Countries In sub-Sahara Africa Research Articles

Macular diseases in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Retina diseases including the diseases of the macular are underreported in developing countries of sub-Sahara Africa including Nigeria. A retrospective review of retinal register of cases presenting to the retinal clinic of the University College Hospital, Ibadan within 4 years (December 2015, to November 2019). Demographics and clinical data of all patients with macula diseases were retrieved. Data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences IBM (SPSS-IBM), version 22 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Illinois, USA), and reported as frequency distributions and percentages. A total of 1291 retinal cases were seen during the period under review, out of which 322 cases were diseases of the macula, representing 24.9% of retinal cases seen. The top 3 common causes of macular disease found in the study were dry Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) 63 (19.6%); Macula oedema 53 (16.5%) and Non-AMD atrophic maculopathy (from Retinitis Pigmentosa, chloroquine maculopathy and hereditary causes) 51 (15.9%) representing more than 50% of cases. Macular holes 48 (14.9%); Non-AMD macular scar (Toxoplasmosis, Trauma) 37 (11.5%) and choroidal neovascular membrane (CNVM) 26 (8.1%) are other important causes. Idiopathic Polypoidal Choroidal Vasculopathy (IPCV) 17 (5.3%) is an emerging cause of macular disease in the retina unit of the University College Hospital Ibadan. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), Macular oedema and Non-AMD atrophic maculopathy are major causes of macular disease presentation in the retinal clinic of the University College Hospital Ibadan, Nigeria. CNVM and IPCV are emerging causes.

Knowledge, attitudes, and practice of cervical cancer prevention among health workers in rural health centres of Northern Uganda

BackgroundCervical cancer is a leading cancer and cause of premature death among women in Uganda aged 15 to 44 years. To address the increasing burden of cervical cancer in Uganda, the Ministry of Health has adopted several strategies which include public education and advocacy. This study aims to assess knowledge, attitudes, and practice of cervical cancer prevention among health workers employed in rural health centres (HCs) III and IV in the Acholi sub-region of Northern Uganda.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional survey of nurses, midwives, and clinical officers between February and April 2019 using self-administered questionnaire. We sampled fifty-four HCs III and eight HCs IV. In Uganda, HCs are structured from HC I to HC IV and the health care package provided increases with increasing level of the HC. We used Epidata version 3.1 to create database and analysis was performed using Stata 16. Descriptive and logistic regression analyses were performed. Factors with p-values ≤ 0.05 were considered as predictors of outcome.ResultsThere were 286 participants who completed the questionnaire: Majority (188, 66%) were females. Nurses were 153 (54%). 141 (75%) female participants self-reported to have been screened for cervical cancer. 171 (60%) participants had adequate knowledge of cervical cancer. 187 (66%) participants had positive attitudes. Participants who indicated not to have ever received training on cervical cancer screening were less likely to have adequate knowledge (AOR = 0.39, 95% CI 0.21–0.71). Participants who indicated not to have ever been trained on cervical cancer screening were less likely to have positive attitudes (AOR = 0.52, 95% CI 0.28–0.97).ConclusionHealth workers from rural HCs in Uganda play crucial role in cervical cancer prevention as they can reach a wider community. Their significance in the prevention of cervical cancer points to the need for Uganda and other sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) countries to establish training to improve their knowledge, attitudes, and practical skills on cervical cancer screening. Furthermore, Uganda government should develop and disseminate guidelines for cervical cancer prevention to rural health workers to promote standardised cervical cancer prevention activities.

Examining the determinants of water resources availability in sub-Sahara Africa: a panel-based econometrics analysis.

