Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy

Highlights 47, Dr. Osayanmon Wellington Osawe, Training Workshop on "R" for Graduate Students and Stuff of Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ibadan, Held at the Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Ibadan, Nigeria From April 11-18, 2019, April 2019.

The Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Policy Project (FTF NAPP) organized an intensive, hands-on training workshop for graduate students and staff of Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The training took place from Thursday April 11 to Thursday April 18, 2019 and was hosted by the Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Ibadan.

The R training workshop, facilitated by three of FTF NAPP Scholars (Dr. Osayanmon Wellington Osawe, Mrs. Blessing Agada and Mr. Philip Hegarty), was based on the FTF NAPP’s ‘Train One To Train Others’ framework. The Scholars were trained on R software during their tenure at Michigan State University (MSU), and their training was followed by an apprenticeship with an MSU faculty as he trained others. Now, back in Nigeria the scholars train other graduate students to make R, a free and open source software, more widely available to Nigerians.

Opening remarks were made by the Head of the host department, Prof. S.A. Yusuf. A total of 26 participants (12 female and 14 male, comprising 22 graduate students and 4 faculty members) attended the workshop.

The 6-day training covered several topics including introduction to R, statistical refresher, basic R structure, reading and writing data in R, data management techniques in R, introduction and advanced topics in R, graphics, simple linear regression, advanced regression analysis – Fixed Effect, Random Effect, Instrumental Variable Regression, means separation and ANOVA, replicating tables and graphs in R.

During the training workshop, participants were divided into five groups to develop research ideas. Using real data and their new R skills, they were required to conduct empirical analysis and make presentations. The resulting research presentations with analysis using R included “Evaluation of Yield and Yield Associated Traits in Cowpea”, “Effects of Climatic Indicators on Precipitation between 1990 and 2018”, “Analysis of Cocoa Farmers’ Productivity in Ondo State, Nigeria”, “Antioxidant Effect of Onion Skin Extract on Performance and Shelf Life of Broiler Meat”.

Following this training workshop, participants, in the tradition of the NAPP Scholars project, will continue to be mentored by the facilitators for a few more months as they apply their new skills in their respective research endeavors. 

This exercise is an example of how the FTF NAPP project uses a few well-trained Nigerians to train many more Nigerians in Nigeria.