Using household survey data from a sample of about 2305 households selected from eighteen states in Nigeria, this paper analyses the impact of irrigation technology usage on crop yield, crop income and household food security in Nigeria among smallholder farmers. The logistic regression estimate revealed that years of education, household size, rainfall information, access to credit, regional dummies are the main drivers of usage decision. The results of the linear regression with endogenous treatment effects showed that irrigation technology use is positively related to crop yield, crop income and household food security. In consistence, the impact analysis using propensity score matching (PSM) also showed a significant and positive effect of irrigation technology use on crop yield, crop income and household food security. We suggest to policy makers, implementers, and any funding agencies with similar interest to further capitalize and scale up the irrigation technology facilities, especially for the poor households, and create more awareness to improve the livelihood of rural households. However, despite the positive impact of irrigation technology use, we contend that other sustainable irrigation sources, such as rainwater harvesting should be used due to possible environmental impact in the excessive use of irrigation technology. Moreover, rained agriculture can be improved with other farming techniques such as agroforestry and soil and water conservation practices.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant income loss for many people and deepened poverty for individuals and vulnerable populations who were adversely affected through job losses. In South Africa, income loss made it harder to acquire health care and a healthy food, which had a negative impact on health outcomes. This study hypothesised that the COVID-19 shocks disproportionately affects the poor's health, hence the need to know the impact of social protection programmes and interventions through the South Africa Social Security Grant (SASSG). Herewith, we employed the nationally represented, robust and reliable National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) data set which was conducted in 2017 (pre-COVID-19), with the first wave of the NIDS-Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) conducted in 2021 (during COVID-19). The household's per capita total income was used to generate poverty lines, while concentration curves and indices were employed to explain the income-health inequalities. The difference-in-difference with fixed effects model was used to estimate the impact of SASSG on the COVID-19 poverty stressors and self-reported health status. Given the significance and magnitude of institutional variables in determining the socio-economic inequalities in poor health, addressing hunger, income inequality and unemployment slightly helped to mitigate income-health inequalities during the COVID-19 shocks. We found that the social protection intervention in South Africa (SASSG) cushioned the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of poverty stressors and self-reported health status. Therefore, we advocate for programmes in South Africa that focus on reducing poverty and health disparities connected to income, as well as more proactive social protection programmes.