<p> A fundamental premise of savanna fire ecology is that late dry season fires burn more intensely than early dry season fires. Late dry season fires are considered a major determinant of savanna woody vegetation as they are thought to be more damaging to trees, thus shaping the grass/tree dynamic of savannas. Most savanna fire experiments have adopted the early/late fire convention in their experimental design, based on the pioneering work of Aubr&eacute;ville. Recent research suggests that numerous factors determine fire intensity, and that the widely accepted dichotomous view of fire intensity as driven by early/late seasonal timing greatly oversimplifies a complex phenomenon. In particular, wind direction may be a significant factor in determining fire intensity. </p><p> To determine the factors that influence fire intensity, experimental fires were conducted in the mesic savanna of Mali. Data were collected for fire season, biomass consumed, grass type, scorch height, speed of fire front, fire type, and ambient air conditions for each burn. Multiple regression analyses were used to determine the key factors affecting the fire intensity and severity. Results suggest there are fundamental differences in fire behavior and intensity depending on wind direction relative to the fire. Intensity is not explained by any tested variables in head fires. Intensity of back fires is determined primarily by seasonal timing and, to a lesser extent, grass characteristics. </p><p>

<p>Mobile phone ubiquity in much of the developing world has turned from a question of when rather than if. Some of the poorest and most remote parts of the world are being connected to the global telecommunications network to enable an unprecedented ability to both observe and interact with previously hard-to-reach populations at scale. While many mobile phone owners adopt this technology for basic phone use, the connectedness this expansive ownership enables presents an opportunity to the study and practice of economic development that extend beyond simple peer-to-peer communication. The modern information technology sector and its underlying network infrastructure presented this same opportunity during its own formation. The network was not only valuable for the communication it enabled, but also for the data it produced from those who utilized its services. It also serves as a platform for a deluge of information systems and services that have become a part of our everyday lives and has spurred significant economic growth over the past few decades. This "data revolution" is well underway in the developed economies but is diminishing in its returns, solving increasingly marginal problems. This same transformation is relatively nascent in developing economies where more salient challenges, such as poverty, have yet to be overcome. In this dissertation, we explore a data-driven approach that leverages mobile phone technology to better measure and address poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Our approach starts with the identification of a problem: in this case, poverty. In the first chapter, we apply novel machine learning methods to analyze roughly ten terabytes of data of mobile phone use from Rwanda's largest telecommunications operator to measure poverty at a national scale. We demonstrate that an individual's history of mobile phone usage can be used to infer his or her socioeconomic status. Using this individual model of mobile phone use and socioeconomic status, we can predict poverty and wealth across the entire network and accurately reconstruct national and regional distributions of wealth. Once we obtain this measure of poverty, we can then focus our efforts in regions that are most afflicted. The second chapter helps moves us from diagnosis to a potential cure. Predictions may be helpful to provide some guidance on which regions or populations to target but does not provide much in the way of what to do to have impact. In three years of field research in poor regions of rural Kenya and Rwanda, it was clear that much of the world's poor thrive and survive on subsistence agriculture, but many of these farmers also own mobile phones. Having such a platform enabled the ability to provide potentially welfare-improving information at scale. This chapter presents the research design and analyzes the results of of six randomized controlled trials testing the welfare effects of sending hundreds of text message formulations encouraging agricultural experimentation to over 500,000 farmers in Kenya and Rwanda. Targeting farmers with the right messaging and delivery characteristics was a focus of these trials. We find statistically significant effects on agricultural technology adoption and high rates of return on welfare outcomes by providing information over this medium. This mirrors the digital advertising industry in many developed economies and reminds us that advertisements as information can have very large welfare effects in poor information environments. The third chapter dives deeper into one of the six studies where the research design focused on information spillover in Rwanda where mobile phone ownership was about half of what it was in Kenya. We find that information does indeed spillover onto other farmers within the same group, and those farmers who don't have phones experience the largest percentage increases in adoptions when others within the same group receive a text message. This has large implications on the effectiveness and cost efficiency of information treatments to regions with lower mobile phone adoption. Not only were these interventions effective, they were also very inexpensive and resulted in network effects, further improving agricultural technology adoption, increasing food production and reducing poverty. The chapters in this dissertation develop a theory and methods for understanding how to leverage mobile technologies to measure and reduce poverty. It serves as a guide for both research and practitioners to approach solving problems in development that is grounded in measurement, data, collaboration, impact and scale.