With the rapid development of economies, the problem of water resources availability particularly in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) has increased significantly. Specifically, in recent times, addressing the challenge of access to water resources has become a global issue of which countries in SSA are not exceptional since the adequate supply of potable water is as relevant as economic development. Consequently, this current paper seeks to estimate the determinants of water resources availability in sub-Sahara Africa. For this purpose, a panel-based regression model, which represents the availability of water resources, is specified based on the period 2000 to 2016 to examine a panel of 41 SSA countries sub-sectioned into low, lower-middle, and upper-middle-income nations. Considering the existence of residual cross-sectional reliance, outcomes based on the CIP and CADF unit root tests showed that the variables were not integrated at the same order. This thus leads to the employment of the PMG/ARDL estimation approach which unveiled that (i) agriculture production has a significant negative influence on H2O in the lower-middle and low-income panel of SSA countries whereas in the upper-middle-income panel, an insignificant impact is witnessed; (ii) CO2 emissions affect H2O palpably in the upper-middle-income SSA panel while for lower-middle and low-income panels, an adverse effect is identified; (iii) economic growth adversely influenced H2O resources in the lower-middle-income panel whereas in the case of the low-income panel, a significant positive liaison is evidenced; (iv) excluding low-income panel, industrial development concerning H2O has a significant negative influence in upper-middle and lower-middle-income panels; (v) urbanization homogeneously showed a positive relationship with H2O resources across all panels. The results are reconfirmed by the CCEPMG/CS-ARDL and MG employed as robust methods. Causality checks by Dumitrescu-Hurlin test finally revealed a mixture of results regarding the causal paths amid variables among the country panels. Policy recommendations have therefore been proposed based on the study findings.

Rethinking the decolonial moment through collaborative practices at the International Library of African Music (ILAM), South Africa

ABSTRACT Until recently the International Library of African Music (ILAM) was at the receiving end of widespread criticisms because most of its collections were acquired through the colonial privilege of its founder, Hugh Tracey. Tracey recorded music and collected musical instruments in many countries of sub-Sahara Africa without following the rigorous ethical practices which are a necessary requirement for collectors these days. Since its establishment in 1954 until the early 2000s, moreover, ILAM had largely been inaccessible to black South Africans who comprise the majority of the population. Its presence, therefore, is complicated by a racist past associated with apartheid and a colonial past characterised by the misappropriation of the colonised's resources. In view of this history, ILAM had to shape a new reality which fell in line with calls and demands for decolonised practices such that the archive became an agent for transformation on numerous fronts. This series of articles describes the efforts undertaken by ILAM so that it could develop and implement policies which would place it at the vanguard of ethical archival practices on the continent. It is argued that the decolonial could be realised only through collaboration with entities which shared our interests in participatory and transformed archival practices.

Climate finance and deforestation: an empirical analysis of the forest transition curve in sub-Sahara Africa

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of climate finance on deforestation among 44 sub-Sahara African countries for the period of 2006-2017 and testing whether Forest Transition Curve (FTC) exists in the region. System-GMM is employed as the main estimation technique and panel quantile regressions are employed to test sensitivity of the results. Overall, our findings do not offer support for the conventional FTC, but indicated that forest transition curve is rather U-shaped for all countries in sub-Sahara Africa in support of the climate finance effect (i.e. climfin effect). Population growth and agricultural land use have been found to be the major drivers of deforestation whilst most governance indicators showed adverse impact on deforestation. Consequentially, the study recommends the need to strengthen governance indicators such as control of corruption and regulatory quality to ensure that climate finance reaches target destination of environmental conservation.

Examining the role of climate finance in the Environmental Kuznets Curve for Sub-Sahara African countries

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of climate finance on pollutant emissions (CO2, CH4 and N2O) for a sample of 19 Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) countries over the period 2006 to 2017. Ou...

