Opportunities and challenges for private service delivery: The case of private crop protection and community animal health workers’ service delivery in Alaba Special District, Southern Ethiopia
CAHWs and PCPS are the two community-based private services operating in Alaba since three years. However, there was no systematic assessment of this initiatives have been made to learn lessons and develop a strategy for scaling successful experience. This research was initiated to fill this gap. Specifically the research attempted to address four important questions: i) What are the challenges and opportunities for emergence and expansion of these services? ii) What are the extent of service coverage and commercial viability to providers? iii) How do the private service providers perceive the entrance and expansion of service delivery? iv) Why some farmers use privately provided services and others don’t? The key findings of research are i) the providers are different in their supply capacity. Although the PCPS providers were relatively better capacitated with basic equipments, CAHWs are lacking the minimum critical facilities for primary animal health care provision. The providers have also perceived many opportunities yet specific to each service. Constraints perceived are also different for each service and many of them are non-technical, but are issue of policies and institutional challenges for both services and require service- specific policy and institutional arrangement to promote the service delivery system; ii) PCPS service coverage has shown the dominance of herbicide service than that of pesticide as well as pre-harvest service coverage than that of post-harvest. In CAHWs, the coverage is cattle dominated than other species with focus of antibiotic treatment than other services. Overall, service coverage is an indicator of the performance of service provider. Analysis of financial viability of the service to providers has also showed its viability even if the current costs of chemical and drugs increased by 14 and 10% for CAHWs and PCPS respectively; iii) The PCPS better satisfied the nearby PA users, whereas in CAHWs service the far PA users were better satisfied with accessibility and effectiveness of the service; and iv) The survey has also revealed that majority of users are willing to pay the said charge if it will improve their income as farmers and empower them financially. The findings imply: i) the effective demand for herbicide than pesticide and confirms the cereal crop domination of the district than cash crop production; ii) the difference in performance of providers in respective PAs and effective demand for CAHWs and PCPS in far and near PAs, respectively; iii) The proportion of those who perceived the current CAHWs charge is lower are greater than that of PCPS. This implies these users might have satisfied by the benefit they derived from CAHWs service; and iv) An increase in income is an issue of ability to pay for services. The key recommendations to seize opportunities & address challenges include: i) For the future, the providers have to focus on existing opportunities at hand and should explore effectively; ii) In response to the challenges identified, it is recommended to develop supportive services and enabling policies and institutional arrangements; iii) In order to avoid unfair competition, enforcement mechanism is vital regarding licensing and policing. PCPS is quite new, needs service standards and guidelines; iv) the service delivery should go beyond mere increase in yields into more of income generating schemes and market facilities for users in order to sustain their income and this is an important condition need to be attached to WTP.
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| Format: | Thesis biblioteca |
| Language: | English |
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Haramaya University
2010-10-15
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10568/3658 |
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