scholarly journals The Impacts of Community Telecenters in Rural Colombia

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabiola Amariles ◽  
Olga P. Paz ◽  
Nathan Russell ◽  
Nancy Johnson

Abstract This paper evaluates the impacts of two community telecenters on their host organizations and on the rural areas they serve. Awareness and use of telecenters by rural households were low, as was users’ ability to articulate information needs. Significant institutional impacts occurred in the NGOs that hosted the telecenters. The results suggest that sustainable expansion of ICTs in rural areas of developing countries may best be achieved by working through local organizations willing to incorporate the technologies into their work, while striving with the communities they serve to build local capacity to use information and ICTs. Resumen Se evalúa el impacto de dos telecentros comunitarios en las organizaciones anfitrionas y en las áreas rurales aledañas. El uso de los telecentros por los campesinos es bajo, así como su habilidad para articular las necesidades de información. Los impactos institucionales observados sugieren que la mejor manera de lograr la expansión sostenible de las TICs en las áreas rurales de los países en desarrollo podría ser por medio de organizaciones locales que incorporen las tecnologías ellas mismas y las usen con sus comunidades, construyendo capacidad local para el uso de la información y de las TICs.

2021 ◽  
pp. 232102222110243
Author(s):  
Biswajit Ray ◽  
Promita Mukherjee

To what extent forests contribute to rural livelihoods in developing countries? To find a plausible answer for this, this article explores whether inclusion of forest income to rural households’ total income accounts reduces poverty and income inequality, and also enables rural households to cope with shocks. To this end, we conducted household surveys in eight forest-dependent villages in the Indian state of West Bengal between August 2016 and August 2017. Using data from 407 sample households, we measured forest income of a household as the aggregate monetary value of resources extracted solely from forest ecosystem and compared this with other economic activities of the households. We calculated poverty indices and Gini coefficient with and without forest income, and we employed regression and Gini decomposition techniques to assess the safety net role and relative contribution of forest income to reducing rural poverty and inequality when compared to other sources of income. We found that the addition of forest income to household accounts significantly reduces measured poverty and inequality. Besides, the sample households, especially the poor, extract more from forests to cope with severe covariate shocks due to greater income certainty and thus adopt forest-dominated coping strategy in time of shocks and crises. The implication is that forest income needs to sustainably flow to the poor along with the development of better safety nets in forested rural areas in order to improve the forest-based rural livelihoods in developing countries like India. JEL Codes: Q23, Q56, Q57


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 1068
Author(s):  
Michael Shadrack Mangula ◽  
Joseph A. Kuzilwa ◽  
Simon S. Msanjila ◽  
Isack A. Legonda

Energy access plays a crucial role in enhancing the social-economic development among the household members in any nation. Notwithstanding the role of energy access in improving the livelihood of people, the problem of energy access has revealed to be more serious in rural areas of Tanzania. The increased in problem of energy access in rural areas of the developing countries is due to the absence of a unified set of indicators for measuring the energy access to rural households from developing countries including Tanzania. This study therefore, aimed at determining the indicators of energy access in rural areas of Tanzania.The study employed Cross- sectional type of the research design to collect data from 384 heads of household from the rural areas of Njombe and Iringa regions in Tanzania. Moreover, the Quantitative Exploratory Factor Analysis using Principal Component analysis and varimax method was employed to determine the indicators of energy access. The identified indicators using exploratory Factor Analysis was further confirmed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The study findings revealed that, the indicators for measuring the provision of energy access to rural households in developing countries including Tanzania ranked based on its importance are: availability, affordability, durability, efficient, no production of smokes, easy to use and ability to keep cooking facilities clean.Based on these findings, the study concludes that, indicators of energy access are important in enhancing the social economic development and improvement of the livelihood of people in rural areas. In the light of this conclusion the study recommends to government energy experts and other practitioners of to use the identified indictors when measuring energy access to rural households in Tanzania in order to improve the livelihood and their standard of living.


