4 pages., Online from publisher., "For the first time, a landmark report on digitalisation for agriculture (D4Ag) in Africa compiles and highlights data on digital solutions that are enabling the transformation of African agriculture."
14 pages, via online journal, Designing effective policies for economic development often entails categorizing populations by their rural or urban status. Yet there exists no universal definition of what constitutes an “urban” area, and countries alternately apply criteria related to settlement size, population density, or economic advancement. In this study, we explore the implications of applying different urban definitions, focusing on Tanzania for illustrative purposes. Toward this end, we refer to nationally representative household survey data from Tanzania, collected in 2008 and 2014, and categorize households as urban or rural using seven distinct definitions. These are based on official administrative categorizations, population densities, daytime and nighttime satellite imagery, local economic characteristics, and subjective assessments of Google Earth images. These definitions are then applied in some common analyses of demographic and economic change. We find that these urban definitions produce different levels of urbanization. Thus, Tanzania's urban population share based on administrative designations was 28% in 2014, though this varies from 12% to 39% with alternative urban definitions. Some indicators of economic development, such as the level of rural poverty or the rate of rural electrification, also shift markedly when measured with different urban definitions. The periodic (official) recategorization of places as rural or urban, as occurs with the decennial census, results in a slower rate of rural poverty decline than would be measured with time-constant boundaries delimiting rural Tanzania. Because the outcomes of analysis are sensitive to the urban definitions used, policy makers should give attention to the definitions that underpin any statistics used in their decision making.
Mignouna, Hodeba D. (author), Abang, Mathew M. (author), Omanya, Gospel (author), Nang'ayo, Francis (author), Bokanga, Mpoko (author), Boadi, Richard (author), Muchiri, Nancy (author), Terry, Eugene (author), and New York Academy of Sciences
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
unknown
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 167 Document Number: C27838
24 pages, Extension is sometimes viewed globally as less important than academic research and innovation, even though these networks are crucial to agricultural development. Using Lewin’s (1947) organizational change theory as a conceptual background, an instrument to measure advocacy capacity within international extension networks was developed. The resulting scale was analyzed for content validity, response process validity, internal structure validity, and consequential validity. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed on the proposed scale. The underlying structure of the scale was found to load onto five factors. The five extracted factors were labelled: 1) network support of advocacy, 2) network integration of advocacy, 3) network influence in advocacy, 4) network visibility in advocacy, and 5) network advocacy performance. The overall International Extension Network Advocacy Capacity (IENAC) scale, and associated subscales were all found to have acceptable levels of validity.
