scholarly journals Rwenzori Score (RS): A Benthic Macroinvertebrate Index for Biomonitoring Rivers and Streams in the Rwenzori Region, Uganda

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 10473
Author(s):  
Peace Liz Sasha Musonge ◽  
Pieter Boets ◽  
Koen Lock ◽  
Minar Naomi Damanik Ambarita ◽  
Marie Anne Eurie Forio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Freshwater Ecosystems ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Biotic Index ◽  
Average Score ◽  
Canonical Ordination ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Pollution Tolerance ◽  
System P ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Highly Correlated

The Rwenzori region in Uganda, a global biodiversity hotspot, is currently undergoing exponential economic and population growth, which puts continuous stress on its freshwater ecosystems. In Sub-Saharan Africa, biomonitoring campaigns using region-specific biotic indices is limited, particularly in Uganda. In this research, we present the Rwenzori Score (RS), a new macroinvertebrate-based biotic index developed to specifically assess the aquatic health of Rwenzori streams and rivers. We collected and measured both biological and physicochemical variables and identified 34,202 macroinvertebrates, belonging to 64 different taxa. The RS was developed in two steps. First, using canonical ordination, we identified chemical variables that correlated significantly with gradients in macroinvertebrate assemblage distribution and diversity. Second, based on selected variables and weighted averages, we determined specific family indicator values and assigned pollution tolerance values (varying from 1: tolerant; to 10: sensitive) to a family. Finally, we established four water quality classes: poor, fair, good, and excellent. The RS is highly correlated with the Average Score Per Taxon System (p < 0.05), a well-known and widely used biotic index. The RS has 5 unique taxa that are not included in other regional indices. In this regard, the development of the RS is a beneficial tool for tailor-made biomonitoring that can contribute to the sustainable development of the Rwenzori stream and river basins.

Reducing corruption and bribery in Africa as a target of the sustainable development goals: applying indicators for assessing performance

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kempe Ronald Hope, Sr.
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Ethical Behaviour ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Illegal Activities

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess African performance for substantially reducing all forms of corruption and bribery on the continent by 2030, through the indicators for achieving Target 16.5 of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the available and accessible relevant data from credible sources, this work quantifies, outlines and analyses the relationship between corruption/bribery and sustainable development as it applies primarily to sub-Saharan Africa; assesses the trends in the region through the official indicators for achieving Target 16.5 of the SDGs; and recommends other indicators for assessing ethical behaviour in African political, administrative and business leadership and institutions for achieving sustainable development and improved ethical performance towards significant reductions in all manifestations of bribery and corruption on the continent by 2030. Findings Corruption and bribery are found to affect all SDG-related sectors, undermining development outcomes and severely compromising efforts to achieve the SDGs in Africa. Consequently, prioritising corruption reduction including from money laundering, bribery and other illegal activities is a necessary requirement for achieving sustainable development, good governance, building effective and inclusive institutions as required by SDG 16, and funding the achievement of the SDGs. Originality/value The main value of the paper is the insights it provides through the very comprehensive compilation of statistical information that quantifies, and with analysis, the corruption/bribery avenues and the resultant deleterious effects on sustainable development in Africa.

Poverty prevalence and negative spillovers in Sub-Saharan Africa: a focus on extreme and multidimensional poverty in the region

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olumide Olaoye ◽  
Cleopatra Oluseye Ibukun ◽  
Mustafa Razzak ◽  
Naftaly Mose
Keyword(s):  
Generalized Method Of Moments ◽  
Spillover Effect ◽  
Multidimensional Poverty ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Spatial Error ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
High Level

PurposeThe paper analyses the prevalence of extreme and multidimensional poverty in line with the sustainable development agenda. In addition, the paper examines the drivers of extreme poverty while accounting for the potential spillover effect of poverty in the region.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts the pooled OLS with Discroll-Kraay robust standard errors to control for cross-sectional dependence. In addition, given the strong potential for endogeneity of poverty index, the authors also employ the generalized method of moments (GMM), which accounts for simultaneity and endogeneity problems, and the spatial error and lag models to control for all forms of spatial and temporal dependence since the factors that affect poverty disperse across borders.FindingsThe study finds that in addition to the traditional drivers of poverty (unemployment, low per capita GDP growth and public debt), poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is a symptom of a deeper structural problem (lack of access to water and sanitation, high level of corruption and low level of financial development, and frequent economic busts). Likewise, the results from the spatial econometric specification show, consistently across all the specifications, that there is a substantial spillover effect of poverty across the region.Originality/valueThe main novelty of the paper is that the authors investigate the “economic shrinkage hypothesis,” and examined the potential negative spillover effect of poverty in the region.

Financing the Sustainable Development Goals in Sub-Saharan African Countries

2022 ◽  
pp. 32-51
Author(s):  
Alex Nester Jiya ◽  
Ernest Roderick Falinya
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
High Population Growth ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Sub Saharan

The chapter seeks to provide insights on the alternatives for financing sustainable development in the Sub- Saharan Africa (SSA). It has been highlighted in the chapter that the region faces the danger of not attaining the SDGs due to poor political systems, climate change, high population growth and restricted economic growth and development. This comes in the midst of declining and unpredictable Official Development Assistance (ODA) plus other domestic and foreign financing instruments. Despite the constraints, the chapter has explored the potential for the region to attain and maintain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) way beyond 2030. Sub-Saharan Africa has a lot of natural resources and a favorable demographic structure. Furthermore, the region has shown some signs of industrial development of late and increasing regional integration which are key to economic transformation. Finally, the chapter has highlighted some policy recommendations in order for the region to realise its potential and attain the SDGs.

