Roland Azibo Balgah

• Professor at University of Bamenda

Social capital is known to influence livelihoods, but how this operates in conflict situations is relatively under‐researched. Leaning on the social capital theory, we investigate the association between conflict and the dynamics of bonding, bridging and linking social capital in the neglected “Anglophone” conflict between a separatist movement and...

The environmental and economic benefits of certified cocoa production are well documented in the current literature. Yet, adoption rates remain largely suboptimal, at least partially due to insufficiently documented empirical evidence on comparative advantage of certified cocoa schemes over conventional production systems. This study estimates prof...

The role of cooperatives in buffering the effects of imperfect markets on smallholder agriculture especially in developing countries has been widely atoned. However, and in spite of eminent advantages, not all smallholder farmers join cooperatives. We use empirical data from coffee farmers in Northwestern Cameroon to identify key factors driving co...

In the Western highlands of Cameroon where sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas L.) is an inevitable staple crop during the dry season, farmers cherish local which are presently under the risk of extinction due to accumulation of pest and diseases. Guaranteeing sustainable Sweetpotato production in this region therefore requires providing farmers with dise...

Since its introduction about a decade ago, the Actor-Centered-Power (ACP) theoretical approach has been applied to analyze power manifestations and outcomes-particularly in forest resource management. This approach emphasized three power features, namely, coercion, (dis)incentives and dominant information. After a decade of empirical validation, it...

Performance-Based Financing (PBF) has been implemented in many countries to improve healthcare access, quality, and outcomes while ensuring the efficient and equitable allocation of resources within the healthcare system. However, very little effort is visible in assessing its real impacts. This study evaluates the impact of the PBF project on heal...

The aim of this study was to enhance disaster management in the Bamenda City Council and update the Disaster Management Profile of Cameroon by evaluating the likelihood and impact of different disasters in the area. The study found that the most common hazards and disasters in the area were floods, environmental pollution, storms, criminal activiti...

Business‐like thinking among NPOs and scholars has stimulated growing but contested views on what constitutes commercialization and what drives its adoption. Unfortunately, empirical efforts have largely neglected the perspective of nonprofit managers who play pivotal roles in commercialization decisions. To stem this knowledge gap, this study appl...

Cameroon is a net rice importer, and actors’ performance along the rice value chain is yet to be well understood, even though they are presumed to integrate functions along the chain. The aim of the study was to investigate the financial performance of actors in the rice value chain in Ngoketunjia division in Cameroon. A multi-stage sampling techni...

Conflicts and environmental disasters are key drivers of global forced internal and external displacement, with economic, psychosocial and livelihood consequences, which often require humanitarian assistance to victims. The effects of humanitarian assistance on forcefully displaced persons needs to be continuously remain documented to inform humani...

The objective of this study is to analyse the effect of agricultural training on livelihood outcomes of farmers in Mezam Division in the North West region of Cameroon. The data was elicited via a structured questionnaire administered on a sample of 381 farmers. Using cluster sampling approach, proximity villages were grouped into three clusters of...

Across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the state intervenes in different sectors in a bid to improve on the livelihoods of the population. The outcome of these state interventions on livelihoods is varying. Although the trend of state interventions across different sectors of economic and social life is rising in SSA, limited empirical research has been...

NGOs are major development partners who play an active role promoting development globally and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in particular. This contribution draws on 51 empirical research articles to examine the impacts of NGO intervention on livelihoods across SSA. The articles were identified through literature search on google scholar. Results indic...

Government (GO) and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) undertake agricultural development projects especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where agriculture-dependent livelihoods are predominant. Agricultural development has been accompanied by a theoretical debate vis-à-vis who is best placed to steer the process. Unfortunately, empirical evidence to...

In spite of visible efforts, gender disparity still persists in development projects worldwide, with negative impacts on women’s participation, project outcomes, and sustainability. The growing literature on determinants of gender disparity in development projects is driven mainly by an individual projects agenda that does not generate knowledge of...

Surging flood frequency has stimulated a growing research interest on the subject especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. The growth in flood research in Cameroon in the last three decades has been characterized by independent, isolated cases, limiting the understanding of possible correlations across geographical space and time. We analyze flood managem...

