ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Spatial analysis of the use of traditional medicine in urban areas of Ghana: a case study of Kumasi Metropolis

This study aims at analysing the use of traditional medicine in urban areas of Ghana with Kumasi Metropolis as the case study area. The study focuses on finding the mode of use of traditional medicine in urban areas and why people choose a particular medicine at the expense of the other. The researcher finds the effect of urbanization on the use of traditional medicine as well as the percentage of urban dwellers that access traditional medicine. The role gender plays in the use of traditional medicine is also factored in the equation. The discussion also focuses on the type of diseases that traditional medicine effectively addresses. To understand the effectiveness of traditional medicine, comparison has to be made with modern medicine. To achieve the objectives of the research, both quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis are used. Multiple regression model as a tool is used to test for the validity of views expressed by respondents. Interviews and questionnaires were used to collect data from the field to support maps and other data collected from related institutions. Views were sampled from 20 selected suburbs in the Kumasi metropolis using a sample size of 320. Analysis of data indicates that education plays a very important role in the utilization of traditional medicine. There is a significant negative correlation between education and use of traditional medicine in both the core and the periphery. Other variables such as place of residence, gender and income levels did not show a significant correlation with the use of traditional medicine. Though the study reveals that more females use traditional medicine than males, the difference is not significant. The other 2 variables (residence and salary) follow a similar trend as in gender. It is recommended that traditional medicine should be incorporated into the Primary Health Care (PHC) system because of its efficiency and affordability. For this integration to be effective, government must seek to regulate the activities of practitioners of traditional medicine. This can be achieved when government’s health policies make provision for the setting up of educational institutions to train people in the field of traditional medicine. Moreover, if practitioners of traditional medicine come together in small groups to share knowledge and expertise, they can do better than they are doing now. Admittedly, this study addresses only a fraction of the problem associated with traditional medicine and the researcher accepts that other areas of further research must be considered. Areas such as “Ethnicity and use of traditional medicine” and “The problem of distribution and application of traditional medicine” are strongly recommended to anyone aspiring to research into traditional medicine.

Source: KNUST
Spatial and functional integration for district level development - a case study of Mpohor Wassa East District in Ghana

Aware that a strong national economy depends on an aggregation of various self-sustaining and complimentary local economies, successive governments in Ghana have often put rural development high on their agenda.. The rationale is that majority of the country’s population live in rural areas.. It is also in these areas that the rich natural resources are largely found. As a result, a myriad of development projects and programmes supposedly aimed at improving upon the socio—economic conditions of the rural people are undertaken. However, there appears to be no suitable theoretical base f or development planning and management at the local level.. The idea of growth poles and the associated polarisation of resource investment in regional capitals have failed to ginger-up local level development in the hinterland. Trickle down of expected benefits is often limited to the immediate surrounding areas of polarised investment centres. The study represents an experiment towards a suitable theoretical base for local level planning and development work. The study is based on detailed field work and focuses on the analysis of the space economy of a rural district in the Western/of Ghana. It came out with/Region proposals and policy statements aimed at improving upon the socio-economic development through spatial and functional integration of human settlements.

Source: KNUST
Spatial arrangements and time of introducing an intercrop on the productivity of component crops in maize (Zea Mays L) - Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill) intercropping systems.

A field experiment was conducted, at the Faculty of Agriculture Farm (Plantation section), KNUST, Kumasi in the Kumasi metropolis of Ashanti region of Ghana during the 2009 growing season. The experiment examined the effects of seeding date (simultaneous with maize, 1 or 2 WAPM) at four levels of spatial arrangements; 1:1, 2:2, 3:3, and 4:4 on soil nutrient budget and performance of the component crops in maize (Zea mays l) - soybean (Glycine max (L) Merrill) intercropping systems. The maize was sown at a spacing of 80 x 40 cm and intercropped with the soybean planted at 0, 1 and 2 week after planting the maize (WAPM). The soybean was sown at a spacing of 60 x 5cm. Non-intercropped plots were made to serve as sole crop or control. The compound fertilizer, NPK (15-15-15) was applied to the sole maize 4 WAP at 60 kg/ha and top dressed with sulphate of ammonia at 50 kg N/ha at 8 WAP. The results showed that intra- and interspecific competition in the system affected the performance of the crops with respect to yield and quality. The late intercrops grew poorly as an intercrop component, producing little or no grain. Leaf area, leaf area index, dry weights, crop growth rate, relative crop growth rate and the yield components decreased with delay in intercropping as results of competition of intercrop components for nutrients, light, and space. In the case of the maize, delay in intercropping resulted in increased grain yield. This implied that the early intercropped maize plants experienced greater competition than the late intercropped maize plants. Land equivalent ratio also decreased with delay in intercropping. It is recommended to intercrop soybean at 0 WAPM in 1:1 spatial arrangement combinations.

