature. Demand for farmed catfish is linked to growing consumption of food away from home at bars and restaurants. (5) Significant opportunities exist to improve the performance of value chains in terms of gender equity, environmental impacts, and food safety.

The importance and determinants of purchases in rural food consumption in Africa: implications for food security strategies

We analyze rural households’ purchases of food (cereals and non-cereals) in Sub-Saharan Africa using nationally representative data with 65,000 observations covering 7 countries over a decade. We distinguish between three strata of countries: lower stratum in income and urbanization, middle stratum, and upper stratum. The paper breaks ground by the breadth and time length of the sample. We find that purchases form the majority of rural food consumption whether in favorable or unfavorable agroecological zones and over country and income strata and for most food products. Rural nonfarm employment (as a cash source) plays an important role in household food purchases across all study countries and food products. Policy implications include the importance of food purchase markets and supply chains to and in rural areas as well as nonfarm employment.

Estimating seed demand in the presence of market frictions: evidence from an auction experiment in Nigeria

This paper measures the effect of seed quality misperceptions on bidding behavior and demand for high-quality seed using an information-provision experiment within an incentive-compatible Vickery Second Price (SPA) auction mechanism that mimics seed purchasing decisions in the presence of seed market frictions. We find that most individuals are prone to quality misperception and revise their bids upwards (downwards) in response to positive (negative) quality signals. In addition, by exploiting random variation in the timing of cash grants, we show that imperfect information influences farmer seed valuation, even in the presence of potentially binding liquidity constraints. We also demonstrate that the provision of quality information does not fully resolve quality misperceptions. We then show that unresolved or persistent misperception is severe enough to distort bidding behavior, and ignoring it could lead to biased willingness-to-pay estimates. Our findings have important implications both for improving inference related to the identification and estimation of willingness to pay for quality seed in the presence of market frictions, and for the design of seed sector polices in developing countries.

The role of land inheritance in youth migration and employment choices: Evidence from rural Nigeria

Agricultural mechanisation and gendered labour activities across sectors: Micro-evidence from multi-country farm household data

The gender difference in employment across sectors is a critical element of gender inequality in rural livelihoods and welfare in developing countries. The role of production technologies, including agricultural mechanisation, in addressing gender inequality is increasingly explored. Knowledge gaps remain, however, including how agricultural mechanisation differentially affects labour engagements across sectors. This study aims to partly fill these knowledge gaps through micro‐evidence from seven countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, India, Nepal and Vietnam), using several nationally representative panel data and supplementary data and applying correlated random effects double‐hurdle models with instrumental variables. We find that the use of tractors and/or combine harvesters by the household induces a greater shift from farm activities to non‐farm activities by female members than by male members. While statistical significance varies, these patterns generally hold consistently across all seven countries studied. These patterns also hold across different farm sizes. While these are short‐term relations, agricultural mechanisation proxied by tractors and/or combine harvesters is one of the crucial contributors to gendered rural livelihood. Future studies should more closely investigate these patterns' underlying mechanisms and implications.

Water insecurity is associated with greater food insecurity and lower dietary diversity: Panel data from sub-Saharan Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic

There is growing recognition that water insecurity – the inability to reliably access sufficient water for all household uses – is commonly experienced globally and has myriad adverse consequences for human well-being. The role of water insecurity in food insecurity and diet quality, however, has received minimal attention. Data are from panel surveys conducted during 2020–21 among adults involved in smallholder agriculture in Niger (n = 364, 3 rounds), Nigeria (n = 501, 5 rounds), Senegal (n = 501, 5 rounds), and Ghana (n = 543, 5 rounds). We hypothesized that household water insecurity (measured using the brief Household Water Insecurity Experiences Scale) would be associated with greater individual food insecurity (using 5 of the 8 Food Insecurity Experiences Scale items) and lower dietary diversity (using the Minimum Dietary Diversity Score for Women). At baseline, 37.1% of individuals were living in water-insecure households and of these, 90.6% had some experience of food insecurity. In multilevel mixed-effects regressions, individuals living in water-insecure households had 1.67 (95% CI: 1.47, 1.89) times higher odds of reporting any food insecurity experience and were estimated to consume 0.38-fewer food groups (95% CI: -0.50, -0.27) than those living in water-secure households. Experiences with suboptimal water access and use are associated with poor nutrition. The pathways by which water insecurity impacts nutrition should be identified. Global and national food and nutrition security policies could be strengthened by monitoring and developing strategies to address household water insecurity.

Vulnerability of Nigerian maize traders to a confluence of climate, violence, disease and cost shocks

Purpose
We study five exogenous shocks: climate, violence, price hikes, spoilage and the COVID-19 lockdown. We analyze the association between these shocks and trader characteristics, reflecting trader vulnerability.

Design/methodology/approach
Using primary survey data on 1,100 Nigerian maize traders for 2021 (controlling for shocks in 2017), we use probit models to estimate the probabilities of experiencing climate, violence, disease and cost shocks associated with trader characteristics (gender, size and region) and to estimate the probability of vulnerability (experiencing severe impacts).

Findings
Traders are prone to experiencing more than one shock, which increases the intensity of the shocks. Price shocks are often accompanied by violence, climate and COVID-19 shocks. The poorer northern region is disproportionately affected by shocks. Northern traders experience more price shocks while Southern traders are more affected by violence shocks given their dependence on long supply chains from the north for their maize. Female traders are more likely to experience violent events than men who tend to be more exposed to climate shocks.

Research limitations/implications
The data only permit analysis of the general degree of impact of a shock rather than quantifying lost income.

Originality/value
This paper is the first to analyze the incidence of multiple shocks on grain traders and the unequal distribution of negative impacts. It is the first such in Africa based on a large sample of grain traders from a primary survey.

Fruit and Vegetable Intake of Females Before, During, and After Introduction of 3 Bundled Food System Interventions in Urban Vietnam and Nigeria

Background
Low fruit and vegetable (FV) intake in low- and middle-income countries, which is associated with noncommunicable diseases and micronutrient deficiencies, requires food system interventions addressing FV accessibility, affordability, and acceptability. Periodic FV intake monitoring during interventions informs progress toward achieving increased intakes and contributes to understanding the effectiveness of these interventions.

Objectives
This study evaluates the trend in FV intake before, during, and after implementation of a set of nutrition-sensitive food system interventions addressing accessibility, affordability, and acceptability to increase FV consumption over a 1-y period in Vietnamese and Nigerian low-income urban and periurban females.

Methods
We used the Diet Quality Questionnaire to assess FV food group consumption among 600 Vietnamese (Hanoi) and 610 Nigerian (Ibadan) females before, during, and after the interventions (Vietnam: July 2020–September 2021; Nigeria: November 2020–December 2021). A FV score was compared between exposure groups with (mixed) count modeling. The trend in consumption of individual FV groups was analyzed with mixed logistic regression.

Results
The FV score was stable over time, and a small increase was observed after the intervention period especially in Nigeria and in urban Vietnam. A decrease in the total score was observed in periurban Vietnam. Fluctuations were detected in the probability of consumption of individual FV groups over time especially within the fruit groups, probably due to seasonal availability. The degree of exposure could not explain differences in FV intake.

Conclusions
We found a marginal increase in the proportion of females consuming FV during the interventions in both countries. The FV score appeared to be a simple, quick, and easy-to-use indicator for monitoring diversity, variety, and consumption.

Spatial market integration during a pandemic: Evidence from food markets in Nigeria

This paper uses comprehensive and long time series monthly food price data and a panel dyadic regression framework to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated policy responses on spatial market integration across a diverse set of food items in Nigeria. The empirical results reveal several important insights. First, we show that a significant slowdown in the speed of adjustment and price transmission occurred during the pandemic. For some food items, the speed of adjustment and, by implication, spatial market integration weakened by two- to-threefold after the outbreak of the pandemic. The effect was especially pronounced for perishable food items. Second, lockdown measures and the spread of the pandemic triggered additional dispersion in market prices across markets. For example, lockdown measures were associated with a 5%–10% reduction in the speed of readjustment toward long-term equilibrium. Third, additional underlying attributes of markets, including lack of access to digital infrastructure and distance between markets, exacerbated impacts associated with the pandemic. For instance, access to Internet service reduced the slowdown in the speed of adjustment caused by the pandemic, but longer distances between market pairs induced greater slowdown in the speed of price transmission. Our findings offer important insights for revitalizing the efficiency of food markets affected by the pandemic. The heterogenous impacts of the pandemic across value chains and markets reinforce the need to properly target post-pandemic recovery interventions and investments. Finally, we offer some insights to reduce the vulnerability of food and market systems to disruptions in future pandemics or similar phenomena that inhibit food marketing and trade.

Differences in peri-urban and rural farm production decisions amid policy change in Nigeria

Large language models and agricultural extension services

Climate change, income sources, crop mix, and input use decisions: Evidence from Nigeria

This paper combines panel data from nationally representative household-level surveys in Nigeria with long-term satellite-based spatial data on temperature and precipitation using geo-referenced information related to households. It aims to quantify the impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity, income shares, crop mix, and input use decisions. We measure climate change in harmful degree days, growing degree days, and changes in precipitation using long-term (30 year) changes in temperature and precipitation anomalies during the crop calendars. We find that, controlling for other factors, a 15% (one standard deviation) increase in change in harmful degree days leads to a decrease in agricultural productivity of 5.22% on average. Similarly, precipitation change has resulted in a significant and negative impact on agricultural productivity. Our results further show that the change in harmful degree days decreases the income share from crops and nonfarm self-employment, while it increases the income share from livestock and wage employment. Examining possible transmission channels for this effect, we find that farmers change their crop mix and input use to respond to climate changes, for instance reducing fertilizer use and seed purchases as a response to increases in extreme heat. Based on our findings, we suggest policy interventions that incentivize adoption of climate-resilient agriculture, such as small-scale irrigation and livelihood diversification. We also propose targeted pro-poor interventions, such as low-cost financing options for improving smallholders' access to climate-proof agricultural inputs and technologies, and policy measures to reduce the inequality of access to livelihood capital such as land and other productive assets.

