The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative Fund Micro-Credit and Poverty Reduction in Ghana: A Panacea or a Mirage?

Since Ghana opted for the HIPC debt relief initiative and reached the completion point in June 2004 the country has received several billions of money into the HIPC account at the Bank of Ghana. Part of the funds has been given out in the form of micro-credit to poor households to help reduce their poverty situation. However, there are so many controversies surrounding the HIPC initiative and its benefit, especially, the impact on the incomes of the poor. It was therefore necessary to assess the impact of the micro-credit, especially how it has positively increased, if any, the income levels and therefore reduced the poverty rate. The basic hypothesis was that HIPC initiative fund micro-credit has reduced level and intensity of poverty among beneficiaries. The study was confined to Nkoranza and Wenchi districts, which have successfully maintained the HIPC Micro Credit Scheme. The Foster-Greer-Thorbecko (FGT) Index was used to measure the Head Count Ratio (HCR), Poverty Gap Index (PGI) and the Squared Poverty Gap (SPG), which assess, respectively, proportion of the population under the poverty line, depth of poverty and the severity of poverty. The study came out that incomes have been increased by an average of 26.72% and 25.50% for Nkoranza and Wenchi districts, respectively. Again, the study found that over the HIPC implementation period the number of people below the poverty line dropped from 78 to 62 and from 79 to 64 for Nkoranza and Wenchi districts, respectively, making 20.51 and 18.99 percentage point decrease for Nkoranza and Wenchi districts. Comparing PGI of the two years it was found that the cash transfer needed to lift the individuals above the poverty line decreased from 26.47 to 17.20 leading to 35.02% fall for Nkoranza and from 26.41 to 17.26 leading to 30.30% for Wenchi. This shows that people in the two districts were nearer the poverty line in 2004 than in the year 2000. This means that people are moving from hard core poverty zones. The results of the SPG of 7.49 and 7.44 for Nkoranza and Wenchi in 2004 against 13.66 and 17.26% in 2000, respectively, show that poverty intensity has also dropped by 45.45% and 55.56 for Nkoranza and Wenchi, respectively. Hence, the HIPC micro-credit is a panacea to poverty reduction. Keywords: Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), Poverty, Head Count, Poverty Gap, Squared Poverty Gap, Micro-credit Journal of Science & Technology (Ghana) Vol. 28 (3) 2008: pp. 94-10

Evaluating the impact of the capitation grant and the school feeding programme on enrollment, attendance and retention in schools: The case of Weweso circuit

This study seeks to investigate the impact of the capitation grant and school feeding programme on school enrollment, attendance and retention in Ghana. The paper used difference-indifference method by comparing changes in enrollment, attendance and retention between beforeand after, and between beneficiary schools (treatment) and non-beneficiary schools (control). It also ran Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression to find the impact of the programmes on enrollment, attendance and retention for the 2001/2002 and 2008/2009 academic years. The study found from the regression results that the capitation grant had positive but not significant impact on enrollment. However, it can be said that the capitation grant caused an instantaneous increase in enrollment because it brought a one-time sharp increase and then settled. However, it did not have a significant impact on attendance and retention. It was also found out that the school feeding programme had positive and significant impact on school enrollment, attendance and retention. The study found out that the positive impact of the programmes was affected by the fees levied on school pupils by the Parent-Teacher-Association and the weather

Feasibility and Coverage of Implementing Intermittent Preventive Treatment of Malaria in Pregnant women Contacting Private or Public Clinics in Tanzania: Experience-based Viewpoints of Health Managers in Mkuranga and Mufindi districts.

Evidence on healthcare managers' experience on operational feasibility of malaria intermittent preventive treatment for malaria during pregnancy (IPTp) using sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) in Africa is systematically inadequate. This paper elucidates the perspectives of District Council Health Management Team (CHMT)s regarding the feasibility of IPTp with SP strategy, including its acceptability and ability of district health care systems to cope with the contemporary and potential challenges. The study was conducted in Mkuranga and Mufindi districts. Data were collected between November 2005 and December 2007, involving focus group discussion (FGD) with Mufindi CHMT and in-depth interviews were conducted with few CHMT members in Mkuranga where it was difficult to summon all members for FGD. Participants in both districts acknowledged the IPTp strategy, considering the seriousness of malaria in pregnancy problem; government allocation of funds to support healthcare staff training programmes in focused antenatal care (fANC) issues, procuring essential drugs distributed to districts, staff remuneration, distribution of fANC guidelines, and administrative activities performed by CHMTs. The identified weaknesses include late arrival of funds from central level weakening CHMT's performance in health supervision, organising outreach clinics, distributing essential supplies, and delivery of IPTp services. Participants anticipated the public losing confidence in SP for IPTp after government announced artemither-lumefantrine (ALu) as the new first-line drug for uncomplicated malaria replacing SP. Role of private healthcare staff in IPTp services was acknowledged cautiously because CHMTs rarely supplied private clinics with SP for free delivery in fear that clients would be required to pay for the SP contrary to government policy. In Mufindi, the District Council showed a strong political support by supplementing ANC clinics with bottled water; in Mkuranga such support was not experienced. A combination of health facility understaffing, water scarcity and staff non-adherence to directly observed therapy instructions forced healthcare staff to allow clients to take SP at home. Need for investigating in improving adherence to IPTp administration was emphasised. High acceptability of the IPTp strategy at district level is meaningless unless necessary support is assured in terms of number, skills and motivation of caregivers and availability of essential supplies

Socio-economic differences and health seeking behaviour for the diagnosis and treatment of malaria: a case study of four local government areas operating the Bamako initiative programme in south-east Nigeria