<p> Contrary to the logical conclusion that the more natural resources a country has or controls, the more prosperous, rich and happy will be its people, the evidence from many Sub-Saharan countries is pointing to a different direction with numerous conflicts occurring mostly near mineral deposits or in countries heavily endowed with natural resources of various sorts. This paper seeks to tackle the basic questions of a sub-Saharan African and any person interested in the region; why are there so many conflicts in the region? Why is there absolute poverty despite the presence of enormous natural resources? What are the factors contributing to the present problems facing the region? This paper establishes the relationship between poverty, resource endowments and conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper reviews literature, stressing on the different conditions under which resource abundance can and have been a primary cause of conflicts. It argues that poverty and conflicts have re-enforced each other and that natural resources have played a role. The paper also makes use of conflict, resource and poverty data among other variables to establish the probable cause for the numerous conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper suggests statistically that Political Stability and Absence of violent conflicts can only be altered by the lack of sustainable economic opportunity, failure to control corruption and rising levels of poverty. It is worth noting that the resource variables are not statistically significant. This however, do not dismiss the role of natural resources in the present conflicts of the region because the trend is observable that most conflict ridden countries in the Sub-Saharan African region are resource rich. It rather lays an emphasis on the fact that resource revenues could be used to avert the current situation by provision of basic needs like shelter, potable water, security, accountable institutions, education and the promotion of enterprise that will be a guarantor of sustainable economic opportunities. The paper employs Maslow's Human needs theory for some explanations and also multiple regression, using panel data for statistical analysis. Fixed and random effects estimation techniques are used, and other statistical testing to determine the validity of the different variable coefficients generated. The paper suggests concrete economic and policy recommendations to the problems enumerated that could leapfrog the region out of the current bad situation it has been in for decades.</p>

<p> At a time when human environmental disturbance is challenging livability on the planet&mdash;for humans and nonhumans alike&mdash;it is important to find better methods for engaging with the liveliness of landscapes, the relations with which they hang together, and the various ways they are interrupted. This dissertation explores the practices of tracking and gathering as methods for studying such issues facing Kalahari Desert landscapes in Botswana. These ecologically important landscapes are increasingly encroached upon and fragmented by the growing cattle economy and the proliferation of extractive industries into the desert. These trends have led to dramatic declines in wildlife populations and growing desertification of the already arid region. The Kalahari is home to small communities of people, many of whom are former hunter-gatherers whose rights to land and access to wildlife are increasingly inhibited. The government has banned hunting, largely in response to conservationists&rsquo; concerns about wildlife. In addition, gathering is increasingly regulated, and cattle colonize areas that are significant for wildlife and San communities. In this context, rather than treating tracking and gathering as objects of study, I take these practices seriously as methods for noticing and theorizing more-than-human landscapes, their transformations, and contingent histories to address challenges facing people and their environments in the Kalahari and beyond. </p><p> By focusing on the relational forms of noticing landscapes with San trackers and gatherers, I describe landscapes as always in motion, emergent more-than-human places where assemblages gather, histories are made, and politics enacted. This is in direct contrast to theoretical moves that treat landscapes as background on which histories and politics occur. My dissertation enacts tracking and gathering as a methodology. Beginning with an extension of the concept of tracks and following their movements out to their relations with other landscape actors in each chapter, I emphasize that landscapes are not merely contexts for politics and histories. Rather, landscapes do histories and politics, in spite of efforts to hold these landscapes still as underutilized expanses of resources. </p><p> The dissertation itself unfolds, moving out through the landscape by tracking these emergent relations. I argue that tracking is a relational practice of becoming-familiar-with these multiple entanglements of emergent landscapes. The practice of gathering involves much of the same kinds of attention to landscape movements and their coordinations as with tracking. Here, I employ gathering in its double meaning: the practice of collecting and of coming together. The tracks of gathered truffles then lead to the worlds of grass and termites that, in turn, allow for a reflection on Kalahari rangeland ecology and the political economy of the cattle industry. Finally, the dissertation zooms out to the desert&rsquo;s geomorphology, tracking the movements of geological processes as they gather with the movements of humans and nonhumans to form lively landscape features over the <i>longue duree</i>. Tracking and gathering are methods that allow for an elaboration of these more-than-human landscapes-in-motion, together with their social, political, and economic histories and speculative futures.</p><p>

<p> <b>Background:</b> Almost two-thirds of the total HIV/AIDS infected populations in the world live in Sub-Saharan Africa. HIV/AIDS stigmas are major obstacles to HIV/AIDS interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa. The literature suggests that diverse factors associated with HIV/AIDS stigma should be investigated to effectively reduce HIV/AIDS stigmas. However, little is known about religion as a cultural factor in the construction of HIV/AIDS stigma in Sub-Saharan Africa. NGOs and FBOs have played a significant role in the work of the HIV/AIDS intervention and prevention in the area. However, in spite of the importance of religion and spirituality among the front-line workers at non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and faith-based organizations (FBOs) in Sub-Saharan Africa, religiosity, and spirituality in relation to the construction of HIV/AIDS stigma have not been fully investigated yet. </p><p> <b>Purpose:</b> The aims of this study were to explore how service providers working with HIV/AIDS affected populations understand the meaning of HIV/AIDS stigma in relation to their religious beliefs, and to explore the role of religiosity and spirituality among service providers working in NGOs and FBOs in southern Malawi. </p><p> <b>Method:</b> A qualitative approach using the Internet via online Google forms and emails was used to collect the questionnaires and narrative data from Malawi. Study participants included twenty service providers working in thirteen NGOs or FBOs in southern Malawi. Fourteen participants were Malawians; six were from abroad, including Australia, Canada, Dutch, South Korea, Zimbabwe, and England. All participants are self-identified Christians. The qualitative data was analyzed using ATLAS.ti (version 8.0), and the quantitative data were analyzed by STATA (version 14.2). </p><p> <b>Results:</b> The findings of the study showed that social stigma and social constructionism were theories relevant to exploring HIV/AIDS stigma as a social construct in the Sub-Saharan context. Service providers participating in the study variously understood HIV/AIDS as a punishment of God, a consequence of sin in the fallen world, a result of human behavior, an opportunity to help PLWHA (People Living With HIV/AIDS), and as a medical disease. The participants described religiosity and spirituality as important health assets that support them in working with PLWHA in NGOs and FBOs in Malawi. </p><p> <b>Conclusion:</b> Religion serves as an important cultural influence, with power to both negatively affect the construction of HIV/AIDS stigma in society, and positively reconstruct the meaning of HIV/AIDS. The findings of the study suggest that it is critical to deconstruct and reconstruct the meaning of HIV/AIDS by focusing on religion as the means of grace and love, not of morality. Service providers must be required to carefully examine their own prejudice toward PLWHA, and social work education can equip HIV/AIDS specialists to more effectively deal with HIV/AIDS-related problems at the local, national, and global levels in the field of international social work. </p><p>