Mapping evidence on HIV status awareness among key and vulnerable populations in sub-Sahara Africa: a scoping review protocol

BackgroundHuman immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) continue to be a major public health issue, especially in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA). Literature shows significant HIV status awareness, testing, and treatment have generally improved among the population since the inception of the UNAIDS 90:90:90 programme. Despite this, it is possible literature gaps exist that require future research to inform in-country programmes to improve the gains post-UNAIDS 90:90:90 programme. This study, therefore, aims to synthesize literature and describe the evidence on HIV status awareness among key and vulnerable populations in SSA focusing on the first UNAIDS 90 since it is essential for treatment initiation.MethodThis systematic scoping review will be guided by the framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley and improved by Levac and colleagues. Literature searches will be conducted in PubMed, SCOPUS, CINAHL, Google Scholar, and Science Direct from 2016 to 2020. A snowball approach will also be used to search for relevant articles from the reference of all included studies. This study will include both published and grey literature, articles that include HIV key and vulnerable populations, HIV status awareness, and evidence from SSA countries. Two reviewers will independently conduct the abstract and full-text article screening as well as pilot the data extraction form. Thematic content analysis and a summary of the themes and sub-themes will be reported narratively.DiscussionsThe evidence that will be provided by this study may be useful to inform in-country programmes to improve the gains made post-UNAIDS 90:90:90 programme from 2021 onwards. This study also anticipates identifying literature gaps to guide researchers interested in this field of study in the future. Peer review journals, policy briefs, and conference platforms will be used to disseminate this study’s findings.

Antibiotics resistance in Sub Saharan Africa; literature review from 2010 – 2017

Antibiotics saves millions of lives in human and animal from bacterial infections, but resistance has been occurred and spreading borderless which pose health and economic problems. This study aimed to describe epidemiology (prevalence) of antibiotic resistant bacteria in human and animals and describing risk factors with strategic control efforts in Sub-Sahara Africa countries. Total 72 articles published from 2010 to 2017 were reviewed which reported on bacterium resistance to commonly-used antibiotics of different groups. Majority of isolated bacteria were highly resistant to b-lactams, Tetracycline and Sulphonamide, moderate resistant to Gentamycine and Aminoglycoside with low resistant to cephalosporin and quinolones for bacteria isolated from human while isolates from animal have high resistance to majority of antibiotic. High antibiotic resistant was associated by presence of weak/no regulation and irrational antibiotics use in Animal and Human health system, despite there is paucity of published data from central and southern African countries, lack of data sharing among laboratories and presence of few initiatives on control strategies of antimicrobial resistance while most of them are faced by resource limitations (skilled personnel, Equipments and Fund allocation). This study recommend that awareness on rational antibiotic use must be created, strong regulation to limit accessibility of antibiotics over the counter prescription, strengthening laboratory based diagnosis and surveillance, Infection control and prevention in hospitals with strong biosafety and biosecurity in animal farms are crucial. Adoption of “One Health Approach” is very important through multisectoral involvement, information sharing and networking.

Antibiotics resistance in Sub Saharan Africa; literature review from 2010 – 2017

Antibiotics saves millions of lives in human and animal from bacterial infections, but resistance has been occurred and spreading borderless which pose health and economic problems. This study aimed to describe epidemiology (prevalence) of antibiotic resistant bacteria in human and animals and describing risk factors with strategic control efforts in Sub-Sahara Africa countries. Total 72 articles published from 2010 to 2017 were reviewed which reported on bacterium resistance to commonly-used antibiotics of different groups. Majority of isolated bacteria were highly resistant to b-lactams, Tetracycline and Sulphonamide, moderate resistant to Gentamycine and Aminoglycoside with low resistant to cephalosporin and quinolones for bacteria isolated from human while isolates from animal have high resistance to majority of antibiotic. High antibiotic resistant was associated by presence of weak/no regulation and irrational antibiotics use in Animal and Human health system, despite there is paucity of published data from central and southern African countries, lack of data sharing among laboratories and presence of few initiatives on control strategies of antimicrobial resistance while most of them are faced by resource limitations (skilled personnel, Equipments and Fund allocation). This study recommend that awareness on rational antibiotic use must be created, strong regulation to limit accessibility of antibiotics over the counter prescription, strengthening laboratory based diagnosis and surveillance, Infection control and prevention in hospitals with strong biosafety and biosecurity in animal farms are crucial. Adoption of “One Health Approach” is very important through multisectoral involvement, information sharing and networking.

