NSSP Policy Briefs

Strengthening women’s voice and agency in Nigeria: Evidence from a randomized control trial on women’s advocacy and men’s allyship trainings

This policy brief presents insights from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted across three states of southwestern Nigeria (Oyo, Ogun, and Osun), examining the effectiveness of advocacy and leadership training for women, along with allyship training for men (their husbands), in improving women’s voice and agency in community governance. With over 5,800 women participants across 450 communities, this study tested whether training women alone, as well as whether training them in tandem (though in separate sessions) with their husbands, can increase women’s political participation in local governance or the responsiveness of local leaders to women’s priorities. We show causal improvements in both when women are trained and chart out emerging policy lessons.

Enhancing women’s economic empowerment in rural Nigeria through advocacy trainings

This policy brief shares quantitative results from a project examining the effectiveness of advocacy and leadership training for women, along with allyship training for men (their husbands), in improving women’s economic outcomes. We share insights from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted across three states of southwestern Nigeria (Oyo, Ogun, and Osun) involving over 5,800 women participants from 450 communities. We causally test whether training women alone, as well as whether training them in tandem (though in separate sessions) with their husbands, can increase women’s access to and investments in livelihood opportunities. While the trainings were designed to train women in the skills needed for engaging in the local policy process in rural communities in Nigeria and to train their husbands on the benefits of women’s participation in community affairs as well as in how to practically support their wives’ participation, we posit that increased efficacy combined with advocacy skills and husbands’ support could additionally have profound economic spillovers. Indeed, we show causal improvements in these outcomes when women are trained and present some emerging policy lessons.

How do policy environments influence technology adoption? Insights from Nigeria’s pod borer resistant (PBR) cowpea experience

Policymakers are increasingly considering the promise of modern biotechnology, including genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to help solve development problems in health, agriculture, and other fields (Zambrano et al., 2022). However, debates persist around health and environmental implications (National Academies of Sciences, 2016; Raman, 2017; Smyth et al., 2021). The regulation of GMOs varies globally, with some countries implementing outright bans or imposing stringent controls (Sarkar et al., 2021; Yali, 2022). A recent study examines the Nigerian policy environment for Pod Borer Resistant (PBR) cowpea, which has been genetically engineered to resist the legume pod borer (Maruca vitrata) [Mockshell et al., (unpublished)]. Legume pod borers significantly reduce cowpea yield and quality, with losses of up to 80% reported (Andam et al., 2024; Mockshell et al., 2024). This policy note summarizes the findings of the paper, providing insights to guide policy development around the adoption of biotech food crops in Nigeria and other countries in Africa South of the Sahara (SSA). The primary research question is: Is there an enabling policy environment for PBR cowpea and what factors contribute to it?

Take-up of cash loans vs. agricultural input loans: A pilot study

Smallholder farmers must invest in agricultural inputs (i.e., seeds, chemicals, equipment, land, and labor) during the planting season before earning income from the sale of agricultural produce after harvest. Credit can help relax liquidity constraints. In rural Nigeria, access to credit is limited, especially formal credit from financial institutions. Less than a third of households in rural Nigeria report using credit and only two percent of rural households borrowed credit from formal financial institutions (EFInA 2020). The rest is borrowed informally from friends, family, or local money lenders. Credit can take many different forms. For example, credit can take the form of a cash loan, where funds are provided to a borrower to make an investment of any kind. Another common form of credit is when specific goods, for instance agricultural inputs, are provided in advance to a payment. In both cases, the borrower must pay back both the loan amount, and any interest incurred from the loan. We partnered with Crop2Cash, a digital financial technology startup company operating in Nigeria, to test take-up for
these two forms of credit.

Building policy coherence into Nigeria’s agri-food system: options for more effective coordination and integration

Nigeria faces a plethora of challenges ranging from malnutrition and food insecurity, violent land tenurial conflicts and water insecurity in a changing climate. This situation threatens economic growth and development, particularly, the achievement of key targets of the Sustainable Development Goals related to SDG 1 (eliminate all forms of poverty), SDG 2 (zero hunger), SDG 5 (gender equality), SDG 6 (Clean water and sanitation), SDG 13 (climate action), SDG 14 (Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development) and 15 (life on land). Another pertinent challenge impeding the achievement of the goals is the lack of synergies and inadequate coordination between and within policies and development programming. The CGIAR Initiative on National Policies and Strategies (NPS), aims to contribute to agri-foods system transformation, by identifying ways of building stronger food, land and water policies with greater coherence and investment capacity, to support Nigeria in addressing current crises and future development needs.
This guidance brief is based on insights from a study on the policy (in)coherence in food, land and water systems in Nigeria. Using the CGIAR NPS, Policies and Institutions Landscape Framework, four policies: the National Water Resources Policy 2016; Agriculture Promotion Policy 2016; The National Policy on Food Safety and its Implementation Strategy (2014) and the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan 2016-2020, were analysed. The study indicates that most of the FLW policies significantly complement one another (horizontal coherence), by promoting food sufficiency and improved livelihoods for especially rural dwellers. However, the National Water Resources Policy 2016, Agriculture Promotion Policy (2016) and the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (2016-2020) have contradicting objectives. There is seemingly harmonious coordination (vertical coherence) of the formulated policies across different tiers of government in the country, but not evident through the implementation of the policies, due to less coordination and accountability. All the four selected policies analyzed in the study were found to be financially incoherent. The average annual national financial commitment fails to meet up with the annual investment requirements of the FLW systems, leading to policy ineffectiveness in addressing critical socio-economic and agri-food challenges. The Initiative can support policy makers in addressing the incoherences and positively transform FLW systems by co-creating and facilitating policy frameworks and pathways.

WEAGov Nigeria pilot study: Findings and policy implications

WEAGov assesses the state of women’s voice and agency in national agrifood policymaking. Like IFPRI’s Kaleidoscope Model, it adopts a policy process approach, looking at every stage of the policy cycle — from why certain issues become salient and how policy solutions to address them are designed, to the organizational strategies and budgetary outlays that shape policy implementation, to how policies are assessed against their objectives. Within each of these stages, WEAGov examines whether women are being considered, whether their voices are included, and whether they are influencing actions and decisions.

Bundling cash loans with agricultural input loans for farmers in Nigeria: A pilot study

Credit allows borrowers to access funds required to make an investment before returns materialize. For smallholder farmers, who must invest in agricultural inputs (i.e., seeds, chemicals, equipment, land, and labor) during the planting season before earning income from the sale of agricultural produce after har vest, credit helps alleviate liquidity constraints and promotes the ability of local agricultural production to support nutrition and food security. In rural Nigeria, access to credit—especially formal credit from finan cial institutions—is limited. Data collected in 2020 show that less than a third of households in rural Ni geria report using credit in the previous 12 months and only two percent of rural households borrowed credit from a financial institution. The rest is borrowed informally from friends, family, or local money lenders. In the absence of credit, smallholder farmers must cover the costs of agricultural production with their own funds that they have available during the planting season. This constrains agricultural production and contributes, in part, to the large gaps in agricultural productivity between high-income and low-in come countries around the world.

Measuring gender and social norms in agrifood systems: Evidence from Nigeria and Tanzania

Seed certification and maize, rice, and cowpea productivity in Nigeria

Despite the potential importance of seed quality to agricultural productivity growth, many governments in sub-Saharan Africa lack the capacity to expand quality assurance systems even where there is expressed interest. This brief summarizes the key insights from a recent study in Nigeria. The evidence points toward the benefits of pursuing balanced, flexible seed quality assurance systems rather than focusing singularly on expanding rigorous seed certification systems, as the country has done until recently. These recommendations are based on findings from the 2010–2018 period in Nigeria: Increased supply of certified seeds of maize, rice, and cowpea had positive effects on farm-level use of certified seeds, yields, and output, but these effects diminished as certified seed supply continued to expand. Moreover, yield gains from certified seeds tend to vary considerably across locations. As certified seed becomes more available to farmers, its use spreads from higher-return farms to lower-return farms, diminishing overall productivity benefits. These results are consistent with the view that singularly expanding rigorous seed certification faces diminishing returns. More balanced, pluralistic systems that also allow for moderate quality assurance, such as quality declared seed (QDS), may be worth trying in Nigeria.