Cameroon is characterised by five agroecological zones which are the Sudano-Sahelian, Guinea High Savannah, Western Highlands, Monomodal Rainforest and Bimodal Rainforest. These agroecological zones experience different rates of rainfall intensity and are therefore prone to varied degrees of flood risks. This paper uses an in-depth and critical rev...

Farmers and herders are among the most adversely impacted by climate change as they depend on natural resources that are highly vulnerable to climate change. As climate change induced extreme weather events become the norm, the scarcity of these resources makes competition for their use among farmers and herders stiff which creates a fertile ground...

Cameroon’s National Development Strategy (NDS30) is a strategic planning document acting as a road map for the attainment of her economic, social and environmental goals by the year 2030. To achieve the ambitious goals set out in this strategic planning document, there is absolute need to factor in best practices which can enhance in a sustainable...

The energy crisis associated with energy poverty in Africa continues to keep millions of men, women and children in absolute poverty due to inadequate access to clean energy. Despite its widely recognised importance for sustainable development, theoretical and policy discourses have largely remained dormant with respect to the role that the paradox...

Infrastructure development's contribution to community wellbeing in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is largely unknown. Existing scholarship over-represents externally funded projects, sidelining micro-level initiatives. Empirical studies hardly apply Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approaches that estimate wellbeing as a composite function of infrastr...

While agriculture is the life-wire for many African economies, the sector has been exposed to multiple shocks, leading to food insecurity concerns. COVID-19′s seemingly perennial nature suggests the need for African agrarian systems to explore pathways to achieve food security in the midst of pandemics. However, existing knowledge on the effects of...

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This study focuses on COVID-19 and food security risk, capturing perceptions, drivers and household response measures. Using a mixed research design, the researchers investigated food security risk in Nkambe Cameroon during peak periods of COVID-19. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire distributed to 400 respondents and key inform...

Inadequate access to credit remains a major constraint to agricultural production in Africa. However, not all farmers face this difficulty. This article assesses the determinants of agricultural credit access among rice farmers who are members of the Ngoketunjia Cooperative Credit Union in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. A structured pretested qu...

Surging extreme events, particularly floods, have stimulated growing research on their epidemiology, management, and effects on livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), especially for agriculture-dependent households. Unfortunately, the topical literature is still characterized by independent, isolated cases, with limited relevance to understanding...

This paper examines the determinants of adoption of certified cocoa production with a view to find means increase the pace of adoption of certified cocoa production in order to improve on the livelihood of cocoa farmers, carried out in Meme division, South West region of Cameroon. The multistage purposive and random sampling technique was used to g...

While knowledge on forest-linked institutional processes is gaining grounds, they require complementary evidence on the role played by actors in such change processes. This is particularly the case in sub-Saharan Africa where natural resource-based institutions are undergoing a seemingly endless evolutionary process. This paper provides such eviden...

While knowledge on forest-linked institutional processes is gaining grounds, they require complementary evidence on the role played by actors in such change processes. This is particularly the case in sub-Saharan Africa where natural resource-based institutions are undergoing a seemingly endless evolutionary process. This paper provides such eviden...

In spite of growing scholarship on environmentally induced non-migration research in Africa, comprehensive empirical evidence of non-migration drivers is extremely difficult to find. We review 77 rigorously selected empirical articles on the drivers of environmental non-migration. A variety of relevant keywords was applied to search, identify, and...

The relevance of acceptable livelihoods for the socioeconomic wellbeing and human survival cannot be overemphasized especially within a socio-political context. This study attempts to understand the livelihood changes that have taken place between 2015 and 2020 for displaced and resident households within the communities in Manyu from a social capi...

Agro-based climate adaptation has gained traction in scholarly and policy circles, albeit with limited comprehensive empirical evidence on the pathways of crop sector-specific adaptation approaches in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). To stem this knowledge gap, this study examines the evolution of farm-based climate adaptation practices in the vegetable s...

The rapid transformation of forest landscapes in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been a key trigger to social conflicts among forest management actors. This development has a governance undertone with institutions playing a central role in shaping the dynamics. This Special Issue synthesizes nine published articles which address questions on the perce...

It is common knowledge that adopting information and communication technologies -ICTs can significantly enhance agricultural performance. However, their adoption and usage in African agriculture remains disappointing. This study assesses ICTs adoption rates and adoption determinants among Cameroonian farmers. A structured questionnaire was used to...

