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1. The need for agricultural productive uses in the national electrification plan of sub-Saharan African countries—a call to action for Ethiopia

   https://doi.org/10.1088/2634-4505/ac611e  

   Van-Hein Sackey, Charles ; Nock, Destenie ( May 2022 , Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability)

   Access to electricity is a crucial aspect of sub-Saharan Africa’s path towards development. In light of the potential for electricity access to improve quality of life, the United Nations aims to achieve universal access to ‘clean, reliable, affordable and modern’ electricity as Goal 7 of its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 7). As such, governments of sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, such as Ethiopia, have developed national electrification plans to outline their pathway to universal access to electricity. In this paper, we identify why it is essential for the national electrification plans of SSA countries to prioritize electricity access for productive uses in its agricultural sector, using Ethiopia as a case study. Reviewing existing literature and using the authors’ research, we point out that there is 3.04 terawatt-hours of latent demand for small-scale pressurized cereal-crop irrigation alone in Ethiopia. Supplying this electricity demand for small-scale irrigation could lead to a reduction in the levelized cost of electricity of up to 95%. We conclude our paper by recommending the creation of a cross-sector national productive use commission that would be tasked with collecting and sharing relevant data from each sector and collaboratively creating a national productive use program that would ensure that Ethiopia reaps the full benefits and potential for wealth creation from access to electricity.

    

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2. Interrelationships between electricity, gas, and water consumption in large‐scale buildings

   https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13097  

   Movahedi, Ali ; Derrible, Sybil ( January 2021 , Journal of Industrial Ecology)

   As cities keep growing worldwide, so does the demand for key resources such as electricity, gas, and water that residents consume. Meeting the demand for these resources can be challenging and it requires an understanding of the consumption patterns. In this study, we apply extreme gradient boosting to predict and analyze electricity, gas, and water consumption in large‐scale buildings in New York City and use SHapley Additive exPlanation to interpret the results. For this, the New York City's local law 84 extensive dataset was merged with the Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output dataset as well as with other socio‐economic datasets. Specifically, we developed and validated three models: electricity, gas, and water consumption. Overall, we find that electricity, gas, and water consumptions are highly interrelated, but the interrelationships are complex and not universal. The main factor influencing these interrelationships seems to be the technology used for space and water heating (i.e., electricity vs. gas). Building type also has a large impact on interrelationships (i.e., residential vs. nonresidential), especially between electricity and water. Moreover, we also find a nonlinear relationship between gas consumption and building intensity. The main results are summarized into seven major findings. Overall, this study contributes to the urban metabolism literature that ultimately aims to gain a fundamental understanding of how energy and resources are consumed in cities.

    

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3. Real‐world experience using hydroxyurea in children with sickle cell disease in Lilongwe, Malawi

   https://doi.org/10.1002/pbc.27954  

   Mvalo, Tisungane ; Topazian, Hillary M. ; Kamthunzi, Portia ; Chen, Jane S. ; Kambalame, Isobel ; Mafunga, Pilirani ; Mumba, Noel ; Chiume, Msandeni ; Paseli, Khadija ; Tegha, Gerald ; et al ( August 2019 , Pediatric Blood & Cancer)

   Sickle cell disease (SCD) is among the most common inherited hematologic diseases in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). Historically, hydroxyurea administration in SSA has been restricted due to limited region‐specific evidence for safety and efficacy.

   We conducted a prospective observational cohort study of pediatric patients with SCD in Malawi. From January 2015 to November 2017, hydroxyurea at doses of 10–20 mg/kg/day was administered to children with clinically severe disease (targeted use policy). From December 2017 to July 2018, hydroxyurea was prescribed to all patients (universal use policy).

