Jacob Mazalale - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Jacob Mazalale
Journal of accounting, business and finance research, Apr 22, 2024
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
The COVID-19 pandemic affected the world in various ways. In response to this, countries set up v... more The COVID-19 pandemic affected the world in various ways. In response to this, countries set up various interventions such as lockdowns, physical distancing, and mandatory face covering, among others. Governments also put in place measures to ensure compliance. However, the extent to which the various responses impacted the deaths and confirmed cases remains debatable. This paper explores this question by looking at how government stringency measures impacted deaths and cases in Malawi. We employ an instrumental variable (IV) approach to assess the impact of government action on confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. We measure government policy by the stringency index. By leveraging the IV approach, we circumvent potential endogeneity concerns between our main policy variable and the outcome variables. Our data comes from the University of Oxford COVID-19 project and spans a daily frequency from 20 February 2020 to 25 April 2022, covering multiple waves of the pandemic. Overall, the ...
For many years, the international development community has placed a high priority on reducing po... more For many years, the international development community has placed a high priority on reducing poverty as a key policy objective. Nevertheless in Malawi, multidimensional poverty has remained alarmingly high exceeding 50% for the past ten years (2004–2016). While previous research on poverty in Malawi has focused on income-based measures, little is known about the changes in multidimensional poverty and their underlying factors. This study investigates multidimensional poverty in Malawi from 2010 to 2019 using the recent Malawi-specific Multidimensional Poverty Index (M-MPI) and nationally representative data from the Integrated Household Panel Survey. In terms of methods, the Alkire-Foster method is used to calculate the MPI. We use unconditional quantile regression model and the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to understand the drivers and dynamics of multidimensional poverty in Malawi. The findings 54moving from 70.4% in 2010 to 62.1% in 2019, with household income, the literacy and...
Journal of Affective Disorders, Mar 1, 2018
Background. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and intimate partner violence (IPV) are recogniz... more Background. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and intimate partner violence (IPV) are recognized global health problems. Both ACEs and IPV have been linked to adverse physical and mental health problems for both mothers and infants. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of physical and/or sexual ACEs and IPV and their association to symptoms of postpartum depression among postpartum women in sub-Saharan Africa. Methods. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in three health centers in the three districts of Dar es Salaam, comprising Ilala, Kinondoni and Temeke. A total of 500 women were interviewed by two trained midwife nurses during their routine postnatal care. The women were asked about their experiences of adverse childhood experiences, intimate partner violence and symptoms of postpartum depression. Results: Of the 500 women who were interviewed, 39.4% (n=197) reported to have experienced physical and/or sexual ACE and 18.8% (n=94) experienced physical and/or sexual IPV during their index pregnancy.
Health Policy and Planning
The need to bolster primary health care (PHC) to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) t... more The need to bolster primary health care (PHC) to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for health is well recognized. In Eastern and Southern Africa, where governments have progressively decentralized health decision-making, health management is critical to PHC performance. While investments in health management capacity are important, so is improving the environment in which managers operate. Governance arrangements, management systems and power dynamics of actors can have a significant influence on health managers’ ability to improve PHC access and quality. We conducted a problem-driven political economy analysis (PEA) in Kenya, Malawi and Uganda to explore local decision-making environments and how they affect management and governance practices for health. This PEA used document review and key informant interviews (N = 112) with government actors, development partners and civil societies in three districts or counties in each country (N = 9). We found that while...
Many years of significant investment into the production and adoption of productivity-enhancing t... more Many years of significant investment into the production and adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies and practices in agriculture have not yielded the desired results. Most smallholder farmers in Africa remain trapped in poverty. Having realised that addressing production challenges alone is not enough to impact the lives of poor smallholder farmers, resources and attention have now shifted to the marketing side of agriculture. Organising farmers into farmer producer organisations (FPOs), like clubs, associations and cooperatives, has been one of the strategies aimed at commercialising smallholder agriculture. In Malawi, smallholder farmers have been organised into FPOs of various types and sizes. This qualitative study interrogated the effectiveness of FPOs in Malawi in meeting their objectives, including the objective of enhancing commercialisation of smallholder farmers through increased access to farm inputs, markets, and agricultural extension and advisory services.
