Assessing development strategies and Africa's food and nutrition security

"On average, a typical developing country in Africa is assisted by about 30 aid institutions in the implementation of development strategies, yet Africa is still far from achieving food and nutrition security. Adequate access to food that is necessary for food security must be complemented with provision of health services, education, sanitary environments, and safe water sources, among other resources, to achieve nutrition security." from TextDevelopment assistance ,Food security Africa ,Nutrition Security ,Health services ,Water quality ,Sanitation ,Development strategies ,

Development strategies and food and nutrition security in Africa: an assessment

"Momentum is building in and around Africa today for policy action to decisively confront hunger and malnutrition. If we are to succeed, it is vital that food and nutrition security strategies be both sound and able to be implemented. Ultimately, strategies deficient in either of these two areas will be ineffectual. Lessons from past strategies provide a valuable resource in the design of future strategies, yet there is a dearth of programmatic information and rigorous evaluations of the approaches used in the past. With this in mind, the authors of this 2020 discussion paper review the multitude of approaches and strategies for achieving food and nutrition security in Africa within the context of development over the past four decades. They assess the extent to which these plans have been implemented and identify the key constraints and limitations, along with the priority investments needed for more effective design and implementation in the future." Foreword by Joachim von Braun, Director General, IFPRIFood policy, Hunger, Malnutrition Africa, Food security Africa, Development policies, Assessment, Investments,

Sampling in health geography: reconciling geographical objectives and probabilistic methods. An example of a health survey in Vientiane (Lao PDR)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Geographical objectives and probabilistic methods are difficult to reconcile in a unique health survey. Probabilistic methods focus on individuals to provide estimates of a variable's prevalence with a certain precision, while geographical approaches emphasise the selection of specific areas to study interactions between spatial characteristics and health outcomes. A sample selected from a small number of specific areas creates statistical challenges: the observations are not independent at the local level, and this results in poor statistical validity at the global level. Therefore, it is difficult to construct a sample that is appropriate for both geographical and probability methods.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We used a two-stage selection procedure with a first non-random stage of selection of clusters. Instead of randomly selecting clusters, we deliberately chose a group of clusters, which as a whole would contain all the variation in health measures in the population. As there was no health information available before the survey, we selected <it>a priori </it>determinants that can influence the spatial homogeneity of the health characteristics. This method yields a distribution of variables in the sample that closely resembles that in the overall population, something that cannot be guaranteed with randomly-selected clusters, especially if the number of selected clusters is small. In this way, we were able to survey specific areas while minimising design effects and maximising statistical precision.</p> <p>Application</p> <p>We applied this strategy in a health survey carried out in Vientiane, Lao People's Democratic Republic. We selected well-known health determinants with unequal spatial distribution within the city: nationality and literacy. We deliberately selected a combination of clusters whose distribution of nationality and literacy is similar to the distribution in the general population.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This paper describes the conceptual reasoning behind the construction of the survey sample and shows that it can be advantageous to choose clusters using reasoned hypotheses, based on both probability and geographical approaches, in contrast to a conventional, random cluster selection strategy.</p

Contrasting Spatial Distribution and Risk Factors for Past Infection with Scrub Typhus and Murine Typhus in Vientiane City, Lao PDR

Scrub typhus and murine typhus are neglected but important treatable causes of fever, morbidity and mortality in South-East Asia. Epidemiological data suggests that scrub typhus would be more common in rural areas and murine typhus in urban areas but there are very few comparative data from places where both diseases occur, as is the case in Vientiane, the capital of the Lao PDR. We therefore determined the frequency of IgG antibody seropositivity against scrub typhus and murine typhus, as indices of prior exposure to these pathogens, in a randomly selected population of 2,002 adults living in different neighbourhoods in Vientiane. The overall prevalence of IgG against these two pathogens was ∼20%. However, within the city, the spatial distribution of IgG against these two diseases was radically different - past exposure to murine typhus being more frequent in urbanized areas while past exposure to scrub typhus more frequent in outlying areas. This study underscores the importance of ecological characteristics in improving the understanding of both scrub typhus and murine typhus transmission and epidemiology