Exploring how land inheritance shapes youth migration and work choices in rural Nigeria

Policymakers in Nigeria and other countries in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) are relying on agriculture to generate employment for the growing youth population. However, there is concern that youth engagement in agricultural production is declining in favor of other economic activities. “Rural-urban-rural” migra tion occurs mainly during intercrop intervals, as the cyclical nature of crop-related activities prompts African youth to seek more economic stability from nonagricultural employment during the off season (Yeboah and Jayne 2018). While comprehensive data on youth’s departure from Nigeria’s agriculture sector remain elusive, various studies indicate a heightened exit rate, particularly post-discovery of oil resources, and a notable 63 percent reduction in the time Nigerian youth spend in farming activities compared to adults (UNECA 2017). In general, discourse on youth unemployment, with specific pertinence to Africa, underscores the pivotal role of different economic structural transformations that are hindering the formation of “quality” employment opportunities (McMillan, Rodrik, and Verduzco-Gallo 2014).

Enhancing climate resilience in Nigerian agriculture: Implications for sustainable adaptation and livelihood diversification

Key Highlights:
Changes in temperature, measured in harmful degree days (HDDs), and precipitation have a significant negative impact on agricultural productivity in Nigeria, which highlights the adverse effects of extreme weather on crop yields.
Climate changes affect income sources for farming households. We found that an increase in HDDs reduces households’ income share from crops and nonfarm self-employment, implying threats to household food security for smallholders whose livelihoods depend on subsistence farming and food consumption from own sources.
In response to the risks posed by climate change, farmers adopt changes in crop mixes (for example, reducing the share of land allocated to cereals) and input use decisions (for example, reducing fertilizer use and purchased seeds) as an adaptation strategy. Adaption strategies that lead to low use of yield-enhancing modern inputs could worsen agricultural productivity and household food insecurity. However, we found that farmers in Nigeria respond to extreme climate by switching to drought tolerant root or tuber crops. Such strategies could partially offset the adverse effects of climatic shocks on households’ welfare.
Climate changes negatively impact agricultural productivity for both poor and non-poor households, but the effects are more pronounced among poorer households, according to our heterogenous effects analysis on household’s initial endowments (based on wealth indicators measured in asset and livestock holdings). This implies low adaptive capacity on the part of poor households and thus their high vulnerability to climate-related shocks.
Suggested policy recommendations include interventions to incentivize adoption of climate-resilient agriculture, 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.

Examining the gender digital divide: A case study from rural Nigeria

Rural Nigeria, with its diverse cultural and socio economic landscapes, presents unique challenges when it comes to digital inclusion. Traditional gender roles, limited educational opportunities, inadequate infrastructure, and sociocultural norms often combine to create barriers that disproportionately affect women’s access to digital technologies. As a result, women in rural areas face significant challenges in acquiring digital skills, accessing online information and services, and participating in digital platforms, thus perpetuating the gender gap and further marginalizing women from the benefits of the digital revolution. This policy note summarizes research designed to highlight the barriers female farmers in Nigeria face in accessing technology and information so that stakeholders can work together to ensure that Nigeria’s rural women are equipped with the necessary tools and resources to thrive in the digital age and contribute meaningfully to their communities.

Acting before disaster strikes: The impacts of anticipatory cash transfers on climate resilience in Northeast Nigeria

In flood-prone communities in Northeast Nigeria, we used a randomized evaluation to measure the impacts of providing cash transfers to households before the onset of a shock (“anticipatory cash”) compared to the standard practice of providing cash transfers after a shock occurs. Results indicate that providing anticipatory cash to households in flood-prone areas reduced negative coping strategies, increased pre-emptive climate adaptive actions, and enhanced investment in productive assets compared to households that received cash after peak flooding occurred. The findings suggest that large, one-time anticipatory cash transfers can build households’ climate adaptive and resilience capacity, making them a promising intervention to reduce household vulnerability to future climate shocks.

CGIAR’s evidence and solutions to tackle farmer-herder conflicts

Analyzing the effects of the Russian-Ukrainian war on Nigeria’s agrifood systems and policy responses

This policy brief examines the consequences of the Russia-Ukraine war on fertilizer and food commodities in Nigeria and the actions policymakers took in the agriculture sector in response to the war. This brief examines data from publicly available sources and policy responses from government documents and online newspapers. The results show that the Russia-Ukraine war has led to shortages in fertilizer availability, leading to high prices of fertilizer. Likewise, prices of major food commodities, such as maize, rice, wheat and cooking oils, have been on the rise. The impacts of the Russia-Ukraine war have exposed the country’s vulnerable agrifood system and weakened the local currency, leading to foreign exchange shortages and high inflation rates. Nigeria has taken some steps to directly respond to the Russia-Ukraine war, including seeking alternative suppliers of grains, approving imports of genetically modified, drought-resistant wheat, and establishing a private fertilizer plant. Careful consideration should be given to increasing agricultural and food production by promoting technologies to increase the productivity of major food crops.

Nigeria’s agrifood system structure and drivers of transformation

Nigeria experienced a rise and fall in economic growth over the past two decades. The economy experienced strong growth, averaging 7 percent per year, from 2000 to 2014. Then falling world oil prices caused an abrupt decline in Nigeria’s GDP in 2015 and 2016 and the country entered its first recession in nearly 20 years. Since then, the economic growth rate has remained below the population growth rate, complicating efforts to reduce poverty in a country with the world’s second-largest number of poor people (80 million) (World Bank 2022a). Various other factors contributed to sluggish economic growth, including the spread of insecurity and conflict across almost all areas of the country; policies related to COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021 (Andam et al. 2020); the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war (Diao and Thurlow 2023); and general macroeconomic instability (World Bank 2022b). Nigeria’s GDP growth is projected to remain low at 2.9 percent in 2023 and 2024, barely exceeding the population growth rate (World Bank 2022c). First quarter growth in 2023 was only 2.3 percent, reflecting the impact of cash restrictions imposed by monetary authorities during the election campaign period (NBS 2023).

Measuring changes in Nigeria’s agri-food system

Transformation of the agri-food system (AFS) is a leading pathway to achieve the USG Global Food Security Strategy Objective 1 of “Inclusive agriculture-led growth”. The AFS encompasses the primary agricultural sector, as well as all upstream and downstream agriculture-related activities. An expansion of the AFS’s off-farm components is central to the process of agricultural transformation and is strongly associated with economic development. The Percent change in value-added in the agri-food system (AgGDP+) and Employment in the agri-food system (AgEMP+) indicators are useful to track this process.

Poverty impacts of food price increases in Nigeria

The prices of staple grains on international markets began to rise in mid-2020 in response to higher fertilizer prices and supply constraints associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. They further spiked in early 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This brief examines the impact of these events on poverty in Nigeria. It is part of a series of six such briefs that estimate the poverty impact of higher world prices for staple grains. The other briefs cover Kenya, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali (see Minot and Martin, 2023a and 2023b; Martin and Minot, 2023a, 2023b, and 2023c). The methodological approach is similar in all six country studies. First, we examine the effect of the increases in international cereal prices on the real price of key grains in the domestic markets of the country. Second, we estimate the impact of the changes in domestic grain prices on the real income of each household using nationally-representative survey data, taking into account the importance of the commodities in consumption and as a source of income for each household. Finally, we estimate the changes in headcount poverty (the share of people living below the poverty line) based on the changes in real income for each household in the sample. We focus on the prices of maize, wheat, and sorghum for reasons discussed below.

Nigeria: Impacts of the Ukraine and global crises on poverty and food security

Global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices have risen rapidly in recent months, driven in large part by the fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia. Other factors, such as export bans, have also contributed to rising prices. Palm oil and wheat prices increased by 56 and 100 percent in real terms, respectively, between June 2021 and April 2022, with most of the in-crease occurring since February (Figure 1). Wide variation exists across products, with real maize prices increasing by only 11 percent and rice prices declining by 13 percent. The price of crude oil and natural gas has also risen substantially, while the weighted average price of fertilizer has dou-bled. With these changes in global prices, many developing countries and their development part-ners are concerned about the implications for economic stability, food security, and poverty.

