INFLUENCE OF THE PASTORALISTS’ FORMAL EDUCATION LEVEL ON ECONOMIC PROSPERITY: A CASE STUDY OF SAMBURU PASTORAL COMMUNITY, KENYA

The study sought to examine the influence of the pastoralists’ formal education levels on economic prosperity with a focus of Samburu pastoral community. Samburu are socially, economically and politically marginalized. Their economy depends primarily on the livestock industry and enjoy challenges that are prevent in other pastoralists communities. These challenges have led to high poverty levels amongst Samburu people with the percentage of people below the poverty line standing at 71.4%. This was the sixth highest percentage of poverty incidences amongst the forty-seven Kenyan counties. This study sought to examine the influence of female and male household heads education levels and income levels amongst the Samburu Community. The study concluded that the level of education of the female member of the household and the male head of the household influences the income levels of the household.  Article visualizations

Modelling the Effects of Teacher Demand Factors on Teacher Understaffing in Public Secondary Schools in Kenya

The secondary school teacher labour market faces many challenges including, escalating teacher wage bill, teacher shortages that occur alongside teacher surpluses, inadequate teacher distribution and inefficient teacher utilization. There is the need therefore to understand the effects of the factors determining demand for secondary school teachers and determine the incidence of risk on teacher under staffing caused by different demand factors. The study adopted cross-sectional research design using time series data for the period from 1990 to 2010. The dependent and independent variables in this study were subjected to Poison Regression to establish the extent to which the set of independent variables explained variance in the dependent variable. Results of the Poisson Regression showed that the significant factors determining secondary school teacher demand in Kenya included: number teachers on duty, secondary school enrolment, class size and number of teachers employed. There was evidence to prove that Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR), number of classes, number of streams, teacher workload and Government policy affected secondary school teacher demand collectively although they did not have significant effect of teacher demand independently. The results of the Poisson Regression model with random effect illustrated the Incidence Relative Risk (IRR) on teacher understaffing.  The study concluded that, changing the levels in student enrolment, PTR, number of classes, number of teachers employed and teacher without relevant policy controls and interventions measures would increase the risk of teacher shortage. Thus there is the need for the policy makers to control the effects of secondary school teacher demand factors to avoid critical teacher shortages in the future. Key Words: Modelling, Teacher demand, public secondary schoo

Effectiveness of Student Councils in Conflict Resolutions and Communication in Secondary School Management in Nyeri County, Kenya

Schools in Nyeri County continue to face diverse conflicts in the day to day running of the schools. Amongst these conflicts include burning of school dormitory at Giakaibei Secondary in Mathira in 2016; injuring of deputy principal at Kirimara Boys High School in school riots in the same school in 2018; and school unrests in Giakabii High School, Watuka High School, Wamagana Girls, and Mwiyogo Girls in 2016. To mitigate the negative consequences of conflicts, there is need for conflict resolutions. This study sought to examine effectiveness of student councils in conflict resolutions and communication in secondary school management in Nyeri County, Kenya. Amongst the objectives of the study included examination of the challenges affecting student councils in communication for effective school Management in Nyeri County and establishing the challenges affecting student councils in conflict resolutions for effective school Management in Nyeri County, Kenya. Amongst the challenges that student councils faced in conflict resolution included lack of skills in conflict resolution, making decisions based on friendships, and threats from other students amongst others. The study thus noted need for organized forums to train students on conflict resolutions as well as need for guidance and counselling. The study found the communication challenges of the student councils to be poor masterly of English and Kiswahili language, lack of communication channels, and speaking in vernacular. The communication challenges of student councils can be mitigated through use of suggestion boxes, banning of vernacular languages, and encouragement of conversation without fear of intimidation. Keywords: Student councils,  conflict resolution,  management DOI: 10.7176/DCS/9-3-06 Publication date:March 31st 201

Crop-land Suitability Analysis Using GIS and Remote Sensing in Nyandarua County, Kenya

Land suitability analysis is a method of land evaluation, which measures the degree of appropriateness of land for a certain use. The aim of this research was to identify and delineate the land that can best support potatoes, using GIS-based Multi Criteria Evaluation technique and Remote Sensing. The study was carried out in Nyandarua County in Kenya. Agriculture is the mainstay of local economy in the study area, but the production is very low because some of the crops being introduced are not doing well. There is need therefore to identify and delineate suitable areas for growing various crops to achieve maximum potential yield. Three suitability criteria i.e. soil (PH, texture, depth, drainage), climate (rainfall, temperature) and topography were evaluated based on agronomist experts opinions and FAO guideline for rainfed agriculture. An Analytical Hierarchical Process was used to determine relative importance of criteria and the resulting weights were used to construct the suitability maps/layers using GIS software. Finally, land suitability map was generated by overlaying these maps with current land cover map generated from Landsat images through supervised classification. The results of this research revealed that in the study area, 37.6% of the agricultural land is highly suitable for potatoes cultivation, 51.5% is moderately suitable and 10.9% is marginally suitable. The results can be used by the County government to advice the local farmers on the suitable areas for potatoes cultivation. Keywords: Land suitability analysis, GIS, Remote sensing, Multi-Criteria Evaluation, AHP, Potatoes cultivation, Nyandarua

