Awareness and adoption of positive selection technology among yam farmers in West Africa

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate how awareness influences the adoption of positive selection (PS) technology among smallholder yam farmers in West Africa. PS has the potential of increasing yield and reducing disease incidence and severity in yam production. Design/methodology/approach - This paper applies the average treatment effect (ATE) methodology to estimate the rates of awareness and adoption of the PS technology and associated factors using data from 678 smallholder seed yam farmers in Ghana and Nigeria. Findings - The results indicate that the actual adoption rates of PS technology are 58 and 55%, while the potential adoption rates are estimated at 89.5 and 79.3% for Ghana and Nigeria, respectively, if the PS technology was fully disseminated. This leads to adoption gaps of 31.7 and 24.8%, respectively, for Ghana and Nigeria stemming from incomplete awareness of the PS among the population of yam growing farmers. The PS adoption is high among the educated young farmers who are members of farmer based organizations and participate in demonstrations. Practical implications - Promotional efforts for enhancing awareness and adoption of PS should target educated youth willing to participate in field demonstrations and should focus on scaling up of PS technology to ensure quality farmer saved seed yams and enhance yam productivity in West Africa. Originality/value - The introduction of PS in seed yam production is quite recent also its introduction to seed yam farmers in West Africa. Subsequently, a better understanding of what the adoption status would be should everyone in the population of yam farmers are aware of PS is vital for policy, research and development.