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IntroductionNigeria is Africa’s most populous country, third largest fish producer, and second largest aquaculture producer. There have been numerous studies of aquaculture and fisheries in Nigeria, but no study to date has analyzed aquaculture and capture fisheries value chains together, while giving equal weight to all value chain segments and systematically capturing information on temporal trends in value chain structure, conduct, and performance. This paper does so.MethodsWe conducted a structured, qualitative, rapid reconnaissance survey of 180 actors from eight segments of the aquatic food value chain in three Nigerian states with contrasting geographies, Ebonyi, Kebbi, and Oyo.ResultsResults particularly important for future research and policy are as follows. (1) Partial vertical integration is a common feature of the organization of firms in all value chain segments, as a risk reduction strategy to overcome market imperfections and frictions. Scarcity and high cost of imported intermediate inputs is stimulating local innovation and import substitution manufacturing of feeds and fabricated items. (2) Inter-sectoral spillovers from the poultry industry have hastened the development of fish value chains, while improvements in power supply have enabled the expansion of cold storage capacity, facilitating the geographical lengthening of frozen fish value chains. (3) Rapid technological and/or institutional change is occurring in all value chain segments, including those usually viewed as traditional, such as processing and fishing. Logistics services are becoming more specialized and sophisticated, and digital communications technologies including social media play an increasingly important role in value chain coordination and marketing. (4) Increasing opportunity costs of time drive demand for convenience foods such as smoked and fried fish, which require little further preparation and can be stored at room temperature. Demand for farmed catfish is linked to growing consumption of food away from home at bars and restaurants. (5) Significant opportunities exist to improve the performance of value chains in terms of gender equity, environmental impacts, and food safety.

Global concerns over increasing carbon emissions, climate change, decreasing environmental quality, limited and uneven endowments of fossil fuels, rising energy demand, and volatile oil prices have inspired the move toward global energy system decarbonization. The challenges of achieving ambitious climate targets and sustainable development cannot be solved without the significant efforts of the Global South. Regarding net-zero emissions, the main issue for developing countries is avoiding future emissions from industrialization and lock-in into fossil fuel-intensive technologies. However, achieving strategic and ambitious climate targets in the Global South will require understanding the economic implications of decarbonization. This study’s objective and key contribution are to systematically review and provide a detailed assessment of the literature on decarbonization in the Global South to understand the multi-level economic implications of achieving net-zero emissions in the Global South. The assessment considers four broad themes–investment costs, employment impacts, economic growth, and other macroeconomic impacts (such as consumption, debt level, net savings, income and welfare, and trade balance, among others). Overall, the review finds that energy system decarbonization requires substantial investment outlay. Also, it is linked with job displacement in fossil energy sectors and job creation in green sectors. However, there is no unanimous evidence on net job creation in developing countries. Additionally, the GDP impacts are ambiguous; some studies find future GDP growth impacts, while others find GDP decline impacts of decarbonization scenarios. This paper also provides directions for future research.

The changing climate is adversely affecting the productivity and livelihoods of Nigerian smallholder rural farmers. Several studies predict worsening outcomes for future climate events, for example heat waves, drought and intense precipitation. Farmers are required to adopt several measures to thrive, given the observed or expected climate change events. Existing studies about the interaction between climate change the agriculture sector has focused evaluating the bi-directional causal relationships, and identifying adaptation measures, but research on the climate resilience aspect of these adaptation measures is missing, or at best, low. This study aims to fill this gap in knowledge by assessing resilience and contribution to sustainability of farmer-adopted measures aimed at addressing risks posed by climate change. We conduct a systematic review of 95 studies concentrating on climate adaptation by smallholder rural farmers in Nigeria in the period 2010 to 2019. We assess the climate resilience of adaptation measures using the Ifejika-Speranza Resilience Check Toolkit. Our findings show that farmers are using climate-resilient adaptation measures; however, we could not ascertain how these have led to sustainable agricultural systems, since it is not the focus of the current study. Our findings show that majority of the adaptation studies in Nigeria are focused on crop farming subsystem. The major agricultural ecosystems and the broad adaptation areas are: Crop farming (improved soil and land management, crop-specific Innovation, water management practices, climate information services and education, access to finance, and off-farm diversification), livestock farming (improved livestock management systems, improved breeding strategies, sustainable health improvement, proper feed formulation early maturing and heat-resistant bird varieties), and fish farming (water harvesting measures, organic material, quick-maturing varieties).