BACKGROUND: Malaria is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in Nigeria. It is not known how user fees introduced under the Bamako Initiative (BI) system affect healthcare seeking among different socio-economic groups in Nigeria for diagnosis and treatment of malaria. Reliable information is needed to initiate new policy thrusts to protect the poor from the adverse effect of user fees. METHODS: Structured questionnaires were used to collect information from 1594 female household primary care givers or household head on their socio-economic and demographic status and use of malaria diagnosis and treatment services. Principal components analysis was used to create a socio-economic status index which was decomposed into quartiles and chi-square for trends was used to calculate for any statistical difference. RESULTS: The study showed that self diagnosis was the commonest form of diagnosis by the respondents. This was followed by diagnosis through laboratory tests, community health workers, family members and traditional healers. The initial choice of care for malaria was a visit to the patent medicine dealers for most respondents. This was followed by visit to the government hospitals, the BI health centres, traditional medicine healers, private clinics, community health workers and does nothing at home. Furthermore, the private health facilities were the initial choice of treatment for the majority with a decline among those choosing them as a second source of care and an increase in the utilization of public health facilities as a second choice of care. Self diagnosis was practiced more by the poorer households while the least poor used the patent medicine dealers and community health workers less often for diagnosis of malaria. The least poor groups had a higher probability of seeking treatment at the BI health centres (creating equity problem in BI), hospitals, and private clinics and in using laboratory procedures. The least poor also used the patent medicine dealers and community health workers less often for the treatment of malaria. The richer households complained more about poor staff attitude and lack of drugs as their reasons for not attending the BI health centres. The factors that encourage people to use services in BI health centres were availability of good services, proximity of the centres to the homes and polite health workers. CONCLUSIONS: Factors deterring people from using BI centres should be eliminated. The use of laboratory services for the diagnosis of malaria by the poor should be encouraged through appropriate information, education and communication which at the long run will be more cost effective and cost saving for them while devising means of reducing the equity gap created. This could be done by granting a properly worked out and implemented fee exemptions to the poor or completely abolishing user fees for the diagnosis and treatment of malaria in BI health centres

The Comparative Economics of ICT, Environmental Degradation and Inclusive Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study examines how information and communication technology (ICT) could be employed to dampen the potentially damaging effects of environmental degradation in order to promote inclusive human development in a panel of 44 Sub-Saharan African countries. ICT is captured with internet and mobile phone penetration rates whereas environmental degradation is measured in terms of CO2 emissions per capita and CO2 intensity. The empirical evidence is based on Fixed Effects and Tobit regressions using data from 2000-2012. In order to increase the policy relevance of this study, the dataset is decomposed into fundamental characteristics of inclusive development and environmental degradation based on income levels (Low income versus (vs.) Middle income); legal origins (English Common law vs. French Civil law); religious domination (Christianity vs. Islam); openness to sea (Landlocked vs. Coastal); resource-wealth (Oil-rich vs. Oil-poor) and political stability (Stable vs. Unstable).Baseline findings broadly show that improvement in both of measures of ICT would significantly diminish the possibly harmful effect of CO2 emissions on inclusive human development. When the analysis is extended with the abovementioned fundamental characteristics, we observe that the moderating influence of both our ICT variables on CO2 emissions is higher in the group of English Common law, Middle income and Oil-wealthy countries than in the French Civil law, Low income countries and Oil-poor countries respectively. Theoretical and practical policy implications are discussed

Increasing Foreign Aid for Inclusive Human Development in Africa

In the light of evidence that poverty has been decreasing in all regions of the world with the exception of Africa, where about 45% of countries in sub-Saharan Africa did not achieve the Millennium development goal extreme poverty target, this study assesses whether increasing foreign aid improves inclusive human development. The investigation is on 53 African countries for the period 2005–2012. The empirical analysis is based on (1) the generalised method of moments (GMM) to control for persistence in inclusive human development, simultaneity and time-invariant omitted variables and (2) Instrumental Variable Tobit Regressions to control for simultaneity and the limited range in the dependent variable. The adopted foreign aid variables are: ‘humanitarian assistance’, ‘action on debt’ ‘aid for social infrastructure’, ‘aid to the productive sector’, ‘aid to the multi sector’, ‘aid for economic infrastructure’ and ‘programme assistance’. The following findings are established. From the GMM specifications, there are (1) synergy effects from ‘aid to the productive sector’ and a positive net effect from ‘programme assistance’ and (2) negative net impacts from ‘aid to social infrastructure’ and human assistance, albeit with positive marginal effects. From Instrumental Variable Tobit regressions (1) there is a synergy effect from ‘aid for economic infrastructure’ and (2) there are negative net impacts from ‘aid for social infrastructure’, ‘aid to the productive sector’ and human assistance, albeit with positive marginal effects. Policy implications are discussed

Publisher Connection: Export-Led Growth in the UAE: Multivariate Causality Between Primary Exports, Manufactured Exports and Economic Growth

The principal question that this research addresses is the validity of the Export-Led Growth hypothesis (ELG) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over the period 1981–2012, focusing on the causality between primary exports, manufactured exports and economic growth. Unit root tests are applied to examine the time-series properties of the variables, while the Johansen cointegration test is performed to confirm or not the existence of a long-run relationship between the variables. Moreover, the multivariate Granger causality test and a modified version of Wald test are applied to examine the direction of the short-run and long-run causality respectively. The cointegration analysis reveals that manufactured exports contribute more to economic growth than primary exports in the long-run. In addition, this research provides evidence to support a bi-directional causality between manufactured exports and economic growth in the short-run, while the Growth-Led Exports (GLE) hypothesis is valid in the long-run for UAE

Decision support tools for site-specific fertilizer recommendations and agricultural planning in selected countries in sub-Sahara Africa

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