Does entrepreneurship improve the livelihood of young people? Evidence from the NDE program beneficiaries in Kano state, Nigeria

Entrepreneurship has evolved into a valuable tool for facilitating job creation in response to Nigeria’s youth bulge and declining job opportunities in the formal sector. This study assessed the impact of entrepreneurship on youths’ livelihood, focusing on the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) program in Kano state. The study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods. A total of 266 respondents, including 148 young entrepreneurs and 118 non-entrepreneurs, were sampled using a multi-stage sampling technique, with Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) used to collect qualitative data from 25 youths. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and an Endogenous Switching Treatment Effect Regression (ESTER) model. The descriptive analysis showed that engagement in entrepreneurship was determined by age, having consistent income source, credit access, number of entrepreneurs in the household, access to entrepreneurship training, household size, and asset ownership. Even though entrepreneurs earned higher monthly income than non-entrepreneurs, their income was just slightly above the Nigerian minimum wage. Furthermore, asset ownership, access to credit, group membership, and access to training, all of which are strong predictors of entrepreneurship, were higher among entrepreneurs compared to non-entrepreneurs. The findings also revealed that entrepreneurs had better livelihood outcomes, as measured by income and self-assessed living condition, than non-entrepreneurs. Even though these outcomes could have resulted from other externalities, the empirical analysis helped to address such endogeneity, thereby attributing the outcome estimates solely to entrepreneurship. These results, therefore, show the relevance of entrepreneurship in alleviating poverty and generating better livelihood outcomes for young Nigerians.

Adoption of climate-resilient groundnut varieties increases agricultural production, consumption, and smallholder commercialization in West Africa

As part of the climate-smart agriculture approach, the adoption of climate resilient crop varieties has the potential to build farmers’ climate resilience but could also induce agricultural transformation in developing nations. We investigate the relationship between adoption of climate-resilient groundnut varieties and production, consumption, and smallholder commercialization using panel data from Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria. We find adoption of climate resilient groundnut varieties to increase smallholder production, consumption, and commercialization. The biggest adoption impact gains are observed under the sustained use of these climate-resilient varieties. We show that adoption benefits all households, but the biggest gains are found among smaller producers, suggesting that adoption is inclusive. Furthermore, we provide suggestive evidence that yield increases could explain commercialization, although household consumption also matters. We conclude that adoption of climate-resilient groundnut varieties can at least partially reduce production constraints and promote smallholder consumption and commercialization, with implications for agricultural transformation.

The gendered consequences of COVID-19 for internal migration

Scant evidence exists to identify the effects of the pandemic on migrant women and the unique barriers on employment they endure. We merge longitudinal data from mobile phone surveys with subnational data on COVID cases to examine whether women were left more immobile and vulnerable to health risks, relative to men, during the pandemic in Kenya and Nigeria. Each survey interviewed approximately 2000 men and women over three rounds (November 2020–January 2021, March–April 2021, November 2021–January 2022). Linear regression analysis reveals internal migrants are no more vulnerable to knowing someone in their network with COVID. Rather, rural migrant women in Kenya and Nigeria were less vulnerable to transmission through their network, perhaps related to the possible wealth accumulation from migration or acquired knowledge of averting health risks from previous destinations. Per capita exposure to COVID cases hinders the inter-regional migration of women in both countries. Exposure to an additional COVID case per 10,000 people resulted in a decline in women’s interregional migration by 6 and 2 percentage points in Kenya and Nigeria, respectively.

Climate-smart agriculture and food security: Cross-country evidence from West Africa

In the face of climate change and extreme weather events which continue to have significant impacts on agricultural production, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has emerged as one important entry point in reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and building climate resilience while ensuring increases in agricultural productivity with ensuing implications on food and nutrition security. We examine the relationship between CSA, land productivity (yields), and food security using a survey of farm households in Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria. To understand the correlates of the adoption of these CSA practices as well as the association between CSA, yields, and food security, we use switching regressions that account for multiple endogenous treatments. We find a positive association between the adoption of CSA practices and yields. This increase in yields translate to food security as we observe a positive association between CSA and food consumption scores. Although we show modest associations between the independent use of CSA practices such as adopting climate-smart groundnut varieties, cereal-groundnut intercropping, and the use of organic fertilizers, we find that bundling these practices may lead to greater yield and food security gains. Under the different combinations, the use of climate-smart groundnut varieties exhibit the strongest association with yields and food security. We also estimate actual-counterfactual relationships where we show that the adoption of CSA practices is not only beneficial to CSA adopters but could potentially be beneficial to non-CSA adopters should they adopt. These results have implications for reaching some of the sustainable development targets, especially the twin goals of increasing agricultural productivity and maintaining environmental sustainability.

The role of spatial inequalities on youth migration Decisions: empirical evidence from Nigeria

Measuring changes in diet deprivation: New indicators and methods

Improving diet quality is an emerging development policy priority. Existing indicators emphasize the cost and affordability of healthy diets but have not attempted to measure how far households are from ideal diets or how policies may nudge them closer to them. We propose a new Reference Diet Deprivation (ReDD) index, estimated from household consumption survey data, that measures the incidence, breadth, and depth of diet deprivation across multiple food groups. While informative as a standalone measure, we demonstrate how the ReDD index can be integrated into an economic model to examine changes in diet quality under different policy or external shocks. Our Nigerian case study shows that productivity growth in the dairy, pulse & nut, fruit, and red meat value chains have more potential than staple crops to reduce diet deprivation. While these findings have implications for food and agricultural policy prioritization in Nigeria, the study more importantly demonstrates the usefulness of the ReDD index for assessing diet quality and examining the drivers of dietary change when used in conjunction with a simulation model.

Antenatal care is associated with adherence to iron supplementation among pregnant women in selected low-middle-income-countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America & the Caribbean regions: Insights from Demographic and Health Surveys

Anaemia is a global public health problem affecting 800 million women and children globally. Anaemia is associated with perinatal mortality, child morbidity and mortality, mental development, immune competence, susceptibility to lead poisoning and performance at work. The objective of this article is to identify whether antenatal care-seeking was associated with the uptake of iron supplementation among pregnant women, adjusting for a range of covariates. This article used data from the cross-sectional recent Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of 12 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America & the Caribbean regions. The individual-level data from 273,144 women of reproductive age (15−49 years) were analysed from multi-country DHS. Multiple Logistic regression analyses were conducted using Predictive Analytics Software for Windows (PASW), Release 18.0. Receiving at least four antenatal care visits was significantly associated with the consumption of 90 or more iron-containing supplements in 12 low and middle income countries across three regions after adjusting for different household and respondent characteristics, while mass media exposure was found to be a significant predictor in India and Indonesia. Antenatal care seems to be the most important predictor of adherence to iron intake in the selected countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Caribbean regions.

Farmer advisory systems and pesticide use in legume-based systems in West Africa

Despite the adverse effects of pesticides on the environment and human health, they are a key ingredient in boosting agricultural productivity as a way of meeting global food demand. While global levels of pesticides are towering in high-income countries, pesticide use in many parts of Africa remains low, with significant impacts on agricultural productivity and food production. We use a rich longitudinal dataset to examine the relationship between farmer advisory systems and pesticide use in legume-based production systems in Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria. We find that farmers who are advised by private extension systems are approximately 8 % more likely to use pesticides at an extensive level. They also use pesticides more intensively (41 %). On the other hand, farmers advised by public extension systems are about 5 % more likely to extensively use pesticides. These farmers are observed to reduce the intensive use of pesticides by about 14 %. Furthermore, we also show that farmers advised by joint private-public extension systems are about 4 % more likely to use pesticides as well as reduce their intensity of use by approximately 11 %. At the various country levels, there exists significant heterogeneity in the relationship between advisory systems and pesticide use, suggesting that context matters. Of course, the pesticide regulatory systems and the institutional environments in these countries vary greatly. Given these findings, our study offers key entry and leveraging points for increasing pesticide use at levels that limit their environmental and human effects but may ascertain increased agricultural productivity and food production.

Domestic burdens amid COVID-19 and women’s mental health in middle-income Africa

This article analyzes two longitudinal datasets (October – December 2020; April 2021) of 1,000 and 900 women in Kenya and Nigeria, respectively, alongside in-depth qualitative interviews with women at risk of changes to time use, to study two pandemic issues: women’s substitution of paid for unpaid work and how these shifts compromise their mental health. Women devote more time to domestic care (30–38 percent), less time to employment (29–46 percent), and become unemployed (12–17 percent). A rise in domestic work is correlated with depressive (Nigeria) and anxiety symptoms (Kenya and Nigeria). Women with greater agency (Kenya) and fewer children (Nigeria) are less likely to report a domestic burden or loss in paid activities. Social protection programs may fill the void of assistance traditionally provided by informal networks in the short term, while campaigns shifting norms around household work may preserve women’s economic participation in the long term.

Conflict-induced shocks and household food security in Nigeria

Conflicts such as the Boko Haram insurgency, herder–farmer conflicts, and armed banditry attacks are major concerns affecting the livelihoods and food security of households in Nigeria. In this paper, firstly, we reviewed and synthesized the nature, spatial extent, and implications of conflicts on food security in Nigeria. Secondly, using survey data and econometric models, we examined the effects of conflict-induced shocks, such as forced migration and fatality on household food security indicators. Our review shows that the underlying causes for the majority of violent conflicts in Nigeria are linked to competition for productive resources, economic inequality, and ethnoreligious tensions. Review results also indicate spatial variations in the nature and severity of violent conflicts in Nigeria. While the Boko Haram insurgency is prominent in the North-East, the North-Central is mainly exposed to herder–farmer conflicts, and there is a high prevalence of communal conflicts in the South-South region of the country. In terms of gender dimensions, women are more vulnerable to conflicts and shoulder more social and economic burdens than men. From our empirical analysis, we found that conflict-induced shocks such as forced migration, fatality, abduction, and injury significantly exacerbate the severity of food insecurity and deteriorate the dietary diversity of households. Conflicts also affect agricultural investment decisions with a negative consequence on future agricultural productivity and food security. Based on the findings, the key policy suggestions include the need for tailored interventions to resolve state or region-specific conflicts, policy interventions on property/land rights and livestock management systems to address herder–farmer conflicts, and targeted investments in building the resilience capacity of households.

