The President and CEO of the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) Dr. David Sarfo Ameyaw has been nominated as the Chair of the Advisory Committee of IDH Corporate Portfolio Evaluation.
Dr. Ameyaw brings to the position over 25 years of experience in leadership and practical experience in Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning. He has served as the Head of Strategy, Monitoring and Evaluation at The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) based in Nairobi, Kenya. He has also served as the Senior Director for Monitoring and Evaluation at the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Washington DC, as well as the Director for Monitoring and Evaluation and Acting Director / Food Security Specialist for the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) Headquarters in Silver Springs, Maryland, US. He is a Board Member of the Agriculture Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI), and a member of the Board of Directors of Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Assets and Market Access that operates in support of the United States Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Food Security.
IDH convenes, co-creates, and co-finances inclusive and sustainable market-driven solutions that create value for people and planet. To catalyze change at scale, IDH empowers people within businesses, the global financial sector, and governments.
Headquartered in the Netherlands, IDH has around 380 employees globally, operating in 20 landscapes and 12 commodities and sourcing regions with over 1000 public and private partners. In 14 years of operation, IDH has catalyzed over 390 M in private sector investment and support for new business models that create better jobs, better incomes, a better environment, and gender equity for all.
Congratulations from the ICED Team, we are proud of your remarkable achievement!
Graduate Research Assistant completes M.Phil thesis using a subset of data collected from ALL-IN project baseline survey
As part of the requirement to provide capacity building/strenthening for individuals on the ALL-IN Project, Samuel Kwabena Chaa Kyire, a graduate research assistant, has completed his M.Phil thesis using a subset of the data collected during the baseline survey of the ALL-IN Project dubbed, “Bundling Small Scale Irrigation and Drought Index Insurance to Manage Small-Scale Farmers’ Income Risk and Expanding Their Access to Agricultural Credit”.
This research project is being undertaken by the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR) Ghana, under the auspices of the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) and funded by Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Markets, Risks and Resilience (MRR), University of California, Davies.
The candidate, whose thesis is entitled “Perceived risk, risk management and credit access among irrigated rice farmers in the Upper East region, Ghana” has successfully defended his thesis, did the corrections based on comments from the Internal and External Examiners and submitted the final version of the thesis to the School of Graduate Studies, UENR and is awaiting graduation on the 31st March, 2023 to be awarded an M.Phil. in Agribusiness Management.
Samuel Kwabena Chaa Kyire’s final thesis defense presentation at UENR
In an interview, Professor John K. M. Kuwornu, the Principal Investigator on the ALL-IN Research Project at UENR disclosed, “Samuel Kwabena Chaa Kyire has been associated with the project; he is hardworking and has the potential to attain higher laurels in academia. I pledge to mentor him to pursue his PhD.”
“Apart from the academics”, Samuel intimated, “I have gained much knowledge and experience which will help in my career. I want to express my profound gratitude to Feed the Future Innovation Lab and ICED for making the funds available for the project. Also, my appreciation goes to Prof. John K. M. Kuwornu, the Lead of the ALL-IN Project at UENR and the entire team for their continuous support. I am looking forward to future opportunities in graduate research so that I will be able to undertake a PhD Program and improve my career and capacity in the field of Agribusiness Management.”
The abstract of the thesis is presented as follows:
Abstract
This study explored risk perception, management, and credit access among irrigated rice farmers. A multistage sampling approach was employed to sample 477 farmers from the Tono and Vea irrigation schemes in the Upper East region of Ghana. The perception index, multivariate probit regression and structural equation modelling were used to analyse farmers’ perception of agricultural risks, determinants of adopting risk management instruments and the moderating role of extension frequency between risk management and access to credit, respectively. The estimated perception index was 0.43, indicating that rice farmers positively perceive agricultural risks. Further, education, gender, farmer group membership, access to extension agents and research centres, total landholding, rice farm size, risk perceptions and perceived environmental changes such as drought, rainfall and declining soil fertility are the significant determinants of adopting risk management strategies. Moreover, the number of extension contact significantly moderates the relationship between risk management instruments (off-farm work and bonding) and the amount of credit borrowed by farmers. It is recommended that extension agents (Ministry of Food and Agriculture) and researchers (Savannah Agricultural Research Institute) need to enhance their services with frequent demonstrations and training to facilitate farmers’ adoption of risk management instruments. Financial service providers should also consider offering in-kind credit to farmers to stop using cash loans meant for farming for off-farm activities. Further, this study re-affirms Protection Motivation Theory as a critical driver of adopting risk management instruments.
