Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Vincent R. Amanor-Boadu / Zambia’s government and its development partners continue to be challenged with how to adequately address the seeming gender inequity in Zambia’s agricultural sector. Women in Zambia’s agricultural sector face challenges in accessing resources and opportunities that could enhance their welfare. In addition, cited inequitable distribution of power in decision-making have been assumed to hamper women’s ability to enhance their own economic wellbeing. Therefore, understanding the factors that influence women’s decision-making in agriculture and how these factors contribute to their wellbeing can provide insights into how to develop programs that help improve their economic wellbeing. This thesis assessed the decision-making and production activities by women in Zambia’s agriculture using the groundnuts subsector as a case study. It used data from the nationally representative Rural Agricultural Livelihood Survey 2015 (RALS15), drawing a sample of rural groundnut farmers and employed a statistical and econometric analysis to explore the relationships of specific factors on women in the groundnut subsector. The following are the key findings: i. Women make up 38% of the producers in Zambia’s groundnuts subsector but accounted for 49% of the total number of people controlling groundnut selling decisions. Women accounted for 48% of the total people controlling how income from groundnut sales are used. These distributions would challenge the prevailing perception that women have a decreasing control over decision-making as one moves from production to utilization of the income from production, at least in the case of the groundnut subsector in Zambia’s agricultural sector. ii. The factors influencing women’s control over production include the gender of the household head, region, affiliation to women’s groups, distance between the homestead and extension service access point, distance between the homestead and the field plot, the woman’s education and household’s production assets. For example, a percentage increase in the distance to field plot reduced the women’s control by one-seventh of a percent. Similarly, the more educated the woman is, the less their control over groundnut production is. iii. Furthermore, groundnut commercialization did not seem to influence female control over production. The foregoing challenges some of the conclusions from previous research regarding women’s control over production decisions. It is possible that the position of groundnuts in Zambian agriculture could be an explanatory factor the results. However, it was not tested. Therefore, it is suggested that future studies explore the relationship between the crop and the empowerment women experience from its production.

South Africa is an exporter of groundnuts (Arachis Hypogaea). The domestic market reaps the spinoff advantage that export quality reaches store shelves, but unfortunately at a price that is directly linked to the price traders achieve on the export market. The local edible groundnut demand is relatively stable, but some processors saw a dramatic decline in the demand for groundnuts within the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry. Businesses in the groundnut industry have a specific objective to create a turnaround strategy for groundnut production in South Africa, in an attempt to increase exports of locally produced groundnuts. This directly results that importance of the domestic market, compared to the export market is secondary. Since retail buyers are the “gatekeepers of consumer choice”, it is important to understand buying behaviour and brand loyalty, as well as the factors that influence buyers’ decisions in a business to business context. Limited literature exists for the domestic South African that highlights or indicates specific buyer preferences towards branded edible groundnuts. Furthermore, a general conceptual model to measure or to provide insight on retailer buyer preferences and buying behaviour lack, or are generally unrelated. An adapted model was used to analyse retail buyer behaviour, perceptions, and brand loyalty influences and data was collected by means of a self administrered questionnaire. Descriptive statistics as well as factor analysis were utilised to identify which factors influence retail buyers’ purchase behaviour and loyalty towards an edible groundnut brand. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy, Bartlett’s test of sphericity and Cronbach Alpha was used to determine whether the collected data was appropriate for factor analysis. Through the factor analysis the following ten factors were identified as having a significant influence on retailers’ buying behaviour as well as brand loyalty towards branded edible groundnuts: * Long-term relationship with a preferred brand. * Brand Loyalty. * Brand trust. * Brand performance. * Satisfaction. * Intentional repurchase. * Brand affect. * Company reputation. * Involvement. * Value for money. More research on this topic is required to develop a single conceptual model in order to measure and analyse retail buyer behaviour and preference for a specific brand on a larger scale within the FMCG industry. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

