Peter Mukarumbwa

Much contemporary policy attention has focused on inequality, poverty, and social exclusion in Africa. The various dimensions of inequality at the national and regional levels can be disaggregated into economic, social, and political factors, including ethnicity, income, gender, age, migratory status, disability, and geographic location. Yet, notable gaps in the empirical literature exist in terms of examining horizontal inequality in Africa and how it manifests within and across countries over time. Furthermore, studies exploring the extent to which governance systems explain observed socioeconomic inequalities in Africa are scarce. Using the World Bank’s global governance indicators as a guiding framework, this chapter demonstrates that sub-Saharan Africa’s current state of governance is deplorable, and it seeks to understand how governance—and specifically, quality of governance—factors into the inequality-underdevelopment equation. With a mind to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, it proposes a realignment of governance systems to address the persistent and worsening problem of socioeconomic inequality. Any such realignment must include revising policy objectives to promote transparency in providing economic opportunities, ensure gender-equal access to land and resources, equalize workers’ pay, encourage labor-intensive industries, close tax loopholes that benefit the rich, and introduce social protection programs vital to fostering equality.

Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the world. It also has some of the world’s highest rates of gender inequality. Across the subcontinent, ethnic heterogeneity strengthens social, cultural, and institutional norms that preserve existing gender gaps. Based on the theory of intersectionality, this chapter explores how gender and ethnicity overlap to influence inequalities in resource distribution and decision-making agency. It analyzes secondary and gray literature to demonstrate that women in sub-Saharan Africa—especially rural, poor women—lack the same access to resources, education, technology, and labor markets that men enjoy; that the separation of roles between men and women compounds the issue; and that as a result, women suffer diminished opportunities for economic advancement and prosperity and decreased participation and representation in civic and political life. Country case studies illustrate gender equality and financial inclusion efforts in Zimbabwe, survival strategies and social capital among immigrants in South Africa, and the gender and ethnic dimensions of political representation in Burundi and Rwanda. This chapter concludes that governments must institute policies targeting gender and ethnic inequality concertedly rather than independently in order to improve women’s access to resources and decision-making agency and foster sustainable, inclusive development.

Urbanization has been argued to be having an impact on several other development challenges. To this end, this paper aims to contribute to the empirical literature by exploring the effect of urbanization and its' magnitude on poverty, both in the short run and long run in Nigeria. The macroeconomic analysis was conducted using data from 1982 to 2017 which was obtained from the World Bank. Bound Test and autoregressive distributed-lag (ARDL) estimation techniques were used to test the existence of a cointegration relationship and to estimate the short and long-run effect of urbanization and other variables on poverty reduction. Results from the study and an economic standpoint, provide strong evidence that urbanization remains an important factor in poverty reduction in Nigeria. The analysis further shows that while international remittances have a positive and significant effect, foreign aid and government expenditure have significant negative effects on poverty reduction in the long-term period. While findings from this study suggest that urbanization remains a valid tool in the fight against poverty, the need for sustainable urbanization policies and efforts by the Nigerian government is highly imperative.

Maize plays a significant role among rural farming households in South Africa. The study therefore estimated the drivers of maize cultivars’ selection choices among rural farming households focusing on the commonly grown cultivars from the study area (Landrace and genetically modifies [GM] maize). A cross-sectional survey of 650 respondents randomly selected from Port St Johns and King Sabata Dalindyebo Local Municipalities of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa were used. Descriptive results revealed that a significant number of the respondents from the study area (65%) were growing Landrace maize cultivars, followed by GM maize (31%), improved OPVs (3%) and conventional hybrids (1%). Multivariate Probit regression estimates show that GM maize cultivars’ selection is positively influenced by the amount of rainfall (1% level), household size (5% level), education (1% level), size of arable land (10% level) and access to cell phones (5% level), whilst negatively influenced by the employment status (5%). Conversely, the selection of Landrace maize cultivars is negatively influenced by the of amount rainfall (1% level), education (1% level), income (10% level), access to cell phone (10% level) and radio (10% level) whilst positively influenced by the number of livestock (5% level). The study therefore argues that GM maize cultivars may be meaningfully promoted in high rainfall areas, focusing on arable land sizes and targeted awareness campaigns. The promotion of Landrace maize cultivars may be targeted in low rainfall areas in a mixed farming setting to enhance the complementarity of maize and livestock.

In an effort to address the decline in maize productivity, the government of Zimbabwe in 2016/17 endorsed a special program for input support named command agriculture scheme (CAS). Against this background, the study questioned the beneficiaries’ technical efficiency and factors that influence farmers to gravitate towards the frontier using Chegutu and Zvimba districts of Zimbabwe as case studies. The study used a cross-sectional survey of 240 households randomly selected through a three-stage multiple-sampling procedure. The single-stage modelling stochastic frontier approach was applied to assess technical efficiency of A1 smallholder command agriculture maize farmers. The study revealed that A1 smallholder command agriculture maize farmers in Chegutu and Zvimba districts were technically efficient at 85% and 94%, respectively. The major determinants of technical efficiency were basal fertilizer, labour, area allocated to maize production and topdressing fertilizer which all indicated a positive relationship. The main determinants of technical inefficiency were age, maize farming experience, level of education, marital status, occupation status and other sources of income. Results further revealed that farmers from Chegutu district had increasing returns to scale (1.43) while farmers from Zvimba district had decreasing returns to scale (0.54). The study therefore argues that despite the observed high technical efficiencies, Chegutu farmers could bridge their 15% gap between the observed output and the frontier output by focusing more on input usage with increasing returns to scale while Zvimba farmers could bridge their 6% gap by focusing more on socio-economic drivers of technical inefficiency given their decreasing returns to scale.

