Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research

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    Adolescent mental health services in West Africa: a comparative analysis of Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Niger
    (Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 2024) Amenah, M.A.; Ibrahim, N.; Fenny, A.P.
    Background Adolescent mental health (AMH) is a critical issue worldwide, particularly in West Africa, where it is intensified by socio-economic, cultural, and security challenges. Insecurity and the presence of mining sites expose adolescents to hazardous environments, substance abuse, and adulterated alcohol, further aggravating their mental health. Despite these severe issues, research on AMH in this region remains limited. This study aims to analyze the provision of AMH services in Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Niger, highlighting the unique challenges these countries face within the broader West African healthcare context. Methods The study adopted a multi-stage, stratified sampling design to collect data from primary healthcare centers (PHCs) in the three countries. Using STATA.17, Descriptive analysis was conducted on the data related to availability of AMH services, types of mental health disorders treated, resources available, and OPD attendance rates. The analysis also incorporated factors such as the rural-urban divide and the presence of national guidelines for AMH services. Results The findings reveal a significant shortfall in the provision of AMH services across the region, with less than 30% of PHCs across all the countries offering these services. The study also highlights a pronounced rural-urban disparity in AMH service availability, a general absence of national guidelines for AMH care, and low OPD attendance rates. Conclusion The study highlights the urgent need for comprehensive policy reform and targeted interventions to enhance AMH services in West Africa. Key policy reforms should include the development and implementation of national guidelines for AMH care and integration of AMH services into primary healthcare. Additionally, efforts should focus on capacity building through the training of mental health professionals, increasing public awareness to reduce stigma, and ensuring equitable resource allocation across rural and urban areas. Improving AMH care is essential not only for the well-being of adolescents but also for driving broader socio-economic development in the region.
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    Smallholder farmers’ perceived effects of land use and cover change on provisioning ecosystem services in the savannah ecological zone of Ghana
    (NJAS: Impact in Agricultural and Life Sciences, 2023) Aniah, P.; Bawakyillenuo, S.
    Ecosystem services are essential for life sustenance but are presently threatened by land use and cover change (LUCC). Meanwhile, policymakers tend to to disregard sustainable pathways that enhance ecosystem integrity due to limited empirical evidence of the impacts of LUCC on provisioning ecosystem services. The existing studies largely rely only on geospatial data or use proxy variables without integration of qualitative information. This study employed a blend of geospatial and qualitative approaches to analyse the spatiotemporal dynamics of LUCC and the perceived impact on provisioning ecosystem services in the savannah zone of Ghana. The findings reveal an expansion of cultivated area from 4.59 km2 to 178.63 km2 and a decrease in wooded savannah area from 176.022 km2 to 29.22 km2 between 1990 and and 2020 in the Bongo district. Declines in wooded savannah area from 471.685 km2 to 258.38 km2 and expansion of cultivated area from 5.79 km2 to 123.80 km2 from 1990 to 2020 were also observed in the KNW district. In In synch with the satellite data, farmers observed expansion in agricultural areas at the expense of wooded savannah area over the past decades. Though farmers highly depend on ecosystems for livelihood needs, the capacity of the ecosystems to continually support their livelihood requirements has decreased over the past decade, and this has resulted in substantial declines in vital provisioning ecosystem services such as cereals, fuelwood, fodder and forage, grazing fields, medicinal plants, and wild edible fruits and vegetables. To ameliorate decreasing provisioning ecosystem services, environmental governance policies should promote strategies that restore degraded ecosystems.
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    Women, Gender, and Development in Africa
    (The Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies, 2020) Anyidoho, N.A.
    Gender denotes the social prescriptions associated with biological sex in regard to roles, behavior, appearance, cognition, emotions, and so on. Social relations of gender or gender relations encompass all relationships in which gender sub jectivities play a role, including those among people, and between people and the institutions, systems, and processes of development. The chapter describes three features of gender relations that are generally consistent across societies – gender ideologies and myths; gendered division of labor; and unequal power relation ships – and discusses their implications for development. The chapter further explains the centrality of gender to the development enterprise and discusses various approaches to integrating gender analysis in development processes.
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    Heterogeneous market participation channels and household welfare
    (Oxford Development Studies, 2023) Dzanku, F.M.; Asante, K.T.; Hodey, L.S.
    This paper uses panel data and qualitative interviews from southwestern Ghana to analyse farmers’ heterogeneous oil palm marketing decisions and the effect on household welfare. We show that, despite the supposed benefits that smallholders could derive from participation in global agricultural value chains via formal contracts, such arrangements are rare although two of Ghana’s ‘big four’ industrial oil palm companies are located in the study area. In the absence of formal contracts, farmers self-select into four main oil palm marketing channels (OPMCs). These OPMCs are associated with varying levels of welfare, with processing households and those connected to industrial companies by verbal contracts, being better off. Furthermore, own-processing of palm fruits has been shown to reduce gender gaps in household welfare. We also unearth community and household level factors that hamper or facilitate participation in remunerative OPMCs. These results have implications for development policy and practice related to inclusive agricultural commercialization.
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    Do farmer-actor interactions in the agricultural innovation system drive technological innovation adoption in Ghana?
    (African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation and Development, 2022) Onumah, J.A.; Asante, F.A.; Osei, R.D.; Asare-Nuamah, P.