Value chain surveys: What do they cover, and how well?

While agricultural value chains are rapidly evolving (Reardon, 2015; Reardon et al., 2021; Barrett et al., 2022), research attention has increasingly taken notice of the important role played by actors in the ag ricultural midstream. The agricultural midstream consists of activities that take place after production but before final sale to consumers, with existing literature highlighting transportation, trading/wholesaling, processing/packaging, and storage as key activities (Reardon, 2015; Ambler et al., 2022a). However, even as research on the agricultural midstream has been growing, little is known about the poten tial financial needs or capabilities of midstream actors (Ambler et al., 2022a; Bellemare et al., 2021; Reardon and Minten, 2021). If midstream actors face meaningful financial constraints in growing their businesses, it can hinder employment opportunities, increase consumer food prices, depress agricul tural producer prices, or constrain growth more broadly.

Assessing the impact of COVID-19 on women and men in Kaduna and Cross River states of Nigeria

The study was conducted in Kaduna State and Cross River State in Nigeria. It was designed as a longitudinal panel study with five rounds of data collection. The study used primary quantitative data collected using structured questionnaires administered through phone-based surveys. The study sample was drawn using systematic random sampling from an earlier in-person survey conducted by IFPRI for the Agro Processing, Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support’ (APPEALS) project. Figure 1 provides a detailed description on the study timeline and sample size covered in each round.

Project factsheet: Overcoming barriers to women’s political participation through advocacy training: Designing a field experiment in Nigeria

This factsheet describes a planned project in Nigeria, working with existing partners, that will provide useful recommendations for empowering women in the public sphere. It has the potential to inform implementation of the National Gender in Agriculture prepared by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) and programming by the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development (MWASD) by sharing specific lessons on how to harness women’s social capital and leadership skills to promote more equitable agricultural and development policies. The project pairs an intervention aimed at generating leadership skills, a sense of collective efficacy, and effective participation in local politics among women’s groups in Nigeria with a rigorous randomized controlled trial (RCT) to understand what works and how to give women a voice in their communities. It builds on programming by ActionAid Nigeria, our implementing partner; we will further refine this programming through qualitative work and embed it in a theory of change. ActionAid Nigeria prioritizes the leadership of women, especially those living in poverty and exclusion.

Will promotion of agricultural mechanization help prevent child labour?

The FAO-IFPRI study, of which this brief is a summary, focuses on the use of tractors because they are among the most versatile farm mechanization tools and are universal power sources for all other driven implements and equipment in agriculture, with significant potential to replace animal draught power and human power, including children’s muscle power. Tractor use is typically also the first type of machine-powered equipment in use at lower levels of agricultural development, the context where most child labour is found. Mechanization is mostly assumed to reduce child labour, as it is expected to be labour saving in general. Yet, this is not always the case, as it has also been observed that the use of tractors and other machinery could increase children’s engagement in farm activities. This may be the case if, for instance, their use allows farms to cultivate larger areas, or if it leads to shifting chores of work from hired labor to family workers, e.g. for weeding edges of farmland not reachable by machinery. Evidence has been scant thus far, but the few available studies have mostly lent greater support to the hypothesis that mechanization reduces children’s productive engagement. Most available studies have focused on specific cases and based on scant data. The new FAO-IFPRI study provides a rigorous quantitative assessment for seven developing countries in Asia (India, Nepal and Viet Nam) and sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania) based on comparable farm household survey data.

Transforming Nigeria’s agrifood system: Wealthier, but also healthier

Malnutrition, largely attributable to poor diets among both the rich and poor, presents a growing challenge in Nigeria. This brief considers the obstacles to food security and better nutrition, particularly the country’s macroeconomic instability, widespread poverty, and the need for greater investment and coherence to support dietary diversity. The authors describe how a shift to focus on consumer needs can transform the agrifood system to deliver healthier and more affordable diets for all Nigerians, as well as better and more secure rural livelihoods.

Synopsis: Subnational public expenditures, short term household level welfare, and economic resilience: Evidence from Nigeria

This study estimates the effects of the shares of subnational public expenditure (PE) for agriculture, health, education, and social-welfare, as well as PE-size, on household-level outcomes, using nationally representative panel household data and district and state-level PE data for Nigeria. We find that greater shares of total PE allocated to agriculture, health, and social-welfare, conditional on PE-size, generally have positive effects on household consumption levels, poverty reduction, and non-farm business capital investments by households. A greater share of total PE for agriculture also positively benefits household dietary diversity across seasons. Moreover, household economic resilience, measured in terms of the economic flexibility a household has to shift between farming and non-farm activities, is more greatly enhanced through greater shares of total PE going towards agriculture than to health and social-welfare. These multi-dimensional benefits of greater PE for agriculture are particularly worthy of attention in countries, like Nigeria, which have historically allocated a low share of total PE to agriculture.

Nigeria: Availability of data on nutrition intervention coverage

This profile provides an assessment of a country’s potential to report on national-level coverage1 for a set of 16 nutrition interventions and recommends key actions to strengthen coverage measurement. Intervention coverage data is essential for tracking implementation and impact of strategies and investments to reduce malnutrition.

Nigeria: The impact of COVID-19 and food system responses

As Nigeria continues to face the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, CGIAR and partners have expanded access to quality seeds and improved crop varieties, strengthened capacity of women and youth, and informed national responses and policies with evidence-based recommendations.

Policy-induced market distortions along agricultural value chains: Evidence from Ethiopia and Nigeria

The performance of agrifood value chains of vital importance for smallholder farmers in developing countries. Measuring and understanding how government policies, such taxes, subsidies, minimum support prices, and government procurement, impact particular value chains is essential to minimize unintended consequences for value chain actors. This analysis of distortions in value chains in Ethiopia (sheep and goats) and Nigeria (cacao and palm oil) uses nominal rates of protection (NRPs) to measure the impact of policies on domestic prices for producers and consumers. Using the NRP methodology is effective for highlighting the significant impact of agricultural policies on prices from the local to the country level and along entire agrifood value chains.

Conceptual framework for food systems for diets and nutrition: Country food system fact sheet: Nigeria

This fact sheet is organized to reflect the status and/or trends of different components in the framework for food systems for diets and nutrition based on a selection of indicators for each of the domains. The indicators have been selected for their orientation toward the goal of better quality diets; their contribution to assessment of the situation at national scale; their standardized use of data and method of construction which permit crosscountry comparison; their construction based on routinely collected, publicly-accessible data or reports available for a wide range of countries. The latter implies most indicators are based on data housed by international organizations rather than national statistics.

Assessing the risk of COVID-19 in Feed the Future countries

In anticipation of the development of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine—the distribution of which will be a complex and sensitive issue—governments will need to assess the number and location of the most vulnerable people within their populations. Problematically, however, tracking data for most low- and middle-income countries are only available at the national level. The most widely used dataset by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (Dong, Du, and Gardner 2020), for example, does not include subnational data for Feed the Future’s 12 target countries in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) and South Asia: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, and Uganda. For this reason, the Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition Integration Initiative (GCAN) was commissioned to correlate Demographic and Health Survey data from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with geospatial data in order to develop a subnational dataset of key COVID-19 risk indicators based on which potential risk hotspots were identified. This summarizes the study’s analysis in the 12 Feed the Future countries and across subnational administrative units within each country.

Assessing the risk of COVID-19 in Nigeria

As COVID-19 vaccines are becoming available, governments will need to assess the number and location of the most vulnerable people within their populations. However, problematically, tracking data for most low- and middle-income countries are only available at the national level. To support the COVID-19 relief effort, the Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition Integration Initiative (GCAN) was commissioned to develop a subnational dataset of key COVID-19 risk indicators and potential risk hotspots.

