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Food prices in Nigeria have become significantly higher and more volatile since 2012. The purpose of this research was to find out what affects farmers’ participation in the growth enhancement support scheme (GESS) in the country. We determined the effect of the GESS on the ease of access to market information and agricultural inputs that influence price volatility at farm gate level. A total of 2100 rural farmers were sampled across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones. Result from the use of recursive bivariate probit model showed that farmers depended on the GESS for the resolution of food price volatility by providing food market information and agricultural inputs that bring down the incidence and amount of anxiety-impelled price rise in Nigeria. The results advocated for the need to improve the GESS in line with the agricultural transformation agenda (ATA) by cutting down the deterrents mostly linked with the use of mobile phones, and the distance of registration and assemblage centres. In extension and contribution, the findings suggest that smallholder farmers can be part of the volatility solution when they are provided with rural roads and transportation to get their product to the market, and technology to receive and share the latest market information on prices.

This paper has put a demand-side empirical structure to the hypothesis that foreign aid volatility adversely affects choices to lifelong learning in recipient countries. Lifelong learning is measured as the combined knowledge acquired during primary, secondary and tertiary educational enrolments. Three types of aggregate foreign aid volatilities are computed in a twofold manner: baseline standard deviations and standard errors (standard deviations of residuals after first-order autoregressive processes). An endogeneity robust system GMM empirical strategy is employed. The findings broadly show that foreign aid volatility does not adversely affect the demand-side choices of lifelong learning in Africa. As a policy implication, when faced with aid uncertainty, the demand for education would increase. This may be explained by the need for more self-reliance in order to mitigate income risks or/and the use of education as means of coping with uncertainty. More policy implications are discussed.

This research investigates the incidence of enhancing external flows on inclusive human development in a panel of 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It complements the literature by examining the relevance of enhancing three types of external flows, namely: development assistance, foreign investment and remittances. Ordinary Least Squares, Tobit, Fixed effects, Generalised Method of Moments and Quantile regressions are used as empirical strategies. The following main results are apparent: (i) between 60 and 150 (% of GDP) is the threshold of foreign aid; (ii) 33.333 (% of GDP) is the foreign investment threshold and (iii) 25 (% of GDP) is the critical mass of remittances. At the established critical masses or thresholds, external flows start having positive effects on inclusive human development. Countries characterized by inclusive development levels that are low need more investment in foreign aid for inclusive human development compared to their counterparts characterized by inclusive human development levels that are high.