Solar-powered cold-storage and agrifood market modernization in Nigeria

Modern cooling technologies that utilize renewable energy sources have been increasingly recognized as promising tools to address various challenges emerging in progressively complex agrifood systems in developing countries. Knowledge gaps about the actual impacts of these technologies in developing countries remain, especially in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA). This study fills this knowledge gap by providing evidence from the evaluation of recent interventions in northeast Nigeria in which seven small solar-powered cold storages were installed across seven horticulture markets. Combinations of difference-in-difference (DID) and variants of propensity-score-based methods suggest that cold storage significantly increased horticulture sales volumes and revenues of market agents. Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that increased net revenues for market agents may be sufficiently large to recoup cold storage investments and operating costs within a reasonable time frame. Using cold storage also reduced the share of food loss. It lengthened the products' shelf-life while raising prices received by market agents and farmers, which were associated with improved product quality, expanded value-adding activities by market agents, and increased use of advance payments.

Assessing food security among young farmers in Africa: Evidence from Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda

Food insecurity remains a serious challenge for many households in Africa and the situation is even more prevalent among young people. However, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on youth food security status in Africa. We assessed the level and determinants of food security among young farmers in Africa. We adopted a multi-stage sampling technique to select 400, 429, and 606 young farmers in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda, respectively. Individual food consumption was assessed following a 7 days recall method. The Food Consumption Score, which combines dietary diversity and consumption frequency was used to assess food security status while the determinants of food security were identified using a logistic regression model. Results suggest low dietary diversity across the three countries. Also, the majority of the respondents had an unacceptable food consumption score, suggesting that despite being food producers, young farmers are still food insecure. The odds of being food secure was positively determined by access to extension services, participation in the ENABLE TAAT business incubation programme, and access to market information but, negatively by access to credit, number of employees, Covid-19 pandemic, and location. Additionally, the food security status of young female farmers was positively influenced by age, suggesting that younger youths are less food secure compared to older ones. These results suggest that more efforts should be directed towards improving the food security of young African farmers and that policy- and programme-level interventions should support access to extension services, market information, and land. Additionally, more investments should be directed towards developing need-based agribusiness incubation programmes with an effort to scale existing programmes beyond the regular one-time period.

COVID‑19, food insecurity and dietary diversity of households: Survey evidence from Nigeria

The policy measures of the government of Nigeria to restrain the spread of COVID-19, particularly in the initial three months (April – June 2020) led to significant disruptions to household livelihoods and food security. We investigate the effects of COVID-19 on food security and dietary diversity of households; focusing on the pathways through which income loss, endowments of wealth, social capital, and safety net programs moderate the severity of households’ food security and dietary diversity. Primary data obtained from a telephone survey of 1,031 Nigerian households were analyzed using ordered logit and negative binomial models. Our results show that income losses due to the COVID-19 restrictive measures had pushed households into a more severe food insecurity and less diverse nutritional outcomes. Regarding wealth effects, livestock ownership significantly cushioned households from falling into a more severe food insecurity amid the pandemic. We found that because of the pandemic’s indiscriminate effect across communities, the potential of social capital as an informal support mechanism might have been eroded to enable households to cope with shocks. Furthermore, safety net programs by the government and NGOs did not provide significant protection to households from falling into severe food insecurity and malnutrition amid the pandemic. We suggest three policy propositions – prioritize investment in local job creation to curb income loss; build the wealth base of households (e.g., land tenure security or livestock) to enhance resilience to shocks; and target safety nets and other social support programs spatially, temporally, and across social groups to enhance the effectiveness of such programs amid shocks.

Community health educators and maternal health: Experimental evidence from northern Nigeria

Nigerians in poverty consume little wheat and wheat self-sufficiency programmes will not protect them from price shocks related to the Russia–Ukraine conflict

The Russia–Ukraine conflict has prompted calls for resource diversification and wheat self-sufficiency programmes in import-dependent regions. Here we show that this approach would have minimal impact on poor Nigerians as wheat constitutes only 4% of their total food consumption and 8% of their starchy staple consumption. In contrast, millets, rice, cassava and tubers are ten times more important—highlighting the need for careful consideration of country-context consumption patterns in response to external food system shocks.

Stressors and resilience within the cassava value chain in Nigeria: preferred cassava variety traits and response strategies of men and women to inform breeding

This study investigated the trait preferences for cassava in the context of climate change and conflict stressors among value-chain actors in Nigeria to strengthen social inclusion and the community-resilience outcomes from breeding programs. Multi-stage sampling procedures were used to select and interview male and female value-chain participants in the Osun, Benue and Abia States. The results indicated that farmers preferred cassava traits such as drought tolerance, early bulking, multiple-product use and in-ground storability to strengthen resilience. Climate change and challenges related to social change shaped the response strategies from both genders, and influenced trait preferences, including the early re-emergence of cassava leaves, stems that had ratooning potential, and especially the root milking that was important among female respondents. The major response strategies employed by men included frequent farm visits to prevent theft and engaging in non-agricultural livelihoods. Those employed by women included backyard farming, early harvesting, having preferences for food with fewer processing steps, and depending on remittances. The resilience capacity was higher for men than for women due to their better access to assets, as well as their abilities to relocate their farms and out-migrate in search of other livelihoods. Considering gendered cassava traits, and enhancing their resilience and response strategies, can complement efforts to make breeding more socially inclusive, resilient, and anticipatory to future challenges created by climate and related social changes.

Do soil and water conservation practices influence crop productivity and household welfare? Evidence from rural Nigeria

One of the most serious challenges threatening agricultural sustainability in Nigeria is land degradation. Although this issue has received little attention, soil and water conservation practices have been identified as a possible pathway out of the potential problems posed by land degradation. Therefore, the central research question that this paper tries to address is the following: Do adoption of soil and water conservation (SWC) practices affect crop productivity and household welfare? This paper uses data collected by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) from maize farmers in rural Nigeria. We usedemploy the propensity score matching (PSM), inverse probability weighting adjusted regression model (IPWRA) approach, and the linear regression with endogenous treatment effect (LRETE) model to incorporate the typologies of SWC practices, and tested how the model affects crop productivity and household welfare. Additionally, multinomial logit was used to estimate the factors influencing the decision to adopt single and multiple SWC practices. The estimates show that education, age of the household head, access to credit, experience of drought, soil fertility, and occupational stress contribute to the decision to adopt SWC practices. The casual effect estimates reveal that both single and multiple adoptions of SWC practices had a positive and significant relationship with the crop productivity and welfare of the adopters. The results show that the adoption of combined SWC practices has a higher impact on crop productivity and welfare than single SWC practices. For instance, the adoption of a combination of three SWC practices was found to increase crop productivity and household welfare by 27.55% and 38.23%, respectively versus 13.91% and 15.11% in the case of single SWC practices. The study suggests that profile-raising agenda and efforts that focus on promoting the adoption of combination of SWC practices should be designed and implemented to enhance crop productivity and hence the welfare of the maize farming households in rural Nigeria.

Pollinator deficits, food consumption, and consequences for human health: A modeling study

Background: Animal pollination supports agricultural production for many healthy foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes, that provide key nutrients and protect against noncommunicable disease. Today, most crops receive suboptimal pollination because of limited abundance and diversity of pollinating insects. Animal pollinators are currently suffering owing to a host of direct and indirect anthropogenic pressures: land-use change, intensive farming techniques, harmful pesticides, nutritional stress, and climate change, among others.
Objectives: We aimed to model the impacts on current global human health from insufficient pollination via diet.

Public agriculture investment and food security in ECOWAS

Public agriculture expenditure is a significant growth catalyst. However, evaluating the impact of public agriculture expenditure on food security remains scanty. This paper assessed the impact of public expenditure on food security in nine ECOWAS countries using four indicators of food security, one in each dimension (availability, access, utilization and stability). Using a fixed-effect generalized least squares model the study found that public agricultural expenditure has improved. However, this has not translated to an automatic improvement in food security. The levels of stunting and undernourishment were still high in the nine ECOWAS countries. A one-unit increase in public agriculture expenditure was associated with a 0.2% reduction in undernourishment andan improved average dietary energy supply adequacy between 2000 and 2016. The paper concluded that the nine ECOWAS countries have made considerable progress in improving food availability, that public agriculture expenditure by share has increased in the nine ECOWAS countries since the inception of CAADP, with several countries meeting the 10% target of spending on agriculture for several years and that public agricultural expenditure had a positive impact on food accessibility and availability. The analysis could be replicated in the design of national food security investment plans and help identify strategies to accelerate food security and nutrition improvements in African countries.

Transforming Nigerian food systems through their backbones: Lessons from a decade of staple crop biofortification programing

This article presents the evolution of the biofortification program in Nigeria over the last decade and the role of interdisciplinary research in informing cost-effective, efficient, and inclusive development; implementation; and scaling of this program. Launched in 2011 to improve Nigeria’s food systems to deliver accessible and affordable nutrients through commonly consumed staples, the Nigeria biofortification program was implemented through an effective partnership between the CGIAR and public, private, and civil society sectors at federal, state, and local levels. By the end of 2021, several biofortified varieties of Nigeria’s 2 main staples, namely cassava and maize, were officially released for production by smallholders, with several biofortified varieties of other key staples (including pearl millet, rice, and sorghum) either under testing or in the release pipeline. In 2021, the program was estimated to benefit 13 million Nigerians consuming biofortified cassava and maize varieties. The evidence on the nutritional impact, consumer and farmer acceptance, and cost-effective scalability of biofortified crops documented by the program resulted in the integration of biofortified crops in several key national public policies and social protection programs; private seed and food company products/investments, as well as in humanitarian aid.

