http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/3976 2026-04-19T12:30:33Z http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/3990 Title: Factors Affecting Credit Constraint and Rural Households’ Access to Formal Credit in Ethiopia: The Case of Sebeta City Administration Authors: Lucho, Wakjira Abstract: This study has aimed to identify factors affecting credit constraint and rural households‘ access to credit in Sebeta City Administration. A total of 190 households, 24% of them female headed households, were included in the study. Logistic regression was applied in order to identify factors affecting credit constraint and rural households‘ access to credit. The study result revealed that only 15% of households included in the survey had access to formal credit service even though 60% of them indicated that they needed the service. Many of them did not apply for credit for two major reasons, small loan size offered by the institutions and lack of awareness about the process and procedures of the organizations. Regarding access to credit, the result of the survey indicates that four continuous variables, age, aging, family size and number of livestock in tropical livestock unit significantly affected access to credit. Similarly, four categorical variables, namely Extension package, Sex of the household head, Ownership of irrigable land and Group membership significantly affected rural household‘s access to formal credit. However, education level, income and land size didn‘t have significant impact on credit access. Number of livestock owned negatively influenced access to credit while family size and aging have positive impact on access to formal credit. Furthermore, the result of the study revealed that male headed households were more likely to access credit compared to female headed households. Finally, ownership of irrigable land, and group membership positively affected access to formal credit service while access to extension service had negative effect on access to formal credit. With respect to Credit Constraint, the study result indicates that 57.3% of the households included in the study were credit constrained households. From the continuous variables, age of the household and number of livestock owned have significant impact in determining credit constrained households while number of dependent children, education, family size and land size seemed to be insignificant in determining credit constraint. From the dummy variables, Sex of households had impact on credit constraint while group membership is insignificant in identifying credit constraint. Aging and number of livestock owned negatively affected credit constraint. As people become older, they accumulate enough wealth which can serve as collateral to access credit. Livestock ownership had negative impact on credit constraint since livestock can be easily converted to cash; people with larger number of livestock may prefer to sell their animals to meet their financial needs instead of accessing credit from financial institutions. The finding of the study also indicates that most of the explanatory variables expected to affect access to credit were found to be in line with theoretical and empirical findings of other studies. It also shaded light on the need to revisit the loan size currently provided by financial institution and importance of awareness creation activities to promote farmers understanding about credit and saving. 2017-08-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/3989 Title: Implementation of Gender Responsive Pedagogy at Debre Markos College of Teacher Education Authors: Fentie, Tilahun Abstract: The main objective of this study was to explore the implementation of gender responsive pedagogy at Debre-Markos College of Teacher Education. To this end, observational case study was employed and non-participant observation; in-depth interview and focus group discussion were used. Data was collected from seven purposively selected teacher-educators and six students. The collected data was analyzed and interpreted qualitatively. As it was revealed in the results, study participants (teachers and students) were found to have low understanding about gender responsive pedagogy. Moreover, the different teacher-student classroom interactions, teachers‘ classroom language use, classroom management, leadership assignment and students‘ seating arrangement were not gender responsive. They were found to favour towards male students than females. Hence it could be concluded that teachers‘ classroom teaching practice has not been carried out in a gender friendly manner. Thus, it was recommended that the college administrative body and other concerned stakeholders should offer sustainable, practical and efficient training to teacher-educators to enable them to consider gender issues in their day-to-day classroom practices. 