Youth entrepreneurship in agriculture and rural development: Nigeria

Young people engaging in agricultural entrepreneurship in developing countries face several challenges. Above all, they lack adequate access to important resources and opportunities. These include land, credit, farm inputs, agronomic and vocational training, insurance, and lucrative markets. Addressing these challenges requires answers to some key questions: Which factors drive the success of youth entrepreneurs in developing countries? What type of business ‘ecosystem’ is best suited for their development? What roles should the various stakeholders play in making youth entrepreneurship flourish nationally? How can young people expand their start-ups to become small, medium, or largescale businesses? To answer these questions, the International Food Policy and Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) developed a conceptual framework. This framework classifies contextual and driving factors that contribute to the success of youth entrepreneurship. There are four broad categories for intervention: policy, institutional, technological, and individual capabilities.

The politics and governance of informal food retail in urban Africa

Rapid urbanization in Africa south of the Sahara continues to highlight the importance of informal retailers as a source of both food and employment for the urban poor. The most recent Africa Agriculture Status Report emphasizes that, due to demographic and socioeconomic transformation in the region, the center of gravity of Africa’s food system is shifting to urban areas (AGRA, 2020). Informal retailers—including those who vend in open-air wet markets and hawk on pavements and streets—provide a critical link between agricultural producers and consumers. While the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically highlighted the vulnerability of this constituency (Resnick et al., 2020), informal traders have long been victims of other public health, economic, and climate shocks (Battersby & Watson, 2019). To build the resilience of informal traders and enhance their contributions to urban food security, fundamental governance issues need to be addressed. This brief synthesizes research on informal traders conducted under the “Economywide Factors Affecting Agricultural Growth and Rural Transformation” flagship of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) led by IFPRI. The research spanned Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Zambia and involved comparative analysis across capital cities based on media events data, surveys with traders, and interviews with urban bureaucrats. In this way, traders’ experiences could be complemented with policymakers’ insights about bottlenecks and opportunities for reform

Do credit constraints affect agricultural technology adoption? Evidence from Nigeria

The agricultural sector in Nigeria is characterized by low productivity that is driven in part by low use of modern agricultural technologies. Poor access to credit is seen by many observers to be one of the key barriers to adoption of these technologies. Literature suggests that credit constraints impede individuals from investing in productivity enhancing agricultural technologies and, thus, poor farmers are unable to engage in high-return agricultural activities. Much policy discourse and research literature associates agricultural credit constraints with supply-side factors, such as farmers not having access to credit sources or high costs of borrowing, and, thus, recommend that such supply-side constraints be addressed to improve smallholders’ access to credit. However, demand-side factors, such as borrower’s risk-averse behavior, financial illiteracy, collateral requirements, or perceived high transactions costs, can also play important roles in credit-rationing for smallholder farmers.

Lessons learned on scaling Aflasafe® through commercialization in Sub-Saharan Africa

Aflatoxin contamination of several crops is common in tropical and subtropical regions. Maize and groundnut, staples for billions of people, are among the most susceptible to contamination, primarily caused by the fungus Aspergillus flavus. Globally, an estimated 25 percent of aflatoxin-prone crops are contaminated with aflatoxins and/or other mycotoxins. Depending on the dose and exposure period, these toxins can cause severe health detriments in humans and animals. Farmers producing contaminated crops cannot sell to premium markets, including export markets.

Poor dietary quality is Nigeria’s key nutrition problem

Nigeria faces a growing triple burden of malnutrition. First, chronic childhood undernutrition remains stubbornly high. Nationwide, 36.8% of children under five years were estimated to be stunted in 2018—only slightly down from 40.8% in 2008. This corresponds to an annual average decline of less than 0.4 percentage points over the last decade and was almost exclusively due to a reduction in the prevalence of child stunting in urban areas (Table 1). Second, micronutrient malnutrition, including iron deficiency anemia, is extremely widespread among young children and women of reproductive age. While the prevalence rate of anemia among children under five years slightly declined in rural areas between 2010 and 2018, it substantially increased in urban areas. Third, overweight and obesity among adults has been rising rapidly in both urban and rural areas. Over the last decade, the national prevalence rates of overweight and obesity (the extreme form of overnutrition) among nonpregnant women 15 to 49 years of age increased faster than the rate of child stunting decreased, driving the growth of the triple burden. Obesity significantly increases the risk of diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases (like heart attack and stroke), and hypertension. The root cause of all forms of malnutrition is poor dietary quality, while poor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) conditions aggravate malnutrition.

Climate change adaptation in the Nigerian agricultural sector

West Africa is expected to suffer yield and production losses of staple crops under climate change, with more severe yield reductions occurring in the period between 2030 and 2050 (Ittersum et al., 2016). In addition, extreme events, including droughts and floods, are expected to become more frequent under climate change, also potentially affecting yields (Abiodun, Lawal, Salami, & Abatan, 2013). Internal displacement and natural resource conflicts are another expected climate impact, as are pest and disease outbreaks (Gregory, Johnson, Newton, & Ingram, 2009; Obioha, 2008). Given these potentially serious climate impacts, a team comprising researchers from Michigan State University and Nigerian partner universities conducted studies intended to inform Nigerian agricultural policy around climate adaptation. This brief presents a summary of findings from 4 of these studies conducted between 2016 and 2019.

Transforming agriculture to improve food and nutrition security in Nigeria

The current agricultural strategy of the Federal Government of Nigeria—the Agricultural Promotion Policy 2016-2020—carries forward the revitalization of the agricultural sector as outlined in the preceding strategy—the Agricultural Transformation Agenda 2011-2016. The Agricultural Promotion Policy aims to increase agricultural production to meet the food needs of the country’s rapidly growing population and transform agriculture from subsistence to commercial and export-oriented production. The complementary Agricultural Sector Food Security and Nutrition Strategy 2016-2025 declares improved food security and nutrition as main goals of the intended agricultural transformation and identifies priority areas that should guide the activities of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) and aligned stakeholders to achieve these objectives. Both strategy documents emphasize the importance of policy-relevant and rigorous agricultural and nutrition research to inform policy priority setting and support decision-making processes. This policy note summarizes findings from a recent study by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) researchers that seeks to inform Nigerian policymakers and donors about the effects of agricultural transformation on food and nutrition security of farm households in Nigeria (Ecker et al 2018).

Nigeria land governance reform: What needs to be done to stimulate demand and support market growth?

Over the last decade, land tenure reform and enhanced tenure security have been given greater attention by African governments, including Nigeria, as policy tools to encourage agricultural growth and to alleviate poverty. Land tenure security can generate agricultural investment incentives and lead to increased agricultural productivity through three channels (Besely 1995). First, it promotes long term investment in land by reducing expropriation risk. Second, it encourages investment by lowering transaction costs and allowing more productive farmers to purchase or rent land from less productive farmers, making both parties better off. Third, it reduces asymmetric information about land ownership rights, allowing individuals to use their land as collateral for loans encouraging investment. Less than 3 percent of the land in Nigeria is formally registered leaving the vast majority of the population to deal with tenure insecurity and its attendant negative implications on land related investment and agricultural productivity. This brief will examine current land policy and administration in Nigeria, landholders demand for tenure security, and present recommendations to improve administration of land.

Mechanization in Nigeria: What needs to be done to stimulate demand and support market growth?

Mechanization increases the power applied to agricultural operations and is one tool among many for improving farm productivity and increasing incomes for Nigeria’s farmers and processors. It alone cannot drive the transformation of agriculture (Pingali 2007). Farmers will mechanize to lower costs and ensure timeliness of operations, allowing a greater area of land to be cultivated. The demand for mechanization is therefore determined by the stage of agricultural transformation reflecting the use of complementary inputs (improved seeds, fertilizer), the intensity of farming, land holdings, and rural labor supply and thus wages. Countries across the developing world have mechanized at different rates corresponding to their level of agricultural transformation but also strongly influenced by government policies. Assessments of agricultural mechanization at the continental level have found that Nigeria has an agricultural sector characterized by both low productivity growth and low machinery growth relative to other African countries (2018, Malabo Montpellier Panel). This brief will examine some of the supply and demand side constraints that may be hindering the adoption of mechanization and outline strategies where government and donors can focus their efforts to better support farm productivity.