Source: KNUST
Spatial development disparities in Ghana, a review of decentralisation as a remedial measure

One of the major characteristics of the Ghanaian space economy is the existence of spatial development disparities. The following types of disparities exist. (i) Disparities between the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ with the distribution of social and economic infrastructure skewed in favour of the regions in the south; (ii) There is an also wide disparity between urban and rural areas; (iii) Wide disparities also exist among the districts in all the regions. Even though the first two dimensions have received much attention from planners and policy makers, not much attention has been paid to the disparities within the regions. It is for the above reason that this study has been undertaken to find out the underlying factors for spatial development disparities in Ghana, past remedial measures for rectifying the problem and their effectiveness and to assess the extent to which the current policy - decentralisation has addressed the problem. The study attributes the causes of spatial development disparities in Ghana to among other things: (a) British colonial administrative policy which tended to concentrate investment in social and economic infrastructure in few areas; (b) Centralised system of government practised by past governments in Ghana before 1988; and (c) Ghana’s emphasis on export-led economy and import substitution that tend to concentrate socio-economic infrastructure in few urban centres. The study further revealed that in view of the problems associated with spatial disparities; past governments have adopted various policies to bvercome the problem buthave achieved little or no impact. Since 1988, decentralisation policy has been implemented in Ghana. Among its objectives is to ensure equitable distribution of the fruits of development and thus overcome spatial disparities. In line with this, the original 65 districts were split into 110 and each given the power, means and competence to develop their areas. The study revealed that after a decade of its implementation, tremendous improvement has been made towards equitable distribution of social amenities to all districts and this ha$ brought some level of gap closure. In spite of the gap closure in the distribution of physical amenities in new/rural districts, this has not been matched with quality as most of the amenities in the ne districts have poor infrastructure, lack of equipment, logistics and the adequate manpc.ver to man them. In view of this situation, it is recommended that for decentralisation to succeed in bridging the gap between old and new/rural districts, the latter districts b appreciated as depressed and be given the much needed attention to grow.

Source: KNUST
Spatial Distribution of Solid Waste Collection Points in KMA and the Community Perception about Solid Waste Management

There is a considerable amount of indiscriminate refuse disposal in many urban areas, most especially of the third-world countries. This study focuses on the spatial distribution of solid waste collection points in the Kumasi metropolitan assembly. It further examined the attitudes and perceptions of the community on the collection points usage and the solid waste management system. The methodology employed involved the use of GPS to pick the coordinates of the solid waste collection points, GIS to produce maps; and a questionnaire through which 400 copies were distributed accordingly across all the nine sub metropolitan areas in the metropolis, 322 were filled and returned completely and successfully, and were used for the analysis to make a generalization. The study area is sub-categorized or zoned into 9 sub metropolitan areas (locations) of which Subin, Oforikrom, Kwadaso, Nhyiaeso and Suame sub metros had 13(10.4%),20(16%), 19(15.2%), 15(12%) and 8 (6.4%) respectively. The rest are Tafo, Bantama, Asokwa and Manhyia sub metros also with 11(8.8%), 18 (6.4%), 11(8.8%) and 10(8.8%) respectively. Thus, it was assumed that almost all the inhabitants in the nine mentioned sub metropolitan area above dispose their solid waste in the legal collection points, therefore, 10 collection points each in the various sub metros were sampled in a stratified manner. And SPSS was used to analyse the data gathered using the questionnaire; and the results were discussed and presented using frequency and cross-tabulated tables, and charts on the attitudes of the community usage of the solid waste collection points and their perceptions toward the refuse management system. The study discovered a total of 125 solid waste collection points distributed unevenly across the nine sub metropolitan areas (locations) in the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly. Of the 125 Solid waste collection points, all seem legal and certified and authorised by the KMA, Waste management department(WMD) with a few satellite ones which seem temporal. The solid waste collection points are made up of two types of collection facilities: Roll-on Roll-off (roro) and skip collection containers, the former are 21 (16.8%), while the later are 104 (83.2%). The research also revealed that the number of indiscriminate solid waste disposal increases as you move from high to low density settlement areas, while the sizes of the refuse heaps increase from low to high density settlement areas. Finally, the study find out that no municipal solid waste management can be effective without proper monitoring of its disposal activities, and public enlightenment.