Subnational public expenditures, short-term household-level welfare, and economic flexibility: Evidence from Nigeria

Public expenditures (PEs) are critical for key public-sector functions that contribute to the development and welfare improvements. PE for agriculture, as well as social-sector PE, such as health, education, and social welfare, have been considered instrumental for income growth, poverty reduction, investment, nutritional outcomes, and resilience. However, direct evidence in developing countries like Nigeria has been relatively limited. We fill this knowledge gap by estimating the effects of subnational PE shares for agriculture, health, education, and social welfare, as well as PE size, on household-level outcomes, using nationally representative panel household data and district––as well as state-level PE data in Nigeria, and a production-function-based indicator of “flexibility.” We find that greater PE shares for agriculture, health, and social welfare, conditional on PE size, have positive effects on consumption, poverty reduction, and nonfarm business. A greater PE share for agriculture, unlike the PE shares for health or social welfare, also enhances household dietary diversity and economic flexibility between farming and nonfarm activities, an indicator of economic resilience. These effects appear to materialize through the positive impacts on agriculture. Such multidimensional benefits of greater PE for agriculture are worth attention in countries like Nigeria, which tends to allocate a lower PE share for agriculture compared to other comparable countries in Africa and elsewhere.

Measuring women's empowerment: Gender and time-use agency in Benin, Malawi and Nigeria

Time use, or how women and men allocate their time, is an important element of empowerment processes. To extend this area of study, this article proposes and explores the concept of time-use agency, which shifts the focus from the amount of time individuals spend on activities to the strategic choices they make about how to allocate their time. It draws on 92 semi-structured interviews from three qualitative studies in Benin, Malawi and Nigeria to explore and compare the salience of time-use agency as a component of empowerment. The article finds that time-use agency is salient among women and men and dictates how they can make and act upon strategic decisions related to how they allocate their time. It also finds that time-use agency is tied to other dimensions of agency beyond decision making and ways of exerting influence in the household. Its findings highlight that women's capacity to exercise time-use agency is conditional on gendered power dynamics and other barriers within households, which together are reciprocally related to local gender norms that dictate how women should spend their time.

From food price crisis to an equitable food system

In 2022, the world is experiencing the greatest cost of living crisis in a generation.1 Crises have always highlighted inequities in our societies. With food prices at near record levels globally, rapidly rising inflation, and economic instability, many people living in situations of constraint have no choice but to skip meals, reduce the amount they eat, prepare meals with fewer nutritious foods, and buy cheaper, starchy staples and ultra-processed foods.2, 3 The implications for health inequalities are dire: increased dietary disparities will worsen food insecurity, undernutrition, obesity, and diet-related disease among those who are struggling most.

Land tenure security and preferences to dispute resolution pathways among landholders in Nigeria

Understanding drivers of stunting reduction in Nigeria from 2003 to 2018: A regression analysis

Nigeria is a high burden country for stunting. Stunting reduction has been slow and characterized by unequal progress across the 36 states and federal capital territory of the country. This study aimed to assess the changes in prevalence of stunting and growth determinants from 2003 to 2018, identify factors that predicted the change in stunting, and project future stunting prevalence if these predicted determinants improve. Trend and linear decomposition analyses of growth outcomes and determinants were conducted using 2003, 2008, 2013, and 2018 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey data. Pooled data included 57,507 children 0 to 59 months old. Findings show that stunting and severe stunting significantly reduced from 43 to 37% and 23% to 17%, respectively (p < 0.001), between 2003 and 2018. Disturbingly, height-for-age z-scores at birth significantly decreased, indicating risks of potential future stunting increase. Improvements in nine stunting determinants (maternal body mass index, maternal height, ≥ 4 antenatal care visits, health facility delivery, reduced child illnesses, asset index, maternal education, paternal education, and preceding birth interval) predicted stunting reductions in children 0–59 months. Few of these nine determinants improved in subpopulations with limited stunting progress. Intra-sectoral and multisectoral coordination were potentially inadequate; 12% of children had received all of three selected health sector interventions along a continuum of care and 6% had received all of six selected multisector interventions. Forward looking projections suggest that increased efforts to improve the nine predictors of stunting change can reduce under-five stunting in Nigeria to ≤ 27% in the short term.

Sex-disaggregated agricultural extension and weather variability in Africa south of the Sahara

Climate change and extreme weather shocks pose serious threats to a number of agricultural outcomes, including agricultural production, productivity, and income, especially when households depend heavily on this activity. Agricultural extension and rural advisory services are key instruments in promoting technical change, advancing agricultural productivity growth and, ultimately, improving farm livelihoods, and are expected to mitigate the negative effects of climate change and extreme weather shocks. Their mitigation effects, however, may vary depending on the sex of the recipient. This paper investigates the role of sex-disaggregated agricultural extension recipients in contexts where agricultural performance of farm households is affected by weather variability. To this aim, we match multiple rounds of panel microdata from the nationally representative, consumption-based Living Standards Measurement Study -Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), collected in four sub-Saharan African countries, with remote sensing data on biophysical dimensions over a long-term horizon as well as year-specific weather shocks. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a micro-level dataset with individual-level information on agricultural extension services’ recipients has been assembled and examined to investigate the effects of extreme weather shocks and climate change. Applying panel data econometric estimators, the study finds that agricultural extension and advisory services translate into higher agricultural performance of farm households where women are also among the beneficiaries, as compared to non-beneficiaries and households where beneficiaries are men only. Moreover, these services can mitigate the negative effects of weather variability and climate change, controlling for country and time fixed effects as well as holding all other variables constant. These results call for national and international policies and interventions strengthening rural advisory services, especially targeted to women in settings where household livelihoods are predominantly agriculture-based and weather variability and shocks are expected to negatively affect farming activities.

Opportunities for orphan crops: Expected economic benefits from biotechnology

An enabling, evidence-based decision-making framework is critical to support agricultural biotechnology innovation, and to ensure farmers’ access to genetically modified (GM) crops, including orphan crop varieties. A key element, and often a challenge in the decision-making process, involves the balancing of identified potential risks with expected economic benefits from GM crops. The latter is particularly challenging in the case of orphan crops, for which solid economic data is scarce. To address this challenge, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in collaboration with local economists analyzed the expected economic benefits to farmers and consumers from the adoption of GM crops in 5 sub-Saharan African countries. This paper focuses on case studies involving insect-resistant cowpea in Nigeria and Ghana; disease-resistant cassava in Uganda and Tanzania; and disease-resistant banana in Uganda. Estimations from these case studies show substantial economic benefits to farmers and consumers from the timely adoption and planting in farmers’ fields of GM orphan crops. Our analysis also shows how the benefits would significantly be reduced by regulatory or other delays that affect the timely release of these crops. These findings underscore the importance of having an enabling policy environment and regulatory system—covering, among other elements, biosafety and food/feed safety assessment, and varietal release registration—that is efficient, predictable, and transparent to ensure that the projected economic benefits are delivered and realized in a timely manner.

Food consumption–production response to agricultural policy and macroeconomic change in Nigeria

Achieving agricultural transformation and farmer resilience in resource‐dependent developing countries like Nigeria is complicated by volatile macroeconomic conditions, which disrupt agricultural supply chains through income, foreign exchange, and risk‐mitigation effects. This study examines the food consumption–production linkage in Nigeria at a time when the national Agricultural Transformation Agenda was implemented and an economic crisis was unfolding. Many farm households responded to expected shocks by planting more staple foods for own consumption at the expense of agricultural commercialization, income growth, and dietary diversification. A policy initiative to improve access to modern farm inputs appeared to mitigate these adverse effects.

Misperceiving and misreporting input quality: implications for input use and productivity

Farmers in developing countries routinely misperceive or misreport input quality for various reasons, which introduces substantial measurement error in farm survey data. In this paper, we motivate and illustrate, both analytically and empirically, the inferential and behavioral implications of misperception and misreporting using a unique crop variety identification data from Nigeria. Using a non-parametric framework for testing the presence of measurement error, we show that crop variety misclassification in our data is mostly driven by misperception. We then demonstrate the inferential challenges of treating misperception as misreporting and vice versa. Finally, we show that misperception induces crowding-in(out) of complementary agricultural inputs but these misperception-driven input allocations may not necessarily be yield-enhancing. As such, rectifying misperception by addressing agricultural input market imperfections may improve farmers’ investment choices and productivity outcomes.

Agricultural credit constraints in smallholder farming in developing countries: Evidence from Nigeria

The agricultural sector in developing countries like Nigeria is characterized by low productivity, driven partly by low use of modern agricultural technologies. Poor access to credit is seen as a key barrier to adoption of these technologies. Policy discourses and literature often associate credit constraints by smallholders with supply-side factors such as inadequate access to sources of rural finance or high costs of borrowing. However, demand-side factors, such as smallholders’ risk-averse behavior, high transaction costs and information asymmetry predominate in rural areas of developing countries equally play important roles in the functioning of rural credit market. Using a nationally representative LSMS-ISA data from 5000 smallholders in Nigeria and seemingly unrelated econometric models, we examine the nature of rural credit, the factors affecting rural credit, and the effects of credit constraints on adoption of four agricultural technologies – inorganic fertilizer, improved seed, agrochemicals, and mechanization. Contrary to policy discourses focusing on supply-side factors of rural credit, we found that demand-side factors are equally important for improving access and utilization of rural credit. On the supply side, inadequate collateral is the key constraint; hence supply-side policies should focus on enhancing smallholders’ capacity to possess bankable collateral, such as land title or assets. On the demand-side, interventions such as crop insurance, information access and extension services are needed to increase credit access, technology adoption, and smallholder's agricultural productivity.

