Testing Market Integration for Fresh Pineapples in Kenya

This paper is based on a survey of thirty-one market actors from producing and consumption markets in Kenya. The data was collected through personal interviews. In analyzing integration of p ineapple markets we use Ravallion-type model. Results show that pineapple market in Kenya is oligopsonistic in nature with aspects of collusion amongst the urban middlemen and local market traders thus barring further entry by oth er potential actors. There was little market integration between urban markets and producing markets, and no integration between the rural producing markets. However, model results show that information flow between production and consumption markets significantly influence market integration, an indicator for efficiency in resource allocation and price transmission which is likely to result in lower transaction costs or higher profits to market actors. The paper recommends for policy intervention to promote information flow in the pineapple market chains as a strategy for improving rural incomes and encourage more market actors to enter and participate for efficiency in the marketing system.marketing Channel, Marketing efficiency, market integration, Crop Production/Industries, Marketing,

A Garch Approach to Measuring Efficiency: A Case Study of Nairobi Securities Exchange

The efficiency of capital markets is important if savers funds are to be channeled to the highest valued stocks. A recent review of markets in Africa categorized the Nairobi Securities Exchange as one which has no tendency towards weak form efficiency. Recent efforts to establish its efficiency have used mainly Ordinary Least Squares regression and have yielded inconclusive results. Ordinary Least Squares method assumes that the variance of the error term obtained is constant over time. However due to economic cycles some time periods are known to be generally riskier than others and the latter assumption fails to hold. There is therefore need to use other models which relax this assumption. The Autoregressive Conditionally Heteroscedastic models have been popular and widely used. They recognize that the value of the variance of errors depends upon previous lagged variances and lagged innovation terms. Kenya has also increasingly embraced ICT which may be attributed to the comparative lower cost of access to internet via computers and mobile phone technology. This is expected to increase the rational buyers in the market none of whom can influence prices in the market which may make the market more efficient. This study first used non parametric methods to check for randomness and independence of stock market returns at the Nairobi Securities Exchange. Results show that daily returns are non-random and the GARCH analysis shows that the current returns are dependent on the returns of the previous 3 days. The GARCH (3,1) model shows that returns on a particular day would be determined by the mean returns plus a white noise error term which would vary by 25.3% of return on day t-1, 9.5% of return on day t-2 and 12.05% of returns on day t-3 at 0.05 level of significance.  This signifies market inefficiency of the weak form. Keywords: Market Efficiency, Weak-Form Hypothesis, OLS, GARC

School farming for school feeding: experiences from Nakuru, Kenya

School feeding is an important development tool and is related to at least three Millennium Development Goals. School farming has been largely overlooked in the urban agriculture literature but with many parents nowadays unable to afford school lunches for their children, it can play a vital role in reducing the costs involved in providing nutritional meals for pupils. This paper examines school farming in an urban setting, namely Nakuru town, Kenya and looks at the current practice, the extent to which school farming contributes to school feeding programs, and the challenges it faces and how these can be overcome. Based on a survey done in almost all primary and secondary schools in Nakuru, it shows that school farming and school feeding are now common practice in the town and that in many cases school farming does indeed contribute to school feeding programs. However, much more is possible and the paper indicates how various constraints in terms of land, water, support and leadership might be overcome

Developing excellence in biostatistics leadership, training and science in Africa: How the Sub-Saharan Africa Consortium for Advanced Biostatistics (SSACAB) training unites expertise to deliver excellence

The increase in health research in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has generated large amounts of data and led to a high demand for biostatisticians to analyse these data locally and quickly.  Donor-funded initiatives exist to address the dearth in statistical capacity, but few initiatives have been led by African institutions. The Sub-Saharan African Consortium for Advanced Biostatistics (SSACAB) aims to improve biostatistical capacity in Africa according to the needs identified by African institutions, through (collaborative) masters and doctoral training in biostatistics. We describe the SSACAB Consortium, which comprises 11 universities and four research institutions- supported by four European universities. SSACAB builds on existing resources to strengthen biostatistics for health research with a focus on supporting biostatisticians to become research leaders; building a critical mass of biostatisticians, and networking institutions and biostatisticians across SSA.  In 2015 only four institutions had established Masters programmes in biostatistics and SSACAB supported the remaining institutions to develop Masters programmes. In 2019 the University of the Witwatersrand became the first African institution to gain Royal Statistical Society accreditation for a Biostatistics MSc programme. A total of 150 fellows have been awarded scholarships to date of which 123 are Masters fellowships (41 female) of which with 58 have already graduated. Graduates have been employed in African academic (19) and research (15) institutions and 10 have enrolled for PhD studies. A total of 27 (10 female) PhD fellowships have been awarded; 4 of them are due to graduate by 2020. To date, SSACAB Masters and PhD students have published 17 and 31 peer-reviewed articles, respectively. SSACAB has also facilitated well-attended conferences, face-to-face and online short courses. Pooling the limited biostatistics resources in SSA, and combining with co-funding from external partners is an effective strategy for the development and teaching of advanced biostatistics methods, supervision and mentoring of PhD candidates

Testing Market Integration for Fresh Pineapples in Kenya

This paper is based on a survey of thirty-one market actors from producing and consumption markets in Kenya. The data was collected through personal interviews. In analyzing integration of p ineapple markets we use Ravallion-type model. Results show that pineapple market in Kenya is oligopsonistic in nature with aspects of collusion amongst the urban middlemen and local market traders thus barring further entry by oth er potential actors. There was little market integration between urban markets and producing markets, and no integration between the rural producing markets. However, model results show that information flow between production and consumption markets significantly influence market integration, an indicator for efficiency in resource allocation and price transmission which is likely to result in lower transaction costs or higher profits to market actors. The paper recommends for policy intervention to promote information flow in the pineapple market chains as a strategy for improving rural incomes and encourage more market actors to enter and participate for efficiency in the marketing system

School farming for school feeding: experiences from Nakuru, Kenya

School feeding is an important development tool and is related to at least three Millennium Development Goals. School farming has been largely overlooked in the urban agriculture literature but with many parents nowadays unable to afford school lunches for their children, it can play a vital role in reducing the costs involved in providing nutritional meals for pupils. This paper examines school farming in an urban setting, namely Nakuru town, Kenya and looks at the current practice, the extent to which school farming contributes to school feeding programs, and the challenges it faces and how these can be overcome. Based on a survey done in almost all primary and secondary schools in Nakuru, it shows that school farming and school feeding are now common practice in the town and that in many cases school farming does indeed contribute to school feeding programs. However, much more is possible and the paper indicates how various constraints in terms of land, water, support and leadership might be overcome

'They just move in with relatives': translocal labour migrants and transient spaces in Naivasha, Kenya

Over the past four decades, the small town of Naivasha in Kenya has attracted tens of thousands of labour migrants. These migrants are looking for employment on one of the many flower farms located on the shores of Lake Naivasha. This article examines how the migrants, who mostly do not settle in Naivasha permanently, carve out space for themselves in the residential areas where they rent housing. These settlements were not planned for by the government or the flower industry, and are commonly interpreted as hopeless 'slums' that are the outcome of sheer neglect. In contrast, this article analyses the settlements as 'transient spaces': spaces that are particularly volatile, and that are shaped by the highly mobile practices of their residents. In dialogue with literature on East African urban and informal space, this article thus draws attention to the - partly translocal - agency of settlement residents in shaping their living environment. The article is based on fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016, which included a survey among settlement residents, archival research, and biographical interviews with migrant workers