This study examined the relationship between the adoption of bio-fortified pro-vitamin-A cassava varieties and farming households’ health outcomes using cross sectional data obtained from 318 cassava farmers in southeast Nigeria. The data was analysed using binary logistic regression, propensity score matching of treatment effects and percentages. The study found that number of children under five, household size, education of head of household, extension service, ownership of television, radio, mobile phone and tricycle, membership of cooperative societies, and access to credit were the significant predictors of adoption of pro-vitamin-A bio-fortified cassava varieties in the States. The study also found that the main constraints militating against adoption of pro-vitamin-A bio-fortified cassava include decaying of roots immediately after maturation, high cost of cassava stem, and high moisture content. The estimate of the effect of the adoption of bio-fortified pro-vitamin-A cassava varieties on incidence of vitamin-A deficiency related diseases was significant with an average treatment effect on the adopters of -0.463. The adoption of bio-fortified pro-vitamin-A cassava varieties has substantial effect on the reduction of vitamin-A deficiency related health outcomes. There is need for wider awareness and dissemination of the varieties among cassava farmers, while interventions should target the promotion of both production and consumption of such cassava varieties.

This study analyzed the interrelationships between participation in MFRMs and dietary diversity of poultry farming households in Southeast Nigeria. We used cross-sectional data from poultry farmers in Southeast Nigeria and employed instrumental variable and seemingly unrelated regression models to estimate the impact of MFRM participation and major linkages to poultry farm households’ dietary diversity. The results show that participating in MFRMs, relative to traditional markets, improved poultry farmers’ dietary diversity. Moreover, dietary diversity was positively related to higher poultry farm incomes, higher value of own poultry products consumed, and larger area of vegetable cultivated using poultry droppings as manure. Furthermore, increased poultry farm income, higher value of own poultry products consumed, and larger area of vegetable land cultivated using poultry droppings as manure increased the dietary diversity of the farm households. In contrast, a higher share of poultry production revenue controlled by men reduced household dietary diversity. These findings make clear the potential of improving farming households’ nutrition outcomes by promoting participation in MFRMs and the major impact pathways.

An in-depth understanding of the impact of vulnerability on livelihoods and food security is important in deploying effective adaptation actions. The Nigerian agricultural sector is dominated by rainfed and non-homogenous smallholder farming systems. A number of climate change risk studies have emerged in the last decade. However, little attention has been given to vulnerability assessments and the operationalization of vulnerability. To highlight this shortcoming, this study systematically reviewed climate-change-focused vulnerability assessments in the agricultural sector by evaluating (1) variation in climate variables in Nigeria over time; (2) the state of climate change vulnerability assessment in Nigerian agriculture; (3) the theoretical foundations, operationalization approaches, and frameworks of vulnerability assessments in Nigeria; (4) the methods currently used in vulnerability assessments; and (5) lessons learned from the vulnerability studies. We used a linear trend of climatic data spanning over a period of 56 years (1961−2016) obtained from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency and the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, along with a systematic review of literature to achieve the objectives. The analysis indicates a significant and positive correlation between temperature and time in all major agro-ecological zones. For precipitation, we found a non-significant correlation between precipitation in the Sahel, Sudan, and Guinea Savanna zones with time, while the other zones recorded positive but significant associations between precipitation and time. The systematic review findings indicate no clear progress in publications focused specifically on vulnerability assessments in the Nigerian agricultural sector. There has been progress recently in applying frameworks and methods. However, there are important issues that require addressing in vulnerability assessments, including low consideration for indigenous knowledge and experience, unclear operationalization of vulnerability, non-standardization of vulnerability measures, and inadequacy of current assessments supporting decision making.

Introduction: Nigeria is Africa's most populous country, third largest fish producer, and second largest aquaculture producer. There have been numerous studies of aquaculture and fisheries in Nigeria, but no study to date has analyzed aquaculture and capture fisheries value chains together, while giving equal weight to all value chain segments and systematically capturing information on temporal trends in value chain structure, conduct, and performance. This paper does so. Methods: We conducted a structured, qualitative, rapid reconnaissance survey of 180 actors from eight segments of the aquatic food value chain in three Nigerian states with contrasting geographies, Ebonyi, Kebbi, and Oyo. Results: Results particularly important for future research and policy are as follows. (1) Partial vertical integration is a common feature of the organization of firms in all value chain segments, as a risk reduction strategy to overcome market imperfections and frictions. Scarcity and high cost of imported intermediate inputs is stimulating local innovation and import substitution manufacturing of feeds and fabricated items. (2) Inter-sectoral spillovers from the poultry industry have hastened the development of fish value chains, while improvements in power supply have enabled the expansion of cold storage capacity, facilitating the geographical lengthening of frozen fish value chains. (3) Rapid technological and/or institutional change is occurring in all value chain segments, including those usually viewed as traditional, such as processing and fishing. Logistics services are becoming more specialized and sophisticated, and digital communications technologies including social media play an increasingly important role in value chain coordination and marketing. (4) Increasing opportunity costs of time drive demand for convenience foods such as smoked and fried fish, which require little further preparation and can be stored at room temperature. Demand for farmed catfish is linked to growing consumption of food away from home at bars and restaurants. (5) Significant opportunities exist to improve the performance of value chains in terms of gender equity, environmental impacts, and food safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]