1,720,957 research outputs found
Agriculture and Rural Development in Cameroon: Empowerment of rural communities followed by a case analysis in the Mbere division – Cameroon:A field study conducted by Napi Wouapi, March-April 2006
No full textUntil the economic recession in the mid 1980s, Cameroon had relatively long sustained period of economic growth and agriculture was one of the main contributor of this growth due to the states subsidies to the farmers in terms of agriculture inputs, equipments, transfer of technology and finances. However, due to the fall in prices of raw materials in the world market, Cameroon went into economic crisis and the government withdrew its subsidies to the farmers and other priority sectors vital to the economy. With this development, farmers and especially the smallholders among them, who constitute of about 70% of the total population, were greatly affected. When the state has failed to meet society’s increasingly complex needs, organizations of civic society and voluntary unions then moved towards initiatives that were earlier in the hands of the state. However, some recent scientific journals and reviews pointed out the general weakness of developmental aid mechanism as a whole in systematically identifying and documenting their strong effect or impression in the struggle against poverty, injustice and marginalisation of vulnerable groups. The question then becomes: What can be the effective way to empower the farmers (in our case the smallholder farmers, the so-called poorest among the poor in the rural zones), to get them better organised so that they will be able to experience a sustainable livelihoods? The method used here consisted into two steps. First, to be able to build up the theory, we have been reviewing documents and relevant literatures concerning the concept of empowerment. The next step has consisted to conduct interview -through a case study related to a locality in Cameroon- with the target groups themselves and other key informants. The fieldwork was then based on participant observation by being immersed in the natural settings of the smallholder farmers in the Mbere division in Cameroon. Lastly, the most important conclusions we have drawn is that smallholder farmers in the Mbere actually operate in an environment which is not conducive. The lack of public goods, the limited access to information, equipment and adequate trainings are amongst other exogenous factors, their main barriers towards empowerment. To these external factors may be added their weakness and even reticence to constitute strong initiative groups made up of members who actually share the same interests, pursue a common goal and who are all participants in the decision making process.Until the economic recession in the mid 1980s, Cameroon had relatively long sustained period of economic growth and agriculture was one of the main contributor of this growth due to the states subsidies to the farmers in terms of agriculture inputs, equipments, transfer of technology and finances. However, due to the fall in prices of raw materials in the world market, Cameroon went into economic crisis and the government withdrew its subsidies to the farmers and other priority sectors vital to the economy. With this development, farmers and especially the smallholders among them, who constitute of about 70% of the total population, were greatly affected. When the state has failed to meet society’s increasingly complex needs, organizations of civic society and voluntary unions then moved towards initiatives that were earlier in the hands of the state. However, some recent scientific journals and reviews pointed out the general weakness of developmental aid mechanism as a whole in systematically identifying and documenting their strong effect or impression in the struggle against poverty, injustice and marginalisation of vulnerable groups. The question then becomes: What can be the effective way to empower the farmers (in our case the smallholder farmers, the so-called poorest among the poor in the rural zones), to get them better organised so that they will be able to experience a sustainable livelihoods? The method used here consisted into two steps. First, to be able to build up the theory, we have been reviewing documents and relevant literatures concerning the concept of empowerment. The next step has consisted to conduct interview -through a case study related to a locality in Cameroon- with the target groups themselves and other key informants. The fieldwork was then based on participant observation by being immersed in the natural settings of the smallholder farmers in the Mbere division in Cameroon. Lastly, the most important conclusions we have drawn is that smallholder farmers in the Mbere actually operate in an environment which is not conducive. The lack of public goods, the limited access to information, equipment and adequate trainings are amongst other exogenous factors, their main barriers towards empowerment. To these external factors may be added their weakness and even reticence to constitute strong initiative groups made up of members who actually share the same interests, pursue a common goal and who are all participants in the decision making process
Enhancing Resilience of Livelihoods and Production Systems to Climate Variability and Other Related Risks in Africa
No full textEnhancing Resilience of Livelihoods and Production Systems to Climate Variability and Other Related Risks in Africa
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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