Nigeria is the largest producer of cowpea in the world and one of the highest consumers. This paper documents the challenges in cowpea production and consumption, export, and import trends in Nigeria. The critical and comparative review reveals several important insights. Cowpea is important for households and communities due to its substantial contributions to food security, nutrition, and revenue production. It plays a pivotal role in supporting various stakeholders involved in the value chain, including producers, processors, traders, and food vendors. Thus, cowpea is a crucial multipurpose crop. Although Nigeria is the largest producer of cowpea in the world, with a total production of 3.6 million tons in 2021, the demand for cowpea surpasses its supply due to factors such as the country's large population and low productivity. We describe the main challenges encountered in Nigeria's cowpea production, encompassing a range of issues such as high susceptibility to pests and diseases from planting to storage phases, low adoption of improved cowpea seed varieties, poor soil fertility, drought, and heat stress. The data suggest that low input use, low-yield varieties, and low productivity characterize the current level of cowpea production. Our findings suggest the need for tailored strategies to support the adoption of improved cowpea varieties in Nigeria to increase domestic production, adherence to quality standards, exploration of international markets for export opportunities, and ultimately, household income and improve nutritional outcomes.

This process evaluation (PE) is part of a five-year (2021–2026) impact evaluation (IE) of the use of a new pod-borer-resistant (PBR) cowpea variety in Nigeria, a project led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). While the IE draws from a representative sample of 1,399 farmers to determine the causal impacts of the use of PBR cowpea, the PE complements the IE by exploring in detail the potential adoption of the PBR cowpea variety and the reasons for adoption or non adoption, including its potential impacts on actors throughout the value chain. A program impact pathway (PIP) is the basis of this PE. The PIP identifies how impacts emerge from program inputs, processes, outputs, and outcomes to highlight barriers and facilitators of adoption. Given that this PE was conducted before the rollout of PBR cowpea in the IE, the analysis focuses on the potential of this innovative seed to achieve positive outputs and outcomes based on the PIP. Qualitative data were gathered from eight focus group discussions with farmers and 180 semi-structured interviews conducted with farmers, extension agents, seed dealers, and cowpea traders from eight local government areas (LGAs) in the states of Adamawa and Kwara. Given that the data are qualitative, the data are not representative. However, important insights were found that can help guide the IE.

This book focuses on food security and safety issues in Africa, a continent presently challenged with malnutrition and food insecurity. The continuous increase in the human population of Africa will lead to higher food demands, and climate change has already affected food production in most parts of Africa, resulting in drought, reduced crop yields, and loss of livestock and income. For Africa to be food-secure, safe and nutritious food has to be available, well-distributed, and sufficient to meet people’s food requirements. Contributors to Food Security and Safety: African Perspectives offer solutions to the lack of adequate safe and nutritious food in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as highlight the positive efforts being made to address this lack through a holistic approach. The book discusses the various methods used to enhance food security, such as food fortification, fermentation, genetic modification, and plant breeding for improved yield and resistance to diseases. Authors emphasize the importance of hygiene and food safety in food preparation and preservation, and address how the constraints of climate change could be overcome using smart crops. As a comprehensive reference text, Food Security and Safety: African Perspectives seeks to address challenges specific to the African continent while enhancing the global knowledge base around food security, food safety, and food production in an era of rapid climate change.

This book documents frontier knowledge on the drivers of agriculture productivity to derive pragmatic policy advice for governments and development partners on reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. The analysis describes global trends and long-term sources of total factor productivity growth, along with broad trends in partial factor productivity for land and labor, revisiting the question of scale economies in farming. Technology is central to growth in agricultural productivity, yet across many parts of the developing world, readily available technology is never taken up. We investigate demand-side constraints of the technology equation to analyze factors that might influence producers, particularly poor producers, to adopt modern technology. Agriculture and food systems are rapidly transforming, characterized by shifting food preferences, the rise and growing sophistication of value chains, the increasing globalization of agriculture, and the expanding role of the public and private sectors in bringing about efficient and more rapid productivity growth. In light of this transformation, the analysis focuses on the supply side of the technology equation, exploring how the enabling environment and regulations related to trade and intellectual property rights stimulate Research and Development to raise productivity. The book also discusses emerging developments in modern value chains that contribute to rising productivity. This book is the fourth volume of the World Bank Productivity Project, which seeks to bring frontier thinking on the measurement and determinants of productivity to global policy makers.

Genetically engineered (GE) crops were first introduced commercially in the 1990s. After two decades of production, some groups and individuals remain critical of the technology based on their concerns about possible adverse effects on human health, the environment, and ethical considerations. At the same time, others are concerned that the technology is not reaching its potential to improve human health and the environment because of stringent regulations and reduced public funding to develop products offering more benefits to society. While the debate about these and other questions related to the genetic engineering techniques of the first 20 years goes on, emerging genetic-engineering technologies are adding new complexities to the conversation. Genetically Engineered Crops builds on previous related Academies reports published between 1987 and 2010 by undertaking a retrospective examination of the purported positive and adverse effects of GE crops and to anticipate what emerging genetic-engineering technologies hold for the future. This report indicates where there are uncertainties about the economic, agronomic, health, safety, or other impacts of GE crops and food, and makes recommendations to fill gaps in safety assessments, increase regulatory clarity, and improve innovations in and access to GE technology.

Cowpea: taxonomy, genetics, and breeding, physiology and agronomy, diseases and parasitic weeds, insect pests, postharvest technology and utilization. Biotechnological applications.