South Africa is an exporter of groundnuts (Arachis Hypogaea). The domestic market reaps the spinoff advantage that export quality reaches store shelves, but unfortunately at a price that is directly linked to the price traders achieve on the export market. The local edible groundnut demand is relatively stable, but some processors saw a dramatic decline in the demand for groundnuts within the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry. Businesses in the groundnut industry have a specific objective to create a turnaround strategy for groundnut production in South Africa, in an attempt to increase exports of locally produced groundnuts. This directly results that importance of the domestic market, compared to the export market is secondary. Since retail buyers are the “gatekeepers of consumer choice”, it is important to understand buying behaviour and brand loyalty, as well as the factors that influence buyers’ decisions in a business to business context. Limited literature exists for the domestic South African that highlights or indicates specific buyer preferences towards branded edible groundnuts. Furthermore, a general conceptual model to measure or to provide insight on retailer buyer preferences and buying behaviour lack, or are generally unrelated. An adapted model was used to analyse retail buyer behaviour, perceptions, and brand loyalty influences and data was collected by means of a self administrered questionnaire. Descriptive statistics as well as factor analysis were utilised to identify which factors influence retail buyers’ purchase behaviour and loyalty towards an edible groundnut brand. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy, Bartlett’s test of sphericity and Cronbach Alpha was used to determine whether the collected data was appropriate for factor analysis. Through the factor analysis the following ten factors were identified as having a significant influence on retailers’ buying behaviour as well as brand loyalty towards branded edible groundnuts: * Long-term relationship with a preferred brand. * Brand Loyalty. * Brand trust. * Brand performance. * Satisfaction. * Intentional repurchase. * Brand affect. * Company reputation. * Involvement. * Value for money. More research on this topic is required to develop a single conceptual model in order to measure and analyse retail buyer behaviour and preference for a specific brand on a larger scale within the FMCG industry. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

In international trade involving agricultural products, attempts to safeguard the health of humans, animals, and plants, have led to the imposition of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards. Due to the fact that groundnuts are susceptible to aflatoxin contamination, stringent aflatoxin standards have been imposed on groundnut trade by many developed countries. For Senegal and other groundnut exporters in the developing world, these aflatoxin standards pose a major challenge. As a result, in Senegal's confectionery groundnut sector, CIRAD (a French scientific organization) has commenced research aimed at developing an aflatoxin-reducing program. This study evaluates the potential economic impact of CIRAD's aflatoxin-reducing program. The hypotheses underlying the study are as follows: (i) The adoption of CIRAD's aflatoxin-reducing program would enhance the welfare of Senegal's confectionery groundnut farmers (ii) An overall welfare net-gain would be derived by Senegal from the adoption of the program. The analysis employs an economic surplus model that incorporates trade, as well as, domestic production and consumption. Various scenarios of program-effectiveness are examined. The results support the hypotheses of the study; besides enhancing farmers' welfare, the adoption of the aflatoxin-reducing program is expected to yield an overall net-gain ranging between US$0.56 million and US$4.25 million. The overall net-gain is, however, very small. / Master of Science

The Government of Senegal is attempting to liberalize the groundnut market. In the past, this market was highly regulated with government-set producer prices, groundnut oil processing mills owned by parastatals, and requirements that all groundnuts be sold to these quasi-governmental organizations. In recent years, these rules are being relaxed, and farmers are allowed to sell groundnuts on the open market. However, farmers continue to sell most of their groundnuts, as before, to the mills. This study attempts to shed light on the effects of this market liberalization. First, an attempt is made to provide estimates of the farmers' short-run output supply and input demand responses to price changes. A quadratic profit function model is estimated using data collected for the current study and a similar dataset collected by Akobundu [1997]. Second, a quadratic programming model is used to examine the effects of eliminating pan-territorial prices. Results indicate that the elimination of the pan-territorial price system will have an overall benefit to Senegalese society. However, as expected, groundnut producers in areas remote from the groundnut oil processing mills would face lower prices. The effects on producers and consumers in the major producing regions, however, were found to be minimal. Finally, the dissertation provides an extensive description of the economic activities of small-scale farm households in Senegal's Groundnut Basin. Differences between males and females and between household heads and other males in the household are also examined. Although females are not as involved in groundnut production, they do not seem to face discrimination in either the official or the open market. The description of the situation facing small-scale farmers provided in this dissertation is not encouraging. The quantity and timing of the rains in the Groundnut Basin add an unwelcome uncertainty to farming. Increases in population are adding pressure to the environment and are placing heavy demands on wood and grazing lands. Only eight percent of the farmers had groundnut seed multiplication ratios less than one, and sixty-seven percent had ratios less than five. The dissertation also indicates that farmers are not producing enough to feed their families. Fewer than twelve percent of the households produce a caloric surplus. Sixty percent produced less than fifty percent of their caloric needs. The study indicates that farmers are not earning enough from agricultural production to take care of normal expenses throughout the year. Thus, when combined with uncertain rains and a worsening environment, the farmers have little margin of safety. Therefore, any government policies affecting groundnut production in particular or agricultural production in general should take into account the situation already facing the farmers. / Ph. D.