A three-day ALL-IN technical workshop, under the tutelage of Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR), designed as a refresher or a jumpstart for students and early researchers involved in technical writing has been held at the Crossroads Hotel in Lilongwe, Malawi.
The LUANAR ALL-IN project writing workshop was aimed at improving writing skills such as clarity, conciseness and organization, increasing the ability to write for different audiences and purposes as well as providing a better understanding of the value of technical writing across a range of sectors and professions.
The workshop was facilitated by Limbikani Matumba, a Professor of Food Technology and Nutrition and Director of Research and Outreach at LUANAR-NRC College. He covered a range of topics from manuscript and article development, different types of articles and reviews, peer reviews and software and tools that aid in scientific and technical writing.
PARTICIPANTS
26 participants (13 males and 13 females) consisting 18 graduate students and 8 researchers from LUANAR attended the workshop.
On the first day, Professor Matumba discussed the importance of proper formatting for scientific documents and the different stages and components of a manuscript or article. He followed up on the second day focusing on systematic and meta-analysis reviews, with participants writing an introduction for an article of their choice and discussing the difference between rapid systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
On the final day, participants engaged in peer reviews of their introductions, followed by a plenary session led by Dr. Elizabeth Bandason, Senior Lecturer (Insect Neuroscientist) at LUANAR-Bunda College.
IMPACT
The LUANAR ALL-IN writing workshop was a valuable experience for participants;
it provided them with the skills and knowledge to improve their technical writing,
they were able to take away valuable information that will help them in their future writing endeavors and it is expected that they will use the knowledge gained from the workshop to improve their writing skills and make their research more impactful,
the workshop also provided participants with an opportunity to create a network of peers and possible partners that may critique and help with future technical writing projects.
Joseph Clottey (Ph.D), a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) has co-authored an article entitled “Taking stock of gender gaps in crop production technology adoption and technical efficiency in Ghana”.
The article has since been published in the Agrekon, whichis a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal concentrating on Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics vis-a-vis to Southern Africa. It is edited by Professor Johann Kirsten, an economics Professor at Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and a director at the Bureau of Economic Research. Agrekon is the official publication of the Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA), the professional body of South African Agricultural economists.
We present the key points of the article:
Agricultural performance has been proven to have strong linkages with the growth of developing countries. However, the gains from agricultural growth disproportionately trickle down to the poor.
Amongst the many ways of reducing this bias against the poor is to reduce gender gaps in agriculture. Over time, however, the validity of stats on gender gaps has been questioned, and the way stakeholders describe gender gaps also affects how they perceive & address them.
This study sought to assess the gender gap in farm output due to technology gaps and technical efficiency. It further evaluates whether gender patterns in technology adoption and technical efficiency have changed over time.
We apply meta-stochastic frontier analysis to data pooled from 7 cross-sectional population-based surveys that represent about three decades (1987-2017) of the prod history for 12 crops in Ghana to assess dynamics of gender gaps in farm output due to tech gaps & tech efficiency.
Results indicate that the responsiveness of output to land, planting material, hired labor, and fertilizer for females is lower than that of males. On the contrary, the responsiveness of output to family labor and pesticide for males is lower than that of females.
Over time the gender gap in elasticities for land and planting material has nearly closed; the gap against males for fertilizer has shifted to a gap against females; and for family/hired labor the gap against females has shifted to a gap against males.
The results also indicate that females operate at an increasing return to scale of 1.14 while males operate at a decreasing return of 0.93. This suggests that females have more room to increase their scale of production.
The dynamics in the level & gender gap in elasticities results in a technology gap of about 25% for female farmers whilst their male counterparts faced a technology gap of 20%, and this gap is robust across different crops and in most regions.
Over the past three decades, the gap against females declined from 18% in 1997/98 by about 83% to 3% in 2016/17.
The results indicate female farmers are more technically efficient (TE of 76%) compared to their male counterparts (TE of 73%). However, this is not robust across different crops but is persistent in all regions except the Northern region.
Tech efficiency gap against males has remained relatively steady over 3 decades and is estimated at 5% in 2016/2017. Meta-frontier technical efficiency measure indicates that both male/female operate at 60% of the potential possible given the overall crop prod tech in Ghana.
We highlight that both male and female farmers have room to increase their tech adoption & tech efficiency in crop prod & the 30-year temporal dynamics suggest that females could also lead in the crop prod tech in Ghana, & they should be supported, albeit not at the expense of males.
For gender interventions to yield their expected results, they must be targeted at specific crops and specific.