ICSID Review - Foreign Investment Law Journal, 2019
The international legal framework for investment in Africa is complex, consisting of a large numb... more The international legal framework for investment in Africa is complex, consisting of a large number of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and regional investment agreements. This is in addition to a number of non-binding regional investment instruments and models that influence African countries' investment policy directions. Looking at the numbers, African countries have concluded over 860 BITs of which 160 are intra-African treaties. This represents around 28 percent of the BIT universe. For over 50 years African countries have been signing BITs that have core elements developed by third countries. Little attention has been given to the implications of these treaties on African countries’ right and duty to regulate investment in their territories. The result is a web of legally binding and broadly formulated commitments on investment protection. Today, African countries are taking a more active approach in the formulation of their international investment commitments at the ...
Questionnaire for school adolescents. (DOCX 36â kb)
In the past few decades, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has been promoted to improve food securi... more In the past few decades, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has been promoted to improve food security and raise incomes as a strategy for sustainable agricultural development. The adoption rates among smallholder farmers, particularly in Africa, remain low and have varied in different contexts. We investigated the market participation spill over effects from the adoption of CSA practices in central Malawi. We tested the hypothesis that the extent of the use of CSA practices in the past 10 years can lead to production surpluses that enable smallholder farmers to participate in markets and thereby increase agricultural incomes. The findings suggest, among others, the need to intensify efforts to promote CSA adoption specifically over a longer period for benefits of the technologies to materialise. The adoption of CSA practices over time enhances crop market participation – an important aspect required for production sustainability as well as for transforming agriculture towards greater ...
Indicator mapping. Overview of indicator mapping by indictor categories and source documents. (XL... more Indicator mapping. Overview of indicator mapping by indictor categories and source documents. (XLSX 34 kb)
RBF4MNH performance indicators and quality composite score. List of RBF4MNH performance indicator... more RBF4MNH performance indicators and quality composite score. List of RBF4MNH performance indicators; Outline of composite development; descriptive results of composite score. (PDF 468 kb)
Delivery Exit Interview Questionnaire.
ANC Exit Interview Questionnaire.
PNC Exit Interview Questionnaire.
Journal of accounting, business and finance research, Apr 22, 2024
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
The COVID-19 pandemic affected the world in various ways. In response to this, countries set up v... more The COVID-19 pandemic affected the world in various ways. In response to this, countries set up various interventions such as lockdowns, physical distancing, and mandatory face covering, among others. Governments also put in place measures to ensure compliance. However, the extent to which the various responses impacted the deaths and confirmed cases remains debatable. This paper explores this question by looking at how government stringency measures impacted deaths and cases in Malawi. We employ an instrumental variable (IV) approach to assess the impact of government action on confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. We measure government policy by the stringency index. By leveraging the IV approach, we circumvent potential endogeneity concerns between our main policy variable and the outcome variables. Our data comes from the University of Oxford COVID-19 project and spans a daily frequency from 20 February 2020 to 25 April 2022, covering multiple waves of the pandemic. Overall, the ...
For many years, the international development community has placed a high priority on reducing po... more For many years, the international development community has placed a high priority on reducing poverty as a key policy objective. Nevertheless in Malawi, multidimensional poverty has remained alarmingly high exceeding 50% for the past ten years (2004–2016). While previous research on poverty in Malawi has focused on income-based measures, little is known about the changes in multidimensional poverty and their underlying factors. This study investigates multidimensional poverty in Malawi from 2010 to 2019 using the recent Malawi-specific Multidimensional Poverty Index (M-MPI) and nationally representative data from the Integrated Household Panel Survey. In terms of methods, the Alkire-Foster method is used to calculate the MPI. We use unconditional quantile regression model and the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to understand the drivers and dynamics of multidimensional poverty in Malawi. The findings 54moving from 70.4% in 2010 to 62.1% in 2019, with household income, the literacy and...