Gender and resilience to health shocks: Evidence from financial and health diaries in rural Kenya and Nigeria

Health shocks (unpredictable illnesses and injuries) are an important source of risk for individuals in developing countries. In the absence of formal financial products such as health insurance or health savings accounts, unexpected illness or injury can have severe consequences. The burden of responding to health shocks often falls disproportionately on women, since they usually act as primary caregivers in households, and as a result are responsible for managing the health of children or elderly dependents. Despite this, much research around the uptake of health insurance or other risk-management products focuses on households instead of individuals, without considering how gender may affect individual preferences for, and access to, these products. To address this issue, this policy brief uses a unique dataset on individuals from rural households in sub-Saharan Africa to demonstrate how the financial lives of men and women differ in important respects, and how these differences may have important implications for policy on universal access to health services.

The roles of agroclimatic similarity and returns on scale in the demand for mechanization: Insights from Nigeria

Despite economic transformations and urbanization, declining shares of the workforce employed in the agricultural sector, and gradual growth of agricultural mechanization, production costs in the agricultural sector and food prices remain high in Nigeria relative to those in some of the other developing countries. Understanding how the adoption of mechanical technologies is related to agricultural productivity is, therefore, important for countries like Nigeria. Using farm household data from northern Nigeria as well as var-ious spatial agroclimatic data, this study shows that the adoption of key mechanical technologies in Nigerian agriculture (animal trac-tion, tractors, or both) has been high in areas that are more agro-climatically similar to the locations of agricultural research and de-velopment (R&D) stations, and this effect is heterogeneous, being particularly strong among relatively larger farms. Furthermore, such effects are likely to have been driven by the rise in returns-to-scale in the underlying production function caused by the adoption of these mechanical technologies. Agricultural mechanization, repre-sented here as the switch from manual labor to animal traction and tractors, has been not only raising the average return on scale but also potentially magnifying the effects of productivity-enhancing public-sector R&D on spatial variations in agricultural productivity in countries like Nigeria.

Evaluating the risk of climate change-induced aflatoxin contamination in groundnuts and maize: Result of modeling analyses in six countries

This policy note summarizes research that assessed the likely impact of climate change on aflatoxin contamination in groundnuts (in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Nigeria) and in maize (in Burkina Faso, Honduras, Guatemala, Nepal, Niger, and Nigeria), and the impact of temperature, precipitation, and soil types on aflatoxin contamination. A future goal is to improve the calibration of the modeling software utilized to enable its use as an early warning tool for aflatoxin hotspots.

Country data profile: Nigeria

The purpose of this data profile is: 1) To summarize all available primary data sources and secondary data aggregation platforms for key nutrition indicators representative at the national level in Nigeria. 2) To assess the identified data sources for each indicator across four dimensions: (i) validity and comparability, (ii) timeliness, (iii) accessibility, and (iv) representativeness. 3) To identify data gaps in the national data system to effectively track progress on nutrition and/or inform policy and program decisions for improving nutrition in Nigeria.

Nutrition policy in Nigeria

This brief summarizes nutrition-relevant policies in Nigeria. We examine i) nutrition context, policy objectives, indicators, budget, and activities, ii) key beneficiaries, actors and coordination, iii) monitoring, evaluation, and accountability, and iv) whether current policies are aligned with the World Health Assembly (WHA) global targets.

Humanitarian assistance and resilience-building: Impact of Fadama III-AF II on food security and livelihood restoration in Northeastern Nigeria

The ongoing insurgency in northeastern Nigeria has led to the loss of over 20,000 lives and about 4,500 abductions since 2002 and, in 2015 alone, caused an economic loss of about US$450 million, equivalent to 5.7 percent of northeastern Nigeria’s gross domestic product.1 As of October 2018, there were 2.03 million internally displaced people (IDPs) and 1.64 million returnees a total of 3.7 million people in need of humanitarian support, or 14 percent of northeastern Nigeria’s population.2 Communities affected by conflict experience severe food and nutrition deprivation and difficult mental health conditions.3 Beyond political and military efforts aimed at ending conflicts, approaches to helping conflict-affected communities have evolved over time from a focus on humanitarian support to more dynamic and sustainable strategies. These approaches follow provision of humanitarian assistance with support for restoring livelihoods and building resilience against potential shocks.4 This new approach of humanitarian assistance plus resilience-building has experienced both successes and challenges. The challenges have largely stemmed from the limited experience of actors, short intervention periods, and insufficient resources to address the many problems experienced by conflict-affected communities. In collaboration with 65 development partners, the government of Nigeria through its Presidential Committee on the North East Initiative (PCNI) has implemented strategies both to restore peace and security and to provide humanitarian support and restore livelihoods for IDPs, returnees, and other conflict-affected people. The most recent of these is the Fadama III–AF II project, a US$50 million investment that combines humanitarian assistance with resilience-building. To evaluate the impact of this project, IFPRI conducted a study to assess its impacts on food and nutrition security and restoration of livelihoods.

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

Informal vendors are a critical source of food security in African cities and play a key role in food system transformation. However, the livelihoods of these traders and the governance constraints they encounter are not well-understood outside of primate cities. This study focuses on two distinct secondary cities in Nigeria – Calabar in the South-South geopolitical zone and Minna in the Middle Belt region. Local and state officials in each city were interviewed on the legal, institutional, and oversight functions they provide within the informal food sector. This was complemented with a survey of 1,097 traders across the two cities.

Synopsis: Transforming agriculture for improving food and nutrition security among Nigerian farm households

The launch of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) by the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) in 2011 represented a shift in strategy toward increasing the agricultural sector share of the Nigerian economy. The successor FMARD strategy document for 2015-2019, the Agriculture Promotion Policy (APP), encompasses many elements of the ATA and is supportive of a continued emphasis on enhancing government’s attention to and support for the agricultural sector. Given the many Nigerians involved in farming, these adjustments in policymaker focus toward boosting general agricultural development, including targeted initiatives for specific crops and industries, could have substantial effects on livelihoods across Nigeria, especially in terms of farm household planting and consumption decisions. Since much smallholder-produced food is consumed at home rather than sold, such changes would influence dietary intakes and nutrition-related health outcomes. Thus, the goals of this study were to: 1) assess current conditions in the country regarding food insecurity and malnutrition; and, 2) determine if the hypothesized linkages between food consumption and various household characteristics (e.g., agricultural production) and market factors (e.g., prices) are observable in household survey data.

Synopsis: Cost and policy determinants of features of tractor markets in Nigeria: Case studies of tractor sellers in Kaduna state and tractor owners in Benue state

There is a need to undertake more thorough assessments of relevant agricultural machinery markets to determine why machine usage by farmers is potentially lower than it would be under ideal market conditions. Our study focuses on four-wheel tractors. Information and data on tractor market structure, conduct, and performance in Africa is sparse. To partly fill this gap, we implemented a qualitative review of two tractor markets in Nigeria – survey-based assessments of the business characteristics of tractor sellers in Kaduna state and of tractor owners in Benue state. Detailed characterizations of the vertical and geographic distribution of these businesses and identification of principal revenue sources and costs were obtained through the surveys.

Synopsis: Grain storage and marketplace characteristics in Kebbi state, Nigeria

The focus of this study is on the physical infrastructure of marketplaces in Kebbi state, Nigeria, an agriculture-based state in the northwest. Kebbi state has distinct variation in climate within a crop year, and, hence, there is need for farmers and traders to store produced crops for use during the year. Increased investments in storage facilities in the state could accelerate agricultural development.

Nigeria: Agricultural R&D Indicators Factsheet

This country factsheet presents key agricultural R&D indicators in a highly accessible visual display. The publication also features a more in-depth analysis of some of the key challenges that the country’s agricultural R&D system is facing, and the policy options to address these challenges.

Climate change, gender, and nutrition: Support to USAID programs in Nigeria

Increasing temperature, erratic rainfall, and other extreme events, such as floods and droughts, pose severe threats to development in Nigeria. Climate change will have significant adverse impacts on crop production and livelihoods, making the country’s poor and disadvantaged people even more vulnerable. It is imperative that the impact of relevant climate science on agricultural production be considered, together with important cross-cutting issues that influence agricultural growth, poverty alleviation, and climate resilience—especially gender and nutrition—if the goals of Feed the Future and the Global Food Security Strategy are to be achieved. This policy note summarizes assessments of these interlinkages in the Nigerian context under the Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition Integration Initiative (GCAN).