Malaria, caused by the parasite Plasmodium, continues to exact high global morbidity and mortality rate next only to tuberculosis. It causes 300-500 million clinical infections out of which more than a million people succumb to death annually. Worst affected are the children below 5 years of age in sub-Saharan Africa. Plasmodium is a protozoan parasite classified under the phylum Apicomplexa that also includes parasites such as Toxoplasma, Lankestrella, Eimeria and Cryptosporidium. Of the four species of Plasmodium affecting man viz., P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale and P. malariae, Plasmodium falciparum is the deadliest as it causes cerebral malaria. The situation has worsened recently with the emergence of drug resistance in the parasite. Therefore, deciphering new pathways in the parasite for developing lead antimalarial compounds is the need of the hour. The discovery of the type II fatty acid biosynthesis pathway in Plasmodium falciparum has opened up new avenues for the design of new antimalarials as this pathway is different from the one in human hosts. Although many biochemical pathways such as the purine, pyrimidine and carbohydrate metabolic pathways, and the phospholipid, folate and heme biosynthetic pathways operate in the malaria parasite and are being investigated for their amenability as antimalarial therapeutic targets, no antimalarial of commercial use based on the direct intervention of these biochemical pathways has emerged so far. This is due to the fact that the structure and function of the targets of these drugs overlaps with that of the human host. A description of the parasite, its metabolic pathways, efforts to use these pathways for antimalarial drug discovery, inhibitors targeting these pathways, introduction to fatty acid biosynthesis pathway, discovery of type II fatty acid biosynthesis pathway in Plasmodium falciparum and prospects of developing lead compounds towards antimalarial drug discovery is given in Chapter 1 of the thesis. In the exploration of newly discovered type II fatty acid biosynthesis pathway of P. falciparum as a drug target for antimalarial drug discovery, one of the enzymes; β-hydroxyacyl- acyl carrier protein dehydratase (PfFabZ) was cloned and being characterized in the lab. The atomic structure of PfFabZ was not known till that point of time. Chapter 2 describes the homology modeled structure of PfFabZ and docking of the discovered inhibitors with this structure to provide a rationale for their inhibitory activity. Despite low sequence identity of ~ 21% with the closest available atomic structure then, E. coli FabA, a good model of PfFabZ could be built. A comparison of the modeled structure with recently determined crystal structure of PfFabZ is provided and design of new potential inhibitors is described. This study provides insights to further improve the inhibition of this enzyme. Enoyl acyl carrier protein reductase (ENR) is the most important enzyme in the type II fatty acid biosynthesis pathway. It has been proved as an important target for antibacterial as well as antimalarial drug discovery. The most effective drug against tuberculosis – Isoniazid targets this enzyme in M. tuberculosis. The well known antibacterial compound – Triclosan, a diphenyl ether, also targets this enzyme in P. falciparum. I designed a number of novel diphenyl ether compounds. Some of these compounds could be synthesized in the laboratory. Chapter 3 describes the design, docking studies and inhibitory activity of these novel diphenyl ether compounds against PfENR and E. coli ENR. Some of these compounds inhibit PfENR in nanomolar concentrations and EcENR in low micromolar concentrations, and many of them inhibit the growth of parasites in culture also. The structure activity relationship of these compounds is discussed that provides important insights into the activity of this class of compounds which is a step towards developing this class of compounds into an antimalarial and antibacterial candidate drugs. Components of the green tea extract and polyphenols are well known for their medicinal properties since ages. Recently they have been shown to inhibit components of the bacterial fatty acid biosynthesis pathway. Some selected tea catechins and polyphenols were tested in the laboratory for their inhibitory activity against PfENR. I conducted docking studies to find their probable binding sites in PfENR. On kinetic analysis of their inhibition, these compounds were found to be competitive with respect to the cofactor NADH. This has an implication that they could potentiate inhibition of PfENR by Triclosan in a fashion similar to that of NADH. As a model case, one of the tea catechins; EGCG ((-) Epigalocatechin gallate) was tested for this property. Indeed, in the presence of EGCG, the inhibition of PfENR improved from nanomolar to picomolar concentration of Triclosan.conducted molecular modeling studies and propose a model for the formation of a ternary complex consisting of EGCG, Triclosan and PfENR. Docking studies of these inhibitors and a model for the ternary complex is described in Chapter 4. Docking simulations show that these compounds indeed occupy NADH binding site. This study provides insights for further improvements in the usage of diphenyl ethers