IITA steps up capacity building efforts in Tanzania

A group photo of the participants of the SAS training

Two one-week trainings took place at IITA-Tanzania as part of efforts to build the capacity of its staff and those of partners to improve the quality of its research for better impact. One of the trainings focused on use of Statistical Analysis System (SAS) to manage and analyze different types of data including experimental and socioeconomic data while the second was on Real-Time PCR.

The SAS training, conducted by Sam Ofodile and Yemi Oluwasoga, from Ibadan Nigeria, brought together 32 participants. They were drawn from both national and international IITA staff and from partner institutions―the Sugarcane Research Institute (SRI) Kibaha as well as MSc and PhD students from Sokoine University of Agriculture and Mandela University. Two PhD students also came from Nairobi.

The training covered the different analysis models for different study designs. The SAS software was installed on each participant’s laptop with a one-year license provided by the IITA Biometric Unit to enable participants to access it.

The training was officially opened by Edward Kanju on behalf of the Director for the Eastern Africa Hub who welcomed all the participants and noted that the training was long overdue. The training was officially closed by Abass Adebayo, also on behalf of the Director for Eastern Africa. He thanked the training facilitators for a job well done and urged participants to use the gained skills to improve their data analysis and paper publications.

IITA-Kano station hosts SAS training

Participants at the SAS training in Kano

ITA Kano station in collaboration with ICRISAT Nigeria hosted a week’s training on Statistics and Statistical Computing Course with SAS. The participants were drawn from IITA, ICRISAT, and other partners from Ahmadu Bello Univerisity, Zaria; and Bayero University, Kano. There were also participants from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria, and the Lake Chad Research Institute.

The training was facilitated by Mr Sam Ofodile and Mrs Olayemi Oluwasoga of the Biometrics Unit in IITA-Ibadan who coached the 27 participants from Monday 16 to Friday 20 December 2013.

In his opening speech, Dr Alpha Kamara, IITA Station Representative urged participants to pay attention to the training and highlighted the importance of the training to scientific writing.

The one-week intensive training taught participants how to:

• Use Genstat – Introduction to the software

•  Write SAS codes and complex data management

• Generate descriptive statistics and explore data with graphs

• Generate and interpret sample statistics using the UNIVARIATE and MEANS procedures

• Detect associations among variables

• Perform analysis of variance and apply multiple comparison techniques

• Perform linear and multiple regression and assess the assumptions

• Fit a multiple and binomial logistic regression model

• Perform multivariate analysis

The training was formally closed on Friday afternoon with the presentation of certificates by Mr Ado Rabo, IITA Station Administrator.