Determinants of conventional health service utilization among pastoralists in northeast Ethiopia

Background: Health service utilization pattern among pastoralists in Ethiopia is not well documented. Available data are very few and mostly institution based. Objective: To assess the determinants of conventional health care utilization among pastoralist communities in northeast Ethiopia. Methods: The study employed a cross-sectional household survey conducted using structured questionnaires administered among 276 mobile and 262 settled subjects within the pastoral area. In addition, reviews of outpatient and inpatient records for the previous year at the local health facilities, as well as focus group discussions among the study communities were conducted to supplement the household survey data. Results: Analysis of the collected data revealed steep distance decay in level of health service utilization, in addition to statistically significant difference in the service utilization between the settled and the mobile pastoralist communities (the odd ratio and 95% CI for utilizing health services of settlers over mobile ones were 1.38 (1.138,1.667) with P valu

Participatory evaluation of cattle fattening innovations of smallholder farmers in Gamogofa zone of southern Ethiopia

The study was conducted in Gamogofa zone, southern Ethiopia, located 445-505 km south of Addis Ababa. The area is semi-arid lowland with altitudes ranging from 746 to 1450 m asl and mean temperature ranges from 22 to 25 °C. The dominant farming system is mixed crop-livestock. Cattle, goats and poultry are the major livestock species, while maize, sorghum, teff, banana and mango are the major crops. Cattle fattening is an important undertaking and source of livelihoods. However, the fattening system is traditional low-input-low-output and producers are not benefiting much from the sector. This study evaluated the challenges and constraints, and cattle fattening innovations introduced through the participation of stakeholders in the study area. The study used focus group discussion, key informants interview, livestock commodity platforms and questionnaires for data collection. The major challenges and constraints identified are; a) feed and feeding related - lack of improved fodder and poor utilisation, lack of fodder conservation practices, poor natural grazing lands management and energy loss due to long distance grazing; lack of access for concentrate feed; b) cattle related - inappropriate cattle type for fattening; c) production related - long cycle fattening (> 8 months), poor housing and poor cattle management; d) market related - unorganised cattle marking, dominance of local markets with brokers which makes producers price takers, lack of market linkage; e) capacity related - lack of knowledge and skill on improved cattle fattening by producers, input providers and livestock extension staff. The following interventions were introduced: a) capacity related, which includes skill based training and coaching & mentoring of producers and livestock extension staff on improved cattle fattening, improved reproductive management and artificial insemination; b) fattening innovations which includes stall feeding instead of grazing, short cycle (3-4 months) multiple fattening per annum, improved on farm fodder production, improved fodder utilisation through chopping, fodder conservation through bag silage making & proper harvesting and storage of crop residues, initiation of commercial concentrate feed supplying business and use of concentrate supplementation, better animal selection from the market and deworming before fattening, establishment of fattened cattle marketing groups, and marketing linkage with buyers

Feeding your soil-nurturing the people

United States Agency for International Developmen

Natural resource management: Africa RISING science, innovations and technologies with scaling potential from the Ethiopian highlands

United States Agency for International Developmen

Decision support tools for fertilizer recommendation

United States Agency for International Developmen

Design and implementation of Automatic Aquarium System using IOT

In modern days many people have fish as their pets in home. Everyone loves fishes and required aquarium for their home. But maintaining aquarium is difficult task. We need to change water time by time, feed fishes time to time. Again it is difficult to check the conditions of an aquarium manually. Therefore it important to automate aquariums. Here we have implement an IOT based system which monitor and control the whole aquarium automatically and provide real time status on user�s Smartphone application. It contains water quality management in which It will monitor the physical changes in the water and will maintain it to the ideal conditions, with required changes. The aquarium will perform all the steps automatically like temperature control, turbidity level control, light monitor, feeding, water renewal etc. It will reduce the manual effort required in maintenance of aquariums by automating the aquarium management process. also automatic food feeding system operated by servo motor mechanism which used to feed fishes on regular time intervals. Dead fish mechanism is there which will detect the dead fish. In addition camera is connected to aquarium system using which user can see live operation occurring in system with the help of smart phone. The aim of our project is to replace manual maintenance of fish aquarium with an Automated system by using IOT

Decision support tools for farm-level fertilizer recommendation in Ethiopia

United States Agency for International Developmen