The importance of adopting agricultural innovations for farm productivity is well known. However, the rate of adoption is generally sub-optimal. This study investigates the determinants for adopting agricultural innovations by rice farmers in the North West Region of Cameroon. A multi-stage sampling technique was employed to identify and collect da...

Article history: Home gardens are subsistent agricultural production systems consisting of diverse crop plants which are easily accessible and adjacent to homesteads. They sustainably contribute to livelihoods in developing countries. Regarding the modernization in tropical Africa, there are changes in plant composition of urbanizing areas like Tub...

Extreme events, such as those caused by climate change, economic or geopolitical shocks, and pest or disease epidemics, threaten global food security. The complexity of causation, as well as the myriad ways that an event, or a sequence of events, creates cascading and systemic impacts, poses significant challenges to food systems research and polic...

The outcomes of adopting technological innovations remain debatable, in spite of its importance. With multiple innovations available in the sector, not all adopters’ benefit at same the magnitude. The majority of agricultural technology adoption studies analyze adoption effects on a single actor, often neglecting other actors on the value chain; li...

Purpose: Gender differences in access to and repayment of loans seem to be the reason behind the persistent subsistence and small-scale nature of most agribusinesses in Cameroon. This study examines access to and repayment of agricultural credit in the face of COVID 19 in the West Region of Cameroon building on evidence from selected microfinance i...

One of Africa’s newest struggles for liberation: Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis, which emerged from legal and edu- cation grievances in 2016, rapidly escalated into a secessionist political conflict that is threatening the unity of the country, with potential to degenerate into a complex emergency. In an exploratory, qualitative, analytical, and desc...

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is replete with significant environmental resources including forests, water, land, and energy; although its transition to a bio-resource economy is yet to be actualized. Consequently, there are limited socioeconomic gains from resource valorization. These challenges which stall progress towards the attainment of several in...

That technology adoption enhances food security is a truism. However, the inconsistency of impacts of technology adoption warrants constant context-specific analysis, so that results can better inform policy. This work makes in-depth analysis of the major technologies adopted by farmers in Bui division in the northwest region of Cameron. Primary da...

Although risk perception of natural hazards has been identified as an important determinant for sound policy design, there is limited empirical research on it in developing countries. This article narrows the empirical literature gap. It draws from Babessi, a rural town in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. Babessi was hit by a severe flash flood in...

Institutional bricolage continues to attract scientific and policy interest, especially in appreciating natural resource management outcomes. However, contemporary bricolage processes in forest-abundant countries where state rules interact with customary rules that have been, at least, partially shaped by different colonial agents, remain relativel...

Floods are the most frequent forms of natural disasters worldwide. Yet, empirical research on factors influencing household risk management decisions to floods is scarce. This chapter analyzes the determinants of households risk management decisions among flood victims in rural Cameroon. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from a ne...

The rhetoric surrounding the microfinance institutions (MFIs) as key providers of financial services to the poor in developing countries is extremely appealing. Research in this sector has largely focused on impact assessments and service delivery. Very little is still known about the empirical characteristics of this sector, and their risk min...

Growing evidence suggests a nuanced link between diversification and well-being for forest communities. We contribute to clarify this nuance, by analyzing the well-being outcomes linked to forest and non-forest diversification choices, through a systematic sample of 200 households around the Kilum-Ijim Forest Landscape (KIFL) of Cameroon. A composi...

The link between microcredit and income poverty reduction for the poor is well established. However, contemporary empirical evidence remains mixed, especially among women beneficiaries. We use a purposive sample of 160 women from 80 microcredit groups of the Program for the Improvement of the Competitiveness of Family Agro Pastoral Farms (ACEFA) in...

This study to analysis profitability of maize production under the different farming systems practiced within Tubah subdivision. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 80 farmers from the 4 villages (Bambili, Bambui, Big Babanki, and Small Babanki) in the study area; 20 from each village. The study used primary data collected through the u...

Climate change seems to be the most phytotoxic of all global changes. One of its most subtle impacts on plants development is on their reproductive processes. There has been very little work directed towards agrobiodiversity, and especially subsistence and cash crops in highland ecosystems. An understanding of the effects of climate change on the y...