Journal of Affective Disorders, Mar 1, 2018
Background. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and intimate partner violence (IPV) are recogniz... more Background. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and intimate partner violence (IPV) are recognized global health problems. Both ACEs and IPV have been linked to adverse physical and mental health problems for both mothers and infants. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of physical and/or sexual ACEs and IPV and their association to symptoms of postpartum depression among postpartum women in sub-Saharan Africa. Methods. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in three health centers in the three districts of Dar es Salaam, comprising Ilala, Kinondoni and Temeke. A total of 500 women were interviewed by two trained midwife nurses during their routine postnatal care. The women were asked about their experiences of adverse childhood experiences, intimate partner violence and symptoms of postpartum depression. Results: Of the 500 women who were interviewed, 39.4% (n=197) reported to have experienced physical and/or sexual ACE and 18.8% (n=94) experienced physical and/or sexual IPV during their index pregnancy.
Health Policy and Planning
The need to bolster primary health care (PHC) to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) t... more The need to bolster primary health care (PHC) to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for health is well recognized. In Eastern and Southern Africa, where governments have progressively decentralized health decision-making, health management is critical to PHC performance. While investments in health management capacity are important, so is improving the environment in which managers operate. Governance arrangements, management systems and power dynamics of actors can have a significant influence on health managers’ ability to improve PHC access and quality. We conducted a problem-driven political economy analysis (PEA) in Kenya, Malawi and Uganda to explore local decision-making environments and how they affect management and governance practices for health. This PEA used document review and key informant interviews (N = 112) with government actors, development partners and civil societies in three districts or counties in each country (N = 9). We found that while...
Many years of significant investment into the production and adoption of productivity-enhancing t... more Many years of significant investment into the production and adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies and practices in agriculture have not yielded the desired results. Most smallholder farmers in Africa remain trapped in poverty. Having realised that addressing production challenges alone is not enough to impact the lives of poor smallholder farmers, resources and attention have now shifted to the marketing side of agriculture. Organising farmers into farmer producer organisations (FPOs), like clubs, associations and cooperatives, has been one of the strategies aimed at commercialising smallholder agriculture. In Malawi, smallholder farmers have been organised into FPOs of various types and sizes. This qualitative study interrogated the effectiveness of FPOs in Malawi in meeting their objectives, including the objective of enhancing commercialisation of smallholder farmers through increased access to farm inputs, markets, and agricultural extension and advisory services.
ICSID Review - Foreign Investment Law Journal, 2019
The international legal framework for investment in Africa is complex, consisting of a large numb... more The international legal framework for investment in Africa is complex, consisting of a large number of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and regional investment agreements. This is in addition to a number of non-binding regional investment instruments and models that influence African countries' investment policy directions. Looking at the numbers, African countries have concluded over 860 BITs of which 160 are intra-African treaties. This represents around 28 percent of the BIT universe. For over 50 years African countries have been signing BITs that have core elements developed by third countries. Little attention has been given to the implications of these treaties on African countries’ right and duty to regulate investment in their territories. The result is a web of legally binding and broadly formulated commitments on investment protection. Today, African countries are taking a more active approach in the formulation of their international investment commitments at the ...
Questionnaire for school adolescents. (DOCX 36â kb)
In the past few decades, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has been promoted to improve food securi... more In the past few decades, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has been promoted to improve food security and raise incomes as a strategy for sustainable agricultural development. The adoption rates among smallholder farmers, particularly in Africa, remain low and have varied in different contexts. We investigated the market participation spill over effects from the adoption of CSA practices in central Malawi. We tested the hypothesis that the extent of the use of CSA practices in the past 10 years can lead to production surpluses that enable smallholder farmers to participate in markets and thereby increase agricultural incomes. The findings suggest, among others, the need to intensify efforts to promote CSA adoption specifically over a longer period for benefits of the technologies to materialise. The adoption of CSA practices over time enhances crop market participation – an important aspect required for production sustainability as well as for transforming agriculture towards greater ...
Indicator mapping. Overview of indicator mapping by indictor categories and source documents. (XL... more Indicator mapping. Overview of indicator mapping by indictor categories and source documents. (XLSX 34 kb)
RBF4MNH performance indicators and quality composite score. List of RBF4MNH performance indicator... more RBF4MNH performance indicators and quality composite score. List of RBF4MNH performance indicators; Outline of composite development; descriptive results of composite score. (PDF 468 kb)
Delivery Exit Interview Questionnaire.
ANC Exit Interview Questionnaire.
PNC Exit Interview Questionnaire.