Towards sustainable management of cassava mosaic disease: The impact of awareness campaigns in Benin

Transboundary diseases, such as cassava mosaic disease (CMD), represent a significant risk to food security and the livelihoods of millions of households in sub-Saharan Africa. To address this issue, awareness campaigns have been conducted targeting farmers and stakeholders within the cassava secor. The objective of this study is to quantify the impact of these awareness campaigns on the knowledge of CMD, the adoption of management practices, and the incidence of the disease in cassava fields. A random sample of 305 farmers and 77 cassava fields in Benin was selected for data collection. To account for potential selection bias associated with observable characteristics, we applied Propensity Score Matching (PSM). The results indicate that farmers who participated in the training demonstrated significantly higher levels of CMD knowledge and were more likely to adopt a greater number of management practices, which ultimately led to a reduction in the prevalence of the disease in their fields. However, CMD symptoms were still prevalent in the majority (61,04) of cassava farms, regardless of participation in the campaigns, due to the lack of healthy planting material and the abundance of whiteflies. These findings suggest that awareness campaigns can significantly improve farmers' knowledge and encourage behavioural changes in the identification and adoption of sustainable CMD management practices. It also shows the need to provide famers with healthy cuttings for more effective disease management.