ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Urban Municipal Solid Waste management: Modeling air pollution scenarios and health impacts in the case of Accra, Ghana

Despite the clear link between air pollution and health, research to investigate the relationship between municipal solid waste management and air pollution and health has not been prioritized. Such research may generate scientific information that would help reduce population exposure to air pollutants. This paper examines the case study of Accra in Ghana, a city dealing with serious waste management problems. The paper proposes a methodology to estimate the impact of waste management on urban air pollution and health. The analysis is described in the following four steps: (1) collecting data on the waste sector; (2) modeling the emissions arising from waste management; (3) transforming emissions to concentration values and (4) estimating the burdens on health. The assessment has been conducted using the CCAC SWEET tool and WHO AirQ+. The method presented can be used in different locations, depending on data availability, when analyzing the impact of and potential changes to waste sector policies. The results of this health impact assessment indicate that, based on the emissions of PM2.5 from the waste sector in Accra, a change from the business-as-usual to more sustainable options would reduce air pollutants emissions and avert 120 premature deaths in 2030. Levels of air pollution in Accra are significant and interventions to reduce PM2.5 exposure should be promoted. The detailed analysis of the current situation provides suggestions for waste management policies in terms of impacts on health and ideas to reconsider the waste policies in Accra.

Source: UG
Urban physical food environments drive dietary behaviours in Ghana and Kenya: A photovoice study

We identified factors in the physical food environment that influence dietary behaviours among low-income dwellers in three African cities (Nairobi, Accra, Ho). We used Photovoice with 142 males/females (≥13 years). In the neighbourhood environment, poor hygiene, environmental sanitation, food contamination and adulteration were key concerns. Economic access was perceived as a major barrier to accessing nutritionally safe and healthy foods. Home gardening supplemented household nutritional needs, particularly in Nairobi. Policies to enhance food safety in neighbourhood environments are required. Home gardening, food pricing policies and social protection schemes could reduce financial barriers to safe and healthy diets.

Source: UG
Urban Sanctuary and Solidarity in a Global Context: How Does Africa Contribute to the Debate?

The MIASA Working Paper series serves to disseminate the research results of work in progress prior to publication in order to encourage the exchange of ideas and academic debate. The series aims to publish research findings from the work of the MIASA Interdisciplinary Fellow Groups (IFGs) and other MIASA fellows in an open-access manner. Inclusion of a paper in the MIASA Working Paper Series does not constitute publication and should not limit publication in any other venue. Copyright remains with the authors

Source: UG
Urban sanitation coverage and environmental fecal contamination: Links between the household and public environments of Accra, Ghana

The main research focus of the Electron Microscopy and Histopathology Department in the past 20 years has been in the areas of enteric diarrhoeas with special emphasis on rotavirus. Through its diarrhoea surveillance studies, the Department has helped to firmly establish rotaviruses as a major cause of diarrhoea in children, and document the circulation of unusual rotavirus genotypes in Ghana. The Department has also recently expanded its diagnostic repertoire to include the identification and characterization of noroviruses, astroviruses, and other enteric viruses.

Source: UG
Urban service partnerships,'street-level bureaucrats' and environmental sanitation in Kumasi and Accra, Ghana: Coping with organisational change in the public bureaucracy

This is an empirical case study of 'street-level' officials in a classic 'regulatory' public agency: the Environmental Health Department in Kumasi and Accra, Ghana, where privatisation and contracting-out of sanitary services have imposed new ways of working on Environmental Health Officers. Both internal and external organisational relationships are analysed to explain the extent to which these officers have adapted to more 'client-oriented' ways of working. Their positive organizational culture is credited with much of the positive results achieved, but was not sufficient to cope with the negative impact of politically protected privatisations on the officials' ability to enforce standards. Nor could it entirely overcome the deficiencies in training and incentive structures which should have accompanied the changes in service delivery. © 2006 Overseas Development Institute.

