Stepdown of Some Contents of AFRE 874 at the Federal University of Agriculture Makurdi
DOWNLOADAugust 21, 2019 - Hephzibah Onyeje Obekpa
Highlights 50, Hephzibah Onyeje Obekpa, August 2019.
During the 2019 spring semester at Michigan State University, I took a course on Empirical Methods in Field Research in Developing Countries (AFRE 874). When I returned to Nigeria for the summer break, I organized a workshop with the intention of transferring some of the knowledge gained from the course to the staff and students in the College of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi in Benue State.
The workshop was held on June 20, 2019 and lasted for three hours with two short breaks between its three sessions. Topics covered included identification, causality and propensity score matching. The workshop had 46 participants (31 males and 15 females) with 20 participants between the ages of 15-29 years of age and 26 participants 30 years and over. At the end of the workshop, the excited participants indicated that they looked forward to more of such workshops in the future.
As a result of the training workshop, I experienced the impact of one person acquiring knowledge at Michigan State University and transferring the knowledge gained there to 46 others at Makurdi in Nigeria. Hopefully this will cause an improvement on the quality of future research to be carried out by the participants.
In conclusion, this is local evidence that spending resources to train one person can become a benefit to many others via training. Train one to train others.