Advocacy organizations and nutrition policy in Nigeria: Identifying metrics for enhanced efficacy

Advocacy organizations have played a significant role in the field of nutrition in recent years. However, why are some advocates viewed as more effective than others? This paper derives metrics for assessing advocacy efficacy by first drawing on key insights from the nutrition and public policy scholarship. A set of metrics is proposed to capture the constitutive elements of three concepts that often emerge as critical from that literature: organizational capacity, strong networks and external outreach. Based on a survey of 66 nutrition stakeholders in Nigeria, including at the federal level and within the states of Kaduna and Kano, the metrics are then applied to a set of advocacy organizations within the country. We show that the metrics can provide insights into why some advocacy organizations are perceived as more effective than others by policymakers. Specifically, we find that geographical reach, the share of budget allocated to advocacy, action plans with clear objectives, large networks that include government and non-governmental policy champions, multiple media and dissemination outputs and numerous training events collectively increase nutrition advocates’ visibility to, and influence on, policymakers. Although the metrics are subject to further testing in other country settings and need to be interpreted based on a country’s underlying policy system, they offer a useful starting point for more systematic, comparative advocacy analysis and learning within the nutrition field and beyond.

Are consumers in developing countries willing to pay for aquaculture food safety certification? Evidence from a field experiment in Nigeria

Many developing countries face challenges in managing food safety risks associated with consumption of animal-source foods. Efforts to address these challenges increasingly recognize the role of certification in agri-food systems governance. Understanding consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for food safety certification is fundamental to determining the appropriate design and implementation of programs to reduce the burden of foodborne illnesses in developing countries. To address this need, we implemented a framed field experiment with consumers of eight farm-raised African Catfish (Clarias gariepinus) products varying in certification status (safety certified versus uncertified) and product forms (live versus smoked) to examine their WTP for food safety certification in Nigeria. We applied a mixed-effects model to account for the hierarchical structure of the data with one participant entering multiple bids, and estimated a model with participant fixed effects as a robustness check. We found that consumers were willing to pay between 3.1% and 18.8% more for fish certified as safe compared to uncertified fish. Furthermore, there was an asymmetry in food safety certification valuation, with consumers paying significant premiums for high-value larger-sized certified live and smoked catfish, but not smaller-sized certified live and smoked catfish. The results are robust to a specification in which consumer fixed effects are included. Our findings suggest there exists consumer demand for certification programs to upgrade the food safety standards of higher-value fish products in Nigeria's domestic markets. Lower-value fish products typically consumed by lower-income consumers show less potential for certification. Alternative safety regulation is needed to ensure safety practices for low-end fish products.

Household livelihood diversification in rural Africa

Diversification is a common livelihood strategy for rural households in developing countries, with diversification being either a choice or necessity depending on individual household contexts. Using two waves of data (from 2009 and 2011) for 1773 households from eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa, we examined livelihood diversification and its drivers. We examined livelihood diversification by considering household involvement in three livelihood activities: crop, livestock, and non-farm. Results indicated that 40% of households conducted all three livelihood activities, but there was heterogeneity in diversity levels. We used a correlated random effects model to identify the factors that pushed or pulled households to diversify their activities. Access to non-agricultural credit was positively associated with livelihood diversity as it can catalyze involvement in non-farm activities. Drought had a negative effect on livelihood diversity. Area of crop land had a positive effect on the number of livelihood activities conducted. We found that 53% of households added or removed at least one livelihood activity between 2009 and 2011, and the addition of non-farm activities was the most common change. Our results demonstrated the dynamic nature of livelihoods and importance of shocks (such as drought) and resource endowments (land) in understanding household livelihood diversification.

Mechanization, digitalization, and rural youth-stakeholder perceptions on three mega-topics for agricultural transformation in four African countries

Mechanization, digitalization, and rural youth engagement are central to African agricultural transformation. Each of these topics is associated with debates on opportunities, risks, and appropriate policy actions, which become visible in international research discourses and policy fora. In contrast, little is known about the viewpoints of national stakeholders. This paper explores the viewpoints of 195 respondents from different stakeholders categories in Benin, Kenya, Nigeria, and Mali. The results reveal hitherto neglected aspects, e.g., the role of animal traction, the continued appeal of state-led mechanization, and data sovereignty concerns. Gender, age, and education influence the viewpoints on some topics. Paying attention to local stakeholders can help to choose and design the most promising policies/programs and ensure their implementation on the ground.

Food insecurity and COVID-19 risk in low- and middle-income countries

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted social distancing, workplace closures, and restrictions on mobility and trade that had cascading effects on economic activity, food prices, and employment in low- and middle-income countries. Using longitudinal data from Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria covering a period from October 2020 to April 2021, the paper assesses whether knowledge of a person infected with COVID-19 is associated with food insecurity, job loss and business closures, and coping strategies to smooth consumption. The likelihood of households to experience food insecurity at the extensive and intensive margins increased among those who knew an infected person in Bangladesh and Kenya.

Improving livelihoods through postharvest loss management: Evidence from Nigeria

Coherence for nutrition: Insights from nutrition-relevant policies and programs in Burkina Faso and Nigeria

There is consensus that coherence is necessary for implementing effective and sustainable approaches to tackle malnutrition. We look at whether policies and programmes provide a coherent pathway to address nutrition priorities and if programmes are designed to deliver interventions aligned to the nutrition agenda in Nigeria and Burkina Faso. A systematic desk review was performed on nutrition-relevant and programme documents, obtained through grey literature searches and expert recommendations. We developed a framework with an impact pathway structure that includes five process steps, which was used to guide coding, data reduction and synthesis and structure the analysis. We assessed internal coherence along process steps within a given document and external coherence across process steps for explicitly linked policy/programme pairs. The majority of policies and programmes had partial internal coherence for both countries. The identification of relevant nutrition interventions to address challenges and reach objectives was the strongest connection within policies (16 out of 45 had complete coherence) while among programmes the strongest connection was coverage indicators that measure interventions (9 out of 21 had complete coherence). Eight programmes explicitly referenced at least one nutrition-relevant with a total of 16 linked policy/programme pairs (13 pairs for Burkina Faso and 3 for Nigeria) across health, nutrition, agriculture, and social focus areas. However, none of the linked pairs were assessed to have complete external coherence suggesting that priorities at level are not fully realised nor translated at programme level. This study offers a new approach for assessment of and program coherence and specifically examines and program linkages. We conclude that improved leadership on country priority setting and better alignment for nutrition within and across sectors is needed to enhance the effectiveness of nutrition investments.

Polygynous family structure and child undernutrition in Nigeria

COVID-19-induced disruptions of school feeding services exacerbate food insecurity in Nigeria

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and associated lockdown measures have disrupted educational and nutrition services globally. Understanding the overall and differential impacts of disruption of nutritional (school feeding) services is critical for designing effective post-COVID-19 recovery policies. Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the impact of COVID-19-induced disruption of school feeding services on household food security in Nigeria. Methods: We combined household-level, pre-COVID-19 in-person survey data with postpandemic phone survey data, along with local government area (LGA)–level information on access to school feeding services. We used a difference-in-difference approach and examined temporal trends in the food security of households with and without access to school feeding services. Of the sampled households, 83% live in LGAs with school feeding services. Results: Households experienced an increase in food insecurity in the post-COVID-19 survey round. The share of households skipping a meal increased by 47 percentage points (95% CI: 44–50 percentage points). COVID-19-induced disruptions of school feeding services increased households' experiences of food insecurity, increasing the probability of skipping a meal by 9 percentage points (95% CI: 3–17 percentage points) and the likelihood of going without eating for a whole day by 3 percentage points (95% CI: 2–11 percentage points). Disruption of school feeding services is associated with a 0.2 SD (95% CI: 0.04–0.41 SD) increase in the food insecurity index. Households residing in states experiencing strict lockdown measures reported further deterioration in food insecurity. Single mothers and poorer households experienced relatively larger deteriorations in food security due to disruption of school feeding services. Conclusions: Our findings show that COVID-19-induced disruptions in educational and nutritional services have exacerbated households’ food insecurity in Nigeria. These findings can inform the designs of immediate and medium-term responses, including the designs of social protection policies and alternative programs to substitute nutritional services affected by the pandemic.

Stories of change in nutrition from Africa and Asia: An introduction to a special series in food security

Malnutrition in all its forms continues to be a massive global challenge, and the past decade has seen a growing political attention to addressing malnutrition in different contexts. What has been largely missing so far, and is in growing demand from countries, is tangible, practical and rigorous insights and lessons (from other countries or contexts) on how to translate this burgeoning political momentum into effective policies and programme implementation strategies – and ultimately impact on the ground. This new climate of learning from experience and evidence led to the launch in 2015 of the Stories of Change initiative. This series presents a second wave of studies from six countries (Tanzania, Rwanda, Vietnam, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Nigeria,) and three Indian states (Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu). These provide clear evidence combined with compelling narratives on what drives success in addressing all forms of malnutrition – evidence that is necessary for turning global momentum into actual results on the ground. This introductory Opinion is published with the first set of papers. It will be followed by a thorough synthesis of papers as a conclusion of the Series. We hope that the lessons embedded in these Stories of Change will inform and inspire the deliberations and outcomes of the UN Food Systems Summit and the second Nutrition for Growth Summit to be held this year, and the actions of those in the global food and nutrition system working for positive change.