2017-08-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/3988 Title: Developing Recommender System for Tourist Attraction Area Selection in Ethiopia: The Case Based Reasoning Approach Authors: Anteneh, Tamir Abstract: Using recommender systems with the help of computer systems technology to support the tourist advising process offers many advantages over the traditional system. A knowledge based recommender reasons about the fit between a user‘s need and the features of available products. Providing an effective service in the Ethiopian Tourism sector is critical to attract more foreign and local tourists. However, there are major problems that need immediate solution. First, the difficulty of getting fast, reliable, and consistent expert advice in the sector that is suitable to each visitor‘s characteristics and capabilities. Second, inadequacy of the number of experienced experts and consulting individuals who can give advice on tourism issues in the country. Therefore, this paper aimed to design a recommender system for tourist attraction area and visiting time selection that can assist experts and tourists to make timely decisions that helps them to get fast and consistent advisory service. So that, visitors can identify tourist attraction areas that have the highest potential of success/satisfaction and that match their personal characteristics. The system provides recommendation to visitors based on previously solved cases and new query given by the tourist. For this study, about 615 cases which were collected from National Tour operation and 10 attributes which were collected from experts were used as case base. These attributes and cases were used as knowledge base to construct case base recommender. The system calculates similarity between existing case and new queries that were provided by the visitors and provides solution or recommendation by taking best cases to the new query. In this study, JCOLIBRI case base development tool was used to develop the prototype of case based recommender system. JCOLIBRI contains both user interface which enables visitors to enter their query and programming codes with the help of Java script language. To decide the applicability of the prototype system in the domain area, the system has been evaluated by involving domain experts and visitors through visual interaction using the criteria of easiness to use, time efficiency, applicability in the domain area and providing correct recommendation. Based on prototype user acceptance testing, the average performance of the system was 80% and 82% by domain experts and visitors respectively. The performance of the system was also measured using the standard measure of relevance (IR system) recall, precision and accuracy measures, where the system registered 83% recall, 61% precision and 85.4% accuracy. 2017-08-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/3987 Title: Determinants of Agricultural Information Need and Access of Smallholder Farmers The Case of Wondo Intaye District West Arsi Zone, Ethiopia Authors: Fantahun, Selamawit Abstract: To enhance agricultural productivity, farmers should have access to timely, well organized, need based and relevant information. A better understanding of farmers‘ agricultural information needs and information sources could help guide extension and other agricultural programs to better target specific groups of farmers. Farmers differ in their access to and need of agricultural information. Such diversity among farmers could relate to various personal, social, economic, psychological, situational and institutional factors. Understanding reasons behind such diversity and farmers current level of access and need of agricultural information is paramount importance. This requires some level of investigation through scientific research to provide reliable and concrete information concerning agricultural information need and accessibility. The objectives of this study were to identify agricultural information needs of the smallholder farmers, to assess the extent of agricultural information access and its determinant factors, and to identify the constraints and opportunities in accessing agricultural information by smallholder farmers. A three-stage sampling procedure was used in which both non-probability sampling for the study area and probability sampling procedures were followed to select three kebeles and 151 respondents. Primary data were collected from the respondents through personal interview schedules FGD, key informant interview and secondary data also collected from district Office of Agricultural and Rural Development and by reviewing relevant materials. A structured interview schedule was used for collecting the essential quantitative data from the sampled respondents. To generate qualitative data, field assessment, informal discussion with key informants, and focus groups discussions were conducted. The quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistical tools, statistical tests (chi-square, and ANOVA) and the econometric model, namely, ordered logit model. The major output of the study indicates that agricultural information access of smallholder farmers was significantly affected by sex, literacy level, extension contact, and Cosmo politeness, information seeking behavior, innovation proneness, and livestock ownership. The majority of sample respondents fall in to the low category of information access level. The constraints that hold back farmers from access to agricultural information were poor extension system, lack of quality inputs availability, lack of support of DAs, farmers lack of interest, information not address farmers‘ interest and lack of electricity. Some of opportunities to access agricultural information where the study area were short proximity to such town as Shashemene and Hawassa, social Media (Shashemene Fana and Hawassa FM radio), most of the DAs were the natives of the study area and it has agricultural institutions (research center, University and NGOs). In conclusion, policy and development interventions in the study area should give emphasis to resolve such constraints and to use opportunities effectively to increase agricultural information accessibility, which will ultimately increase the productivity and income of smallholder farmers. 2017-08-01T00:00:00Z