Synopsis: The role of the locations of public sector varietal development activities on agricultural productivity

Using panel data from farm households in northern Nigeria and spatial data on agroecological factors, this study shows that crop productivity and technical efficiency at farm household level is positively affected by the degree of similarity between the agroecological conditions of the locations of these households and where major crop breeding institutes are headquartered. Where improved varieties are developed affects crop productivity in different locations.

Synopsis: Study of the determinants of chronic malnutrition in northern Nigeria: Qualitative evidence from Kebbi and Bauchi states

To inform discussions on future programming to improve child nutrition, a rapid scoping study of the drivers of undernutrition in northern Nigeria was conducted. This report presents insights obtained from almost 70 key informants interviews and focus group discussions conducted in April and May 2017 in Kebbi and Bauchi states and in Abuja (Figure 1). The participants in these interviews and discussions included mothers and fathers of young children, community civic and religious leaders, local medical and public health officers, state-level officials from government and non-governmental organizations (NGO), experts on human nutrition, and national-level government and NGO officials.

Synopsis: Subnational variation in policy implementation: The case of Nigerian land governance reform

This study focuses on differential implementation of Systematic Land Tenure Regularization (SLTR) across Nigerian states in order to understand the set of conditions that are more likely to facilitate reform. Geographically, the study focuses on six states: Cross River, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, and Ondo between 2012 and 2016. Methodologically, process-tracing was combined with a comparative analysis across the six states based on semi-structured interviews conducted with more than 90 stakeholders between July and October 2016.

Synopsis: How macroeconomic factors may influence agricultural program sustainability: Evidence from Cross River state, Nigeria

Expenditures of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) and the state Ministries of Agriculture in Nigeria need to be accounted for when assessing the extent to which Nigeria is meeting its pledge as a signatory of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) to commit a 10 percent share of total government expenditures toward agriculture. This policy note describes recent research that examines how expenditures on agricultural programs at the federal and state level have fluctuated in recent years and estimates the relative fiscal autonomy of FMARD and state Ministries of Agriculture.

Synopsis: Macroeconomic factor influence on agricultural program sustainability in Kaduna state, Nigeria

In this study, we measure the degree to which changes in key macroeconomic variables – global oil prices or donor funding levels – affect the fiscal conditions of the Kaduna Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (KDMAF), and, thus, the likelihood of the Kaduna government to sustain agricultural programs following a fiscal shock.

Synopsis: Scrutinizing the status quo: Rural transformation and land tenure security in Nigeria

This study examines the drivers of perceived tenure insecurity in Nigeria. The determinants of perceived tenure insecurity are assessed across two indicators: private (idiosyncratic) tenure risk and collective (covariate) tenure security risk. The analysis shows that both private and collective tenure risk are higher for land parcels acquired via the traditional customary system, in contrast to purchased parcels. Private tenure risk/insecurity is higher in communities with vibrant land markets and for households that are located close to urban centers. On the other hand, collective tenure risk is lower in communities with improved economic status.

Synopsis: Study of the determinants of chronic malnutrition in northern Nigeria: Quantitative evidence from the Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys

To better understand the drivers of chronic child undernutrition in northern Nigeria and how those drivers differ from those in other areas of the country, an econometric analysis was done of data from the 2008 and 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys (NDHS). The analyses focused on children aged 6 to 23 months.

Synopsis: Constraints for small-scale private irrigation systems in the North Central zone of Nigeria

Using nationally-representative farm household data and a case study in the North Central zone, this study shows that, first, the share of small-scale farmers in Nigeria who intensively irrigate some of their crops has declined in recent years, while the share of irrigating farmers who engage in less intensive irrigation has increased. Secondly, high production costs, particularly labor costs, are the major constraints to intensive irrigation.

The Financial Health Diaries: What do the Financial and Health Diaries tell us about decisions to renew in health insurance?

What influences renewal in insurance? Is it poverty (low wealth) or seasonality in how much cash a household has at hand (liquidity)? These and other questions were investigated in the Financial and Health Diaries study, consisting of weekly interviews with 240 households, over a one-year period. 120 of these households were located in Kwara State, Nigeria. The recorded data shed light on how to improve marketing strategies to target people that are up for renewal in the context of the Kwara State Health Insurance program.

The Financial and Health Diaries: Using diaries to improve a health insurance program to better meet health needs in rural Nigeria

How frequently do people get sick? What diseases do they get? How often do people seek care? And when seeking care, where do they go, and what do they spend? These and other questions were investigated in the Financial and Health Diaries study, consisting of weekly interviews with 240 households, over a one-year period. 120 of these households were located in Kwara State, Nigeria. The recorded data shed light on how to improve the insurance program in terms of provider network and quality of services within the Kwara State Health Insurance program.

Synopsis: Who influences government spending in agriculture? The roles of public actors in subnational funding allocation in Nigeria

A large body of evidence has focused on the drivers of agricultural policymaking in both developed- and developing-country settings. However, several applicable theories and empirical analyses on the dynamics of policymaking have not yet been applied to public expenditure decision-making in agriculture, particularly in Africa. The NSSP Working Paper on which this Policy Note is based makes a contribution to this literature by drawing on the framework of actor-centered institutionalism (Scharpf 1997) to understand the drivers of public agricultural expenditures in Nigeria. Actor-centered institutionalism provides a set of conceptual tools useful for understanding the dynamics of complex policy processes that take place among various actors within an institutional setting. Using this framework, we empirically examine how political and budget institutions affect the incentives of actors involved in the public agricultural finance process at subnational level in Nigeria, structures the interactions between them, and ultimately shapes expenditure al-locations. In this study, we employ a single-case, embedded case study strategy which involves multiple sub-units of analysis that is appropriate in the context of Nigeria’s complex federal and de-centralized structure.

Synopsis: Institutions and public agricultural investments: A qualitative study of state and local government spending in Nigeria

There is a renewed attention to the performance of the ag-ricultural sector in Nigeria given its potential to serve as an engine of pro-poor growth, create jobs, and support economic diversification. Strategies to further transform agriculture need to be accompanied by efficient and effective public expenditures. In addition to analysis of the size and quality of agricultural spending, an understanding of the political-institutional setting within which public spending decisions are made is important. However, there is little known about the policy and political processes through which public agricultural expenditure al-locations are decided upon. This policy note synthesizes the findings of an empirical analysis of how the political and budget institutions of the states and Local Government Areas (LGA) of Nigeria affect the incentives of actors involved in the public agricultural finance process, shape the interactions between them, and ultimately influence expenditure allocations.

Promoting strategic agricultural public spending in Nigeria

In 2015, the World Bank awarded Nigeria a $100 million grant for the implementation of Nigeria’s public expenditure action plan to reform the country’s agricultural sector. The Nigerian Federal Ministry of Finance drew heavily from IFPRI’s research during its dialogue with the World Bank, which helped Nigeria acquire the grant.

Agricultural mechanization and south-south knowledge exchange: What can Ghanaian and Nigerian policymakers learn from Bangladesh’s experience?

Past agricultural mechanization efforts in Ghana and Nigeria have focused more on the styles of machinery used in western countries or Latin America, where average farm sizes are much larger. While West African countries, particularly Ghana, are still relatively land abundant compared to Bangladesh, seeking the right balance across various models is important for achieving mechanization growth across diverse types of farms. Learning from the experience of agricultural mechanization in Bangladesh offer useful inspirations toward how widespread mechanization growth can happen for smallholders in Ghana and Nigeria.

2015 Nutrition country profile: Nigeria

The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

Nigeria: Country brief

HarvestPlus improves nutrition and public health in Nigeria by promoting cassava that provides more vitamin A in the diet. We work with almost 40 partners drawn from government, business, and civil society.

