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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

Erick Boy

researcher spotlight

Erick Boy

Erick Boy is the Chief Nutritionist in the HarvestPlus section of the Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit. As head of nutrition for the HarvestPlus Program since 2008, he has led research that has generated scientific evidence on biofortified staple crops as efficacious and effective interventions to help address iron, vitamin A, and zinc deficiency in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and South Asia.

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Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Nigeria

countries and regions

Publications

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Journal Article

Policy and regulation in seed sector development for vegetatively propagated crops: Insights from Kenya, Nigeria, and Vietnam

2025Spielman, David J.; Gatto, Marcel; Wossen, Tesfamicheal; McEwan, Margaret; Abdoulaye, Tahirou; Maredia, Mywish K.; Hareau, Guy
Details

Policy and regulation in seed sector development for vegetatively propagated crops: Insights from Kenya, Nigeria, and Vietnam

Context In many low- and middle-income countries, smallholder farmers cultivating vegetatively propagated crops (VPCs) have limited access to quality planting material. This constraint can limit both the yield and returns to VPC cultivation. Yet policy and regulations designed to strengthen access to quality VPC planting materials and scale innovative programs that deliver these materials have been relatively unsuccessful to date. Part of the problem lies the unique biological and economic characteristics of vegetative propagation and its distinctness from cereal crops that dominate narratives on seed sector reforms and the resulting policy and regulatory regimes. Objective The study analyzes both theory and evidence on existing and alternative models of regulation that may incentivize cost-effective multiplication and distribution in VPC seed systems and markets. Methods The study draws on case studies of policy and practice related to quality assurance regulations in four crop-country combinations: cassava in Nigeria and Vietnam, and potato in Kenya and Vietnam. The case studies rely on qualitative analysis that was conducted using a combination of key informant interviews, focus group discussions, analysis of regulatory documents, and analysis of publicly available secondary data. Results and conclusions The study describes five strategies for regulating VPC seed systems in our four crop-country combinations, each with its own generalizable costs and benefits. The application (or marginalization) of these strategies is often shaped by fluid coalitions of actors with competing interests and framing narratives, and driven by organizational innovations, technological opportunities, trade relationships, and crises that are crop- and country-specific. Significance These findings suggest that regulations designed around strict, centralized quality control systems tend to limit market size, while more localized production systems are limited by both capacity and reach. They also suggest the need for alternatives that balance a permissive regulatory regime with decentralized production systems, grassroots capacity development, market surveillance, and systems that integrate multiple approaches to quality assurance. A detailed set of policy recommendations follows from these findings that inform ongoing country efforts to revise VPC seed sector policies and regulations—reforms that are being pursued not only in the crop-country case studies highlighted here, but also in other countries in both Africa and Asia.

Year published

2025

Authors

Spielman, David J.; Gatto, Marcel; Wossen, Tesfamicheal; McEwan, Margaret; Abdoulaye, Tahirou; Maredia, Mywish K.; Hareau, Guy

Citation

Spielman, David J.; Gatto, Marcel; McEwan, Margaret; Abdoulaye, Tahirou; Maredia, Mywish K.; and Hareau, Guy. 2025. Policy and regulation in seed sector development for vegetatively propagated crops: Insights from Kenya, Nigeria, and Vietnam. Agricultural Systems 229(October 2025): 104441. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2025.104441

Country/Region

Kenya; Nigeria; Vietnam

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Western Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Asia; South-eastern Asia; Policy Analysis; Regulations; Seed Systems; Quality Assurance

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2025.104441 Source record

Project

Seed Equal

Record type

Journal Article

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Journal Article

Private sector promotion of agricultural technologies: Experimental evidence from Nigeria

2025Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Dillon, Andrew; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Adjognon, Guigonan Serge
Details

Private sector promotion of agricultural technologies: Experimental evidence from Nigeria

Private sector agricultural businesses are critical for scaling new and potentially environmentally-friendly technologies, though much attention has focused on public agricultural investment. Working with a private firm, we conduct an experiment testing the effectiveness of alternative marketing strategies for promoting the adoption of urea super granule fertilizer (USG) among rice farmers in Nigeria. We disentangle the effects of price discount vouchers and the firm’s standard marketing package. We find that the firm’s standard marketing increases the adoption of USG fertilizer by 24 percentage points while reducing prilled urea utilization by 17 percentage points. Discount vouchers increase adoption of USG by an additional eight percentage points, but are not profitable for the firm. Although the adoption of USG leads to substantial environmental benefits by reducing nitrogen loss, farmer rice yields did not increase. Thus, despite the potential public benefits, private incentives facing firms and farmers are insufficient to drive scaling after a one-year intervention.