   Of 187 patients with SCD, seven (3.7%) died and 23 (12.3%) were lost to follow‐up. The majority (135, 72.2%) were prescribed hydroxyurea, 59 (43.7%) under the targeted use policy and 76 (56.3%) under the universal use policy. There were no documented severe toxicities. Under the targeted use policy, children with SCD demonstrated absolute decreases in the rates of hospitalization (−4.1 per 1000 person‐days; −7.2, −1.0;P = .004), fevers (−4.2 per 1000 person‐days; −7.2, −1.1;P = .002), transfusions (−2.3 per 1000 person‐days; 95% confidence interval: −4.9, 0.3;P = .06), and annual school absenteeism (−51.2 per person‐year; −60.1, −42.3;P < .0001) within 6 months of hydroxyurea commencement.

   We successfully implemented universal administration of hydroxyurea to children with SCD at a tertiary hospital in Malawi. Similar to recently reported trials, hydroxyurea was safe and effective during routine programmatic experience, with clinical benefits particularly among high‐risk children. This highlights the importance of continued widespread scale‐up of hydroxyurea within SCD programs across SSA.

    

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4. Educational Assortative Mating in Sub-Saharan Africa: Compositional Changes and Implications for Household Wealth Inequality

   https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-9000609  

   Pesando, Luca Maria ( February 2021 , Demography)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is undergoing rapid transformations in the realm of union formation in tandem with significant educational expansion and rising labor force participation rates. Concurrently, the region remains the least developed and most unequal along multiple dimensions of human and social development. In spite of this unique scenario, never has the social stratification literature examined patterns and implications of educational assortative mating for inequality in SSA. Using 126 Demographic and Health Surveys from 39 SSA countries between 1986 and 2016, this study is the first to document changing patterns of educational assortative mating by marriage cohort, subregion, and household location of residence and relate them to prevailing sociological theories on mating and development. Results show that net of shifts in educational distributions, mating has increased over marriage cohorts in all subregions except for Southern Africa, with increases driven mostly by rural areas. Trends in rural areas align with the status attainment hypothesis, whereas trends in urban areas are consistent with the inverted U-curve framework and the increasing applicability of the general openness hypothesis. The inequality analysis conducted through a combination of variance decomposition and counterfactual approaches reveals that mating accounts for a nonnegligible share (3% to 12%) of the cohort-specific inequality in household wealth, yet changes in mating over time hardly move time trends in wealth inequality, which is in line with findings from high-income societies. 

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5. Mapping Open Data and Big Data to Address Climate Resilience of Urban Informal Settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa

   https://doi.org/10.3390/cli10120186  

   Banzhaf, Ellen ; Bulley, Henry N. ; Inkoom, Justice Nana ; Elze, Sebastian ( December 2022 , Climate)

   This perspective paper highlights the potentials, limitations, and combinations of openly available Earth observation (EO) data and big data in the context of environmental research in urban areas. The aim is to build the resilience of informal settlements to climate change impacts. In particular, it highlights the types, categories, spatial and temporal scales of publicly available big data. The benefits of publicly available big data become clear when looking at issues such as the development and quality of life in informal settlements within and around major African cities. Sub-Saharan African (SSA) cities are among the fastest growing urban areas in the world. However, they lack spatial information to guide urban planning towards climate-adapted cities and fair living conditions for disadvantaged residents who mostly reside in informal settlements. Therefore, this study collected key information on freely available data such as data on land cover, land use, and environmental hazards and pressures, demographic and socio-economic indicators for urban areas. They serve as a vital resource for success of many other related local studies, such as the transdisciplinary research project “DREAMS—Developing REsilient African cities and their urban environMent facing the provision of essential urban SDGs”. In the era of exponential growth of big data analytics, especially geospatial data, their utility in SSA is hampered by the disparate nature of these datasets due to the lack of a comprehensive overview of where and how to access them. This paper aims to provide transparency in this regard as well as a resource to access such datasets. Although the limitations of such big data are also discussed, their usefulness in assessing environmental hazards and human exposure, especially to climate change impacts, are emphasised. 

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