Utilization of Herbal Medicines among Diabetic Patients Attending Kenyatta National Hospital Outpatient Clinic

Background: World Health Organization has estimated that 70-90 % of Africa’s population still relies on herbal remedies in order to meet their healthcare needs. Although the role of herbal medicines in the management of diabetes is an emerging health issue, use of herb remedies is common among diabetics. Objectives: To evaluate knowledge, perception and describe the pattern of utilization of herbal medicines among diabetic outpatients at Kenyatta National Hospital. Methodology: The study was a tertiary hospital-based cross sectional study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 251 adult diabetic outpatients who were interviewed. Data was captured into Microsoft Excel computer software and then exported to SPSS version 17.0 for analysis. Descriptive data was analyzed quantitatively and presented in form of charts and tables as appropriate. Statistical significance was determined using Pearson Chi Square at p<0.05. Where numbers of participants were too small, Fishers exact results were used. Results: The prevalence of use of herbal remedies for managing diabetes mellitus was 7.2%. However, the total prevalence of use of herbs among the diabetic outpatients was 39.5% implying that 32.3% of the study participants used herbs for other medical conditions. The commonest herbs used were ginger and Aloe vera used by 50% of the herbal users. Almost half of the herb users did not regard it important to inform the doctor about their use of herbs. The reasons given for use of herbal medicines were varied; the commonest being that herbs could easily be accessed 13 (13.1%) of the herbal users. There was no statistically significant relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and use of herbs (P>0.05). Conclusion: About 40% of diabetic outpatients are in some form of herbal remedy. In addition, 1 out of 5 of diabetic herbal users use them for managing diabetes; commonest herbs being Aloe vera and ginger. Therefore, healthcare workers and researchers should find ways of harmonizing the utilization of herbal and conventional medicines amongst diabetic patients

INFLUENCE OF SCHOOL LOCATION ON COST EFFICIENCY IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN BOMET COUNTY, KENYA

Kenyan public secondary schools are intended to run at a cost that is both cheap and sustainable. Despite this, the cost of education in most public secondary schools in Bomet County is still high in relative terms. This could indicate that public schools are operating inefficiently in terms of costs. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of school location on cost efficiency in public secondary schools in Bomet County, Kenya. The target population of the study was two hundred and seventy principals of public secondary schools and all the five Sub-County Directors of Education in Bomet County. Using stratified and simple random sampling approaches, a sample of 175 principals was chosen. The data was collected from the principals using a semi-structured questionnaire, and the data from the Sub-county Directors of Education was collected using an interview schedule. The data was collected from the principals using a semi-structured questionnaire, and the data from the Sub-county Directors of Education was collected using an interview schedule. The Content Validity Index was used to check for validity, and it found that all variables had an S-CVI of greater than 0.9, indicating that they were all valid and could be used in the study. All variables had Cronbach alpha coefficients of greater than 0.7, indicating that the variables were internally reliable enough to be used in the study. The data was analyzed and summarized using descriptive statistics, such as frequencies, means, and standard deviations. To test the hypotheses, the researchers employed simple linear regression analysis in inferential statistics to see how well school location could predict cost efficiency. Statistical operations on data analysis were performed using the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) statistics software. The influence of the school location on the cost efficiency in public secondary schools was examined using nine indicators. These indicators included the effects of school location on diverse expenses such as water services provision, electricity services provision, food supplies, administration cost, extracurricular activities, access to workshops and seminars, external support services, transportation costs, and missing on the cost-saving opportunities. The study results indicated that the respondents indicated that the school incurred huge expenses on water bills, and food supplies to a very small extent. The study also concluded on the presence of a statistically significant influence of school location on the cost efficiency of public secondary schools in Bomet County. These results were attributed to higher operational costs associated with their geographical remoteness and sparsely populated schools, which were then not able to benefit from economies of scale in their operations

A Flash Flood Control System Based on the Global Earth Observation System of Systems

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Tree species diversity and abundance in coffee farms adjacent to areas of different disturbance histories in Mabira forest system, central Uganda

Coffee production in Uganda is done on small-scale farms containing a very significant tree component. However, there is little information on how tree species abundance, richness and diversity change in coffee farms as distance from forest changes. The main objectives of this study, therefore, were to assess (a) abundance and (b) diversity of tree species in the coffee production systems in proximity to disturbed and undisturbed forest around Mabira forest, one of Uganda's Robusta coffee-growing areas. Seventy-nine 0.1 ha plots were established in nine villages close to undisturbed and disturbed forest, and over 5 km from the forest. A total of 875 trees belonging to 63 species were recorded. There was significant similarity in species composition among the three study sites (analysis of similarity R = 0.09, p < 0.01; analysis of variance: F3,12 = 0.353, p = 0.79). Non-metric dimensional scaling supported these findings (stress value = 0.224 at k = 2) and showed that tree species composition in the three proximity categories was very similar. These results demonstrate that tree species composition and diversity is similar in coffee farms regardless of their distance from the nearest natural forest and forest exploitation history. (Résumé d'auteur