Nuru Nigeria: 2021 Midpoint Impact Report

The Ray Marshall Center (RMC) at The University of Texas at Austin is conducting a four-year mixed-method impact evaluation of Nuru Nigeria’s interventions. The study design includes an intervention group and a non-intervention comparison group assigned through a clustered random control trial design. The mixed-method approach includes quantitative data collection using a household survey administered at baseline and midpoint, and qualitative data collection using focus groups and stakeholder interviews conducted at baseline and midpoint. RMC is using propensity score matching and difference-in-difference to study the impact of Nuru Nigeria’s interventions. This report sets out the midpoint status of these objectives.

The impact analysis found that, at the midpoint, Nuru interventions had no significant program impact on overall resilience, but did have impacts on adaptive resilience capacity and transformative resilience capacity. The impact analysis also found that Nuru had significant program impacts on several key resilience indicators, including access to cash savings, asset ownership, shock preparedness and mitigation, aspirations/confidence to adapt/locus of control, availability of financial resources, education/training, and availability of/access to formal safety nets. The impact analysis also found that Nuru had significant and often large program impacts on short-term outcomes like saving money, saving cash crops from loss, household dietary diversity, using zinc supplements to treat diarrhea, and soap use. Nuru’s M&E team also found that Nuru intervention households had a 65 percent increase in crop equivalent yield (CEY) from 2019 to 2020, exceeding the target of a 32 percent increase in CEY, as well as a 107 percent increase in agricultural income, exceeding the target of 30 percent. Overall, the midpoint findings suggest that Nuru Nigeria’s interventions are having positive impacts on both short-term outcomes and resilience indicators. The midpoint results can help inform Nuru Nigeria’s program implementation and be used to make decisions about where to focus program efforts.