Contribution of Economics to Design of Sustainable Cattle Breeding Programs in Eastern Africa: A Choice Experiment Approach

Although livestock forms a very important component of the livelihoods of rural populations of developing countries, productivity remains very low. Livestock keepers are beset by various constraints. In sub-Saharan Africa, cattle are exposed to a number of tropical diseases and other environmental stresses. Breed improvement programs provides key entry points for increasing productivity in cattle populations, especially those plagued by animal diseases. However, breed improvement programs have tended to focus on single, market-driven production traits in isolation of broader livestock system functions. This potentially leads to genotypes that are not well adapted to the environment and not suitable for performing the multiple roles of cattle in developing countries. In order to design a sustainable breed improvement program, farmer preferences for cattle traits need to be integrated into the breeding objective. To explore preferences for cattle traits by cattle keepers, data are used from a choice experiment household survey from a sample of 507 cattle keeping households in trypanosomosis challenge areas in Kenya and Ethiopia. A multinomial logit and mixed logit models are applied to estimate the economic values of preferred cattle traits. The results show existence of preference heterogeneity for cattle traits based on cattle production systems. Further, the results suggest that important traits in developing breed improvement programs should include trypanotolerance, fitness to traction, drought tolerance and fecundity, drawing implications on conservation of breeds which possess these traits.Choice experiment, Cattle production system, Trait preferences, Trypanotolerance, Livestock Production/Industries, D12, D60, C35,

Banana Value Chains in Central Africa: Constraints and Opportunities

Smallholder farmers in developing countries need to improve their position in food value chains in order to improve their margins and as a strategy for coping with agricultural food price volatility through innovations within the chains. Value chain mappings and gross margin analysis were employed to assess constraints and opportunities for existing value chains for bananas in Central Africa using market survey data. The results showed weak linkages within the banana value chains with poor integration of value chain actors and minimal involvement with regional markets and high-value domestic chains such as supermarkets. Value addition in terms of agroprocessing was carried out at small scale levels using rudimentary techniques limiting the final product to low value markets. Transaction costs comprising transport, handling and storage comprised a high proportion of cost items in the value chain. Generally, the findings suggest that efforts aimed at strengthening linkages within the value chains, collective marketing, penetration into high-value chains and improved processing techniques may provide a potential avenue for enhancing banana value chains in Central Africa.banana value chains, smallholder farmers, Central Africa, collective action, Crop Production/Industries,

What are the Key Constraints in Technical Efficiency of Smallholder Farmers in Africa? Empirical Evidence from Kenya

The idea that smallholder farmers are reasonably efficient has triggered much debate in Sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, efficiency of smallholder farmers has implications for choice of development strategy; reason being that Sub-Saharan countries derive over 60% of their livelihoods from smallholder agriculture and rural economic activities. This paper evaluates factors that promote production efficiency among smallholder farmers in Kenya as avenues for policy intervention. A production frontier function was fitted to a random sample derived from a survey carried in 2007. Results show that all conventional inputs had the expected significance. On the inefficiency indicators, ownership to farmland, attendance to agricultural workshops, access to credit and participation in self-help groups significantly reduced inefficiency, while age, market distance, female gender and formal education increased inefficiency. Our findings suggest that within the available technologies, farmers can improve on their productivity if they nurture teamwork as in groups where labour is shared. Besides, better roads would reduce transaction costs and promote higher returns, and training in agriculture would boost efficient resources use for better performance. Therefore, there exists opportunity to improve efficiency in production given existing farm technologies.Technical Efficiency, Smallholder Farmers, Africa, Productivity Analysis,

Revenue Effects of Tax Reforms, Economic Growth and Political Environment in Kenya

This study investigated the effect of tax reforms, economic growth and political environment on total tax, direct tax and indirect tax revenues using annual data for the period 1964-2016. Various techniques of analysis were employed: descriptive statistics, multi-segment regressions and non-linear regression. Results show that: all taxes responded positively to each of the tax reforms; changes in all taxes were affected by the reforms because GDP was also growing; economic growth has positive significant effect on all the categories of taxes; Government effectiveness has positive impact on indirect taxes; and that even though government control of corruption effect on tax revenues is statistically insignificant, it could promote the revenue generation more than economic growth. These findings have a number of policy implications: the government should put more emphasis on governance in order to promote revenue collection. Government effectiveness and control of corruption would go a long way to enhance tax compliance, reduce tax avoidance and evasion, eliminate illicit flows and reduce illegal collusion between tax payer and tax administrator that may deprive government of due revenues.  Secondly, government must work towards designing and implementing in the reforms that make the tax system more buoyant, and link it more to economic growth.Key Words: Tax Revenues; Tax Reforms; Economic Growth; Governance/political environment; Budget Deficit; Public Debt

The Shrinking Grazing Fields of the Maasai Land Under the Changing Climate System in Kajiado County, Kenya

The Maasai pastoralists have in the last decade experienced disruptions in their economies and livelihoods following climate shifts. For instance, they have been losing up to 30 % of their herd annually to drought related disasters, yet information on the various land uses is still fragmented. This has been worsened by the shortening famine cycles which has impacted pastoral livelihood system as they highly depend on natural resource. Yet, these key resources have been dwindling over the past 30 years compromising their ability to meet basic need such as food. To address this gap, the study focused on long term evaluation of land use. The study’s objective was to determine land use transformations and their impacts particularly on the pastoral livelihood system. Keywords: Climate change, Arid and Semi-Arid Lands, Natural resources, food insecurity, pastoral livelihood system, socio-ecological system