Geographies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-123
Author(s):  
Samuel Tumwesigye ◽  
Lisa-Marie Hemerijckx ◽  
Alfonse Opio ◽  
Jean Poesen ◽  
Ronald Twongyirwe ◽  
...  

Rural–urban migration in developing countries is considered to be a key process for sustainable development in the coming decades. On the one hand, rural–urban migration can contribute to the socioeconomic development of a country. On the other hand, it also leads to labor transfer, brain-drain in rural areas, and overcrowded cities where planning is lagging behind. In order to get a better insight into the mechanisms of rural–urban migration in developing countries, this paper analyzes motivations for rural–urban migration from the perspective of rural households in Uganda. A total of 1015 rural households located in southwestern Uganda were surveyed in 2019. A total of 48 percent of these households reported having at least one out-migrant. By means of logistic regression modeling, the likelihood for rural out-migration was assessed using household- and community-level socioeconomic characteristics as predictors. The results show that most out-migrants are from relatively wealthy households with a higher-than-average education level. Typically, these households are located in villages that are well connected with urban centers. Poor households in remote locations send significantly fewer migrants because of their limited access to migration information and poor transport networks. From these findings, the following policy recommendations are made: Firstly, efforts should be made to extend basic social services, including quality education, towards rural areas. Secondly, in order to reduce socially disruptive long-distance migration and the eventual overcrowding and sprawls of major cities, government investments should be oriented towards the upgrading of secondary towns, which can offer rural out-migrants rewarding employment and business opportunities.


The problem of indebtedness among the rural households of Punjab was become more serious in the last two decades. A large number of studies were carried out in India and abroad to look into the problem of rural indebtedness and its consequences but most of these studies are either based upon a very small sample of a few districts or cover the farmers only. The present study would be wider in scope as it was also included artisans, agricultural labourers (non- cultivators) along with the farmers (cultivators). This study analysed the situation of Punjab as a whole and district wise analysis was done. Therefore, in the present study, an attempt was made to analyse the growth of indebtedness among the rural households in Punjab and attempt was made to explain the utilisation pattern of loan used by rural households and tried to trace out how the situation of household indebtedness in the Punjab evolved and changed over the course of about ten years. The study will be helpful to planners, academicians, researchers as well as policymakers for solving the problem of indebtedness among rural households for the betterment of the society as a whole. It is suggested that encouragement should be given to subsidiary occupations, improvement in access to health at subsidised rate in rural areas to curb the indebtedness and to monitor the informal mechanism of credit by Government and financial institutions along with availability of the appropriate delivery of credit into the agricultural as well as non-agricultural sector of rural areas by eliminating costly sources of money lenders for the accurate functioning of the economy.


Author(s):  
Dharambeer Singh

Digital libraries, designed to serve people and their information needs in the same way as traditional libraries, present distinct advantages over brick and mortar facilities: elimination of physical boundaries, round-the-clock access to information, multiple access points, networking abilities, and extended search functions. As a result, they should be especially well-suited for the disables. However, minorities, those affected by lower income and education status, persons living in rural areas, the physically challanged, and developing countries as a whole consistently suffer from a lack of accessibility to digital libraries. This paper evaluates the effectiveness and relevance of digital libraries currently in place and discusses what could and should be done to improve accessibility to digital libraries for under-graduate students.


Author(s):  
Ruchika Agarwala ◽  
Vinod Vasudevan

Research shows that traffic fatality risk is generally higher in rural areas than in urban areas. In developing countries, vehicle ownership and investments in public transportation typically increase with economic growth. These two factors together increase the vehicle population, which in turn affects traffic safety. This paper presents a study focused on the relationship of various factors—including household consumption expenditure data—with traffic fatality in rural and urban areas and thereby aims to fill some of the gaps in the literature. One such gap is the impacts of personal and non-personal modes of travel on traffic safety in rural versus urban areas in developing countries which remains unexplored. An exhaustive panel data modeling approach is adopted. One important finding of this study is that evidence exists of a contrasting relationship between household expenditure and traffic fatality in rural and urban areas. The relationship between household expenditure and traffic fatality is observed to be positive in rural areas and a negative in urban areas. Increases in most expenditure variables, such as fuel, non-personal modes of travel, and two-wheeler expenditures, are found to be associated with an increase in traffic fatality in rural areas.


