Employing a multilevel model, this paper demonstrates the importance of contextual effects, over and above the compositional effects, in shaping the geographical pattern of agricultural diversification towards high value crops. The results reveal that, besides household-level differences, the contextual effects of higher geographical levels, especially states and villages, explain significant variation in land-use under high value crops, but these do not apply to all types of crops and farm classes in a similar manner.

Drought is an important downside risk in Indian agriculture; and the spatial differences in its intensity and probability of occurrence are considerable. To develop strategies to manage the risk of drought, and to coordinate and implement these strategies, it is essential to understand the variation in drought risk across geographical or administrative levels. This paper, using a multilevel modeling approach, decomposes the variation in drought risk across states, regions, districts, villages and households, and finds it disproportionately distributed.

Despite the great strides by the government of Tanzania in bolstering access to electricity in rural areas under its Rural Energy Agency (REA), rural connection rates have remained low. A substantial fraction of households residing “under the grid” remains unconnected despite the considerable state subsidy of this program. This study investigates the reasons for low uptake of seemingly highly subsidized, productive and modern energy. Using both bivariate and multivariate logit, we find that the distance between the household and the nearest electric pole matters.

To ensure that benefits from capture fisheries accrue to nationals, fisheries regulations and acts prioritize local access and harvest rights in near and distant waters within a nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The lack of local capital to finance industrial fishing, such as trawling, has compelled developing coastal countries’ fishermen to access foreign investment through contractual agreement such as hire-purchases.

Cash transfers have received increased scholarly and policy attention, as a means of reducing poverty in theglobal South. While cash transfers are primarily intended to prevent impoverishment and deprivation, severalstudies suggest they can have 'productive' impacts, contributing to building sustainable livelihoods. However,pilot projects of unconditional cash transfers have often been too brief or too recent to determine how small, but regular, transfers can improve rural livelihoods over time.

Involvement of youth in horticulture agribusiness has become a vital approach to create employment opportunities among the youth in Tanzania.

This paper contributes to the growing literature on energy poverty in developing countries. We use a dynamic probit estimator on three rounds of panel data from urban Ethiopia to estimate a model of the probability of being energy poor and to investigate the persistence of energy poverty. We also study the impact of energy price in!ation,which Ethiopia experienced during 2007–2009, on energy use and energy poverty.We"nd strong evidence of state dependence in energy poverty. A household that is energy poor in one round is up to 16% more likely to be energy poor in the subsequent round.

The adoption of Soil Conservation Technologies (SCTs) in Tanzania is very low compared to other countries in Africa with related situation. Interventions were taken by introducing soil conservation practices. However, the adoption of these practices is far below the expectation. The objective of this study was to examine the determinants of SCTs among maize small-scale farmers in Tanzania. Secondary data from the National Panel Survey was used in this study. A binary probit regression model was employed to analyse the data.

Key findings