ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Consumers willingness to pay a premium for safe cabbages

Growing consciousness about the nature of water used in growing cabbages and the manner in which sellers treat and/or wash cabbages has led some consumers to demand safe cabbages. This study sought to measure and model consumer’s willingness to pay a premium for safe cabbages in six communities in Ghana. Findings indicate that 58.33 percent of the respondents are willing to pay about 76 percent more of the current price of a conventional cabbage as a premium for a safe cabbage. The binary Logit regression results also suggest that consumers who are concern about the nature of water used in growing cabbages, aware of the use of unwholesome water in growing cabbages, knows the source of water used in irrigating cabbages, works in the health sector and resides in a rich community is likely to pay a premium for safe cabbages. To identify key consumer characteristics that influence the payment of a high premium for safe cabbage, the Tobit regression model was used. The results revealed that high income earners, consumers who are concern about the nature of water used in growing cabbages, aware of the use of unwholesome water in growing cabbages, and resides in a rich community is likely to pay a high premium for safe cabbages. As such, marketing efforts should focus on reaching consumers who fit this profile. Further analysis shows that the mean premium price offered by consumers in the rich communities is greater than that offered by those in the poor communities at 1 percent significance level; hence distribution channels of safe cabbages are likely to emerge as a more successful avenue in the rich communities than the poor communities.

Source: UG
Consumers’ attitude towards social media advertising and their behavioural response: The moderating role of corporate reputation

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between consumers’ attitude toward social media advertising and their behavioural response and the moderating effect of corporate reputation in this relationship. Social media advertising is gradually gaining grounds among practitioners and researchers. Design/methodology/approach – Survey design was used and the respondents totaled 441. They were selected using convenience sampling technique. Questionnaires were used to collect the data and analyzed using hierarchical regression. Findings – Findings indicate that there is a significant relationship between consumers’ attitude toward social media advertising and their behavioural responses. Again, it was noted that corporate reputation moderates this relationship. Research limitations/implications – This study relied on convenience sampling and a cross-sectional survey design, which makes it difficult to generalize the findings and account for changes that occurred in the attitude of consumers. Originality/value – This study contributes to the understanding of the moderating role of corporate reputation in consumers’ attitude toward social media advertising. © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Source: UG
Consumption of multiple micronutrients or small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements containing iodine at the recommended dose during pregnancy, compared with iron and folic acid, does not affect women’s urinary iodine concentration in rural Malawi: a secondary outcome analysis of the iLiNS DYAD trial

Objectives: Inadequate iodine intake during pregnancy increases the risk of neo natal morbidity and mortality. We aimed to evaluate whether prenatal supplements containing iodine affect urinary iodine concentrations (UIC) of pregnant women in Malawi. Design: A randomised controlled trial. Pregnant women (n 1391) were assigned to consume 60 mg/d Fe and 400 μg/d folic acid (IFA) or 18 vitamins and minerals including 250 μg/d iodine (MMN) or 20 g/d small-quantity lipid-based nutrient sup plements (SQ-LNS) with similar nutrient contents as MMN group, plus macronu trients (LNS) until childbirth. In a sub-study (n 317), we evaluated group geometric mean urinary iodine concentration (UIC) (μg/L) at 36 weeks of gestation controlling for baseline UIC and compared median (baseline) and geometric mean (36 weeks) UIC with WHO cut-offs: UIC < 150, 150–249, 250–499 and ≥500 reflect ing insufficient, adequate, above requirements and excessive iodine intakes, respectively. Setting: Mangochi District, Malawi. Participants: Women ≤20 weeks pregnant. Results: Groups had comparable background characteristics. At baseline, overall median (Q1, Q3) UIC (319 (167, 559)) suggested iodine intakes above require ments. At 36 weeks, the geometric mean (95 % CI) UIC of the IFA (197 (171, 226)), MMN (212 (185, 243)) and LNS (220 (192, 253)) groups did not differ (P = 0·53) and reflected adequate intakes. Conclusions: In this setting, provision of supplements containing iodine at the rec ommended dose to pregnant women with relatively high iodine intakes at base line, presumably from iodised salt, has no impact on the women’s UIC. Regular monitoring of the iodine status of pregnant women in such settings is advisable. Clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT01239693.

