The use of small-scale off-grid renewable energy for rural electrification is now seen as one sustainable energy solution. The expectations from such small-scale investment include meeting basic household energy needs and thereby improving some aspects of household welfare. However, these stated benefits remain largely hypothetical because there are data and methodological challenges in existing literature attempting to isolate such impacts. This paper uses field data from micro hydro schemes in Kenya and a propensity score matching technique to demonstrate such an impact.

This article contributes to a growing body of empirical literature relating credit constraints and incomplete insurance to investment decisions. We use panel data from rural Ethiopia to investigate whether participation in a safety net program enhances fertilizer adoption. Using a difference-in-differences estimator and inverse propensity score weighting, we find that participation in Ethiopia's food-for-work (FFW) program increased fertilizer adoption in the short run, but not in the long run.

The cost of providing electricity to the unconnected 1.1 billion people in developing countries is significant. High hopes are pinned on market-based dissemination of off-grid technologies to complement the expensive extension of public grid infrastructure. In this paper, we elicit the revealed willingness-to-pay for different off-grid solar technologies in a field experiment in rural Rwanda. Our findings show that households are willing to dedicate substantial parts of their budget to electricity, but not enough to reach cost-covering prices.

Participation of local communities in management and utilization of forest resources through collective action has become widely accepted as a possible solution to failure of centralized, top-down approaches to forest conservation. Developing countries have thus resorted to devolution of forest management through initiatives such as Participatory Forest Management (PFM) and Joint Forest Management (JFM). In Kenya, under such initiatives, communities have been able to self-organize into community forest associations (CFAs).

The paper examines the impact of the Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program on household dietary diversity and child nutrition using both waves of the Ethiopian Socio-economic Survey.
Key messages
• The Productive Safety Net Program is not found to have any impact on dietary diversity or child nutrition, however, it does help reduce household food insecurity.
• A nutrition-sensitive social protection program should be implemented.
• To improve child nutrition, social benefits can be made conditional on parents’ participation in nutrition education programs.

This article estimates the visitation demand function for Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (KTP) in
order to determine the scope for raising fees charged to international tourists in order to fund
revenue-sharing schemes for local communities. International and Southern African Development
Community tourists account for approximately 25% and 2% of the total number of visitors to
South African national parks, with domestic visitors making up the remaining portion. Although

Predation of livestock in South Africa has been estimated to cost in excess of ZAR1 billion in losses per
year and has complex social, economic and ecological drivers and consequences. In this context, livestock
can be broadly defined as domesticated animals and wildlife (the former excluding poultry and the latter
including ostrich, Struthio camelus) managed for commercial purposes or human benefit in free-ranging (or
semi-free ranging) circumstances that render them vulnerable to predation. This conflict between livestock

This study considers the effect of household cigarette expenditure on food poverty indicators in Tanzania. We first compare expenditure patterns as well as the household size of non-smokers and smokers. We find that the majority of non-smokers and smokers have low incomes, and that the mean total per capita expenditure (proxy for income) of non-smokers is slightly higher than those of smokers.