Given the increasing tension between food production and food demand in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the poor development of the rice sector in Africa, the present paper examines the impact of agricultural extension on adoption of chemical fertilizers and their impact on rice productivity in Ghana. A parametric approach was employed to account for selectivity and endogeneity effects, which most impact studies fail to address. The empirical results reveal that agricultural extension service is endogenous in the chemical fertilizer adoption specification. Our findings show that access to extension services significantly promotes adoption of chemical fertilizer. Access to extension services and adoption of chemical fertilizer exert positive influences on rice productivity. Promoting farmer participation in irrigation schemes and row-planting technologies, facilitating easy access to education and credit facilities, sensitization of female farmers and leasing of farmlands are policy alternatives needed to facilitate adoption of chemical fertilizer and access to extension services, with the goal of enhancing rice productivity and the livelihoods of rice farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Governments and various institutions in Africa should train more extension officers, given the significant impact they have on agricultural technology adoption and productivity. Future studies on adoption of agricultural technologies and access to extension services in developing countries should adopt empirical approaches that account for endogeneity and selectivity effect in order to arrive at the precise magnitude and extent of impacts from productive agricultural technologies and interventions.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for composite flour bread produced with a blend of 15-40 per cent cassava flour blended with wheat flour in Ghana. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on interviews with 350 consumers in the Ashanti and Eastern Regions of Ghana to assess their awareness, perceptions and WTP for cassava-wheat composite bread. From these consumer interviews, a hedonic regression model was applied to evaluate consumers’ WTP for various attributes of composite flour bread. Price-related and health-related perceptions of consumers on cassava-wheat composite bread were investigated with perception indices. Multi-attribute preference-based contingent ratings that rate product attributes in terms of importance to consumers was employed. The implicit prices of the product attributes representing the contribution of the product attributes to the WTP amount were also computed. Findings The paper finds that consumers who are aware of cassava-blended flour bread and who like its taste and texture are willing to pay more than consumers who are unaware. This leads to a policy recommendation advocating increased advertising of the economic and nutritional benefits of cassava-wheat blended composite flour bread. Research limitations/implications Future studies should explore the choice experiments to examine preferences for the food product. Originality/value This paper evaluates consumers’ WTP for composite flour bread produced with a blend of 15-40 per cent cassava flour and wheat flour. Given widespread reliance on imported wheat flour and the simultaneously large volumes of locally available cassava, it is important to consider opportunities for import substitution (and possible cost reduction for consumers) of blended flour products such as cassava-wheat composite flours. Nigeria has imposed a 10 per cent blending requirement for this reason. Ghana has taken important measures recently for the development of high-quality cassava flour, and so research on its potential and actual uptake is welcomed and highly relevant to food security and agribusiness development.