Agricultural extension systems response to COVID-19 outbreak in Egypt and Nigeria

COVID-19 pandemic has brought setbacks to all human endeavours globally, in the sectors of health, education, tourism, and agriculture. African agriculture is greatly affected by the pandemic and lockdown, in particular the peasant farmers. In this regard, the agricultural extension service which has been responsible for the dissemination of innovation to the farmers becomes an indispensable platform to sensitize farmers on COVID-19 and preventive measures. Hence, this paper aimed to investigate the agricultural extension systems' response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Egypt and Nigeria. A questionnaire was administered to 200 extension agents randomly selected from the government institutions in Egypt and Nigeria. The results showed that the degree of agricultural extension staff commitment to the precautionary measures for the COVID-19 epidemic in Nigeria (x = 6.32) was higher than that in Egypt (x= 2.59). Nigerian agricultural extension agents recorded a higher contribution (x=8.82) at reducing the spread of COVID-19 than Egyptian counterparts (x = 5.52). Although the demand for agricultural extension service in Nigeria is twice that of Egypt, extension service delivery during COVID-19 in the two countries was affected by frequent changes in the operating plans, poor funding, and inconsistent internal work system. The study recommends, establishing an electronic extension platform and coordinating agricultural extension services (AES) actors including private and public sectors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), producer organizations (POs) and the ministry of health (MOH) to face this crisis, especially in Egypt.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on agro-inputs distribution in Ogun State, Nigeria

This study investigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on agro-inputs distribution and sales along the agricultural supply chain (ASC) in gun State, Nigeria. A simple random sampling technique was used to select 96 agro-dealers from the Abeokuta and Ilaro ADP zones of Ogun State. Data were collected and analysed using a computer assisted personalized interviewing (CAPI) system. Findings showed that 89% of the respondents sold agro-inputs in the shops, 26% in the rural villages, and 19.8% at market stands. Due to the lockdown, 68.8% closed down shops for 35-39 days, 92.7% found it difficult to move agroinputs from the stores to the villages, and 85.4% incurred high costs in transporting agroinputs from urban to the rural areas. Likewise, 61.5% reported low patronage of fewer than 10 customers per week while the average weekly sales dropped from 60,000 to 15,600 for maize seeds, 78,000 to 27,000 for herbicides, and 336,000 to 120,000 for fertilizers. The lockdown was significantly affected patronage (beta = 0.64) and sales (beta = 0.72). The COVID19 pandemic affected patronage and sales of agro-inputs in Ogun State.