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PurposeThis paper presents assessment results on the level of perceived knowledge in climate change and the extent to which participatory awareness in adaptation initiatives by management and the public in key selected areas identified to be highly impacted by climate change has fared.Design/methodology/approachExploratory research design, using snowball, purposive and simple random sampling methods, was employed to assess respondents' level of knowledge in climate change and participatory adaptation awareness activities. Focus group discussion was finally used to appraise returned responses that compared indigenous knowledge with scientific data to examine variables influencing key determinants.FindingsAge, gender, the level of education and work experience were all significant in determining outcome of responses by respondents on perceived level of knowledge in climate change and awareness in adaptation engagement efforts by the public. The study also confirmed existence of perceived knowledge and awareness gap with a marginal difference of 28% between management and stakeholder respondents.Practical implicationsAnthropogenic activities leading to climate change impacts are rarely linked to individual actions, lifestyles and community's sociocultural practices and choices.Originality/valueThere is a disconnect between what climate change managers know and are doing in terms of adaptation and mitigation efforts and what stakeholders should know and are expected to do toward achieving functional participatory engagements in Ghana. It calls for needs assessment on a governance system that will chart a new order to transform individual and household attitudes through curriculum development, awareness training, coping strategies to capacity building for members of the communities and households.

This study sets out to investigate the relationship between foreign aid and national income in Ghana, between 1980 and 2005 using fully modified ordinary least squares (FM-OLS). This is to ascertain whether foreign aid receipts have had significant impact on the level of Ghana's gross national income. The autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) bounds test and the Johansen cointegrating equations are used to test for the long-run equilibrium. Three different sample periods namely the pre-structural break, post-structural break, and full-period were used in the analysis. The results in the pre-structural break showed a positive and significant relationship between foreign aid and national income with lower aid elasticity. The post-structural break estimate showed a positive but insignificant relationship. On the contrary, the full sample showed a negative and insignificant relationship with lower income elasticity. The study recommends that, long-run aid that seeks to impact on national income or growth should be accompanied by a well-developed strategic plan to forecast, receive and manage a country's foreign aid

Cattle rearing is the single most important activity in the agricultural sector of Botswana, and cattle enjoy a high status among both rural and urban dwellers. In recent years, farmers have begun to intensify the production of small ruminants owing to an increasing recognition by policy makers that they are a potential alternative source of farm income. However, as yet, small ruminants have not approached the social importance of cattle. This may be attributable to several factors, including economic considerations. The present study focused on the economic factor. It comprised a comparative economic assessment of cattle- and goat-rearing enterprises for an average smallholder farm-household to throw light on their relative economic efficiency. It was concluded that rearing either cattle or small ruminants is economically viable in the study area. The net profit measured as the net margin either per enterprise or per animal was far higher for a cattle-rearing enterprise. Nevertheless, when expressed in terms of the return on the capital invested in each enterprise, cattle rearing had only a slight edge (1.93%) over rearing of small ruminants.