In den letzten Jahrzehnten ist die Zahl der extremen Naturereignisse und auch ihre Volatilität gestiegen. Im Zeitraum von 1980 bis 2012 beobachtete die Emergency Database (EM-DAT) am Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) eine rapide Zunahme solcher Vorfälle. Die Zahl blieb auch in den 2010er Jahren auf einem erhöhten Niveau. A...

The Central African Region, home to the Congo Basin Forest ecosystem, is replete with several natural resources (e.g. forests, wildlife, minerals and land), which serve as a point of attraction for diverse and conflicting actors, institutions and practices. Institutional conflicts linked to political interests, resource access rights, conservation...

ABSTRACT The history of science is one based on revolutions and discourse where a new paradigm arrives challenging the status quo with the promise of progress and if the evidence is there to justify paradigm shift on the basis of that promise the consensus will be to shift paradigms. Apparently the shift from Adam Smith’s traditional market paradi...

Flood risks continue to pose serious threats to developing countries with dire ramifications for livelihoods. Yet, contemporary research on determinants for coping with flood hazards is driven mostly by individual cases with less effort to systematically identify coping strategies across multiple floods. This research analyses potential determinant...

Ecotourism is increasingly accepted as a suitable alternative for sustaining rural livelihoods. In spite of this trend, quantitative assessments of relationships between household assets and ecotourism choices, and the policy implications thereof, currently account for only a negligible number of studies in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper contribute...

The relevance of intra-household division of labor for overall household wellbeing is common knowledge, especially among development practitioners from the developing world. While division of labor acquired a newer impetus as a consequence of a strong and emerging gender narrative a few decades ago, its momentum seems to have been torpedoed by the...

Rising interests to support green development through targeted conservation approaches in the developing world attracted international NGO attention especially in the 1990s. One of such NGOs, the World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has been backstopping many African nations in the process of realizing the twin objectives of livelihood sustenance and p...

Bourgeoning flood hazards inflict significant negative effects on the welfare of households, particularly in developing countries. Rapid growth in scholarship on impacts and flood coping strategies from developing countries is therefore a justified consequence. However, identifying the determinants of coping decisions across space and time has so f...

This study captures the relationship of risks, potentials and microfinance sustainable growth in Cameroon where growth has been particularly favored by increased unreliability of the formal banking sector. However, significant improvements currently observed in the latter sector present a new form of risk. How MFIs will survive in the face of a vib...

Access to energy is crucial for developing sustainable livelihoods. Renewable energy sources dominate international policy discourses based on their dual capacity to enhance livelihoods and improve the environment. This romantic conceptualization sounds appealing. However, supportive empirical evidence combining different approaches are limited. We...

The more frequent occurrence of natural disasters due to climate change will doubtlessly blow up the number of environmental refugees, not the least in sub-Saharan Africa. Not all of them flee their countries, many being internally displaced. Ideally, abandonment of the homelands is not permanent. In order to improve our understanding of internally...

Empirical evidence confirms the role of local institutions in natural resource management in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). While their exact actions in this aspect is important, even more pertinent is the way these institutions can be rekindled in the midst of seemingly weak formal structures to support resource management processes. Using empirical ca...

Empirical evidence suggests that local institutions play a crucial role in natural resource management in most countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This is largely because such institutions present a platform through which incentives for individual and collective actions are structured. While the exact actions of local institutions in natural res...

Five nests of Meliponula (Meliplebeia) becarii were located and excavated in Bui Division of Cameroon to study their detail architecture. This paper describes the general nest structure of this species in terms of number, size, shape and area of combs, brood cells, pollen and honey pots. They construct their nests in secondary forests, eucalyptus p...

Aims: The relevance of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in promoting community participation, enhancing sustainable development in rural communities, and its capacity to succeed where other approaches fail is well recognized in the rural development literature. Some PRA tools have been widely applied empirically for gender analysis than others....

Community participation in rural development is no longer a new terminology in the development lexicon of developing countries. In most developing nations, there exist a great disparity between the rural and the urban centres in terms of socio-economic development. Central Ejagham, an enclaved community in Manyu Division of southwestern Cameroon ha...

p> Global climate variability exerts negative impacts especially on agriculture-dependent economies. Contemporary climate modelling suggests that farming households in developing countries will bear the greatest brunt from climate variability. However, information on farmers’ knowledge and perceptions to climate variability and possible influence o...