Year published

2025

Authors

Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Dillon, Andrew; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Adjognon, Guigonan Serge

Citation

Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda O.; Dillon, Andrew; Bloem, Jeffrey R.; and Adjognon, Guigonan Serge. 2025. Private sector promotion of agricultural technologies: Experimental evidence from Nigeria. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 133(September 2025): 103201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2025.103201

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Africa; Technology Adoption; Private Sector; Nitrogen; Rice; Urea

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2025.103201 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Herder-related violence, labor allocation, and the gendered response of agricultural households

2025Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Damon, Amy; Francis, David C.; Mitchell, Harrison
Details

Herder-related violence, labor allocation, and the gendered response of agricultural households

Violent conflict between nomadic herders and settled agricultural communities in Nigeria occurs as both groups clash over the use of land and natural resources, in part, due to a changing climate. We generate theory and evidence to study the labor responses of individuals within agricultural households to herder-related violence and consider a “shadow of violence” mechanism, whereby previous exposure to a violent event alters labor responses to a recent event. Using panel data from 2010 through 2019, we highlight how exposure to violence can lead to differing responses in the planting or harvest seasons and among men or women. In the planting season, among both men and women living in households with no previous exposure to herder-related violence, we find that exposure (i.e., singular exposure) leads to a reduction in household enterprise work, but among households with previous exposure experience, exposure (i.e., repeated exposure) leads to an increase in household enterprise work. Meanwhile, repeated exposure to herder-related violence reduces agricultural work among men only. This leads total hours worked to decline in response to singular exposure and to increase in response to repeated exposure especially among women. In the harvest season, we find that singular exposure increases agricultural work among both men and women, but repeated exposure reduces agricultural work among men only. JEL Codes: E26, E29, I31, Q12

Year published

2025

Authors

Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Damon, Amy; Francis, David C.; Mitchell, Harrison

Citation

Bloem, Jeffrey R.; Damon, Amy; Francis, David C.; and Mitchell, Harrison. 2025. Herder-related violence, labor allocation, and the gendered response of agricultural households. Journal of Development Economics 176(September 2025): 103512. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103512

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Northern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Africa; Agriculture; Conflicts; Gender; Households

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103512 Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Journal Article

Datasets

Dataset

2021 Social Accounting Matrix for Nigeria

2024International Food Policy Research Institute
Details

2021 Social Accounting Matrix for Nigeria

The 2021 Nigeria Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) follows IFPRI’s Standard Nexus SAM approach, by focusing on consistency, comparability, and transparency of data. The Nexus SAMs available on IFPRI’s website separates domestic production into 42 activities. Factors are disaggregated into labor, agricultural land, and capital, with labor further disaggregated across three education-based categories. The household account is divided into 10 representative household groups: Rural and urban households across per capita consumption quintiles. Nexus SAMs support the improvement of model-based research and policy analysis in developing countries and allow for more robust cross-country comparisons of national economic structures, especially agriculture-food systems.

Year published

2024

Authors

International Food Policy Research Institute

Citation

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). 2023. 2021 Social Accounting Matrix for Nigeria. Washington, DC: IFPRI [dataset]. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/095UBP. Harvard Dataverse. Version 1.

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Southern Africa; Western Africa; Macroeconomic Analysis; National Accounting; Household Consumption; Household Expenditure; Economic Indicators; Labour; Sex-disaggregated Data

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.7910/dvn/095ubp Source record

Project

Foresight

Record type

Dataset

Dataset

Dataset on the impact of biofortified cassava in Nigeria: assessment of livelihood outcomes in Nigeria

2024Gurmu, M.; Feleke, S.; Abdoulaye, T.; Andam, Kwaw S.; Adeyemo, T.
Details

Dataset on the impact of biofortified cassava in Nigeria: assessment of livelihood outcomes in Nigeria

Year published

2024

Authors

Gurmu, M.; Feleke, S.; Abdoulaye, T.; Andam, Kwaw S.; Adeyemo, T.

Citation

Gurmu, M., Feleke, S., Abdoulaye, T., Andam, K. & Adeyemo, T. (2024). Dataset on the impact of biofortified cassava in Nigeria: assessment of livelihood outcomes in Nigeria. Ibadan, Nigeria: IITA.

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Biofortification; Cassava; Impact Assessment

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.25502/af81-7m08/d Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Dataset

Dataset

Food Security Simulator — Nigeria

2023Comstock, Andrew R.; Ecker, Olivier; Pauw, Karl; Thurlow, James
Details

Food Security Simulator — Nigeria

The Food Security Simulator is an innovative and easy-to-use, MS-Excel-based tool for assessing the potential short-term impacts of food price or household income shocks on food security and people’s diets. The Simulator is an ideal tool for first-cut forward-looking evaluations of direct, household-level outcomes of economic crises and policy responses in a timely manner. The tool allows users to enter positive and negative price or income changes in percentage terms and provides simulated changes for a diverse set of food-consumption- and diet-quality-related indicators. In addition to detailed tabular presentations of all simulation results by household income quintile and residential area, key indicator results are summarized in concise overview tables and visualized in graphs for easy export and use in reports. The underlying data include estimates from representative household survey data and rigorous, sophisticated food demand models to capture consumer behavior.