The purpose of the article is to examine the rural small scale farmers’ smart mobile phone usage acceptance prognosticators for agricultural marketing information access in selected farming towns in Zimbabwe. Responses were collected from rural small scale farmers in Marondera, farming town in Zimbabwe using structured questionnaire with a 7 point Likert scale. The research study depicted that trust, social influence, perceived risk and relative advantage have positive influence on rural small scale farmers’ smart mobile phone usage acceptance for agricultural marketing information access adoption intention in Zimbabwe. The study has limitations which may affect the generalisability of the results since they can only be applied to the studied areas, all in Mashonaland East province of Zimbabwe. Agricultural marketers are encouraged to focus more attentively on smart mobile phone acceptance determinants such as social influence, perceived risk and trust when devising mobile agricultural marketing strategies especially during uncertain times. The study adds to theoretical literature development by extending knowledge on the UTAUT2 theoretical framework since there is paucity of research that have directly applied the same model in agricultural marketing and general agribusiness. Practically, the study enhances the need for adoption of contemporary technologies to solve the current challenges facing farmers in the marginalised rural areas, not only in Africa, but also dotted around the world.

An understanding of factors influencing smallholder farmers’ livestock ownership at the household level is vital in formulating pro-poor livestock production policies and technologies. Hence, this study examined factors that influence livestock ownership of smallholder farmers. The data was collected randomly from three purposively selected study areas in the OR Tambo District (King Sabata Dalindyebo, Port St Johns and Ingquza Hill local municipalities) in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa using a cross-sectional survey of 650 households. A multivariate probit model (MPM) was used to estimate correlates of livestock species ownership at the household level. Results indicated that education, age, household income, marital status, religion, rainfall, gender, household size and employment status influence livestock species ownership at the household level. Therefore, efforts to promote livestock ownership and production should be guided by these significant explanatory variables in the study area. Interdependence among species was also noted (cattle and sheep; goats and pigs; sheep and pigs; cattle and goats; goats and sheep), suggesting complementarity among the different types of livestock species. This complementarity among the species can possibly be explained by functional diversity generic with multi-species livestock farming which is worth supporting to enhance biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, rural resource use efficiency and socio-economic sustainability at the household level.

Literature suggests that there are high levels of commercialisation by even the poorest and smallest landholders within the horticulture subsector in most rural Africa. Thus, the notion of poor commercialisation among smallholder farmers is now being challenged. Against this background,this paper estimated factors that influence commercialisation by smallholder cabbage farmers in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The study used a cross-sectional survey of120 smallholder cabbage farmers obtained through a multistage sampling procedure. A Cragg double-hurdle model was applied to analyse the factors that influence the commercialisation decision and intensity of commercialisation. In the first stage, the result of the probit regression model revealed that gender, age, access to informal credit and area planted were significant factors towards influencing smallholder cabbage farmers’ commercialisation decisions. In the second stage, the results of the truncated regression model revealed that family size and area planted were the key factors determining the intensity of commercialisation. Hence, the attempts to improve smallholder farmers’ cabbage commercialisation should be guided by these significant explanatory variables in the study area, given the low commercialisation index revealed.

The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research (TD) is a journal dedicated to promoting the concept of transdisciplinary research. It is aimed at creating knowledge with the collaboration of the formal sectors of the natural and human sciences as base. Over and above this, the intention is to focus on levels of knowledge that are to be found at grassroots level. It is important to explore this knowledge because it becomes the groundwork for further knowledge, which is often not confined to a fixed formal discipline or area of knowledge. The editorial team of the journal welcomes contributions of a theoretical nature, as well as material based on empirical research. Preference is given to southern Africa as a region of focus. However, should submitted articles show the potential for making a contribution towards our understanding of science beyond the confines of single disciplines, it would enjoy favourable consideration.

Risk plays a significant role in input use decisions and production of output in agricultural production. Understanding farmer risk attitudes and their responses to risk is significant in designing effective intervention programmes. Few studies have tried to identify how the introduction of a livestock programme has tended to influence farmer risk profile. The objective of the study was to highlight the determinants of risk behaviour in participants of a livestock development programme. The study was carried out in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Province of South Africa, utilising a purposive sample of 164 respondents who are part of the Kaonafatso Yadikgomo (KYD) Scheme. The cross-sectional survey collected data pertaining to the risk attitudes of the livestock farmers from an attitudinal scale as well as socio-economic and farm biophysical characteristics. Descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression were used to analyse the data. The results show that the livestock farmers were risk loving, with the risk attitude being influenced by the age of household head, monthly household income and experience in rearing cattle at the ????< 0.1 level. Furthermore, the source of income, herd size, reason for slaughtering cattle distance to the nearest water source and access to a dip tank had significant influence of attitude towards risk at the ????< 0.05 level. The study concludes that being part of a livestock development programme tends inflto uence the risk attitudes of the participants as the determinants were against a priori expectations.