<p> Small business enterprises are important to the economic growth of Nigeria because they make up 97% of the economy and contribute 70% of the country&rsquo;s job opportunity. Notwithstanding the importance of small businesses in the Nigerian economy, 80% fail within the first five years. Based on system theory developed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the purpose of this multi-unit qualitative case study was to investigate the strategies owners and managers used to sustain operations longer than first five years. Twelve senior managers of small businesses in Dutse Nigeria participated in an interview. Methodological triangulation of interview questions was used to collect the data. Review of transcribed data and member checking were used to affirm the validity, credibility, and reliability of the study. Ten dominant themes emerged as findings: managers with educational and professional qualifications, skills, and experience; written business and strategic planning; additional financing; commitment of owners; and improved working conditions and good employees manager rapport. Other findings include the use of word of mouth and maintaining a close relationship with top 20% and high spending customers; use of local FM radio stations, social media, and face-to-face contacts marketing; and the use of e-commerce and e-payment platforms. The findings also include the use of support services; and knowledge of seasonality, cutting cost, and financial discipline. Findings might be utilized by small business owners and managers to develop success strategies to sustain operations longer than first five years which might mitigate small business failure. Mitigating small business failure might contribute to the growth of Nigerian economy.</p><p>

<p> Although the association between poor sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and sociodemographic indicators has been explored in many resource-poor settings, limited information exists specific to Liberia. The two studies in this document seek to describe unmet need for SRH services using three critical indicators of SRH services: knowledge of HIV status (sexual health); use of skilled provider for antenatal care and delivery (reproductive health); and use of modern contraception when there is a desire to limit or space reproduction (family planning). Data from Liberia&rsquo;s 2013 Demographic and Health Survey (LDHS) was used to summarize individual-level profiles according to key sociodemographic and sexual health characteristics for sexually active women and men aged 15-49 (N_women=7,787; N_men=3,426). Frequency distributions from log-binomial regressions show the prevalence of unmet need for sexual health services for women is 51.9% and 72.8% for men; 39.7% for reproductive services (women only); and prevalence of unmet need for family planning is 70.7% for women and 76.1% for men. Results show wide disparities in unmet need for sexual health services by wealth and educational attainment for both men and women. Differences in unmet need for reproductive services were disparate based on educational attainment, wealth, and urban/rural residence. Although the unmet need for family planning is high, the disparities among subgroups is not as dramatic as other unmet needs. Results indicate the need to evaluate the gaps between national policy and service utilization with special attention to subgroups with a high-burden of unmet need.</p><p>

<p> This case study explores wellbeing and sustainable development in rural sub-Saharan Africa &ndash; a culturally and ecologically diverse and vibrant region devastated by colonial and postcolonial injustices that have created persistent and pervasive social, economic, and ecological crises. The growth-oriented capitalist economic model that has shaped the operative understanding of wellbeing and perpetuated the invented reality of underdevelopment also guides large-scale sustainable development efforts that persistently fail to significantly improve wellbeing among rural communities. Ecological economics may provide a paradigm for sustainable development that is culturally, ecologically, and economically more appropriate &ndash; and more effective &ndash; for both assessing and improving wellbeing. Twenty-seven participants from two rural, forest-dependent communities in Cameroon&rsquo;s Southwest Province were surveyed to assess perceptions of wellbeing and social-ecological resilience. These communities are heavily invested in a sustainable agriculture initiative that reflects an ecological economics worldview and key dimensions of community resilience. Results indicate that perceptions of wellbeing are influenced by both gender and occupation, and that the sustainable agriculture initiative positively impacts perceptions of wellbeing for farmers more than non-farmers, and female farmers more than male farmers. This suggests that participation in the program may positively influence perceptions of subjective and community wellbeing. Further study in these communities, and across similar communities may shed light on how ecological economics might provide a practical basis for broadening an understanding of wellbeing and for informing the approach, design, and implementation of sustainable development initiatives.</p>

Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.