A rapid initial assessment of the distribution and consumption of iron-folic acid tablets through antenatal care in Nigeria

Delivery of vitamin A cassava in Nigeria

2014 Nutrition country profile: Nigeria

Biological controls for aflatoxin reduction

Aflatoxin exposure is frequent and widespread in most African countries where the key staples, maize and groundnut, are particularly vulnerable to aflatoxin contamination. Aflatoxin-producing fungi are ubiquitous in Africa where they occupy soil and colonize diverse organic matter while producing spores that associate with crops leading to aflatoxin formation. Aflatoxins need to be managed throughout this region. A biological control technique that greatly reduces aflatoxin contamination of susceptible crops has been developed by USDA-ARS and is used commercially in the U.S. Over the past decade, USDA-ARS with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, has sought to adapt the biological control technology for use in Africa. This effort has resulted in several highly effective aflatoxin management products specifically targeted to regions in need in countries across sub-Saharan Africa. The first generation African biological control products are currently in evaluation trials in farmer’s fields in East, West and Southern Africa environments. Aspergillus flavus occurs in nature in complex communities composed of both aflatoxin-producers and isolates that do not produce aflatoxins (atoxigenic strains). Application of carefully selected atoxigenic strains at appropriate stages in crop development shifts the community composition within the production area from one dominated by aflatoxin producers to one in which beneficial atoxigenic strains dominate. This results in decreased crop aflatoxin contamination. Changes in the A. flavus community structures induced by atoxigenic strain applications occur without increases to the overall amount of A. flavus in the environment and without increases in the amount of the crop infected. Prior to large-scale use in a target country, biocontrol products must be registered with that country’s national biopesticide regulatory agency through a complex process. Registration is based on efficacy, safety, quality and social/economic value of a product. Due to high potential of the technology to reduce aflatoxins, further efforts are required for widespread adoption of biocontrol by creating a flexible and enabling system for biopesticide regulation in tandem with other policy and institutional support. Currently there are atoxigenic strain biocontrol products under farmer’s field evaluations in several African countries extending from West Africa to East and Southern Africa. These products need to be moved into wide use to reduce aflatoxin exposure to the human populations across Africa.

Policy options for accelerated growth and competitiveness of the domestic rice economy in Nigeria

The Nigerian government has embarked on an ambitious plan to make the country self-sufficient in rice production by 2015 under its current Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA). The plan is in response to the perceived threat to the Nigerian economy of larger volumes of milled rice imports into Nigeria, with an import bill currently exceeding US$2 billion. To reverse the growing trend in rice imports, the Nigerian government has introduced a number of key policies and investment strategies to increase domestic rice production and improve its competitiveness with imports. This is being done through a combination of import restrictions, input policy and institutional reforms, and direct investments along the rice value chain. However, little is known as to whether this ambitious short term goal can be achieved and what would be needed over the long term to sustain increased production. This policy note synthe-sizes the results of various analyses assessing the potential for Nigeria to transform its domestic rice sector to become competitive with imports. A number of key messages emerge: (1) import restrictions alone are insufficient because they are costly to implement and likely to be ineffective; (2) given agro-ecological conditions and biophysical potential, current rice technologies, and farmer characteristics, short term increases in rice production are unlikely to meet domestic demand; (3) sufficient support to small-to-medium scale rice pro-cessers to improve quality will be even more important than promoting large-scale milling technologies; and, (4) a combination of rice production technology growth and market improvement are fundamental prerequisites for raising rice self-reliance without hurting the overall economy.

Structural change in the economy of Nigeria

We document that structural change accounts for approximately one-fifth of the total change in labor productivity in Nigeria between 1996 and 2009. Labor moved out of the agricultural and wholesale and retail trade sectors into manufacturing, transportation and communications, business services, and general services. While structural change did occur in this period, significant gains to aggregate labor productivity are still available from further shifts of labor to higher-productivity sectors. We discuss the factors limiting structural change, which include poor agricultural productivity, insufficient infrastruc-ture to support high productivity sectors, and a lack of appropriate skills in the labor force. We calculate that the gains still available to Nigeria from structural change are equivalent to an increase in value-added of 25 percent, given the existing productivity levels of sectors in 2009.

Impact of fertilizer subsidies on the commercial fertilizer sector in Nigeria: Evidence from previous fertilizer subsidy schemes

Clonal evaluation trial of yellow root cassava genotypes in south eastern Nigeria

Policy options to strengthen the cassava and rice supply chains

Nigeria is the world’s largest cassava producer and Africa’s largest rice importer. The government and private sector should figure out ways to enhance cassava’s competitiveness in the international market and improve the efficiency of domestic rice production and processing. A range of policies and initiatives can strengthen cassava and rice supply chains, all the way from production to marketing. However, because of the country’s massive size and diversity, different regions may face different constraints; following a decentralized approach to designing industrial policies and initiatives is the best course of action for Nigeria.

West African agriculture and climate change: A comprehensive analysis - Nigeria

About half of the working population in Nigeria is engaged in agriculture. Cassava is the most important food crop. Other major food crops include yam, sorghum, and maize. The share that agriculture contributes to GDP has declined from about 50 percent in 2000 to about 30 percent.

Strategic issues on growth in the agricultural sector and reducing poverty in Nigeria

Designing agricultural strategies requires an understanding of the options for dealing with growth in the sector, its impact on targeted beneficiaries, and the investment required to achieve the growth. IFPRI's recent study identified agricultural growth and development options that can support comprehensive rural development in Nigeria, in line with its national agricultural strategy - the National Food Security Program - over the next nine years (2009-2017). This research highlighted five key issues to be considered when developing and updating agriculture strategies that aim to alleviate poverty through accelerated growth in the agriculture sector.

Improving marketing and traceability of agricultural commodities: The role of cooperatives

Farmer cooperatives are viewed as mechanisms to help improve the marketing environment for poor rural farmers faced with limited and uncertain consumer demand for the goods they produce. Cooperatives can help reduce production costs by organizing bulk input purchases for their members. They may also be used as social organizations and serve as a medium for enlightenment and capacity building. This brief explores the role of farmers' cooperatives in Nigeria by assessing their effectiveness in marketing and traceability services, as well as elucidating the constraints they face.

Ensuring food and nutrition security in rural Nigeria: An assessment of the challenges, information needs, and analytical capacity

Malnutrition is widespread in Nigeria, especially in rural areas. Nigerians are vulnerable to chronic food shortages, erratic supply, poor quality food, and fluctuating food prices. The huge investment in ensuring food and nutrition security for Nigerians has had limited success, and therefore, there is a need to review and learn from past interventions. This brief provides a glimpse at rural food and nutrition security in Nigeria and highlights gaps in existing knowledge and capacity to analyze Nigeria's food and nutrition security situation.

Institutional environment and access to microfinance by self-employed women in the rural areas of Edo state

In Nigeria, conventional financial institutions serve only about 35 percent of the active population, and the poor, especially women, have limited access to financial services. Private sector-led microfinance institutions (MFIs) are increasingly playing a role to fill this need. This brief provides an overview of the institutional environment of microfinance in Nigeria, as well as insights and recommendations for better reaching this audience, based on focus group discussions and case studies of self-employed women in rural areas of Edo State, Nigeria.

Decentralization, agricultural services and determinants of input use in Nigeria

The substantial differences in agricultural productivity between Asia and Africa can be largely explained by differences in use of modern inputs. The evidence suggests that better access to infrastructure (such as roads and irrigation) and agricultural services has given Asian farmers significantly better access to modern inputs, while Sub-Saharan African farmers without such an access are not able to fully exploit the benefits of modern agricultural inputs. This brief discusses the relationship between agricultural service provision and modern input use by farmers in Nigeria, with a focus on the differences among states and local government areas (LGA).

Encouraging youth's involvement in agricultural production and processing

Available evidence suggests an ageing farming population in Nigeria, with an average age of 47 years and life expectancy at 47-50 years in 2008 (NBS 2008, Oboh et al., 2009). In 2009, the national unemployment rate was 19.7 percent with the youth accounting for more than 75 percent (NBS, 2010). Increased involvement of youth in agricultural activities will help reduce the problems of the ageing farm population and increasing youth unemployment. This brief explores issues related to youth involvement in agriculture such as socioeconomic characteristics of youth engaged in agriculture and factors hindering youth involvement in agriculture.