Assessment of Water Use Efficiency in Sub-Sahara Africa : Application of The Malmquist Productivity Index

This paper presents the assessment of improvement in water use efficiency in sub-Sahara Africa based on the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI). The study was conducted in 28 countries in sub-Sahara Africa from 2007 to 2017. Two test cases comprising data with water stress as undesired output, and without water stress as undesired output were analyzed to determine their level of impact on the improvement of water use efficiency. Again the technical efficiency as well as technological efficiency change were also examined. The overall mean outcome of the results regarding the test case of the MPI with the inclusion of water stress was 0.969 which is higher than the values recorded from 2012-2016. Comparing the two results, it was observed that the mean MPI estimates without water stress are much higher than that of the average MPI with the inclusion of water stress. This means that without the inclusion of undesirable factors such as water stress, the MPI scores could be overestimated. In terms of the catch-up effect, all sampled countries were technically efficient except Angola, Burundi, Chad, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Togo that could not meet the efficiency frontier of 1.00. With the technological efficiency change, the results indicated that none of the sampled countries was able to reach the efficiency frontier. Policy recommendations based on the results are provided.

Prevalence, incidence, and trends of childhood overweight/obesity in Sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic scoping review

BackgroundThe growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NDC), particularly in low-and middle-income countries, poses a significant threat to global health. Obesity and overweight constitute major risk factors of NCDs such as heart diseases, diabetes, and kidney disease, and as a result, contribute significantly to the development of chronic morbidities, reduced quality of life, and increased risk of premature death. This study described evidence on the prevalence, incidence, and trends of childhood overweight and obesity in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA).MethodsWe conducted a systematic scoping review employing the Arksey and O’Malley framework, Levac et al. recommendations, and the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines. To obtain relevant published articles for this review, we performed a comprehensive keywords search in PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and CINAHL via EBSCOhost platform for studies published between 2009 and June 2019. Guided by the eligibility criteria, title and abstracts, as well as the full-text articles were independently screened in parallel by two investigators. All relevant data were independently extracted by two investigators using a piloted form designed in Microsoft and thematic analysis conducted.ResultsOf the 81 included studies obtained from 250,148 potentially eligible articles, the majority (25) conducted in South Africa followed by 18 in Nigeria. Six studies were conducted in Ethiopia (6), Tanzania (5), Kenya (4), Cameroon (4), Ghana (3), Uganda (2), Mozambique (2), and Sudan (2). One study each was conducted in Botswana, Gambia, Lesotho, Mauritius, Seychelles, Togo, and Zimbabwe. The remaining three articles were multi-country studies. Most (81.5%) of the included studies were cross-sectional surveys and the majority (79) focused on both male and female participants. The majority (80/81) of the included studies reported on the prevalence of childhood overweight/obesity, 8 on the trends of childhood overweight/obesity, and one presented evidence on the incidence of childhood overweight and obesity in SSA.ConclusionThis review demonstrates limited studies on childhood overweight/obesity in most SSA countries although the included studies suggest an increasing burden. Considering the consequences of childhood obesity, there is a need for more primary researches to inform policies decision and implementation to halt the rise of childhood obesity/overweight in SSA.

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Donor Recruitment Strategies Towards Improving Availability Of Blood Product In Nigerian Tertiary Health Institution

