This report summarizes the impacts of a 2014-2018 RCT in Nepal in partnership with Heifer International to test the impacts of a livestock transfer and training program seeking to help the rural poor, particularly women,
achieve a stable, independent and growing income.
A printed phone directory in Tanzania had significant impacts by connecting small-scale farmers with agriculture-related enterprises. The project’s results suggest directory services have substantial value for agriculture.
A temporary “learning” subsidy for commercially sourced fertilizers could help to expand the reach of Kenya's subsidy programs while supporting the commercial markets that will sustain long-term adoption.
In Tanzania, an experimental game found that a hybrid microloan with a 20% individual collateral increased individual effort and repayment for group loans while reducing the number of farmers who choose to borrow.
By adapting traditional financial products delivered by microfinance institutions, and making them more flexible to meet the needs of farmers and rural inhabitants, many of these challenges faced by index insurance can be overcome.
An exciting project in Uganda is bringing together a team of ICT entrepreneurs, economists, computer scientists, and agri-business professionals to test whether a highly scalable, high-tech approach can reduce transactions costs and improve market access for smallholders.
Our research will evaluate two separate programs in Senegal and Uganda, and will focus on the degree to which smallholder farmers make the required investments sustainable, the financial and behavioral obstacles they face in doing so and whether additional interventions help farmers overcome these obstacles.
To support the use of agricultural credit using index insurance The Ohio State University (OSU) and the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET), in collaboration with the University of Ghana, will undertake a program of research, outreach, and education.
Our project will contribute to these policy discussions primarily because our experimental analysis will be an important innovation in understanding the impact of contract farming on smallholder welfare.
