The unit provides statistical services to ARC and external clients, providing these services to scientists from industry, government and universities. Typically, the unit does in the region of 2500 statistical consultations with ARC scientists and external clients per year, review more than 50 scientific articles, and co-authored a number of scientific publications. The unit also reviews proposals, presents papers at conferences, and facilitate workshops and training courses.
The unit participates in a community of practice (CoP) on M&E in Science Councils and participates in organisation-wide initiatives, such as the value proposition for the National Public Good Assets, managed by the ARC as a critical precondition for any breeding programme.
The unit digitised a farm assessment toolkit, and a functional application is used with stakeholders in practical application. The toolkit addresses a key limitation; a lack of data on land and farmer potential and performance, which should inform agricultural support and policy. Commodity standards used to determine productivity in the App are updated annually with commodity specialists in the ARC and commodity organisations.
The unit leads a work package in the EU funded DIVAGRI (Revenue Diversification in Africa through bio-based and circular Agricultural Innovations) project.
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The project addresses limitations of smallholder systems, investing in productivity through seven bio-based technologies and associated business solutions, adapted to rural African contexts. The ARC is part of a consortium of 20 European and African R&D organisations in this incentive. The unit developed and implemented the project’s analytical framework with partners in Europe and Africa and engaged rural end-users at 16 sites in five participating countries. The resulting baseline reported, and cross-country comparison were completed and are available. These reports describe current production systems, livelihoods and farmer strategies in order to inform project implementation. The project addresses transition to a circular bio-economy as having the highest potential for sustainable growth of rural livelihoods.
Eleven DIVAGRI project pilot sites for bio-based technologies that can generate income are being setup in Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Ghana and Mozambique. Successful technologies will then be rolled-out to 15 farmer field demo sites. A Situational analysis report was prepared in collaboration with the respective partner organizations. The report included characteristics such as climate and soil conditions, on-site challenges, infrastructure, land ownership and size, crops produced, value chains, degree of mechanization, how inputs and produce transported, mobile phone usage and wifi availability.
A subset of the main characteristics of demo sites, can be found here.
Contact the Agrimetrics team now to ensure:Proper statistical experimental planning
Correct data analysis of the results Correct interpretation and representation of the results Assistance with writing statistical procedures in reports, theses and publications Your place in one of our statistical training courses and workshops
| | Courses available are:
| Basic stats course | Ms Nicolene Cochrane | On request | | Excel and applied stats | Ms. Nicolene Cochrane
Ms. Cynthia Ngwane
Mr. Eric Mathebula | On request | | Survey and questionnaire data | Ms. Cynthia Ngwane | On request | | Experimental design | Dr Mardé Booyse
Ms. Liesl Morey | On request | | Multivariate analysis | Ms. Marieta can der Rijst
Ms. Nombasa Ntushelo | On request |
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