Source: UG
Urban sprawl and land use/land-cover transition probabilities in peri-urban Kumasi, Ghana

This paper examines Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) transition probabilities and its implications for KumasiMetropolis using remote sensing image analysis technique. Methods used for the study include sub-setting ofsatellite images for the metropolis using the metropolitan shapefile boundary and classification of the images using maximum likelihood image classification algorithm. A Markov Model was applied to predict probabilities of LULC changes in 15 years (2016 - 2031). Study results show the probability of urban lands changing to agricultural land as low and so is the probability of farmland transitioning to urban land use. Vegetation however shows a high probability of change to built-up area while the likelihood of change from water to other cover types is not a possibility. The study recommends enforcement of relevant land use policies backed by vigorous public education to make sustainable urban land use in the Metropolis a reality. Also, vertical rather than horizontal construction of buildings could stem the sprawling city.

Source: UG
Urban Sprawl in sub-Saharan Africa: A review of the literature in selected countries

Urban sprawl has gained popularity in academic discourse in recent times, but the majority of the research was conducted in developed countries. There is a marginal body of works on the character and nature of urban sprawl in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), although the region is experiencing one of the fastest rates of sprawl. Urbanisation in SSA is very rapid, and in addition to the emerging challenges of globalisation, climate change and poverty, SSA cities have an enormous task to manage urban sprawl. This paper reviews the literature on urban sprawl in SSA to identify research gaps and propose a research agenda. Published articles from five Anglophone countries in three of the four regional blocks in SSA were selected. The literature was organised into the causes and effects of urban sprawl and showed that the previous research on the subject focused mainly on its environmental impacts. Few studies have looked at the effects of sprawl on rural livelihoods, agriculture and food security considering the challenges of global climate change and poverty. Other studies have used Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems, but these were conducted largely for change detection. The paper recommends the deployment of a more comprehensive methodology incorporating remote sensing/GIS with ethnographic methods to capture better the complexity and impacts of urban sprawl in SSA. Additionally, further research attention must be paid to the effects of urban sprawl on rural livelihoods and overall sprawl-induced agrarian change.

Source: UG
Urban Sustainability And The Subjective Well-Being Of Migrants: The Role Of Risks, Place Attachment, And Aspirations

While material conditions of migrant populations on average tend to improve over time as they become established in new destinations, individual trajectories of material and subjective well-being often diverge. Here, we analyse how social and environmental factors in the urban environment shape the subjective well-being of migrant populations. We hypothesize that these factors include (a) perceived social and environmental risk, (b) attachment to place, and (c) migrant aspirations. We analyse data from a cross-sectional survey of 2641 individual migrants in seven cities across Ghana, India, and Bangladesh. The results show that the persistence of inferior material conditions, exposure to environmental hazards, and constrained access to services and employment affect migrants' subjective well-being. Hence, social and environmental risks constitute urban precarity for migrants whose social vulnerability persist in their destination. Meeting migration-related aspirations and developing an affinity to urban destinations have the potential to mitigate negative sentiments from perceived risks. These findings have implications for future urban planning and sustainability.

Source: UG
Urban Water Politics and Water Supply in Disadvantaged Urban Communities in Ghana

Ghana, like most developing countries, struggles to improve access to water and sanitation to its urban population. Presently, many areas within the country do not have access to clean water from the national grid. And in areas served by the approved utility company, water service is mostly erratic and increasingly unreliable. Available evidence indicates that only 59 percent of urban residents have access to improved drinking water. The main policy tool aimed at improving water supply is private sector participation in the water sector. The inadequacies in urban water supply are felt disproportionally in disadvantaged or peri-urban communities. Often, the needs of the disadvantaged communities are hidden in the aggregate statistics of the larger urban areas. This research theorizes that because of the unique characteristics of the disadvantaged community—a high concentration of low income dwellers, squatter communities, and poor infrastructure developments—private sector participation often has very limited effect on the disadvantaged communities. Using a multiple case study approach, this study analyzes the unique water problems faced by disadvantaged urban communities. The research concludes by espousing a multi-sectoral approach which utilizes all resources and uses multiple avenues for water delivery as the best approach to ensure water security to disadvantaged communities.

