Search

Mango is an important fruit crop in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), including Zambia, due to its nutritional value and contribution to food security. However, the invasive and mango-infesting fruit fly is a significant constraint in mango production. Therefore, icipe and partners developed and disseminated the integrated pest management package to curb this menace. The current study uses household-level data from 325 smallholder mango-growing households from selected regions in Zambia to evaluate how empowerment affects women's willingness to pay (WTP) for an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) package for the suppression of mango-infesting fruit flies. We used a double-bounded contingent valuation model to determine the association between Project-Level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI), other social-economics factors, and WTP. The results show that women’s empowerment status positively and significantly increased the likelihood of considering a higher bid for the IPM package. Other factors affecting women’s WTP for the IPM package were women's education level, access to extension services, non-farm occupation, and household income from mangoes, with a positive and significant influence on their WTP. However, distance to the input market, perception of the effectiveness of current fruit fly management methods, and level of mango loss due to fruit flies negatively influenced WTP for the IPM package. Empowering women, especially increasing their access to extension services, and providing livelihood alternatives would increase their uptake of pest management technologies. Efforts to lower women’s domestic workloads, boost their finances, and sensitize others in the community to promote women’s freedom of movement would be vital to empowering women hence increasing their uptake of new agricultural innovations.

Debility due to malaria remains a major constraint to economic growth in many Agrarian economies. In the case of Ethiopia, nearly 70% of the population reside in malaria prone areas with focal and multifocal malaria epidemics, presenting a major challenge to subsistence farmers who rely on family labor supply for agricultural production. Various studies have analysed the economic burden of malaria in developing countries, proposing various interventions to reduce its prevalence. These studies have, however, paid little attention to the role of gender in shaping the impact of malaria infections on agricultural labor supply and productivity. There is evidence of existence of complex and diverse gender norms that shape decision making and gender roles in households in many African countries and may influence the risks of malaria infections within households, and access to services for malaria prevention and control. In this study, we examine the direct and indirect effects of malaria risk on agricultural productivity among smallholder farmers. We deviate from previous research in two main aspects: we examine productivity effects of the disease by sex and age of the infected member of the household and estimate the malaria equations using the fractional response model to overcome the limitations of linear and non-linear econometric estimators for bounded data. We find that malaria significantly reduces crop yields and labor productivity. For instance, a 50% increase in malaria prevalence in a household can reduce the per capita land productivity by US$13.4/year, which is about 7.8% reduction in annual per capita income. The estimated loss in labor productivity is about US$1.38/person-day given a 50% rise in malaria prevalence in a household. The results further reveal differential productivity effects of the disease with respect to gender of the household member infected; the effect is greatest when women and children below 14 years in the household fall sick compared to men. The results highlight the need to strengthen women and children's access to malaria control and prevention services to enhance human health and agricultural productivity. Furthermore, rural development projects may achieve greater health benefits by integrating malaria control interventions with the existing agricultural interventions. JEL Classifications: M1, M2, O1 and O2 Keywords: Malaria risk, Agriculture productivity, Gender, Ethiopia Contact author's email address: diirog@yahoo.co.uk, INTRODUCTION Malaria remains a major health and economic burden in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), accounting for 10% of the overall disease burden, and 40% of the public health expenditure in the [...]

Abstract Background Concerted effort to control malaria has had a substantial impact on the transmission of the disease in the past two decades. In areas where reduced malaria transmission is being sustained through insecticide-based vector control interventions, primarily long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS), non-insecticidal complementary tools will likely be needed to push towards malaria elimination. Once interruption in local disease transmission is achieved, insecticide-based measures can be scaled down gradually and eventually phased out, saving on costs of sustaining control programs and mitigating any unintended negative health and environmental impacts posed by insecticides. These non-insecticidal methods could eventually replace insecticidal methods of vector control. House screening, a non-insecticidal method, has a long history in malaria control, but is still not widely adopted in sub-Saharan Africa. This study aims to add to the evidence base for this intervention in low transmission settings by assessing the efficacy, impact, and feasibility of house screening in areas where LLINs are conventionally used for malaria control. Methods A two-armed, household randomized clinical trial will be conducted in Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe to evaluate whether combined the use of house screens and LLINs affords better protection against clinical malaria in children between 6 months and 13 years compared to the sole use of LLINs. Eight hundred households will be enrolled in each study area, where 400 households will be randomly assigned the intervention, house screening, and LLINs while the control households will be provided with LLINs only. Clinical malaria incidence will be estimated by actively following up one child from each household for 6 months over the malaria transmission season. Cross-sectional parasite prevalence will be estimated by testing all participating children for malaria parasites at the beginning and end of each transmission season using rapid diagnostic tests. CDC light traps and pyrethrum spray catches (PSC) will be used to sample adult mosquitoes and evaluate the impact of house screening on indoor mosquito density, species distribution, and sporozoite rates. Discussion This study will contribute epidemiological data on the impact of house screening on malaria transmission and assess the feasibility of its implementation on a programmatic scale. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov PACTR202008524310568 . Registered on August 11, 2020.

Black soldier fly farming is gaining traction globally as a strategy for recycling organic waste into high-quality proteins and fat for feed and organic fertilizer for crop production. The support of governments in East Africa to integrate insect meal in livestock feed has opened opportunities for commercializing insect products. Understanding the potential value of Black soldier fly larvae meal (BSFLM) is paramount to inform policies and practices to promote insect farming and insect-based feed for livestock production. This paper uses the economic surplus method to generate evidence on the potential socioeconomic impact of replacing conventional soybean and fish meal protein sources with insect-based feed (IBF), BSFLM, in Uganda. Results indicate that substitution of IBF for existing protein sources will generate net economic benefits of USD 0.73 billion in 20 years (0.037 billion per year). The benefit-cost ratio is estimated at 28:1, and the internal rate of return is 138%, indicating that the insect-based animal feed industry is a profitable investment. Even in the worst-case scenario, when the replacement rate of IBF and its economic benefits are reduced by half, the benefit-cost ratio remains high (8:1). The estimated economic benefit can lift about 4.53 million people above the poverty line in the country. It can also create about 1,252-563,302 new jobs per annum, depending on the substitution rate of conventional protein feeds with IBF (0.1%-45%). Uganda has the potential to produce from about 3,244 tons to 1.5 million tons of IBF. Similarly, using the same replacement rates, the country can produce about 695-312,678 tons of NPK fertilizer from biowaste recycling. About 0.09-41 million tons of biowaste could be recycled, depending on the replacement rate of conventional feed sources with IBF. Our results justify that investing in the insect feed value chain can contribute to Uganda's economic, social, and environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most previous studies evaluating agricultural technology adoption focus on estimating homogeneous average treatment effects across technology adopters. Understanding the heterogeneous effects and drivers of impact heterogeneity should enable interventions to be better targeted to maximise benefits. We apply machine learning using data from a randomised controlled trial to estimate the heterogeneous treatment effect of fruit fly IPM practices (i.e., parasitoids, orchard sanitation, use of food bait, biopesticides, male annihilation technique, and their combinations) in Central Kenya. Results suggest significant heterogeneity in the effect of IPM practices conditioned on household characteristics. The most important covariates explaining differences in treatment effects are wealth, distance to the mango fruit market, age of the household head, labour and experience in mango farming. Results further indicate that those with fewer mango trees benefit more from most IPM practices. Additional analysis across other covariates shows mixed results but generally suggests significant differences between households benefiting the most and those benefiting the least from IPM practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]