scholarly journals Land Use, Environmental, and Food Consumption Patterns in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2000–2015: A Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8200
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Chiwuikem Chiaka ◽  
Lin Zhen
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Food Supply ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Sparse Vegetation ◽  
Local Methods ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Sub Saharan

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) land use changes are primarily influenced by agriculture and its population. The region faces various challenges ranging from rainfall variabilities to poverty and insecurities, which further hampered food supply and production. The spatial analysis identified six land uses—agriculture, forest, grassland, wetland, urban, and others (i.e., bare land, water, and sparse vegetation), showing relative percentage changes. Additionally, information collected and analyzed shows that the Millennium Development Goals period witnessed increased agricultural land use changes in the environment to improve food supply, and farmers adopted local methods and native experiences to mitigate environmental particularities facing the region. Farmers’ landholdings are fragmented, and food supply per capita is low albeit rich in calories, and nutrition is still unbalanced, while bushmeat consumption is popular and serves as an alternative to animal-sourced protein. Concerted efforts should be made to improve food security and edge closer to the sustainable development goal during this decade.

scholarly journals Age Distribution, Trends, and Forecasts of Under-5 Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iván Mejía-Guevara ◽  
Wenyun Zuo ◽  
Eran Bendavid ◽  
Nan Li ◽  
Shripad Tuljapurkar
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Child Mortality ◽  
Age Distribution ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Death Rates ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Mortality Estimation ◽  
Age Patterns ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Mortality Estimates

AbstractBackgroundDespite the sharp decline in global under-5 deaths since 1990, uneven progress has been achieved across and within countries. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the Millennium Development Goals targets for child mortality were met only by a few countries, and recently new targets were set in goals for Sustainable Development that include the eradication of preventable deaths by reducing neonatal and under-5 mortality rates to at least as low 12 and 25 per 1000 live births by 2030, respectively. As the reduction of preventable deaths has a direct impact on their age distribution, the foci of this study are assessing age patterns, trends over time, and forecasts of mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa.Methods and findingsData came from 104 nationally-representative Demographic and Health Surveys with full birth histories from 31 Sub-Saharan African countries from 1990 to 2016 (a total of 448 country-years of data). We assessed the distribution of age at death through the following demographic model. First, we used a direct method for the estimation of death rates with full-birth histories from survey data to construct age profiles of under-5 mortality on a monthly basis. Second, a two-dimensional P-spline approach was used to smooth out raw estimates of death rates by age and time. Third, a variant of the Lee-Carter model, designed for populations with limited data, was used to fit and forecast age profiles of mortality. We used mortality estimates from the United Nations Inter-agency group for Child Mortality Estimation to adjust, validate and minimize the risk of bias in survival, truncation, and recall in mortality estimation.Our study has three salient findings. First, we observe a monotonous decline of death rates at every age in most countries, but with notable differences in the age-patterns over time. Second, our projections of continued decline of child mortality differ from existing estimates from the United Nations Inter-agency group for Child Mortality Estimation in 5 countries for both neonatal and under-5 mortality. Finally, we predict that only 5 countries (Guinea, Liberia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda) are on track to achieve the sustainable development goal targets on child mortality by 2030. Poor data quality issues that include bias in the report of births and deaths, or age heaping, remain a limitation of this study.ConclusionsThis study is the first to combine full birth history data and mortality estimates from external reliable sources to model age patterns of under-5 mortality across time in Sub-Saharan Africa. We demonstrate that countries with a rapid pace of mortality reduction across ages would be more likely to achieve the sustainable development goal targets of child mortality reduction. Our mortality model predicts that if neonatal and under-5 deaths decline at the rates observed during the last 25 years, only 5 countries would reach those targets by 2030, 15 would achieve them between 2030 and 2050, and 11 afterwards.

scholarly journals Small-scale Automated Drip Circulation System

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-196
Author(s):  
Yaw Obeng Okofo Dartey ◽  
Eno Boamah Osei Antwi ◽  
Maryam Munagah Bassit ◽  
Elizabeth Ayaw Oduro-Koranteng
Keyword(s):  
Farming Systems ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Circulation System ◽  
Automation System ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Increase Food Production ◽  
Current Production ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Sub Saharan

Hunger and Poverty are one of the major problems faced in Sub-Saharan Africa. To get rid of this problem in line with the aim of the sustainable development goals, there is the need to increase current production levels of food. This can be achieved by mechanizing farming systems and introducing technology to farming systems. This paper seeks to introduce an automation system that uses automated drip irrigation with a circulation system to efficiently use energy and avoid the amount of water wasted during farming activities to attempt to increase food production levels..

scholarly journals Tax Revenue Mobilization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does political Legitimacy Matters?

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. p47
Author(s):  
Issa Dianda ◽  
Aminata Ouedraogo ◽  
Idrissa Ouedraogo
Keyword(s):  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Tax Revenue ◽  
Fiscal Capacity ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Tax Revenues ◽  
Political Determinants ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Sub Saharan

The mobilization of substantial domestic resources is required to finance human and physical capital in order to achieve the sustainable development goals. In developing countries like those of Sub-Saharan Africa, the mobilization of tax revenues remains a great challenge. In this context, identifying the determinants of fiscal capacity remains crucial to guide the adoption of appropriate fiscal reforms. Therefore, as part of the wave of literature on the institutional and political determinants of fiscal capacity, this article explores the effect of political legitimacy on tax revenues in a sample of 41 SSA countries over the period 1996-2017. The system GMM in two steps estimator is used for empirical investigation. The result shows that tax revenue increases with political legitimacy. This result suggests that political legitimization in SSA remains crucial to mobilize more resources in order to adequately finance the development.

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