Income variability, evolving diets, and elasticity estimation of demand for processed foods in Nigeria

We present evidence on evolving dietary patterns in Nigeria using six rounds of household consumption data from the Nigerian General Household Survey panel between 2011 and 2016. First, following conventional definitions in the literature, we show that Nigeria has not shown any aggregate increase in consumption of highly processed foods over this period, contrary to patterns observed elsewhere in the region. In fact, consumption of highly processed foods at home has declined, while food consumed away from home, often assumed to be highly processed, has risen substantially. We then show that estimates of food expenditure elasticities of different food types are highly sensitive to different estimation approaches and raise concerns about some frequently used methods in the literature. In the absence of credible exogenous variation, we argue for the importance of panel methods and household fixed effects to control for time invariant factors likely to confound cross‐sectional estimates. Finally, we examine semiparametric Engel curves for different food groups and find that apparent curvature in the relationships between food budget shares and overall food expenditure levels in the raw data become nearly linear when removing variation explained by time‐invariant household factors.

Socio-economic drivers of food security among rural households in Nigeria: Evidence from smallholder maize farmers

Issues relating to food availability, accessibility/affordability, and food utilization remain paramount among different stakeholders such as policymakers and academics. Using data from 250 maize farming households in Nigeria, the study used Foster–Greer–Thorbecke and probit regression model to investigate the factors determining households food security. The food insecurity measure shows that 23.2% points of the households express the incidence of food insecurity while 5.5% points and 1.8% points were found to have depth and severity of food insecurity, respectively. After controlling for households’ socio-economic and demographic characteristics, the probit regression model suggested that, among others, value of output sold, education, credit access and participation in government safety nets program significantly influenced food security among the maize farmers in the study area. Based on our findings, effort should be intensified to enhance the productivity of land through improved production practices. There should be high-level awareness that will increase farmers’ participation in safety net programs. Thus, government at all levels (local, state, and federal) should have adequate budget allocation to this course in order to improve the livelihood outcomes of the farming households.

International comparison of extension agent objectives and construction of a typology

Does economic shocks influence household's healthcare expenditure? Evidence from rural Nigeria

Health is profoundly influenced by several factors outside the traditional realm of healthcare. This paper employed a two-step Heckman selectivity model to examine factors influencing the decision to spend on health and the effects of economic shocks on health expenditure. The results from the first stage shows that the likelihood of spending on health increased with age, education, income, and decreases if the household is living in the northern region of Nigeria and uses mosquito bed-net. The findings from the second stage estimation show that a fall in the price of food items, an increase in the price of inputs for household enterprises and loss of job are the significant shocks that affect household health expenditure. Based on these findings, this study concluded that fall in the prices of major food items consumed within the household increased income available for health care among the farmers. Going forward, the study recommends the provision of holistic health-economic-welfare interventions for the marginalized rural populace in Nigeria.

COVID-19 and food security: Panel data evidence from Nigeria

This paper combines pre-pandemic face-to-face survey data with follow up phone surveys collected in April-May 2020 to examine the implication of the COVID-19 pandemic on household food security and labor market participation outcomes in Nigeria. To examine these relationships and implications, we exploit spatial variation in exposure to COVID-19 related infections and lockdown measures, along with temporal differences in our outcomes of interest, using a difference-in-difference approach. We find that households exposed to higher COVID-19 case rates or mobility lockdowns experience a significant increase in measures of food insecurity. Examining possible transmission channels for this effect, we find that the spread of the pandemic is associated with significant reductions in labor market participation. For instance, lockdown measures are associated with 6–15 percentage points increase in households' experience of food insecurity. Similarly, lockdown measures are associated with 12 percentage points reduction in the probability of participation in non-farm business activities. These lockdown measures have limited implications on wage-related activities and farming activities. In terms of food security, households relying on non-farm businesses, poorer households, and those living in remote and conflicted-affected zones have experienced relatively larger deteriorations in food security. These findings can help inform immediate and medium-term responses, including social protection policies aiming at ameliorating the impacts of the pandemic.

Combining household and price data to target food marketing interventions in Nigeria

Scaling up delivery of biofortified staple food crops globally: Paths to nourishing millions

Background: Micronutrient deficiencies affect over one quarter of the world’s population. Biofortification is an evidence-based nutrition strategy that addresses some of the most common and preventable global micronutrient gaps and can help improve the health of millions of people. Since 2013, HarvestPlus and a consortium of collaborators have made impressive progress in the enrichment of staple crops with essential micronutrients through conventional plant breeding. Objective: To review and highlight lessons learned from multiple large-scale delivery strategies used by HarvestPlus to scale up biofortification across different country and crop contexts. Results: India has strong public and private sector pearl millet breeding programs and a robust commercial seed sector. To scale-up pearl millet, HarvestPlus established partnerships with public and private seed companies, which facilitated the rapid commercialization of products and engagement of farmers in delivery activities. In Nigeria, HarvestPlus stimulated the initial acceptance and popularization of vitamin A cassava using a host of creative approaches, including “crowding in” delivery partners, innovative promotional programs, and development of intermediate raw material for industry and novel food products. In Uganda, orange sweet potato (OSP) is a traditional subsistence crop. Due to this, and the lack of formal seed systems and markets, HarvestPlus established a network of partnerships with community-based nongovernmental organizations and vine multipliers to popularize and scale-up delivery of OSP. Conclusions: Impact of biofortification ultimately depends on the development of sustainable markets for biofortified seeds and products. Results illustrate the need for context-specific, innovative solutions to promote widespread adoption.

Youth migration decisions in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Satellite‐based empirical evidence from Nigeria

This article examines the implications of urban growth on youth migration decisions in Nigeria. We use night light intensity data combined with Living Standards Measurement Study‐Integrated Surveys on Agriculture data, as an indicator of urban growth and associated economic opportunities. Employing alternative econometric approaches that exploit the spatial and temporal differences in urban growth as proxied by night light intensity, we find that urban growth in potential migrant destinations encourages youth migration. We also find heterogeneous responses to urban growth among various groups of youth as well as varying responses to different types of migration. Broadly, women and those youth with more education are more likely to migrate, while those in households with livestock are less likely to migrate. Often, however, the effects are complex and varied. For example, land and physical asset ownership encourage temporary migration; but greater land ownership discourages permanent migration, while physical assets have insignificant effects. Our results from Nigeria show that makers concerned about rural–urban youth exodus should adopt a differentiated, in terms of targets, and multidimensional approach to reap the benefits of urbanization while avoiding its negative consequences.

Does agricultural cooperative membership impact technical efficiency of maize production in Nigeria: an analysis correcting for biases from observed and unobserved attributes

The formation of agricultural cooperatives has been widely promoted as an agricultural development policy initiative to help smallholder farmers cope with multiple production and marketing challenges. Using a nationally representative survey dataset of smallholder maize producers from rural Nigeria, this study assesses the impact of agricultural cooperative membership on technical efficiency (TE). We based our estimation approach on the combination of a newly developed sample selection stochastic production frontier model with propensity score matching to control for possible selectivity biases from both observables and unobservables. We estimate stochastic meta-frontiers to examine TE differences between cooperative members and non-members. Our results reveal that TE levels of members are consistently higher than that of non-members. This calls for continued policy incentives targeted at encouraging farmers to form as well as participate in agricultural cooperatives.

Variability in agricultural productivity and rural household consumption inequality: Evidence from Nigeria and Uganda

This paper uses multiple rounds of panel data to assess the distributional implications of the variability in agricultural productivity in Nigeria and Uganda. It uses both a conventional decomposition and a regression‐based inequality decomposition approach to estimate the impact of climate‐induced variability in agricultural productivity. To mitigate the endogeneity associated with unobserved time‐invariant and time‐variant household fixed effects, we use rainfall shocks as a proxy for estimating the exogenous variability in agricultural productivity that affects consumption. Results suggest that a 10% increase in the variability of agricultural productivity tends to decrease household consumption by 38 and 52% on average for Nigeria and Uganda, respectively. Controlling for other factors, variability in agricultural productivity contributed to between 25% and 43% of consumption inequality between 2010 and 2015 for Nigeria; and 16% and 31% of consumption inequality between 2009 and 2011 for Uganda. We also show that variability in agricultural productivity increases changes in consumption inequality over time.

Daily consumption of pro-vitamin A biofortified (yellow) cassava improves serum retinol concentrations in preschool children in Nigeria: A randomized controlled trial

Background: Vitamin A deficiency is a public health problem in sub-Saharan Africa. Pro-vitamin A biofortified (yellow) cassava has the potential to contribute significantly to improve vitamin A status, especially in populations that are difficult to reach with other strategies. Objectives: The study aimed at determining the efficacy of biofortified cassava to improve vitamin A status of Nigerian preschool children. Methods: An open-label randomized controlled trial was conducted in southwestern Nigeria. In total, 176 preschool children (aged 3–5 y) were randomized into 2 parallel arms comprising an experimental group (n = 88), fed foods prepared from biofortified (yellow) cassava, and a control group (n = 88), fed foods prepared from white cassava, twice a day, 6 d a week for 93 d. Results: A total of 159 children completed the trial (yellow cassava group, n = 80; white cassava group, n = 79). Children consumed 221 and 74 µg/d retinol activity equivalents from intervention foods in the yellow and white cassava groups, respectively. The treatment effect on serum retinol concentrations at the end of the feeding trial was 0.06 µmol/L (95% CI: 0.004, 0.124 µmol/L), after adjustment for baseline retinol concentrations, inflammation, and asymptomatic malaria status. No significant treatment effects were detected for serum β-carotene (adjusted effect: 3.9%; 95% CI: −0.6%, 8.6%) and gut permeability (adjusted effect: 0.002; 95% CI: −0.089, 0.092), but a significant effect was detected for hemoglobin concentrations (adjusted effect: 3.08 g/L; 95% CI: 0.38, 5.78 g/L). Conclusions: Daily consumption of β-carotene from biofortified cassava improved serum retinol and hemoglobin concentrations modestly in Nigerian preschool children. This study was registered with clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02627222.