Abstract Introduction/Objective Over the years, many strategies has been put in place to improve blood donations and overcome socio-cultural myths and fear that has held groups of people from voluntary blood donation in Nigeria and other subsahara africa countries. Among these are adequate education, approaches through religious group leaders, non-monetary incentives like giving them special awards during world blood donor day. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness and adequacy of our blood donor recruitment and retention strategies in improving availability of blood product in our institution Methods For this cross sectional retrospective study, Data including blood donation and break down of pattern of donations, request for blood products, monthly units of blood issued gotten from our 5 year Transfusion services records were searched, same entered into Microsoft Excel and the were analysed Results Our voluntary non-renumerated blood donation steadily increased from 4.55 in 2015 to 33.3% in 2019, this represent a five fold increase in our voluntary donor recruitment within the period under review. However overall blood donation rate remained steady at approximately 12000 units per annum over this period of time. There is an increase in request rate, on the average the rate of blood request was 1214 units per month in 2015, but in 2018 this has increased to an average of 1738 units per month and by 2019 average rate of request was 2300 units per month. Out of this huge request only 67.9% of them was met, implying a huge deficit in our blood availability despite increasing pool of voluntary blood donor. Conclusion Findings in this study revealed a steady increase in the pool of voluntary blood donor which did not reflect in our overall blood availability. This might be due to concurrent decrease in our family replacement donor. This finding also suggests that even though our current strategy used in donor recruitment and retention might seems effective, they are still not adequat, as there is no commensurate rise in blood donation to match the progressive increase in blood demand. In the face of this inadequacy it might be expedient to also audit the blood ordering pattern in our centre in order to reduce wastage while we continue to work towards increasing the voluntary blood donor base.

Individual and contextual factors associated with mistimed and unwanted pregnancies among adolescent girls and young women in selected high fertility countries in sub-Saharan Africa: A multilevel mixed effects analysis

IntroductionUnintended pregnancies are associated with a number of risk factors such as malnutrition, mental illness, unsafe abortion, maternal mortality and horizontal transmission of HIV to children. These risks are predominant among adolescent girls and young women compared to older women. This study examined the individual and contextual factors associated with unintended pregnancy among adolescent girls and young women in selected high fertility countries in sub-Saharan Africa.Materials and methodsData for this study was obtained from recent Demographic and Health Surveys carried out between 2010 and 2018 in 10 countries in sub-Sahara Africa. The sample size for this study was made up of 6,791 adolescent girls and young women (aged 15–24), who were pregnant during the surveys and had complete responses on all the variables considered in the study. Unintended pregnancy was the outcome variable in this study. Descriptive and multilevel logistic regression analyses were performed and the fixed effect results of the multilevel logistic regression analysis were reported as adjusted odds ratios at 95% confidence interval.ResultsUnintended pregnancy in the selected countries was 22.4%, with Angola, recording the highest prevalence of 46.6% while Gambia had the lowest prevalence of 10.2%. The likelihood of unintended pregnancy was high among adolescent girls and young women aged 15–19 [aOR = 1.48; 95% CI = 1.26–1.73], those with primary [aOR = 1.99; 95% CI = 1.69–2.33] and secondary/higher [aOR = 2.30; 95% CI = 1.90–2.78] levels of education, single (never married/separated/divorced/widowed) adolescent girls and young women [aOR = 9.23; 95% CI = 7.55–11.28] and those who were cohabiting [aOR = 2.53; 95% CI = 2.16–2.96]. The odds of unintended pregnancy also increased with increasing birth order, with adolescent girls and young women having three or more births more likely to have unintended pregnancies compared to those with one birth [aOR = 1.99; 95% CI = 1.59–2.48]. Adolescent girls and young women who had ever used contraceptives (modern or traditional), had higher odds of unintended pregnancies compared to those who had never used contraceptives [aOR = 1.32; 95% CI = 1.12–1.54]. Finally, adolescent girls and young women who belonged to the rich wealth quintile were more likely to have unintended pregnancy compared to those in the poor wealth quintile [1.28; 95% CI = 1.08–1.51].ConclusionThe study found that age, marital status, level of education, parity, use of contraceptives and wealth quintile are associated with unintended pregnancy among adolescent girls and young women in high fertility sub-Saharan African countries. These findings call for the need for government and non-governmental organisations in high fertility sub-Saharan African countries to restructure sexual and reproductive health services, taking into consideration these individual and contextual level characteristics of adolescent girls and young women.