Year published

2023

Authors

Comstock, Andrew R.; Ecker, Olivier; Pauw, Karl; Thurlow, James

Citation

Ecker, Olivier; and Comstock, Andrew R. 2023. Food Security Simulator Nigeria. CGIAR Blog Post. First published online October 26, 2023. https://www.cgiar.org/research/tool/food-security-simulator-nigeria/. https://www.cgiar.org/research/tool/food-security-simulator-nigeria/

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Food Security; Data; Diet; Survey Methods; Income

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.7910/dvn/wwmn6h Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Dataset

Blogs

Northern Nigeria’s hunger crisis: Transforming food aid to rebuild food systems
IFPRI Blog
 | 
July 11, 2025

Northern Nigeria’s hunger crisis: Transforming food aid to rebuild food systems

By David Stevenson, Abdul Kamara, Yero Baldeh, Martin Fregene, and Steven Were Omamo

Leveraging assistance to build resilience.

Four lessons for financial innovation in agrifood systems
IFPRI Blog
 | 
July 01, 2025

Four lessons for financial innovation in agrifood systems

By Kate Ambler, Jeffrey Bloem, Alan de Brauw, Mehrab Bakhtiar, and Eduardo Maruyama

Digital apps and other approaches for modernizing value chains.

The gendered response to farmer-herder violent conflict in Nigeria
IFPRI Blog
 | 
June 03, 2025

The gendered response to farmer-herder violent conflict in Nigeria

By Jeffrey Bloem, Amy Damon, David C. Francis, and Harrison Mitchell

A study shows how smallholder households deal with disruptions.

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Events

23rd International Congress of Nutrition (ICN)
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

August 24 to 29, 2025

23rd International Congress of Nutrition (ICN)

IFPRI is participating in the 23rd International Congress of Nutrition (ICN), hosted by the International Union of Nutritional Sciences (IUNS) on August 24-29 in Paris, France.  The theme of this year’s congress is “Sustainable Food for Global Health,” bringing together experts to discuss evidence and innovations in nutrition, sustainability, food science, and public health. IFPRI […]

The Future of Youth Jobs in Agrifood Systems in Africa
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

July 15, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am

The Future of Youth Jobs in Agrifood Systems in Africa

Africa’s population is the youngest of any region, affording the continent an adequate workforce to drive economic and social transformation. However, African economies are finding it difficult to create employment opportunities for this “youth bulge”—opportunities that are needed to advance on SDG target 8.6 to substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education […]

Improving Food Systems for Healthy Diets and Nutrition in Nigeria: Policies and Actions
Series/Special Event

 | 

July 25, 2024, 10:00 – 1:30 pm

Improving Food Systems for Healthy Diets and Nutrition in Nigeria: Policies and Actions

Despite significant progress in addressing hunger and undernutrition in the early 2000s, malnutrition, in all its forms, remains a major challenge in all regions of the world.  Unhealthy diets remain the primary drivers of many forms of malnutrition, including undernutrition, overweight and obesity, micronutrient deficiencies, and diet-related noncommunicable diseases.  Today, the number of people who […]

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News

October 24, 2024 | In the News

At high level dialogue, Stakeholders Rally Support for Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture (National Update/Punch)

This article published by National Update (Nigeria) wrote about a recent high-level dialogue on the CGIAR HER+ initiative in Abuja held on October 9, 2024, that aimed to address barriers women face in Nigeria’s agrifood sector.

July 08, 2024 | In the News

Pivotal: Confronting hunger and poverty in Nigeria (Africa Independence Television)

Nigeria’s current economic crisis continues to attract media attention. On 26 June 2024 Africa Independence Television (AIT) hosted a panel discussion on the television program “Pivotal” focused on confronting hunger and poverty. The panel, moderated by Nabila Usman, included Kwaw Andam, Country Program Leader, IFPRI-Nigeria, Andrew Mamudu, Country Director, Action Aid, and Abdullahi Mohammad, Associate, […]

October 23, 2023 | In the News

The return of the rice crisis (Financial Times)

“Export restrictions and extreme weather are threatening the global supply of a staple commodity relied on by millions,” writes the Financial Times. The sharp increase in the cost of this everyday staple can be traced to a crackdown by India, the world’s largest rice exporter, in response to fears of a production shortfall and rising […]

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Projects

Addressing Nigeria’s Policy, Finance, and Technology Supply Constraints to Accelerating Small-Scale Irrigation through Mapping Tools and Other Decision Support

Addressing Nigeria’s Policy, Finance, and Technology Supply Constraints to Accelerating Small-Scale Irrigation through Mapping Tools and Other Decision Support

Small-scale irrigation is a climate-proof, pro-poor technology that creates employment, helps smooth seasonal shortfalls in food supply, and encourages the production of crops that support……

Food Security Simulator

Food Security Simulator

The Food Security Simulator is an innovative, easy-to-use MS-Excel-based tool for assessing the potential short-term impacts of food price or household income shocks on food……

Women’s empowerment in agrifood governance (WEAGov)

Women’s empowerment in agrifood governance (WEAGov)

The Women’s Empowerment in Agrifood Governance (WEAGov) is an assessment tool developed by IFPRI and partners to help evaluate the extent to which women are……

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