This study examined the impact of income inequality on female labour force participation in West Africa for the period 2004 to 2016. The study employed the Gini coefficient, the Atkinson index and the Palma ratio as measures of income inequality. For robustness, the study also utilises female employment and female unemployment as measures of female labour force participation. The study employed the instrumental variable fixed effects model with Driscoll and Kraay standard errors to account for simultaneity/reverse causality, serial correlation, groupwise heteroskedasticity and cross-sectional dependence. The empirical results reveal that the three measures of income inequality significantly reduce the participation of women in the labour force in West Africa.

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This paper examines whether the adoption of the ASI thresher technology by rice farmers in the Senegal River Valley increases their access to credit and their creditworthiness through various pathways. Mainly, this study seeks to verify the argument that the adoption of technologies that increase factor productivity and production capacity eventually leads to the ability (and desire) of adopters to borrow more due to enhanced operations and confidence in their ability to repay loans. This paper uses primary data collected from 194 adopters and nonadopters of the ASI thresher in the Senegal River Valley. Four propensity score matching techniques (nearest neighbour, calliper, stratification and kernel) were used to analyze the data and to remove the selection bias due to observable characteristics. The results from the four techniques consistently show that ASI rice thresher adopters borrowed more money (between 194,000 and 432,000 CFA) in comparison to their neighbours who had not adopted the ASI thresher. This study recommends that, in order to move rice system development closer to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, policymakers and other stakeholders should increase their proactive efforts to promote ASI adoption in Senegal and other rice-producing regions in Africa. The originality of this paper and its contribution to the literature mainly lie in the quantification of the credit farmers gained and the increase in their creditworthiness due to the adoption of a technology.

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Study investigated the effect of farmer perceptions of climate change stressors on stressmigration using primary data collected by means of multi-stage sampling technique in 2012 on 120 irrigated upland rice-farming households. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Heckman Two-Steps probit models. Results showed that drought and flood principally reduced rice yield, led to high crop loss, increased food insecurity and indebtedness and induced farmer stress-migration. Twenty-two percent of the farmers adapted to stress-migration between the years 2007 to 2011.

This article was first published here: International Journal of Agriculture, Environment and Bioresearch

Agenda 2030 sets an ambitious target to provide inclusive and quality education for all. The first step in this quest is identifying those left behind in accessing quality education and reasons for their exclusion. However, Nigeria like many developing countries lacks data on learning assessment to measure progress on Agenda 2030 at the national and sub-national levels. In this study, we construct a measure for the quality of education by matching curriculum with literacy and numeracy assessments based on existing education survey. In addition, we examine the drivers of quality education in Nigeria based on the newly constructed learning indicator. Our findings confirm Nigerian education system is indeed facing deep learning crisis with the affected children mostly from poor households, in the rural areas, those that attend government-owned schools, and those in the northern region of the country Nigeria. The results emphasized the need for systemic change that will improve school infrastructure, teacher training and ensure more parental involvement.

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The OLAM’s outgrower scheme in Nasarawa State was established in 2012 among rice farmers in three Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the State and represents one of three strategies adopted by the company to generate paddy supplies for its rice milling factory located in Rukubi, Nasarawa State. Other strategies are rice cultivation in a nucleus farm located near the factory and purchase of paddies in the open market. Over the last three years, the company has been able to process 18,000–30,000 metric tons of polished rice annually, compared to the mill’s capacity of 60,000 metric tons, yielding average capacity utilization rate of below 50%.

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