The Effect of Financial Liberalization on Economic Growth in Selected Middle East, North Africa and Sub-Sahara Africa Countries 1986-2018

The Effect of Financial Liberalization on Economic Growth in Selected Middle East, North Africa and Sub-Sahara Africa Countries 1986-2018

Evolutionary distance explains shade tree selection in agroforestry systems

Enhancing agrobiodiversity offers a suite of functions key to the sustainability of low input agroecosystems. The pairing of shade trees in pan-tropical tree-crop systems represents one of the most common and widespread applications of agroecosystem diversification, yet given the vastly heterogeneous conditions in which shade tree selection is made, generalizable advances in the identification of suitably paired tree-crop and shade tree is essential for performance and adoption. Here, we determine the phylogenetic distance between 78 reported shade tree genera and the dominant tree-crop, Theobroma cacao L (cocoa), across four countries in sub-Sahara Africa. We hypothesize that shade trees classified as desirable will be phylogenetically distant from T. cacao, based on the well-established theory that disparate evolutionary histories confer niche differentiation. Our analyses confirm that shade tree taxa categorized as desirable by farmers and institutions present higher phylogenetic distance with T. cacao than shade trees taxa categorized as undesirable. These results demonstrate that shade tree evolutionary distance to the target crop could be a useful tool to predict a taxon’s a priori suitability in cocoa agroforests, as well as the ability of phylogenetic analyses in prescribing appropriate shade trees in other current and future agroforestry systems.

Lived Experiences of the Elderly in Ghana: Analysis of Ageing Policies and Options for Reform.

Ghana is one of the countries in sub-Sahara Africa that is experiencing rapid growth of its elderly population. The elderly phase of life is often associated with degenerative conditions that affect the human capacity to function effectively and requires specialized care and income support to ensure the elderly do not suffer poverty, neglect and rejection. In 2008, policy makers in the country introduced a three-tier pension system to provide income security in old age and a cash transfer program to lift the poorest among the elderly out of poverty. In addition, the country's health insurance scheme grants exemption from payments of premiums to the elderly population. These interventions notwithstanding, evidence suggests that the elderly population continues to face several challenges. This paper critically analyses the three intervention and draws attention to the limitations that impede efficacy of the policies; and discusses options to improve the ability of programs associated with the various policies to deliver on their objectives.

The case of Paratransit - ‘Trotro’ service data as a credible location addressing of road networks in Ghana

Road networks are by far the largest mobility infrastructure in Sub-Sahara Africa, and are key to providing access to economic and social opportunities. Yet the majority of road networks in Ghana and other countries in Sub-Sahara Africa are not geographically referenced, to facilitate their uses for road maintenance and management, transport planning, emergency services, disaster cases, logistics, tourism and other location based services. Consequently, this study takes advantage of paratransit service and the location of landmarks to provide location addressing of road networks in Ghana. The paratransit service, popularly known as Trotro in Ghana is a local transit system that uses an automobile to move people and goods along a prescribed travel route on a road network, with locally known stops where people get on and off the vehicle. The Trotro service is popular in Ghana, yet there is no critical investigation demonstrating its spatial coverage, relevance as a credible location addressing for road networks, or as a comprehensive location data for location based services. This study provides evidence for this case, and investigates the spatial coverage of road networks used by the Trotro vehicles, and the mapping of their service stops together with landmarks in the Asokore Mampong Municipality (AMM) of Ashanti region in Ghana. It was found that the location data from both Trotro service and landmarks covered about 86% of the entire road network in AMM; providing a large coverage of the road network and greater geographic detail. A service area estimation undertaken using the generated location data shows a high geographic accessibility, with travel distances as low as 160 m from any location to the nearest Trotro service or landmark covering about 80% of the road networks. These results show the capability of the generated location data to tackle the problem of spatially unreferenced road networks, and to significantly improve their effective uses. The popularity of paratransit in Sub-Sahara Africa means that this study can be adapted to other countries where the majority of the road networks are not spatially referenced.

