SEMINAR EVALUATING THE IMPACTS OF USING THE POD BORER-RESISTANT (PBR) COWPEA VARIETY IN NIGERIA
Held on Thursday, August 24th , 2023
11:00 – 12:00 AM (EST) | 15:00 – 16:00 PM (GMT)
Presented by:
Kwaw Andam
Country Program Leader
Senior Research Fellow | Development Strategies and Governance | IFPRI
Mulu Amare
Research Fellow | Development Strategies and Governance | IFPRI
Abstract:
This brown bag seminar presents ongoing research on the impact evaluation of the PBR cowpea SAMPEA-20T variety in Nigeria. As the first commercially released genetically modified (GM) food crop in Nigeria and globally for cowpea, its adoption represents a significant milestone in the agricultural landscape Developers of the PBR variety expect that by 2025, 25 percent of Nigerian cowpea farmers adopt this variety, generating yield gains of at least 20 percent for adopting farmers, with accompanying reductions in pesticide applications. The evaluation aims to examine household-level effects of the use of PBR cowpea on key outcomes related to cowpea production and productivity.
The seminar will present an overview of the research design and results of the baseline survey, including household and plot characteristics. Employing a cluster randomized controlled trial (c-RCT) with an encouragement design, the evaluation includes two treatment arms: PBR cowpea adoption plus complementary inputs (T1) and PBR cowpea adoption alone (T2), and a control group of conventional cowpea adoption (C). This is the first RCT for GM crops in Africa and its results will contribute to generate new insights into the implications and outcomes of GM crop adoption in Nigeria and other African countries. Join us to learn more about the research design and progress and discuss the implications for development practitioners and policymakers regarding the use of GM crops on the continent.
Presenters:
Kwaw Andam is the Country Program Leader of IFPRI Nigeria, and Senior Research Fellow at the IFPRI’s Development Strategies and Governance unit. Before leading the IFPRI Nigeria team, Kwaw worked as a research fellow in the IFPRI program in Ghana from 2014 to 2019, and he served as an agriculture economist at the World Bank in Washington from 2010 to 2014.
Mulu Amare is a Research Fellow at the IFPRI’s Development Strategies and Governance unit. He is a quantitative development micro-economist, who has considerable experience in the analysis of household survey datasets in several countries in Africa and Southeast Asia.
Moderator:
Hyacinth Edeh is the country program manager in IFPRI's Abuja Office. He got his undergraduate degree in Agricultural Economics in 2000 from the Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT).
