Mobile Phones, Nutrition, and Agriculture in Ghana: Quantitative Baseline Report

This report focuses on the quantitative component of the mNutrition Evaluation and it employs a randomized encouragement design to determine the causal effect of the programme on dietary diversity, agricultural income, and production. The quantitative evaluation will answer the following research questions: 1. How effective is the Vodafone Farmers’ Club service at increasing the knowledge and changing the behaviour of farmers? 2. What are the impacts of the Vodafone Farmers’ Club service on households’ dietary diversity, agricultural income, and production? 3. What is the demand for the Vodafone Farmers’ Club service and can framing about the agriculture or nutrition objectives of the service affect household’s willingness to pay for the service? 4. Does targeting women have differential impacts on knowledge, behaviour, and final outcomes than targeting men with the service? The purpose of this baseline report is to introduce the context for this evaluation, describe the interventions and evaluation design, summarize the data from the baseline household survey, and test if the randomization successfully balanced baseline characteristics across encouraged and comparison communities. The findings from the quantitative baseline will be combined and triangulated with the initial exploratory qualitative study and business model/cost-effectiveness study, and integrated into a mixed methods baseline report of the mNutrition impact evaluation in Ghana.