“We have conducted four rounds of survey on the same households in previous years which, with this round of survey, produce five years panel data over the span of twelve years.”, says Professor Stein Holden, from the Department of Economics and Resource Management (School of Economics and Business) in the Norwegian University of Life Sciences at Ås in Norway, who is coordinating the study.
NOMA is the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperations (Norad) Programme for Master Studies. Currently, twelve students from Norway, Malawi, Uganda and Ethiopia are spending the period from February until August at Mekelle University in Tigray Region. Mekelle University is also part of an institutional collaboration between Mekelle and Hawassa Universities and the Norwegian University for Life Science - UMB funded by the embassy.
“We are mainly working in the highland areas of Tigray, but also in the lowland part of Raya valley. We are focusing on a number of issues, such as the impacts of climate changes on household food security, impacts of productive safety nets, access to credit, new health reforms and land law reforms on rural households, and one student is studying the costs and time requirement related to household land fragmentation. Each of three field teams consists of 5-6 students and 6 enumerators. In each group two of the enumerators collect basic household economy data, two collect farm plot level data including measurement of plots, and two collect health data and knowledge and perception data related to the recent land law reform. In addition we make interviews with different tabia (community) officials using a village level questionnaire, interview Land Administration Committee members about their knowledge of the law and implementation of the new law. We also interview the local representatives for the Productive Safety Net Task Force, the credit and savings institution (DECSI), and local producer cooperative, and judges from the local Social Court and local Land Court.”
Professor Holden also highlights some of the additional secondary data collected during the field work; to study climate changes monthly data (as far back as they go) on rainfall and temperature have been obtained from all weather-stations in the localities where the field-study has been taking place. In addition, weekly prices on basic agricultural products have been obtained for the last four years from a large number of locations and can be used to determine how prices in the international markets for oil, fertilizer and food commodities have affected the local market prices.
Altogether, the NOMA-programme has involved more than 40 students in three batches since its establishment. The programme is highly popular among all its partner-institutions. It provides a unique opportunity for students from a range of environments to broaden their perspectives. The students from Norway will get an obvious change of environment when studying abroad, but the same applies for students coming from one African country to another, as there are huge differences between a country like Uganda, and the dry highlands of Tigray Regional state.
Read more about NOMA students in Mekelle on: http://www.norway.org.et/News_and_events/education/Nine-NOMA--students-at-Mekelle-University-/
Professor Holdens blog from Tigray field-work: http://ethiopia.steinholden.com/#home