Enhancing the competitiveness of agricultural commodity chains in Nigeria

Nigeria's economic performance since 2002 has improved, with growth averaging about 7.3 percent during 2002-07 (Global insight 2008). While the production of cassava, rice, and maize has responded to the associated improved policy incentives in recent years, factors such as poor infrastructure and limited market outlets have served as great disincentives to farmers. Using household data in a "Policy Analysis Matrix" (PAM) framework, the comparative advantage of Nigerian farmers in producing cassava, rice, and maize in high potential states, given current national policies, is examined.

Review of small farmer access to agricultural credit in Nigeria

The important role of credit in agricultural enterprise development and sustainability has prompted the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) to establish credit schemes such as the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme (ACGS) and Agricultural Credit Support Scheme (ACSS) to ensure farmers' access to agricultural credit. Yet, the situation has not improved substantially; based on the 2006 Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire Survey, it is estimated that only 18 percent of farm households (mainly smallscale farmers) have access to financial services (Akramov 2009). This brief reviews existing knowledge on small-scale farmers' access to credit with particular focus on conditions for accessing credit, the maximum credit provided, repayment of credit, other factors limiting access, and the impact of credit on small-scale farmers.

Review of private agricultural advocacy groups in Nigeria

Public-private sector dialogue in Nigeria's economic policymaking process is fragmented and unstructured. As a result, the private sector has moved to organize itself around trade groups, which have the tendency to seek self-interest. Advocacy groups can help bring balance in private-public sector dialogue. This paper explores agricultural advocacy groups in Nigeria as instruments for economic policy change by focusing on their organization, functions, achievements, constraints, and sustainability.

Economics of farmers' demand for private irrigation in Nigeria

Small-scale private irrigation (SPRI) schemes make up much of the irrigated areas in Nigeria. These irrigated areas, though, are only about three percent of the cultivated area in the country. Constraints on SPRI expansion are investigated by many studies in Nigeria, but key knowledge gaps in at least four areas still need to be resolved. These gaps are: (1) lack of knowledge of water sources; (2) perceptions of risks associated with rainfall and access to good quality water; (3) transaction costs associated with investments in irrigation; and (4) effectiveness of public institutions activities in SPRI.

A quantitative analysis of determinants of child and maternal malnutrition in Nigeria

Malnutrition rates among children 0 to 36 months and women of reproductive age in Nigeria are high and vary significantly across rural urban locations, geopolitical zones, and agro-ecological zones, thereby constituting a significant public health challenge. Using the 2003 National Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) data, this brief discusses the key determinants of child and maternal nutrition in Nigeria across these different zones.

Nigeria: Recent developments in agricultural research

Enhancing agricultural productivity and profitability in Nigeria

Much of Nigeria's recent economic growth can be attributed to its non-oil economy-primarily agriculture. But the recent agricultural growth has been driven mainly by expansion in areas planted while productivity has remained flat or declining. This brief provides insight for formulating policies and strategies to enhance profitability and productivity of major crops across Nigeria's agroecological zones.

Agricultural investment for growth and poverty reduction in Nigeria

The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) includes a target of 6 percent annual agricultural growth, supported by the allocation of at least 10 percent of the national budget for agriculture. The Nigerian government has set a higher growth target of 10 percent annual agricultural growth in the medium term, since the country has already achieved the 6 percent target. To achieve such rapid agricultural growth in the next eight years (until 2017), improvements in factor productivity beyond land expansion may be needed, as well as increases in public spending to support the process. This brief assesses the amount, growth, and efficiency of public spending required for Nigeria to reach the agricultural growth target it has established in order to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) of poverty reduction.

Assessment of the 2009 fertilizer voucher program in Kano and Taraba, Nigeria

Despite many efforts to ease Nigerian farmers' access to quality and affordable fertilizer, it remains a key challenge for Nigerian agricultural policymakers As a result, the Nigerian government is experimenting with implementing a fertilizer voucher scheme, which is intended to improve on the current fertilizer distribution system. This brief analyzes the application of input vouchers in the Nigerian states of Kano and Taraba in 2009. It explores the effect of the voucher program on the quantity and quality of fertilizer received; the timeliness of receipt, and the price paid by respondents.

Farmers' preferences on seed purchase timing - rice, cowpea, and maize growers in Nigeria

The timely availability of seeds at planting time is considered one of the important factors for faster improved seed adoption in Nigeria. There is a lack of empirical information on how much more farmers are willing to pay (WTP) for seeds at planting time compared to a few months before planting time. The information on such WTP can help assess the feasibility of public sector support for the timely delivery of improved seeds. This study estimates how farmers' WTP for rice, cowpea and maize seeds varies depending on the purchase timing, using information on both farmers' observed purchase behaviors and their stated preferences. Results indicate that low-income farmers may prefer to pay higher prices for cowpea seeds if those seeds can be bought closer to planting season. Policy implications and future research needs are discussed.

Alternative energy sources for agricultural production and processing in Nigeria

Around the world, it is recognized in agricultural production and processing that energy (farm power) is perhaps the second most important input besides land). Yet the agricultural sector in Nigeria has access to less than one percent of the total conventional energy supply in the country (EarthTrends 2003). This brief explores solutions to the rural area energy gap by reviewing the potential for conventional and alternative sources of energy for agricultural production and processing.

Decentralization and public service delivery in Nigeria

Nigeria's efforts to decentralize its government system are aimed at improving service delivery. However, access to important social and economic services remains limited, especially for rural populations. The deficiencies in service delivery have been exacerbated by a strong urban bias in development policies and growing fiscal imbalances among the three tiers of government: national, state, and local. In particular, Nigeria faces a challenge in efficiently and effectively delivering agricultural and rural services at the local level to help the agricultural sector grow and alleviate poverty. To overcome this challenge, research suggests that the subnational governments, especially local governments, must be empowered with adequate tax and revenue authority to carry out their jurisdictional responsibilities. This brief summarizes existing knowledge on the decentralization of public service delivery to Nigeria's rural sector.

Improving research-policy linkages in Nigeria

When there is disconnect between research and policy, high quality research-based information can be produced without impact on policy dialogue and action. This often results in policy actions lagging far behind scientific and academic knowledge, the presence of avoidable inefficiencies in policy design and implementation, and policies that may not fulfill their purpose. While there is no real consensus on how to successfully improve linkages between research and policy, it is clear that understanding the specific context in which policy decisions take place is critical. To better understand the dynamics between agricultural research and policymaking in Nigeria, we examined the 2006 National Fertilizer Policy for Nigeria and the process that led to its writing and adoption.

A review of fertilizer policy issues in Nigeria

Low fertilizer use is one of the many reasons for low agricultural productivity in Nigeria. Fertilizer use estimated at 13 kg/ha in 2009 by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), is far lower than the 200 kg/ha recommended by the FAO as well as the 104 kg/ha in South Asia and 142 kg/ha in Southeast Asia. This brief reviews existing studies on the fertilizer sector in Nigeria and provides a summary of the results of recent surveys and analytic work conducted by IFPRI in Nigeria under the Global Food Security Response (GFSR) initiative of the USAID.

Institutional capacity for designing and implementing agricultural and rural development policies and strategies in Nigeria

An agricultural system consists of production, processing, storage, marketing, extension, research, and training. While production is a result of land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship, its magnitude and efficiency from the farm to the consumer depend on handling, preservation, and the processes of making the products readily available and conveniently consumable, which are directed by government policies. For this reason, good institutional capacity for designing and implementing agricultural and rural development policies is critical for a successful agricultural system, and ultimately for food security. This brief highlights key issues on the capacity for designing and implementing agricultural and rural development policies, strategies, and programs in Nigeria.

Quantitative analysis of rural poverty in Nigeria

In spite of Nigeria's abundant natural and human resource endowment, poverty remains pervasive, multifaceted, and chronic. Given the most recent data available, it is estimated that approximately 69 million (or 54.4 percent) Nigerians lived in poverty in 2004, an increase of more than 24 percent since 1980. This brief deals with poverty in Nigeria and focuses on the determinants of poverty in rural households by identifying the household/community characteristics (such as the status of women) and region-specific risks that affect rural poverty and how they have changed over time.