Event Information
Call for Proposals
The Uptake and Impact of Modern Agricultural Technologies and Practices
Primary Focus Country: Nigeria
Deadline: July 10, 2025
Background and Context
As part of its capacity-building mission, the SPIA-Nigeria country study team is pleased to announce a call for proposals to support MSc, PhD, and early-career researchers who conduct empirical research on Nigeria's agricultural sector. The SPIA-Nigeria country study is a three-year research program, spanning January 2025 – December 2027, aiming to investigate the reach, adoption, and impact of CGIAR-promoted innovations in Nigeria over the past 20 years (2005-2025). CGIAR, the Consortium for International Agricultural Research, is an international partnership focused on research for food security and the sustainable transformation of food, land, and water systems. The Special Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA) generously funds the study. The country study is jointly implemented by EfD-South Africa, based at the University of Cape
Town, and EfD-Nigeria, based at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Professors Yonas Alem and Amin Karimu lead the program as PIs.
As part of its capacity-building objective, the team proposes small grants to support master's students (USD 1,500), PhD students (USD 3,000), and early-career fellows (USD 8,000) in their research based on large-scale data sets from Nigeria. While applicants can be based anywhere in the world, the proposed research should primarily focus on Nigeria, utilizing large-scale data collected within the country, such as the Nigerian General Household Survey (GHS) Panel. The
team accepts proposals focusing on other sub-Saharan African countries if the proposed research or data is highly novel. The research team will offer or arrange mentorship to successful grant
recipients to support the research. The team will announce the grant winners by the end of July, and the grant recipients are expected to submit a first draft of the paper by December 15, 2025.
Grant winners will also be required to present the paper in a policy-oriented academic workshop organized by the research team. Grant winners are also expected to submit a research article with
the potential for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The final report/paper should be submitted before July 31, 2026. Co-authorship is a possibility but not required.
Study Scope
The proposed study must use large-scale farm household dataset(s) from Nigeria, possibly in combination with other data sources, and focus on the uptake and possible impact of modern agricultural technologies, particularly those promoted by CGIAR institutions.
Examples of eligible themes are:
• Diffusion of innovations: to document adoption pathways using two or more survey rounds, focusing on individual innovations or comparisons across innovations.
• Adoption: to understand among whom and where the adoption of different innovations occurs to generate evidence relevant to targeting, scaling policies, etc.
• Synergies and trade-offs between innovations: to understand linkages between the adoption of different innovations and their benefits.
• Analysis of farm/household level decision-making and outcomes as they relate to various agricultural innovations.
• Relationship between agricultural innovations and community/regional level developments, including, e.g., questions on structural transformation.
• Varietal-level data: if you have access to DNA fingerprinting, the varietal identification dataset of different crops at the national level. You can use this unique dataset to exploit and shed new light on several questions.
• Analysis of measurement error: to provide evidence on best practices across a range of commonly used methods for measuring agricultural innovations.
The team will also consider other themes if they aim to answer a research question related to modern agricultural innovations, particularly CGIAR-promoted ones, and encourage the use of
additional data sources (remote sensing, soil databases, administrative databases, etc) and background literature that can be merged/combined with Nationally representative data.
Selection procedure and grant disbursement
The research team will review each proposal and contact short-listed applicants. Applicants should submit a resume accompanied by a support letter from their University/research institution and a
short proposal describing the research project with the following sections: a title (10-12 words), an abstract (up to 200 words), research question(s) and motivation (up to 400 words), literature review and scientific contributions of the proposed study (up to 600 words), data and methods (up to 500 words), and implications (up to 100 words). The total number of words, excluding the references, should not STRICTLY EXCEED 2,000 words.
Proposals should be submitted through the following link:
https://forms.gle/FMPNCncgNNWCz4XM7
The deadline for submissions is July 10, 2025. The team will not consider proposals submitted after this date. The project duration should be no more than 12 months. If deemed necessary, the team may conduct a second-stage process to select proposals.
Furthermore, the applicant should confirm that they adhere to internationally accepted research codes of conduct and verify that the
proposed work is original and has not been previously published as a working paper or in a peerreviewed journal. UCT will disburse the grant in two tranches of equal amount: the first after a thorough data analysis is conducted and the second after a draft version of the paper is submitted.
To see the full Call for Proposal document please find the attached document.
The University of Cape Town reserves the right to disqualify ineligible, incomplete and/or inappropriate applications, to change the conditions of the award and/or to make no award at all.