Source: UG
Contact toxicity and proximate effect of fipronil on insect pest and predatory ant community structure in cocoa agro-ecosystem

Although usage persists in some countries, fipronil is banned or restricted in many others. Prior to its ban on cocoa in Ghana, concerns about its effect on non-target insects and secondary outbreak of Anomis leona were conflicting. This study, which predates the ban, assessed the toxicity and the short-term effect of fipronil on specific insect community structure in the cocoa agro-ecosystem alongside bifenthrin and a non-insecticide control. Although the insecticides induced a high mortality (90-100%) on the target (mirid: Sahlbergella singu laris, stink bug: Bathycoelia thalassina and coreid bug: Pseudotheraptus devastans) and non-target (ants: Oecophylla longinoda, Crematogaster africana, Pheidole megacephala and Camponotus consobrinus) insects, the knockdown to fipronil was very low compared to bifenthrin. On the field, fipronil was more detrimental to the ants. Insecticide treated plots recorded relatively lower post-treatment pest diversity compared to the control, except the last sampling month while ant abundance, richness and diversity were lowest on the fipronil-treated plots at the end of the study period. This study demonstrates that although fipronil was effective against pests and did not result in acute secondary pest outbreak, it was harmful to the ants. This effect could potentially be replicated on these ant species in other cropping systems where the insecticide is used, adversely affecting ecosystem service de livery. Hence, research on its impact on non-target organisms in other cropping systems is needed to regulate and monitor its use.

Source: UG
Contamination of herbal medicinal products in low-and-middle-income countries: A systematic review

The use of herbal medicinal products (HMPs) has grown significantly across low-and-middle income countries (LMICs). Consequently, the safety of these products due to contamination is a significant public health concern. This systematic review aimed to determine the prevalence, types, and levels of contaminants in HMPs from LMICs. A search was performed in seven online databases, i.e., Africa journal online (AJOL), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Health Inter-Network Access to Research Initiative (HINARI), World Health Organization Global Index Medicus (WHO GIM), Scopus, and PubMed using appropriate search queries and reported as per the “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses” (PRISMA) guidelines. Ninety-one peer-reviewed articles published from 1982 to 2021 from 28 different countries across four continents were included in the study. Although metals, microbial, mycotoxins, pesticides, and residual solvents were the reported contaminants in the 91 articles, metals (56.0%, 51/91), mi crobial (27.5%, 25/91), and mycotoxins (18.7%, 17/91) were the most predominant. About 16.4% (1236/7518) of the samples had their contaminant levels above the regulatory limits. Samples tested for microbial contaminants had the highest proportion (46.4%, 482/1039) of contaminants exceeding the regulatory limit, followed by mycotoxins (25.8%, 109/423) and metals (14.3%, 591/4128). The proportion of samples that had their average non-essential metal contaminant levels above the regulatory limit was (57.6%, 377/655), 18.3% (88/480), 10.7% (24/225), and 11.3% (29/257) for Pb, Cd, Hg, and As, respectively. The commonest bacteria species found were Escherichia coli (52.3%, 10/19) and Salmonella species (42.1%, 8/19). This review reported that almost 90% of Candida albicans and more than 80% of moulds exceeded the required regulatory limits. HMP consumption poses profound health implications to consumers and patients. Therefore, designing and/or implementing policies that effectively regulate HMPs to minimize the health hazards related to their consumption while improving the quality of life of persons living in LMICs are urgently needed.

Source: UG
Contamination of herbal medicinal products in low-and-middle-income countries: A systematic review

The use of herbal medicinal products (HMPs) has grown significantly across low-and-middleincome countries (LMICs). Consequently, the safety of these products due to contamination is a significant public health concern. This systematic review aimed to determine the prevalence, types, and levels of contaminants in HMPs from LMICs. A search was performed in seven online databases, i.e., Africa journal online (AJOL), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Health Inter-Network Access to Research Initiative (HINARI), World Health Organization Global Index Medicus (WHO GIM), Scopus, and PubMed using appropriate search queries and reported as per the “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses” (PRISMA) guidelines. Ninety-one peer-reviewed articles published from 1982 to 2021 from 28 different countries across four continents were included in the study. Although metals, microbial, mycotoxins, pesticides, and residual solvents were the reported contaminants in the 91 articles, metals (56.0%, 51/91), microbial (27.5%, 25/91), and mycotoxins (18.7%, 17/91) were the most predominant. About 16.4% (1236/7518) of the samples had their contaminant levels above the regulatory limits. Samples tested for microbial contaminants had the highest proportion (46.4%, 482/1039) of contaminants exceeding the regulatory limit, followed by mycotoxins (25.8%, 109/423) and metals (14.3%, 591/4128). The proportion of samples that had their average non-essential metal contaminant levels above the regulatory limit was (57.6%, 377/655), 18.3% (88/480), 10.7% (24/225), and 11.3% (29/257) for Pb, Cd, Hg, and As, respectively. The commonest bacteria species found were Escherichia coli (52.3%, 10/19) and Salmonella species (42.1%, 8/19). This review reported that almost 90% of Candida albicans and more than 80% of moulds exceeded the required regulatory limits. HMP consumption poses profound health implications to consumers and patients. Therefore, designing and/or implementing policies that effectively regulate HMPs to minimize the health hazards related to their consumption while improving the quality of life of persons living in LMICs are urgently needed.