Source: KNUST
Spatial distribution of drinking water quality in Nkawie in the Atwima-Nwabiagya District

The Nkawie area of the Atwima-Nwabiagya district of the Ashanti Region represents an urban–rural type of mixed settlement with a high prevalence of water borne epidemiological conditions. Access to good quality drinking water is known to be a major factor for such prevalence. Therefore this research sought to highlight the spatial characterization of water quality within Nkawie; using Geographical Information Systems. The spatial analysis of water quality was conducted using laboratory determined magnitudes of parameter values known to affect water quality, followed by Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) and spatial interpolation techniques in GIS resulting in surface generation of water quality (to show its spatial distribution). Spatial interpolation was carried out using Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) model to generate the water quality map over the study area. Samples from 9 public water sources in the study were collected and analysis was carried out including tests for pH, E. coli, Total Coliform, Faecal Coliforms and Salmonella. Drinking Water Quality Index (WQI) was developed using the measured parameter values. Results from the WQI shows that it’s only the Asuofia well water that is moderately good for drinking as all the sources show various levels of contamination. The study of spatial analysis and interpretations of water quality demonstrated that the applied GIS methodology is a useful tool in evaluating and describing the spatial distribution of water quality characteristics. The conclusions from this research revealed that more than half of the public drinking water sources were contaminated beyond guidelines recommended by WHO and Ghana Standard Authority. It also revealed compromised water quality, hygiene and sanitation challenges; which have resulted in the district recording high cases of water borne diseases especially diarrhoea even though it has 95% water coverage.

Source: KNUST
Spatial analysis of under-5 malaria in Ghana (2008 GDHS) for public health intervention evaluation

Malaria control programmes adopt national strategies without recourse to individual, social and location factors that affect the dynamics of the infection transmission. Spatial relationships between locations are often unaccounted for with the number of cases assumed to be randomly occurring. This renders inappropriate a one-size-fits all intervention approach for a parsimonious allocation of limited resources for the design, implementation and evaluation of malaria control programmes. To accomplish the desired outcomes, interventions must reach the subgroups of the populations where malaria prevalence is at its highest. This can only be achieved if malaria control interventions take into cognisance factors that ensure equity in program design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Impact assessment requires nationally representative data that are often prohibitively expensive. To circumvent this, nationally representative routine data can easily be adopted Methods: This study utilizes the GDHS 2008 data for the identification of disease patterns for under-5 malaria using individual child, maternal and household socio-economic and geographic variables as predictor variables. These variables were used to model the likelihood of U-5 malaria and to develop the risk/prevalence maps to explain the risk and spatial dependencies of the incidence of malaria between households. The chi-square test of independence, binary logistic regression and spatial statistics analytical tools were utilized. Results: Logistic regression model showed age group 5, anaemia, type of residence and epidemiological zones as significant (p <.05) with odds ratios less than 1 of the incidence of U-5 malaria. Model overall percentage performance was 74.7%. Moran’s index for non-randomness in occurrence was significant (p <.02) and LISA cluster maps showed significant clustering between 45 clusters with most of them in the southern part of Ghana. vii The malaria risk maps showed 4 dense clustering of low prevalence centres clustered around hot spots in Northern, Ashanti, Western and Greater Accra regions. Identifying these high prevalence foci is important to the success of any public health intervention or vector control. These are important conduits for malaria transmission. The SEM was found to give a better fit than the SLM based on the AIC and Schwarz criteria. Conclusion: The use of statistical models for predicting probability of under-5 malaria could be adopted as a household risk index for children’s exposure to malaria. The spatial clustering and risk maps have been utilized to depict distribution of the observed pattern of under-5 malaria prevalence and demonstrated as an efficient tool for quick identification hot and cold spots of disease prevalence. This can provide valuable insight into the underlying mechanisms driving incidence and transmission of malaria in children

Source: KNUST
Spatial heterogeneity of malaria in Ghana: a cross-sectional study on the association between urbanicity and the acquisition of immunity

Background: Malaria incidence has declined considerably over the last decade. This is partly due to a scale-up of control measures but is also attributed to increasing urbanization. This study aimed to analyse the association between malaria and urbanization and the effect of urbanicity on the acquisition of semi-immunity. Methods: In 2012, children with fever presenting to St Michael’s Hospital Pramso/Ghana were recruited. The malaria positive-fraction (MPF) of fever cases was calculated on community-level to approximate the malaria risk. The mean age of malaria cases was calculated for each community to estimate the acquisition of semi-immunity. The level of urbanicity for the communities was calculated and associations between MPF, urbanicity and immunity were modelled using linear regression. Results: Twenty-six villages were included into the study with a mean MPF of 35 %. A linear decrease of 5 % (95 % CI: 4–6 %) in MPF with every ten-point increase in urbanicity was identified. The mean age of malaria patients increased by 2.9 months (95 % CI: 1.0–4.8) with every ten-point increase in urbanicity. Discussion: The results confirm an association between an increase in urbanicity and declining malaria risk and dem‑ onstrate that the acquisition of semi-immunity is heterogeneous on a micro-epidemiological scale and is associated with urbanicity

Source: KNUST
Spatial multi criteria based landfill site selection for disposal of petroleum waste in the Shama Ahanta area of Ghana