    The low level of technological innovation adoption among farmers has been a development concern. However, not much attention has been paid to how agricultural innovation system actors contribute to the adoption of technological innovations among farmers. This paper, therefore, analyzed the factors that drive the adoption of technological innovations using the agricultural innovation system concept. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach where qualitative data from focus group discussions was used to triangulate findings obtained from the quantitative data analyzed. A two-period panel data set of 3486 observations of randomly sampled agricultural households across Ghana was analyzed using descriptive statistics and the multinomial logit regression model. Findings showed that farmers with strong ties in the innovation system had a higher probability of adopting multiple sets of innovations, compared to those with weaker linkages. Platforms that encourage actor interactions, such as innovation platforms, should be strengthened to increase the innovative performance of smallholder farmers. This study is one of the few that has quantified the effect the agricultural innovation system has on the adoption of innovations and hence makes a positive contribution to the budding literature regarding the importance of unpacking actor interactions whilst considering a holistic inquiry of the agricultural innovation system.
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    Progress on Poverty in Africa: The Importance of Growth and Inequality
    (Journal of African Economies, 2023) Fosu, A.K.
    Employing World Bank data, this paper first historically examines Africa’s record on poverty incidence. spread and severity, as compared with other regions of the world, at US$1.90 and US$3.20 per day (2011 PPP) poverty standards. Second, it evaluates country-specific progress on growth, poverty and inequality, and compares the ‘poverty transformation efficiency vector’ (PTEV) among African countries. Third, the study analyses the relative roles of income growth and inequality changes in explaining African countries’ poverty records, through a decomposition of poverty changes using ‘optimal’ income and inequality elasticity estimates from the ‘identity’ model. The study finds that following the dismal record on poverty during the 1980s, progress on poverty has been appreciable since Africa’s growth resurgence, starting in the mid-1990s, and that this progress was driven mainly by income growth, consistent with the global evidence. Nonetheless, inequality often played a complementary role in most of the countries and, in a small number of cases, it was the primary driver of changes in poverty. Thus, the present study sheds light on country-specific differences in the relative roles of growth and inequality in poverty reduction on the continent, based on both qualitative and quantitative evidence. The study should, therefore, provide a useful compass to those who seek to understand country-specific situations within the African context
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    Digital financial inclusion and income inequality in WAEMU: What causality for what heterogeneity?
    (Cogent Economics & Finance, 2023) Soro, K.; Senou, M.M.
    In developing countries, economic inequality is attracting considerable attention. Many factors, including financial exclusion, are key in explaining income gap in developing countries. This paper examines the effect of access to financial services through digital technologies to address income inequality. Using data from the World Development Indicator (WDI), the Central Bank of West Africa States (BCEAO) and the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID), we estimated a pooled means group estimation (PMGE) and a dynamic fixed effect (DFE) as a robustness test. The results indicate that digital financial inclusion leads to a decrease in income inequality. In the long run, there is a negative and significant effect of digital financial inclusion on inequality. The Short-run results evidenced more of the heterogeneity effect of digital financial inclusion in WAEMU countries due to the diversity, inconclusiveness, and contradictory results of the effect of DFI on inequality.
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    A Typology of Young Cocoa Farmers: Attitudes, Motivations and Aspirations
    (The European Journal of Development Research, 2022) Amon‑Armah, F.; Anyidoho, N.A.; Amoah, I.A.; Muilerman, S.
    This paper presents a typology to highlight and describe the variation in attitudes among young farmers in rural Ghana, a group that has been treated in policy discourses and in development practice as largely homogenous. It further identifies motivations and aspirations associated with each type. A cluster analysis of survey data from 120 respondents yielded two types of young farmers: ‘positive’ and ‘resigned’. The likelihood of being in either category was found to be related to marital status, location, and whether one had a secondary occupation. Further, the ‘positive’ group were more likely to report being influenced by adult role models and more likely to aspire to stay in farming. Our findings underscore the relevance of socio-economic and ecological environment on young people’s attitudes to and decisions regarding farming and, consequently, on the outcome of policy and programmatic interventions meant to increase their participation in agriculture
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    Actor-network analysis of community based organisations in health pandemics: evidence from the COVID-19 response in Freetown, Sierra Leone
    (Disasters, 2021) Frimpong, L.K.; Commodore, T.S.; Okyere, S.A.; et al.
    Freetown, Sierra Leone, is confronted with health risks that are compounded by rapid, unplanned urbanisation and weak capacities of local government institutions. Addressing them implies a shared responsibility between government and non-state actors. In low-income areas, the role of community-based organisations (CBOs) in combating health disasters is well-recognised. Yet, empirical evidence on how they have utilised their networks and coordinated community-level strategies in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic is scant. This paper, based on a qualitative study in two informal settlements in Freetown employs actor-network theory to understand how CBOs problematize COVID-19 as a health risk, interact with other entities, and the subsequent tensions that arise. The findings show that community vulnerabilities and past experiences of health disasters informed CBOs’ perception of COVID-19 as a communal emergency. In response, they coordinated sensitisation and mobilisation programmes by relying on a network of actors to support COVID-19 risk reduction strategies. Nonetheless, misunderstandings among them caused friction.
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    Mobile money: a gateway to achieving financial inclusion in Ghana
    (Enterprise Development and Microfinance, 2022) Kodom, M.; Steel, W.F.; Ackah, C.; Bokpin, G.A.
    While emerging studies on mobile financial inclusion have focused on the factors driving the adoption of mobile money, little evidence exists on how the service is facilitating the use of formal financial services. Using the World Bank Findex data, we estimate the effect of mobile money adoption on the use of formal accounts, savings, and credit in Ghana. The results of the recursive bivariate probit analysis showed a significant symbiotic relationship between mobile money adoption and the probability of operating a formal account. Mobile money adoption has a positive effect on savings and access to credit but does not affect the avenues to savings and obtaining credit, respectively. Mobile money users save in their wallet and obtain microcredit through the mobile money platform but not through formal channels. These findings reinforce the hypothesis that mobile money is the surest financial tool for achieving universal financial inclusion in developing countries.