COVID 19 Pandemic/Lockdown: Innovative Agricultural Research Activities - A Webinar


The Ahmadu Bello University’s Faculty of Agriculture and the Institute for Agricultural Research Samaru will present a series of webinars focusing on COVID-19’s impact on agriculture in Africa.

The first webinar will be held on Wednesday, April 29, at 12 noon. West Africa Time (WAT). The presentation, “COVID-19 Pandemic/Lockdown: Innovative Agricultural Research Activities,” will be delivered by Professor Mohammad Faguji Ishiyaku, Executive Director, the Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) Samaru, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Nigeria.

The Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that 60% of the world’s people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. COVID-19 is a global pandemic that is already having tangible effects on the agriculture sector. According to the Brookings Institution, COVID-19 could result in a global loss of $2.4 trillion to over $9 trillion in gross domestic product this year alone. And according to the World Bank, agriculture accounted for one-third of the global gross domestic product as of 2014. 

The current pandemic is forcing agricultural researchers into a quandary. The agricultural research community is collaborative and heavily linked to sharing and working with different organizations. Social distancing will affect how experimental plots are established and managed. There is a link between supplies used for agricultural research (in the field and the lab) and the hospitals. Due to the pandemic, these items have gone up in price, and in some cases, the supply is lacking. This will undoubtedly affect the cost of conducting research, and project timelines will also have to be adjusted. 

The goal of this webinar is to examine and answer questions on how agricultural researchers around the world are responding to COVID-19 pandemic; Could we have been a lot more prepared ahead of time? Are we learning anything that could change the trajectory/direction of our research mandates/themes?.

Additional sessions are expected to be announced in the coming weeks. 

Registration for the webinars is free and open to anyone until the start of each meeting HERE or alternatively, you can manually join us using the Zoom app: 
Meeting ID: 783 9264 8244 
Password: 9bDR6Z

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