in conjugation or combination with tea catechins as possible antimalarial therapeutics. In search for new lead compounds against deadly diseases, in silico virtual screening and high throughput screening strategies are being adopted worldwide. While virtual screening needs a large amount of computation time and hardware, high throughput screening proves to be quite expensive. I adopted an intermediate approach, a combination of both these strategies and discovered compounds with a 2-thioxothiazolidin-4-one core moiety, commonly known as rhodanines as a novel class of inhibitors of PfENR with antimalarial properties. Chapter 5 describes the discovery of this class of compounds as inhibitors of PfENR. A small but diverse set of 382 compounds from a library of ~2,00,000 compounds was chosen for high throughput screening. The best compound gave an IC50 of 6.0 µM with many more in the higher micromolar range. The compound library was searched again for the compounds similar in structure with this best compound, virtual screening was conducted and 32 new compounds with better binding energies compared to the first lead and reasonable binding modes were tested. As a result, a new compound with an IC50 of 240 nM was discovered. Many more compounds gave IC50 values in 3-15 µM range. The best inhibitor was tested in red blood cell cultures of Plasmodium, it was found to inhibit the growth of the malaria parasite at an IC50 value of 0.75 µM. This study provides a new scaffold and lead compounds for further exploration towards antimalarial drug discovery. The summary of the results and conclusions of studies described in various chapters is given in Chapter 6. This chapter concludes the work described in the thesis. Cloning, over-expression and purification of PanD from M. tuberculosis, FabA and FabZ from E. coli are described in the Appendix.

Les femmes, élément central de la vie économique et sociale, jouent un rôle important dans la société sénégalaise. Dans cette thèse nous avons voulu mettre en valeur le dynamisme et l'héroïsme quotidien des femmes sénégalaises, de la région de Diourbel en particulier. Ce dynamisme est étudié à travers leurs activités quotidiennes, la recherche d’autonomie économique, et leurs associations. Diourbel était le centre du bassin arachidier dont les contours se sont modifiés avec le développement de l’arachide et les mutations du milieu. Ces dernières ne manquent pas de conséquences sur la vie des populations, des femmes en particulier qui doivent trouver des moyens pour s'adapter et faire face au départ des hommes et à l'accroissement des charges familiales. En partant des difficultés multidimensionnelles du vieux bassin arachidier, étudiées à travers la mauvaise articulation des politiques agricoles coloniales et nationales, qui ont participé à la crise agricole qui a été aggravée par la combinaison de facteurs anthropiques et physiques, nous avons rappelé le rôle actif des femmes dans la sphère familiale, d’abord et rendu visibles les activités collectives ou individuelles qu’elles ont déployées. Ensuite, les associations féminines se caractérisent par leur diversité dans leurs formes, leurs objectifs, leurs moyens et leur tissu relationnel. Devant les mutations observées, elles sont devenues incontournables et sont perçues comme des réponses féminines. Devant tous ces changements, les femmes du Baol ont leur mot à dire et leur force à apporter pour que l'édifice familial et social reste debout. Face aux efforts déployés par les femmes, des perspectives s'ouvrent. / Women play an important role in Senegalese society occupying a central position in the economic and social life of the nation. In this thesis we will highlight the dynamism and the heroic levels of energy that Senegalese women invest in their daily tasks. Our observations will focus on the region of Diourbel. Their dynamism will be assessed throughout their daily activities, including their efforts to reach an economic self-sufficiency and their work within organizations. Diourbel used to be the center of the groundnut (peanut) basin. The borders of this region changed with shifts in the techniques of peanut farming and modifications in the environment. The latter has had effects on the living conditions of the inhabitants, particularly on women who had to find ways to adapt to such challenges as men migrating and increases in the cost of running a household. We highlight the active role women play within the family, demonstrating their collective and individual activities. These details are presented within the context of such multidimensional issues facing the old groundnut basin, as the incoherence of the colonial and national agricultural policies which have been aggravated by the combination of anthropogenic and physical factors. In addition the women´s associations are characterized by their variety, objectives, methods and internal relationships. The analysis will show them to be an inevitable feminine response to the observed social, economic and environmental changes. Women of Baol play a substantial role and exert significant influence on the process of maintaining both the social and familiar structures of their communities. As women carry out these efforts, our analysis will reveal how these efforts generate new perspectives.