Source: UG
Contamination of soils and loss of productivity of Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L.) caused by cement dust pollution

The effects of air pollution at the Diamond Cement (DIACEM) facility area on soil and cowpea plant (Vigna unguiculata L.) were observed using potted plants in areas close to the cement factory and control plants 7.9 km upwind of the factory. The results obtained indicated that soil parameters like pH, exchangeable cations (Ca, Mg and Na), phosphate and some heavy metals were elevated compared to controls. The cement dust around the factory had a significant reduction in the morphological and yield parameters including, chlorophyll content, leaf area, shoot length and pod length and weight in cowpea plant (Vigna unguiculata L.). The level of reduction was inversely proportional to the distance from the cement factory. The reduction in level of these variables may be attributed to the air borne cement factory emissions which contain toxic chemicals. The data obtained for both soil and plant contamination conforms to other studies. The study concludes that air pollution emitted from cement plants adversely affect soils and agricultural production in their immediate vicinities. It is recommended that the location of cement factories should take into consideration the positioning of arable croplands and that more stringent pollution control measures to reduce airborne particulates should be put in place.

Source: UG
Contemporarising ɔhene tene (the Akan chief’s procession) as political communication

This paper is about politics and communication in a Ghanaian traditional setting. It focuses on ɔhene tene (the Akan chiefly procession) as a single act of non-rhetorical symbolic communication. Situated within the conceptual frameworks of public relations and political communication, the description and analysis of ɔhene tene characterises its staging as image-making which communicates and projects power and authority. Through in-depth interviews, observation, and drawing on encoding and decoding of the sight spectacle, observed visual and sound elements of ɔhene tene are detailed, highlighting their signification and consequential roles that combine as public relations and political communication activities. Ɔhene tene is contextualised and proposed as a constructed image typology and “political language” with lessons for political communication and public relations practices.

Source: UG
Contemporary female migration in Ghana: Analyses of the 2000 and 2010 Censuses

Abstract Background: Knowledge of female migration patterns is scant despite increased recognition and reporting of the feminization of migration. Recent data on female internal migration in Ghana challenges historical assumptions that underestimated female migration. Objective: This study presents the first detailed comparative analyses of female migration using microdata from Ghana’s censuses (2000 and 2010) and exploits this national data to understand the gendered dimensions of migration. Methods: Secondary analyses use direct and indirect methods to describe the scale, type, and demographic structure of contemporary female migration; assess the distribution of female migrants across age and geography; and estimate net internal female migration. Results: Excluding international migrants, census microdata identified 31.1% of females as internal migrants in 2000 and 37.4% of females as internal migrants in 2010. Working-age migration was particularly pronounced in 2010, reinforcing economic opportunity as a likely driver of migration for both sexes. Female migrants were significantly more likely than female nonmigrants to reside in urban areas and work for pay, profit, or family gain. By 2010, married women were less likely to migrate than peers who had never married. Net out-migration exceeded net in-migration in eight of Ghana’s ten regions. Contribution: Our analyses expand the evidence base on contemporary female migration and refute the outdated stereotype that girls and women do not participate in migration. The prominence of the Greater Accra and Ashanti Regions as destinations for female migrants suggests that interventions are needed in Ghana’s more rural regions to reduce poverty and develop greater economic opportunities for girls and women.

Source: UG
Content Analysis of Primary and Secondary School Textbooks Regarding Malaria Control: a Multi-Country Study

The Department of Parasitology conducts research into parasitic diseases of public health importance with the overall goal of reducing their transmission and the heavy disease burden that they impose on affected populations. The Department maintains focus on parasitic diseases in general. These include major diseases such as malaria, and others listed under the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) control initiative such as, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminthiasis, trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis.

Source: UG
Content-based Image Retrieval using Tesseract OCR Engine and Levenshtein Algorithm

—Image Retrieval Systems (IRSs) are applications that allow one to retrieve images saved at any location on a network. Most IRSs make use of reverse lookup to find images stored on the network based on image properties such as size, filename, title, color, texture, shape, and description. This paper provides a technique for obtaining full image document given that the user has some portions of the document under search. To demonstrate the reliability of the proposed technique, we designed a system to implement the algorithm. A combination of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine and an improved text matching algorithm was used in the system implementation. The Tesseract OCR engine and Levenshtein Algorithm was integrated to perform the image search. The extracted text is compared to the text stored in the database. For example, a query result is returned when a significant ratio of 0.15 and above is obtained. The results showed a 100% successful retrieval of the appropriate file base on the match even when partial query images were submitted.