Shortage of land for waste disposal and inappropriate landfill site is one of the biggest problems in most of large urban areas. Therefore more efforts are needed to overcome this problem. Most of the landfill sites are selected randomly, and waste is burned and not treated, which impacts nature and human. The main aim of this research is to determine a suitable Petroleum Landfill Site (PLS) with less impact on environment. In this research, a potential site for an appropriate area for the Shama Ahanta Area was determined by using Geographic Information System (GIS) as a tool to aid the decision making process. To achieve this purpose, thematic layers and different tabular data such as topography, land use, roads network, ground and surface water, infrastructure, and urban areas were collected from different institutions and governmental agencies. Thematic maps were used to create the suitability map for the area and the result was compiled to the buffer zones around sensitive areas. By using multi-criteria analysis, a candidate site was allocated taking into consideration the sensitive areas in order to find out the best location for the anticipated PLS

Source: KNUST
Spatial mapping of carbon stock in mangroves in the Ellembelle District, Ghana.

Compared to other wetland ecosystems, mangroves are well known for their numerous ecosystem services, especially carbon pool. In Ghana, however, there is limited information on the sequestered carbon in mangroves. There is increasing interest on national climate change mitigation and adaptation plans in mangroves in developing nations, and Ellembelle in the Western Region of Ghana is of no exception. Ellembelle, the study area, is one of the areas where the little information on the size and variation of mangrove carbon stock needs to be addressed. This research, therefore, aimed at determining the carbon stock from the carbon sequestered in mangrove and the areal extent in mangrove forest. It also aimed at determining the changes that has occurred over the years 1991, 2000 and 2015, and the prediction for 2025. The spatial map of the mangrove forest was obtained using a random forest classification algorithm to determine the Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) for the mangrove forest in Ellembelle in the Western Region of Ghana. The accuracy assessment for the classified images of 1991, 2000 and 2015 are 76.16%, 82.45% and 81.13% respectively; with kappa of 0.70, 0.78 and 0.76 respectively. The mangrove cover in 1991 was 298.35 ha, in 2000 it increased to 350.01ha and further increased in 2015 to 374.49ha. A change map was used to determine the changes of mangrove in the years 1991 to 2000 and 2000 to 2015. A Markov chain analysis used to predict mangrove extent showed that mangrove will increase to 381.69ha in 2025. The ecosystem carbon density estimate for the mangrove forest was weighted based on their spatial distribution across the landscape to yield a total carbon stock of for the Ellembelle mangrove forest. The error obtained from the 95% Confidence Interval was + 1.53%, which is within the acceptable levels of uncertainty based on the Monte Carlo Analysis. The overall carbon estimated for 2015 based on the area for mangrove was 1,550,295 tons with an uncertainty of +57,125.40 tons.

Source: KNUST
The Spatio-Temporal Variability of Rainfall over the Agro-Ecological Zones of Ghana

Rainfall variability plays an important role in many socio-economic activities such as food security, livelihood and farming in Ghana. Rainfall impact studies are thus very crucial for proper management of these key sectors of the country. This paper examines the seasonal and annual rainfall variability in the four agro-ecological zones of Ghana from the CHIRPS V2 rainfall time series spanning a period of 1981-2015. The rainfall indices were computed with the aid of the FClimDex package whereas the trends of these indices were further tested using the Mann Kendall trend test. The results show good agreement (r ≥ 0.7) between CHIRPS V2 and gauge in almost all portions of country although high biases were observed especially in DJF season over parts of the Northeastern (NE) portions of the country. The mean seasonal rainfall climatology over the country is observed to be in the range of 20 - 80 mm, 60 - 200 mm, 100 - 220 mm and 40 - 180 mm in DJF, MAM, JJA and SON seasons respectively with high intensities of rainfall dominating Southwestern portions of the country. The trend analysis revealed positive trends of consecutive dry days in the Transition, Forest and Coastal zones and negative trends in the Savannah zone of the country. Decreasing trends of consecutive wet days are observed over the Savannah, Transition and Coastal zones whereas increasing trends dominate the Forest zone. Savannah, Forest and Transition zones show weak increasing trends of the number of heavy rainfall days whilst weak decreasing trends are observed over the Coastal zone of the country. Similarly, weak increasing trends of the number of very heavy rainfall days are observed over all the agro-ecological zones except in the Transition zone. It is observed that the annual wet day rainfall total has increasing trend in the Savannah and Forest zones of the country whereas decreasing trends cover the remainder of the zones. The trends of these indices in the agro-ecological zones were all significant at a significant value of 0.05. This paper assessed the performance of the CHIRPS V2 rainfall data over the region and reports on the biases in seasonal rainfall amounts which are limited in previous studies. These findings have adverse impacts on rain-fed agricultural practices, water resource management and food security over the country.

Source: KNUST