Biogas production vs. dung combustion as household energy in rural Ethiopia

The objective of the study was to investigate the potential of dung as primary and secondary energy source, i.e. direct combustion of dung and combustion of its secondary products biogas or dried digestate, under consideration of its quality as fertilizer. The results of the analysis show the similarity of dung and digestate regarding combustion characteristics. Fertilizer values proved better for digestate. However, calorific value of dung proved much lower than those of biogas. Thus, biogas represents a good alternative energy source with double benefit. Besides its better combustion characteristics compared to dried dung, it also delivers a superior fertilizer

Can religion kill? The association between membership of the Apostolic faith and child mortality in Zimbabwe

Existing literature has been equivocal about the effect of religion on utilization of health service and health outcomes. While followers of particularized theology hypothesis believe that doctrinal teachings, beliefs and values of religious groups directly influence health access and outcomes, the advocates of the selectivity hypothesis claim that the observed disparities between religious groups mainly reflect differential access to social and human capital which in turn determines health access and outcome rather than religion per se. Using household data from the Zimbabwe Multiple Indicator Monitoring Survey 2009, we find that household heads’ affiliation with apostolic faith put children under five years old at greater risk of death compared to other religious groups. This effect remains strong even after controlling for a wide range of socio-economic and demographics characteristics of the households in multivariate logit regressions