Source: UG
Urban water stress and poor sanitation in Ghana: perception and experiences of residents in the Ashaiman Municipality

Access to safe and adequate water and to sanitation has been a global developmental priority due to their intrinsic impacts on the achievement of the sustainable development goals. Despite the implementation of several measures to improve access to safe water and sanitation, urban dwellers in Ghana struggle to acquire water and access sanitation facilities. This paper identified and examined the vulnerable conditions of households to environmental inadequacies of potable water and sanitation and measures aimed at reducing the risks associated with them in the Ashaiman Municipality. The study revealed that, access to adequate water supply was not necessarily dependent on the physical location of house units, but on factors such as lack of building permit, financial constraints, rental conditions, administrative procedures and ill-suited housing arrangement. Inadequate solid and liquid waste management practices and poor drainage systems were major problems identified in the Municipality. The paper argues that water, drainage systems and logistics for waste management in deprived communities must be provided by the local government and service providers through public–private partnership agreements. We conclude that, planning rules, regulations and procedures should be strictly adhered to and vigorously enforced by the Municipality in order to have a well-organized and planned urban environment. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Source: UG
Urban-rural differences in the gene expression profiles of Ghanaian children

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
Urban-rural differences in the socioeconomic deprivation-Sexual behavior link in Kenya

We compare the impact of socioeconomic deprivation on risky sexual outcomes in rural and urban Kenya. Quantitative data are drawn from the Demographic & Health Surveys (DHS) and qualitative data from the Sexual Networking and Associated Reproductive and Social Health Concerns study. Using two separate indicators of deprivation we show that, although poverty is significantly associated with the examined sexual outcomes in all settings, the urban poor are significantly more likely than their rural counterparts to have an early sexual debut and a greater incidence of multiple sexual partnerships. The disadvantage of the urban poor is accentuated for married women; those in Nairobi's slums are at least three times as likely to have multiple sexual partners as their rural counterparts. The implications of these findings are discussed. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Source: UG
Urbanisation and domestic energy trends: Analysis of household energy consumption patterns in relation to land-use change in peri-urban Accra, Ghana

Urban living has become a dominant lifestyle in the 21st century. The period also comes with far-reaching changes in knowledge-gathering, which has become more compartmentalised, fragmented and specialised. This is reflected in the ways of working of both academic and government institutions, and has led to incomplete knowledge and understanding of human ecology, and the formulation of unwise, strongly sectoral policies, not least in respect to the understanding, planning and managing the dynamics of energy use and land-use change in an era of global climate change. This study contributes to addressing the perceived shortcoming by comparing patterns of energy consumption in two research locations in peri-urban Accra: representing a more urbanised, and a cluster of rural communities, respectively. The study applied an inter-disciplinary approach combining expert interviews, a literature review, and an in-depth change analysis based on remote sensing/geo-information systems. The paper establishes a relationship between land-use change and wood-fuel and LPG usage mediated by geographical and socioeconomic discrepancies. We conclude that different peri-urban patterns are driven by geographic, historical, cultural and economic disparities. Therefore, if energy policies and strategies for sus tainable development are to be successfully constructed, there is the need to accommodate and enforce land-use policies by adopting a comprehensive approach to governance

Source: UG
Urbanisation, poverty and sexual behaviour: The tale of five African cities

The question of how urbanisation and poverty are linked in sub-Saharan Africa is an increasingly pressing one. The urban character of the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa exacerbates concern about the urbanisation-poverty relationship. Recent empirical work has linked urban poverty, and particularly slum residence, to risky sexual behaviour in Kenya's capital city, Nairobi. This paper explores the generalisability of these assertions about the relationship between urban poverty and sexual behaviour using Demographic and Health Survey data from five African cities: Accra (Ghana), Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania), Harare (Zimbabwe), Kampala (Uganda) and Nairobi (Kenya). The study affirms that, although risky behaviour varies across the five cities, slum residents demonstrate riskier sexual behaviour compared with non-slum residents. There is earlier sexual debut, lower condom usage and more multiple sexual partners among women residing in slum households regardless of setting, suggesting a relatively uniform effect of urban poverty on sexual risk behaviour. © 2010 Urban Studies Journal Limited.

Source: UG
Urbanization and income inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa

According to the World Bank, a burgeoning proportion of Africans now live in urban areas. The United Nations notes that the fastest urbanizing regions in the world are Africa and Asia and projects that by the year 2050 these regions would become about 56% and 64% urban, respectively. At the same time, over the last several decades, many countries and regions have recorded rising income inequality. While some scholars have argued that urbanization worsens income inequality, others contend that the relationship is non-linear and dependent on the stage of development. In this regard, Sub-Saharan Africa remains largely understudied. This paper employed an unbalanced panel dataset for 48 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1996–2016 to examine whether urbanization is correlated with income inequality. We find evidence of a positive association between urbanization and income inequality in the region.