Inflation and Standard of Living in Nigeria

Standard of living is very germane to every economy. It gives a broad view of how the economy is fairing on a global scale. If an individual cannot get required basic necessities due to low purchasing power, his/her marginal propensity to consume (MPC) rises which makes it more difficult for the individual to live comfortably hence the standard of living dips Several researches have been carried out but the standard of living still remains abysmally low. From empirical review we find that several countries in sub-Sahara Africa, Nigeria inclusive suffers from low standard of living. The case of Nigeria being evidently sever as the Nigeria currently the poverty capital of the world with over 91 million people living below in abject poverty. Time series data on inflation rate and standard of living proxied by the Human Development Index (HDI) between 1998 and 2017 was used for this research. Augmented Dickey Fuller and Phillip-Perron unit root tests were used to test for stationarity of the data. Based on findings, the Auto Regressive Distributed Lagged (ARDL) model was adopted for inferential analyses. Descriptive statistics employed include skewness, kurtosis, Jarque-Bera test and Breuch-Pagan-Godfrey serial correlation LM test, Breuch-Pagan test for heteroscedasticity and the Durbin-Watson test. Results indicated that there exists a long-run relationship between Inflation and standard of living. Inflation exhibited a negative and significant effect with a coefficient of -0.034 against a P-value of 0.017 which implied that a unit increase in inflation brings about 0.034unit decrease in standard of living over the period of study. Based on findings we recommend that a proper blend of fiscal and monetary policies should be employed to improve the standard of living of Nigerians. Keywords: Inflation rate, Monetary policies, Poverty, Standard of living, Fiscal policies DOI: 10.7176/DCS/10-4-06 Publication date: April 30 th 2020

Biosafety Regulatory Reviews and Leeway to Operate: Case Studies From Sub-Sahara Africa.

While modern biotechnology and, specifically, genetic modification are subject of debate in many parts of the world, an increasing number of countries in Sub-Sahara Africa are making important strides towards authorizing general releases of genetically modified (GM) crop varieties for use by farmers and agribusinesses. Obviously, the documented economic and environmental benefits from planting GM crops—based on a track record of over two decades—are a major driver in the decision-making process. Another key factor is the increasing alignment of biosafety regulatory policies with progressive agricultural and rural development policies in Africa, resulting in—compared to past experiences—greater emphasis on anticipated benefits rather than risks in biosafety regulatory reviews. In several cases, this has led to expedited reviews of GM crop release applications, either for confined field trials or general environmental release, taking experiences and data from other countries into account. Such regulatory approaches hold promise as the pipeline of relevant, pro-poor GM crop applications is expanding as are the opportunities provided by novel plant breeding techniques. This review article analyses the shifting policy context in select African economies, resulting in adoption of new agricultural technology, and novel regulatory approaches used in biosafety decision-making. Case studies will be presented for Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Uganda to analyze challenges, distill lessons learned and to present general policy recommendations for emerging economies.

A Comprehensive State-of-the-Art Survey on Hybrid Renewable Energy System Operations and Planning

The use of hybrid renewable energy systems among household consumers in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) is increasingly gaining attention. This is due to low electrification rates in many of the countries in SSA. A hybrid energy system for power generation combines various energy systems, either renewable or a combination of renewable and fossil-powered sources for optimal power extraction and operation. In the era of decarbonization of the electricity grid through the use of renewable energy, hybridization of sources is an essential condition for the production of electricity. Based on current quest for renewable energy (RE) expansion in the global energy mix, optimum conditions for the production and adoption of hybrid renewable energy systems (HRES) at micro-levels are indispensable and must be advocated for. This can be justified based on the perpetually rising cost of energy for socio-economic development. This paper presents a survey of major issues regarding the motivations and specific benefits behind the adoption of HRES. Also presented, is a discussion on different renewable energy sources that can be adopted for HRES application for both grid and off-grid consumers. Furthermore, a discussion on the important issues as it pertains to the design and implementation of HRES is also presented. Finally, a policy discussion on the affordability of HRES in a low-income household is presented.