Evaluating the distributional impacts of drought tolerant maize varieties on productivity and welfare outcomes: an instrumental variable quantile treatment effects approach

In an attempt to go beyond the conventional mean impact assessment of agricultural interventions, this paper examines the distributional impacts of adoption of drought-tolerant maize varieties (DTMVs) on the productivity and welfare outcomes of rural farming households in Nigeria. The study employed a conditional instrumental variable quantile treatment effects approach to control for selection bias that may arise from both observed and unobserved factors. The empirical findings revealed that adoption significantly impacts the distributions of maize yield and farming households’ welfare. In particular, the effects of adoption are larger at the lower tails of the distributions of yield and welfare outcomes, suggesting that the strategic roles of DTMVs adoption in raising productivity and reducing poverty are better among poor farming households. These findings emphasize that effective targeting and dissemination of improved agricultural technologies are critical for increasing maize yield and improving welfare outcomes of rural farmers in Nigeria. Policy measures targeted at tackling dissemination constraints, such as the promotion of informal seed sector, may help enhance the successful dissemination and adoption of DTMVs or any agricultural intervention without masking out any sub-groups.

Estimation and determinants of multidimensional energy poverty among households in Nigeria

The sustainable use of clean and safe sources of energy is indeed a global challenge. Traditional and unsafe forms of energy use is predominant among households in sub-Saharan Africa. This is not only a threat to the environment, but also constitutes health risk to the population. In the Nigeria context, this study provides the first attempt to estimate household energy poverty status and also investigate the driving factors of household energy poverty status using the National Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) dataset. The analytical techniques adopted in this study are based on Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI) and Tobit regression model. Our results show that national average MEPI was 0.38, suggesting that majority of the households are energy poor. Energy poverty is however found to be higher in rural areas than in urban areas. We also found that male-headed households, age, rural sector and northeast residents are found to be the energy poverty enhancing factors, while household income and credit access are energy poverty inhibiting factors. The study concludes that income smoothening among other energy poverty reduction interventions should be prioritized, especially among rural households in order to help them exit energy poverty trap.

Estimating financing gaps in rice production in Southwestern Nigeria

This study analysed the financing gaps relative to production frontier of rice farmers in Southwestern Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to collect cross-sectional data from 360 rice farmers selected from three states in the region. A Cobb–Douglas stochastic frontier and an adapted form of Harrod–Domar (HD) growth model was employed to determine the financing gap required the farmers to be at the frontier level. The empirical results of the frontier model show that quantity of labour, quantity of rice as planting material and herbicides were statistically significant in explaining the variations in the efficiency of rice production in Nigeria. However, age, gender, farming experience, household size, access to credit, access to information, adoption of improved variety and location of rice farmers as sources of technical inefficiencies. As revealed by the result of the HD growth model, the average amount of credit per season that farmers had access to was, 38,630.56 naira (₦) while the mean financing in the form of credit required to produce at the frontier level was ₦193,626.50, showing a financing shortfall of about 80%. As unravelled by the result of the study, it can thus be concluded that technical efficiency of rice farmers can be improved by ameliorating access to timely credit and agricultural information for improving rice productivity. These findings suggest that filling the financing gap of smallholder rice farmers will improve rice productivity in Nigeria. The study, therefore, recommends that strengthening the existing technology by building farmers’ capacity on farm management practices would be the surest means of improving rice productivity growth in Nigeria. This would not only contribute to the intensification of rice production in Nigeria to meet its increasing rice demand, but also improve rice farmers’ productivity and their households’ incomes.

Gender-specific livelihood strategies for coping with climate change-induced food insecurity in southeast Nigeria

Disclosure, reporting and help seeking among child survivors of violence: A cross-country analysis

Violence against children is a pervasive public health issue, with limited data available across multiple contexts. This study explores the rarely studied prevalence and dynamics around disclosure, reporting and help-seeking behaviours of children who ever experienced physical and/or sexual violence.

Experimental and survey-based data on willingness to pay for seafood safety and environmental sustainability certification in Nigeria

Fish/seafood represents an increasingly important source of animal protein in diets globally. Aquaculture growth, which already constitutes half of all seafood consumed by humans, is critical to meet increasing demand for fish. Concern among consumers and regulators over the safety and environmental sustainability of seafood, particularly in developed nations, has led to the development of stringent seafood safety standards in the global North. While such standards may constitute barriers to participation in export markets by small-scale producers, they have catalysed upgrades to production and post-harvest handling practices of value chain actors in developing countries. The health burden of foodborne illnesses is a major concern in developing countries. As incomes rise, consumers in developing countries are increasingly willing to pay a premium for safer foods. However, there is little empirical evidence on consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for seafood safety in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Data on demand for seafood safety in African countries is still unavailable or has not been shared publicly. In this paper, we describe data collected in Lagos State, Nigeria in October and November 2019. Experiments in the form of Becker-DeGroote-Marschak (BDM) auction mechanism were conducted with 200 fish consumers in fish markets. These data can be used to assess whether consumers’ demand for safe and healthy seafood from local markets in SSA can be harnessed to generate positive returns to producers.

Distortions to agricultural incentives: Evidence from Nigerian value chains

Understanding how policies affect price transmission and incentives for producers and consumers along the complete value chain is a relevant research question due to the more globalized structure of agricultural value chains. In particular, Nigerian agricultural value chains have been targeted by a number of policy decisions. We analyze the import‐oriented palm oil value chain and the export‐oriented cacao value chain, estimating the price distortions from policies and their implications for production incentives at the regional level. For palm oil, due to protective trade policies and domestic initiatives, the nominal rate of protection (NRP) at the farmgate for palm oil producers shows that producers have been protected. NRPs at the border for cacao beans and cocoa products are negative, which may be due to a quality gap, the export market structure, and the concentration of buyers in global markets. Negative NRPs at the farmgate are seen for all regions, showing disincentives in the cacao beans export market reverberate through the domestic market despite domestic support policies. In both value chains, NRPs at farmgate vary across regions partially due to regional policy frameworks and partially due to local conditions impacting price transmission.

Budgetary influence under information asymmetries: Evidence from Nigeria’s subnational agricultural investments

With emerging recognition of changing climates’ impact on agricultural productivity, a sharper lens is focused on how to target agricultural public investments for development. This paper contributes to an understanding of budget decision-making processes in agricultural development, by examining to what extent those with superior information and expertise on a sector have sway over how public resources to the sector are allocated. The empirical qualitative analysis of this paper employs process tracing with an embedded case study design, based on interviews of 79 senior public sector key-informants in Nigeria. We also analyzed quantitative public expenditure data in the study areas. We draw insights from theories of information asymmetries in the public sector along three dimensions. Within the first type of information asymmetry, we find that, despite the higher agricultural technical expertise that sector bureaucrats have vis-à-vis the elected non-sector-specific chief executives, it is the latter who heavily influence agricultural resource allocation. In the second form of information asymmetry, the benefits from superior lower-tier information are only exploited at one subnational (state) level but not at the other (local government) level. Within the third kind of information asymmetry, public leaders prioritize funding for those types of public investments that are more visible by their nature, and outputs of which materialize relatively rapidly; this disfavors agriculture. Going beyond the literature on the impact of information interventions, this study sheds light on the extent to which information already in the public sector is tapped into to guide the provision of public goods and services.

Does relative deprivation induce migration?: evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

This analysis revisits the decades-old relative deprivation theory of migration. In contrast to the traditional view that migration is driven by absolute income maximization, we test whether relative deprivation induces migration in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. Taking advantage of the internationally comparable longitudinal data from integrated household and agriculture surveys from Tanzania, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda, we use panel fixed effects to estimate the effects of relative deprivation on migration decisions. Using per capita consumption expenditure and multidimensional wealth index as well-being measures, we find that a household’s migration decision is based not only on its absolute well-being level but also on the relative position of the household in the well-being distribution of the community in which it resides. We also discover that the effect of relative deprivation on migration is amplified in rural, agricultural, and male-headed households. Results are robust to alternative specifications including the use of Hausman Taylor Instrumental Variable (HTIV) estimator and pooled data across the five countries. Results confirm that the “migration-relative deprivation” relationship also holds in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. We argue that policies designed to check rural–urban migration through rural transformation and poverty reduction programs should use caution because such programs can increase economic inequality, which further increases migration flow.

Agricultural growth and sex-disaggregated employment in Africa: Future perspectives under different investment scenarios

Literature is scanty on how public agricultural investments can help reducing the impact of future challenges such as climate change and population pressure on national economies. The objective of this study is to assess the medium and long-term effects of alternative agricultural research and development investment scenarios on male and female employment in 14 African countries. We first estimate the effects of agricultural investment scenarios on the overall GDP growth of a given country using partial and general equilibrium models. Secondly, using employment elasticities to GDP growth, we estimate the impact of GDP growth on overall employment in the economy. Results show that, increased investments in agriculture could generate higher overall employment and reduce gender disparities in labor participation. In 8 out of 14 sampled countries, female employment increased more than male employment in response to agricultural investments. Investment in infrastructure had higher impact on female employment growth compared to productivity scenarios.

The prominent role of informal medicine vendors despite health insurance: A weekly diaries study in rural Nigeria

In sub-Saharan Africa, accessibility to affordable quality care is often poor and health expenditures are mostly paid out of pocket. Health insurance, protecting individuals from out-of-pocket health expenses, has been put forward as a means of enhancing universal health coverage. We explored the utilization of different types of healthcare providers and the factors associated with provider choice by insurance status in rural Nigeria. We analysed year-long weekly health diaries on illnesses and injuries (health episodes) for a sample of 920 individuals with access to a private subsidized health insurance programme. The weekly diaries capture not only catastrophic events but also less severe events that are likely underreported in surveys with longer recall periods. Individuals had insurance coverage during 34% of the 1761 reported health episodes, and they consulted a healthcare provider in 90% of the episodes. Multivariable multinomial logistic regression analyses showed that insurance coverage was associated with significantly higher utilization of formal health care: individuals consulted upgraded insurance programme facilities in 20% of insured episodes compared with 3% of uninsured episodes. Nonetheless, regardless of insurance status, most consultations involved an informal provider visit, with informal providers encompassing 73 and 78% of all consultations among insured and uninsured episodes, respectively, and individuals spending 54% of total annual out-of-pocket health expenditures at such providers. Given the high frequency at which individuals consult informal providers, their position within both the primary healthcare system and health insurance schemes should be reconsidered to reach universal health coverage.