Rural communities in the Sub-Sahara African region have become focal points for climate adaptation especially in the agricultural sector. This is due to their significant involvement in agro-pastoral activities which constitute the lifeblood of most of the economies of this region, with about 85% of the indigenous populations relying on it for thei...

The increasing occurrence of climate related risks and their effects on agriculture especially in developing countries has generated reflection in the scientific community on the potential role that climate insurance in buffering shocks and the level of preparedness in the farming community in developing countries. This paper uses a random selectio...

This research uses participatory spatial multi-criteria analysis for the assessment and prioritization of vulnerable ecosystems wherein, protection from anthropogenic activities could help to ensure the continued provision of ecosystem services in Mezam, Cameroon. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to build objective hierarchies and comparis...

Community participation in rural development is no longer a new terminology in the development lexicon of developing countries. The Central Ejagham Community, in response to their development problems and the inability of the government to improve on the situation took a bold step by participating in development programmes in order to add value to...

Floods are the most frequent forms of natural disasters worldwide. Yet, empirical research on factors influencing household risk management decisions to floods is scarce. This chapter analyzes the determinants of households risk management decisions among flood victims in rural Cameroon. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from a ne...

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), among other regions of the world, stands today as one of the hardest hit areas as far as the concomitants of climate change is concerned. This is particularly the case with the agro-pastoral sector which is the lifeblood of most of the economies of this region with about 85% of the indigenous populations relying on agricul...

It is a truism that Cameroon's agricultural sector in general and the cocoa sector in particular has been hit by climatic vagaries with telling repercussions. Cocoa (Theobroma cacao Linn.) production remains one of the main cash crops in Cameroon with over 90% of households in the cocoa producing areas depending on it for their income. Cameroon ran...

The observed and predicted increases in idiosyncratic and covariate shocks in developing countries demands new approaches and tools to analyze and manage such events. The social risk management (SRM) framework developed by the World Bank at the end of the 20th century no longer seems very appropriate in empirically analyzing the increasing frequenc...

Increasing occurrence of natural disasters is having immense impacts on livelihood security especially in developing countries. While it is generally accepted that these impacts will be stronger in developing countries, empirical evidence is scarce. The objective of this paper is to empirically compare the livelihood security status of victims and...

The role of development nongovernmental organizations (DNGOs) in driving change, servicing the very poor and reducing poverty especially in rural areas in developing countries has been generally affirmed in the rural economics literature. This romantic image accounts to a large extent for the exponential numeric growth observed in the sector, and f...

Floods are the most common natural disasters worldwide. Much of the growing literature on the impact of floods, especially in developed countries, and to a lesser extent in rural areas of developing countries, concentrates on economic rather than a comprehensive assessment of combined effects on people’s livelihoods. Holistic floods impact assessme...

The escalation of natural disasters in the last two decades or so and their devastating effects on developing countries in general and Africa in particular, has been frequently mentioned in the topical literature. Devastating impacts in African and other developing countries have often been attributed to the failure of formal (state and market) ins...

The importance of the nonprofit sector in enhancing sustainable development especially in developing countries where states and markets often fail is generally recognized in the literature on organizational behavior and development. The rapid growth observed in this sector has been accompanied by increasing volatility of charity and philanthropy, p...

Community forest management is often advanced as a remedy for failing top-down approaches to nature conservation. Contingent on the property rights theory, it assumes that local participation in natural resource management results in sustainable structures. There is, however, insufficient empirical evidence on the intra-community dynamics – especia...

This paper aims at examining the relevance of Irving Fisher's theory of interest in explaining agent decision making under conditions of risk and uncertainty created by aggregate natural shocks. A case study approach is applied to empirically test Fisher's concept of impatience by comparatively analyzing physical and psychic income variables amongs...

Irving Fisher's theory on time preference in the 1930s arguably influenced the analysis of agents' current behavior with respect to future outcomes. By suggesting linear discount rates implying rational and self-interested motives of agents, Fisher substantiated neoclassical economic thinking. However, Fisher's notion of time preference, the choice...

Increasing occurrence of devastating natural shocks has stimulated research interest in the economics of natural disasters. Much of this scholarly work concentrates on effects of shocks on poverty, risk and vulnerability, and very little on understanding the effects of natural shocks on risk behavior. Referring to a 25 year-old disaster, we use uni...