Stratification de la ville de Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) à partir d’une image panchromatique Spot 5 : Une première étape à la mise en place d’une enquête de santé

To put spatial health disparities in Ouagadougou in relation to the processes of urbanization, we realize from a satellite image a stratification according to criteria’s, which resume the urbanization: building density and area regularity. From this stratification it is possible to carry out a health survey near the populations which reside in different urban spaces. Textural analysis is a technique to determine the space high frequencies. We used it to characterize the building on the satellite image panchromatic SPOT 5. It proves very satisfactory to localize the building when only a panchromatic image is available

Stratification de la ville de Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) à partir d’une image panchromatique Spot 5 : Une première étape à la mise en place d’une enquête de santé

Afin de mettre en relation les disparités spatiales de santé à Ouagadougou avec les processus d’urbanisation, nous réalisons, à partir d’une image satellitaire, une stratification de la capitale burkinabè selon des critères, qui illustrent les différences d’urbanisation : la densité du bâti et le type de lotissement. Cette stratification permettra de mener une enquête sanitaire auprès des populations qui résident dans des espaces de niveaux différents d’urbanisation. L’analyse texturale, technique utilisée pour déterminer les hautes fréquences spatiales, permet de caractériser le bâti sur l’image satellitaire panchromatique SPOT 5. Elle se révèle très satisfaisante pour localiser le bâti lorsque seule une image panchromatique est disponible.To put spatial health disparities in Ouagadougou in relation to the processes of urbanization, we realize from a satellite image a stratification according to criteria’s, which resume the urbanization: building density and area regularity. From this stratification it is possible to carry out a health survey near the populations which reside in different urban spaces. Textural analysis is a technique to determine the space high frequencies. We used it to characterize the building on the satellite image panchromatic SPOT 5. It proves very satisfactory to localize the building when only a panchromatic image is available

Depolymerization of cellulose during cold acidic chlorite treatment.

International audienceA cold holocellulose treatment (cHolT) was studied on a bleached kraft pulp (BKP) of Eucalyptus to observe the degradation of polysaccharides in pulp by chlorite at room temperature under conditions of slightly acidic pH and high chlorine charge (313% of active chlorine on BKP). Based on literature data, cellulose depolymerization is expectable by chlorite treatments at 70°C and reinforced chlorite charge, while the addition of dissolved lignin could protect cellulose. In the present study, polysaccharide degradation was followed by TAPPI viscosity, size-exclusion chromatography coupled to multidetectors, pulp yield, kappa number, elemental sugar analysis of pulps, and total organic carbon detection in filtrates. cHolTs were repeated several times without significant polysaccharide degradation, but the insertion of a caustic extraction stage at 70°C induced little degradation. This study opens the way to the setup of inert delignification procedures to be applied on raw or processed lignocellulosic samples from biorefinery studies

Séminaire Lotharingien de Combinatoire 54A (2007), Article B54Am FREE QUASI-SYMMETRIC FUNCTIONS, PRODUCT ACTIONS AND QUANTUM FIELD THEORY OF PARTITIONS

Abstract. We investigate two associative products over the ring of symmetric functions related to the intransitive and Cartesian products of permutation groups. As an application, we give an enumeration of some Feynman type diagrams arising in Bender’s QFT (quantum field theory) of partitions. We end by exploring possibilities to construct noncommutative analogues. Résumé. Nous étudions deux lois produits associatives sur les fonctions symétriques correspondant aux produits intransitif et cartésien des groupes de permutations. Nous donnons comme application l’énumération de certains diagrammes de Feynman apparaissant dans la QFT (théorie quantique des champs) des partitions de Bender. Enfin, nous donnons quelques pistes possibles pour construire des analogues non-commutatifs. 1