BMJ Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. e043365
Author(s):  
Subhasish Das ◽  
Md. Golam Rasul ◽  
Md Shabab Hossain ◽  
Ar-Rafi Khan ◽  
Md Ashraful Alam ◽  
...  

IntroductionWe conducted a cross-sectional survey to assess the extent and to identify the determinants of food insecurity and coping strategies in urban and rural households of Bangladesh during the month-long, COVID-19 lockdown period.SettingSelected urban and rural areas of Bangladesh.Participants106 urban and 106 rural households.Outcome variables and methodHousehold food insecurity status and the types of coping strategies were the outcome variables for the analyses. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were done to identify the determinants.ResultsWe found that around 90% of the households were suffering from different grades of food insecurity. Severe food insecurity was higher in urban (42%) than rural (15%) households. The rural households with mild/moderate food insecurity adopted either financial (27%) or both financial and food compromised (32%) coping strategies, but 61% of urban mild/moderate food insecure households applied both forms of coping strategies. Similarly, nearly 90% of severely food insecure households implemented both types of coping strategies. Living in poorest households was significantly associated (p value <0.05) with mild/moderate (regression coefficient, β: 15.13, 95% CI 14.43 to 15.82), and severe food insecurity (β: 16.28, 95% CI 15.58 to 16.97). The statistically significant (p <0.05) determinants of both food compromised and financial coping strategies were living in urban areas (β: 1.8, 95% CI 0.44 to 3.09), living in poorest (β: 2.7, 95% CI 1 to 4.45), poorer (β: 2.6, 95% CI 0.75 to 4.4) and even in the richer (β: 1.6, 95% CI 0.2 to 2.9) households and age of the respondent (β: 0.1, 95% CI 0.02 to 0.21).ConclusionBoth urban and rural households suffered from moderate to severe food insecurity during the month-long lockdown period in Bangladesh. But, poorest, poorer and even the richer households adopted different coping strategies that might result in long-term economic and nutritional consequences.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frimpong Kwasi ◽  
Jacque Oosthuizen ◽  
Eddie Van Etten

<p>Little is known about the health effects of heat in outdoor work and appropriate work and rest schedules for farmers working in developing countries. As temperatures continue to increase in tropical regions, such as Northern Ghana, it is necessary to evaluate how farmers experience and respond to high heat exposures. In this study, WBGT (Wet Bulb Globe Temperature) estimates and the ISO work / rest standards were applied to a cohort of farmers in the rural areas of Bawku East, Northern Ghana, to assess how farmers respond to high heat and how much they rest to protect their health, as well as the level of heat on their productivity. WBGT data was recorded over a period of 6 months among vegetable, cereals, and legume farmers. The ISO proposed and actual rest regimes observed by farmers in the same time period were evaluated. In the dry season the dry bulb temperature rose as high as 45 ºC, while during the humid months of March and April WBGT rose to levels as high as 34 ºC. Farmers worked for nine hours a day during these hot periods with insufficient rest, which has adverse consequences on their health and productivity.</p>


1979 ◽  
Vol 1 (5) ◽  
pp. 285-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjorn V. Tell

The developing countries arc emulating the industrialized countries when setting up information services to cater for their information needs. However, the traditional infrastruc ture of service organisations may not be the best model for supporting easy and speedy access to information. A different approach is argued, founded upon the enthusiasm with which many developing countries have taken to online systems when demonstrated there. A model for a ministerial information network is proposed as part of a "social intel ligence function" of the country. It is proposed that Unesco and UNIDO should set up regional "centres of excellence" according to this model for developing countries.


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