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Field Before After
Trial End Date July 31, 2023 December 31, 2023
Last Published February 15, 2023 04:46 AM July 25, 2023 08:19 AM
Intervention (Public) Our design involves two interventions, farmer-herder inter-dialogues which constitute our primary intervention (henceforth SFCG workshops) of interest and health workshops which we consider a benchmark case of neutral contact without a target focus on sources of conflict. The main intervention consists of farmer-herder inter-dialogue workshops organized by Search for Common Ground (SFCG). The SFCG workshops unfold through three steps. First, preparatory meetings are held with farmers and herders separately; then both parties are brought together in two to three-day long fora. These fora include key local leaders, such as the chairmen of the farmer and herder associations, chiefs and local councilors, as well as women and youth leaders. However, there may be as many as 50 individuals from each of the communities, including rank and file herders and farmers. During the fora, farmers and herders collectively discuss key challenges and sources of tension within their community. At the end of the session, they produce a collective record of this discussion, which requires them to reach basic agreement on how these challenges are represented. Third, SFCG organizes follow-up visits to the communities, 6 weeks after the fora to discuss progress in implementing the action plans. 32 SFCG workshops were implemented involving 96 farmer-herder community pairs. The first workshop took place on July 15, 2020 and the final workshop on November 3, 2021 with the last follow up visit on December 10, 2021. Additionally, we designed a neutral treatment arm which consists of health workshops. We partnered with a Nigerian health consulting firm, Dan Meshak Consulting, to provide health workshops to farmer and herder communities following the same structure and setup as the SFCG workshops (first farmers and herders meet separately, then together, and a follow-up visit six weeks later). In contrast to the SFCG workshops, issues surrounding the conflict between farmers and herders are not discussed at the health workshops. Only health care problems are addressed, such as child and maternal health, sanitation practices, and COVID-19 prevention. 32 health workshops were implemented involving 96 farmer-herder community pairs. The first health workshop took place on November 24, 2020 and the final health workshop on June 13, 2022 with the last follow up visit on September 30, 2022.
Primary Outcomes (End Points) Conflict, cooperation and economic production. Farmer-Herder Disputes; Farmer-Herder Violence
Primary Outcomes (Explanation) Please refer to the Pre-Analysis Plan for details on the variables.
Experimental Design (Public) The intervention consists of inter-dialogue workshops between farmer and herder communities in the Middle Belt of Nigeria. These bring together farmers and herders in two to three-day sessions over which they collectively discuss key challenges and sources of tension within their community. Our sample included farmer-herder community pairs in three states of the Middle-Belt of Nigeria: Benue, Nassarawa, and Plateau states. We excluded communities that SFCG has previously worked in and coordinated with other NGO's working on farmer-herder relations to avoid contamination. We stratified the randomization by Local Government Areas (LGA), the Nigerian administrative division below states, this created 15 strata. Within each LGA stratum, we selected a random third of farmer-herder community pairs to the SFCG workshop treatment and another third to the health workshop treatment. Since both SFCG and health workshops involve three communities in one workshop, we sampled 9, 18, 27, or 36 communities per LGA. The randomized sample included 288 farmer-herder community pairs; 96 were assigned to SFCG workshop treatment, 96 to health workshop treatment and 96 to the control group. We refer to farmer-herder community pairs as communities, for brevity.
Planned Number of Clusters 189 communities 288 communities
Planned Number of Observations 2137 4,608
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms 63 inter-dialogue treatment, 63 health workshop and 63 control communities. 96 inter-dialogue treatment, 96 health workshop and 96 control communities.
Keyword(s) Crime Violence And Conflict Crime Violence And Conflict, Education
Public analysis plan No Yes
Secondary Outcomes (End Points) Secondary Outcomes: Long Run Disputes; Long Run Farmer-Herder Violence; Other Violence; (Subjective) Security Situation; Economic Indicators; Economic Exchange; Migration & Displacement Mechanisms: Cooperation; Behavior; Asymmetric Information; Trust; Stereotypes & Discrimination; Religious Views; Social Networks; Empathy; Perception of Justice; Dispute Resolution; Institution Building; Intervention Knowledge and Attendance; Health Outcomes
Secondary Outcomes (Explanation) Please refer to the Pre-Analysis Plan for details on the variables.
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Analysis Plans

Field Before After
Document
Farmer_Herder_PAP.pdf
MD5: 4aa34af0aedb6c5bedb28269cd4daff6
SHA1: bfce23fddf91a5df93a90793658165d957f33a2b
Title Pre-Analysis Plan
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