Growing condition variations and grain prices in Niger and Nigeria

In this paper, we describe how both the existing degree of price correspondence and tradability are important factors explaining why and the extent to which grain price relationships adjust due to growing condition variations. For a set of maize and millet markets in Niger and Nigeria with different agro-ecological characteristics and strengths of price relationships, we use normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) data to identify years with weather-related production shocks. We then measure the degree to which price transmission between the commercial hub and reference market in each country in the anomalous weather years varies from that in normal years.

Urbanization and child nutritional outcomes

In this paper, the relationship between urbanization and child nutritional outcomes is investigated using satellite-based nighttime light intensity data as a proxy for urbanization and urban growth. Geo-referenced and nationally representative data from two rounds (2008 and 2013) of the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) from Nigeria is employed. The DHS data provide detailed anthropometric measures of child nutritional outcomes along with a series of control variables. These geo-referenced DHS data are merged with nighttime light intensity data for the survey clusters in which the DHS sample households reside. This nighttime light introduces a gradient of urbanization permitting investigation of the implications of urbanization on child nutritional outcomes along an urbanization continuum.

Climate and poverty in Africa South of the Sahara

To estimate the effects of weather conditions on welfare globally, cross-country comparisons need to rely on international poverty lines and comparable data sources at the micro-level. To this end, nationally representative household surveys can offer a useful instrument, also at the sub-national level. This study seeks to expand the existing knowledge on the determinants of poverty in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA), examining how long-term climatic conditions and year-specific weather shocks affect expenditure per capita. We take advantage of a novel and unique dataset combining consumption-based household surveys for 24 SSA countries -representative of more than half of the African population and two thirds of SSA- and geospatial information on agro-climatic conditions, market access and other spatial covariates of poverty. To our knowledge, it is the first time that a welfare-based, multidisciplinary, micro-level dataset with such wide spatial coverage has been assembled and examined. Our analysis relies on a linear and spatial model at the household- and district-level, respectively, both controlling for socio-economic, demographic, and geographic confounding factors. Results are consistent across econometric approaches, showing that living in more humid areas is positively associated with welfare, while the opposite occurs living in hotter areas, as existing literature shows. Flood shocks -defined as annual rainfall higher than one standard deviation from the 50-year average- are associated to a 35% decrease in total and food per-capita consumption and 17 percentage point increase in extreme poverty. On the other hand, extreme shortages of rain and heat shocks show an uncertain effect, even when estimates control for spatial correlation between welfare and weather conditions using the spatial error correction model. Given the heterogeneous effects of climatic events across SSA macro-regions, local-specific adaptation and mitigation strategies are suggested to help bringing households on a sustainable path.

Effects of agricultural mechanization on economies of scope in crop production in Nigeria

Agricultural mechanization has often been associated with scale-effects and increased specialization. Such characterizations, however, fail to explain how mechanization may grow in Africa where production environments are heterogeneous even within a farm household, and crop diversification may help in mitigating risks. Using panel data from farm households and crop-specific production costs in Nigeria, we estimate how the adoptions of animal traction or tractors affect the economies of scope (EOS) for rice, non-rice grains, and legumes/seeds, which are the crop groups that are most widely grown with animal traction or tractors in Nigeria, with respect to other non-rice crops. The inverse-probability-weighting method is used to address the potential endogeneity of mechanization adoption and is combined with primal- and dual-models of EOS estimation. The results show that the adoption of these mechanization technologies is associated with greater EOS between rice and non-rice crops but lower EOS among non-rice crops (i.e., between non-rice grains, legumes/seeds, and other non-rice crops). Mechanical technologies may raise EOS between crops that are grown in more heterogeneous environments, even though it may lower EOS between crops that are grown under relatively similar agroecological conditions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that shows the effects of mechanical technologies on EOS in agriculture in developing countries.

Organisational capacities and management of agricultural extension services In Nigeria: Current status

Organisational capacity and management are critical elements of extension systems. This paper examines the organisational capacity and management of the Nigerian extension system. Content analysis of documents and artefacts, semi-structured interviews with key informants, and site visits were used to collect data. The paper looks at individual, organisational, and system-level capacities and management systems. The current ratio of extension agents to farmers is between 1:5000 and 1:10 000, with a total workforce of about 7000 public agents. A new initiative, the N-Power programme, is employing 100 000 young graduates in extension. Financing provided by state governments typically only covers the salaries of extension staff, meaning there is little operational budget for travel, communication, training, or field programmes. States thus struggle to hire and provide incentives for staff, and most continuing education and incentives take place in donor-funded projects or with federal funds. The extension system has good support from policies and strategies, as well as from research, education, and donor programmes. The paper confirms that capacity and management issues are critically important for well-functioning extension systems, and that there are many elements to get right, including continuing education, incentives, coordination, and operational budgets.

Variability in traditional processing of gari: A major food security product from cassava

Cassava is a major crop for food security in Nigeria and its principal processed form is gari. Gari processing practices were observed in the south-west (Oyo State) and south-east (Benue State) of Nigeria using two complementary approaches: 1) semi-quantitative surveys with processors (n = 123); and 2) actual detailed measurements at processing units (n = 7). Size of processing operations and types of practices differed significantly between the two states. There were also intra-state differences, influenced by ethnicity and customs. Variability of processing practices should be considered while seeking to improve processing productivity and introducing nutritious varieties of cassava to feed the fast-growing Nigerian population.

Ex‐ante evaluation of promising soybean innovations for sub‐Saharan Africa

This study undertakes an ex‐ante evaluation of the effects of alternative technology and policy options on soybean supply and demand in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) to 2050. Current soybean consumption in SSA is dominated by cooking oil followed by soybean cake used as animal feed. Due to weak processing sectors and low soybean yields, the region is currently importing about 70% of its consumption requirements. Based on the results from a geospatial bio‐economic modeling framework, soybean consumption in SSA is projected to more than double by 2050 compared to 2010 due in part to a rising population and rising incomes. On the other hand, supply from domestic production is projected to increase by 80% over the same period. Hence, by 2050, net imports into SSA would be nearly 4 times higher than supply from domestic production. Under a future drier climate, some of the production gains achieved through soybean research and extension would be lost and this would further worsen the soybean demand gap in SSA relative to the baseline. This study shows that relying on conventional breeding alone to increase soybean yields in SSA would not be enough to substantially reduce the future demand gap. A combination of promising innovations affecting the soybean value chain across SSA would be needed to close the soybean demand gap in SSA by 2050 under a drier future climate.

Migration, labor mobility and household poverty in Nigeria: A gender analysis

The increase in the geographical mobility of labour as a result of poverty, unemployment and unstable economic conditions, among other factors, especially among professionals, has been associated with a brain drain in Nigeria. Despite the high level of migration and subsequent remittances from migrants, a large proportion of Nigerians still live in poverty. The increased participation of women in migration in the country also brings to the fore the existence of gender-specific migration experiences and how this has in turn affected their households. Based on gender, this study assesses the extent of labour mobility, its determinants and how it influences remittance inflows and household poverty using the logit regression model Propensity Score Matching and Linear Regression with Endogenous Treatment Effect Approach. Results reveal that while more males travelled for employment purposes, more females travelled due to marriage arrangements. More of the migrants that were working after migration had worked before migration and had the highest average amount of remittance sent to households. The study shows that labour mobility increases the amount of remittance sent to households. However, the increase was higher among male migrants than female migrants. More than half of the migrants had poor households; meanwhile, labour mobility was found to reduce the extent of poverty. The study recommended that policies that improve the welfare of labour and reduce the brain drain, unemployment and closures of enterprises in the country should be put in place. Also, effective policies and interventions that promote the use of remittances to achieve maximum reductions in poverty should be pursued.

That’s a woman’s problem”: A qualitative analysis to understand male involvement in maternal and newborn health in Jigawa state, northern Nigeria

Maternal and newborn mortality continue to be major challenges in Nigeria. While greater participation of men in maternal and newborn health has been associated with positive outcomes in many settings, male involvement remains low. The objective of this analysis was to investigate male involvement in maternal and newborn health in Jigawa state, northern Nigeria.

The enabling environment for informal food traders in Nigeria’s secondary cities

Cooperation in polygynous households

Using a carefully designed series of public goods games, we compare, across monogamous and polygynous households, the willingness of husbands and wives to cooperate to maximize household gains. Compared to monogamous husbands and wives, polygynous husbands and wives are less cooperative, one with another, and co-wives are least cooperative, one with another. The husbands’ and wives’ behavior in a corresponding series of inter-household games indicates that these differences cannot be attributed to selection of less cooperative people into polygyny. Finally, behavior in polygynous households is more reciprocal and less apparently altruistic. (JEL C93, D13, J12, O12)

Mother’s nutrition-related knowledge and child nutrition outcomes: Empirical evidence from Nigeria

Nutrition outcomes among young children in Nigeria are among the worse globally. Mother’s limited knowledge about food choices, feeding, and health care seeking practices contributes significantly to negative nutrition outcomes for children in most developing countries. Much less is known about the relationship between mother’s nutrition-related knowledge and child nutritional outcomes in rural Nigeria. This paper investigates therefore: (i) the association of mother’s nutrition-related knowledge with nutrition outcomes of young children living in rural Nigeria, where access to education is limited, and (ii) whether mother’s education has a complementary effect on such knowledge in producing positive child nutrition outcomes in such settings.