Source: UG
Urbanization and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from dynamic panel data analysis of selected urbanizing countries

Abstract: Urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is generally highlighted as a puzzle that deviates from the stylized facts in the literature. Using data from a panel of 29 urbanizing countries in SSA from 1985 to 2019, the study employs the twostep system generalized methods of moments to investigate the effect of urbanization on the Poverty Headcount ratio and Poverty Gap. The estimated urbanization elasticities of poverty indicate that at growth rates, a 1 percentage point increase in urbanization rate induces 0.04 and 0.05 (0.07 and 0.09) percentage points decrease in the Poverty Headcount ratio and Poverty Gap in the short-run (long-run), respectively. Similarly, at levels, a 1 percent increase in urbanization level induces 0.22 and 0.32 (0.60 and 0.68) percent decrease in the Poverty Headcount ratio and Poverty Gap in the short-run (long-run), respectively. Consistently, these results show stronger effect of urbanization on the depth of poverty relative to the incidence of poverty. These findings reappraise the literature on the urbanization of poverty in SSA as well as provide a nuanced understanding of the effect of urbanization on the different class of poverty measures. Notwithstanding, the poverty reduction potential of urbanization is not automatic and requires enormous investment in public infrastructure to achieve.

Source: UG
Urbanization Effects On Urban Vegetable Farmers Adaptation: Evidence From Ghana

This study argues that urban change and urban agriculture are linked, and this relationship affects urban farmers. This causes urban farmers to adapt to urban change and, in this study, within the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA). This is because urban agriculture serves as a source of livelihood for urban dwellers and a source of vital food ingredients which helps address food security concerns in the city. This study employs an exploratory sequential mixed method to investigate this phenomenon, which first uses a qualitative methodology and then quantitative methodology to investigate the changes that have occurred within the GAMA and how the farmers are adapting to these changes. A heterogeneous sampling approach was used to select a total of 29 farmers from 10 farm sites for the qualitative data, while a multistage sampling approach was used to select 251 farmers from 16 farm sites for the quantitative data. The changes within the urban space realized by farmers include climate, land scarcity, increased population, and lifestyle dynamics. The population increase and lifestyle change; for instance, increased demand for vegetables and land scarcity caused farmers to move to secured lands, which led to farmers enjoying security on those lands. However, increased population, for instance, led to more unplanned settlements, which negatively resulted in polluted streams for farming. It also led to land scarcity, that has resulted in the eviction of farmers from their farmlands. In adapting to some of the effects of these changes, farmers used several water sources to reduce their dependence on polluted streams and embarked on intensification and relocated to cheap and cost-free lands to be able to manage the land scarcity challenge. All these adaptation strategies prove farmers’ resilience to the intense urban changes, which affect their farming activities. This calls for specialized and focused support for urban agriculture by stakeholders responsible for the promotion of urban agriculture.

Source: UG
Urbanization influences small mammal composition, but not species richness in forest fragments in Accra, Ghana

The Accra Plain of Ghana is experiencing rapid urbanization, but there is scant information on its impact on local biodiversity. We assessed the changes in land use/land cover of the Accra Plain since 1991 and evaluated how the observed changes have influenced local small mammals in forest fragments. We applied supervised classifcation and intensity analysis time-series Landsat imagery data to assess land use/land cover changes between 1991 and 2017. Small mammals were surveyed in two for est fragments, the Pinkwae and Adumanya forests from June 2019 to January 2020, using capture-mark-recapture technique. We compared our data with baseline data gathered in 1991–1992, when large areas of the city remained mostly undeveloped. Our data revealed that the urban area has increased by 832%, while the forest area declined by 85% between 1991 and 2017. The Pinkwae and Adumanya forests, which covered 120 and 1.5 ha, respectively, in 1991 have each been reduced to<1 ha. We found changes in the small mammal species composition in the forest fragments, but not species richness due to species turnover. Grammomys poensis and Dephomys defua are first records for the Accra Plain. Our data suggested that small forest fragments within the urbanizing landscape are important for maintaining the local small mammal species. For the conservation of local small mammals in urbanizing landscapes, it is important to maintain the greatest possible number of small forest fragments and establish policies that prevent forest remnants from being further depleted.

Source: UG