Source: UG
The contentious Ghanaian: An historical appraisal of social movements in Ghana

Ideas of freedom, liberty, and social justice are germane to most societies, including African societies. The quest for these values also often involves contentions, dialog, and compromise. Sadly, the often-told stories of political and social change in Africa are brush-stroked with bloodshed, tears, and anguish. This Africa of pessimism, unfulfilled dreams, state-sponsored violence, and civil wars is a familiar headline in the global North. This work, however, proposes that African countries such as Ghana have been resolving their disagreements and contentions through other means. These range from subtle, subversive, noncompliant and complex responses to the less preferred direct and open confrontation with authority. Secondly, the historiography of protest movements in Ghana reveals a lingering prefer ence for twentieth century social movements, neglecting nineteenth century forms of protest and social movement bases, which employed subtlety, noncompliance, and some times, direct confrontation. Lastly, initial social movement literature showed a preponderance of male-dominated narratives, which eventually led to the creation of female-inspired alternate narratives. Using selected works in social movement theory, general surveys on the history of Ghana, monographs, journal articles, book chapters and unpublished theses, this article seeks to offer a panoramic view of the history-writing of social movements and its prospects in Ghana.

Source: UG
The contentious Ghanaian: An historical appraisal of social movements in Ghana

Ideas of freedom, liberty, and social justice are germane to most societies, including African societies. The quest for these values also often involves contentions, dialog, and compromise. Sadly, the often-told stories of political and social change in Africa are brush-stroked with bloodshed. tears, and anguish. This Africa of pessimism, unfulfilled dreams, state-sponsored violence, and civil wars are familiar headline in the global North. This work, however, proposes that African countries such as Ghana have been resolving their disagreements and contentions through other means. These range from subtle, subversive, noncompliant and complex responses to the less preferred direct and open confrontation with authority. Secondly, the historiography of protest movements in Ghana reveals a lingering preference for twentieth-century social movements, neglecting nineteenth-century forms of protest and social movement bases, which employed subtlety, noncompliance, and sometimes direct confrontation. Lastly, initial social movement literature showed a preponderance of male-dominated narratives, which eventually led to the creation of female-inspired alternate narratives. Using selected works in social movement theory, general surveys on the history of Ghana, monographs, journal articles, book chapters and unpublished theses, this article seeks to offer a panoramic view of the history-writing of social movements and its prospects in Ghana.

Source: UG
The contest for mineral wealth: an economic analysis of conflicts in Ghanaian mining communities.

The paper uses survey data from 1458 households in 60 communities from 24 districts in 5 regions of Ghana and logistic regression to examine conflicts as a contest for mineral wealth in mining communities, estimates the determinants of conflicts in these mining communities and examines how these contests could erode and/or enhance Ghana’s gains from mining. The paper finds that the likelihood of a conflict occurring in a mining area is about 56.7%. Village effect was found to be a significant positive predictor of mining conflict. Also, improvement in primary education, employment opportunities to community members of ages 25–50, the strength of institutions and the absence of small-scale miners in a mining community reduces the probability of conflicts occurring by 12.8, 35.8, 6.57 and 17.7%, respectively. While an increase in pollution levels increases the likelihood of conflicts occurring by 7.1%, primary occupation in manufacturing and services, and increase in household monthly expenditure significantly increases the likelihood of conflicts within the mining communities as the cost of living increases.

Source: UG
Contested causes of flooding in poor urban areas in Accra, Ghana: an actor-oriented perspective

It is well known that urbanisation and climate change are likely to induce more floods in existing flood-prone African cities. Previous contributions on the causes of flooding in urban areas mostly do not consider the actors involved in adaptation and do not acknowledge the diversity of knowledge they possess. In this study, the causes of urban floods in an African city are explored from an actor-oriented perspective. The Kendall coefficient of concordance method is used to analyse interviews with household members and community leaders living in flood-prone communities as well as technocrats involved in public flood adaptation at the metropolitan level. The level of agreement on the causes of flooding is low among the actors, making the case for integrating informal actors into the formal flood adaptation structures at the metropolitan level. This will harness the diversity of knowledge on how flood risk unfolds for the purpose of local adaptation to urban floods in African cities. © 2019, Springer Nature B.V.

Source: UG