Zaipuna Yonah - NM-AIST, Arusha, Tanzania

Zaipuna Yonah - NM-AIST, Arusha, Tanzania
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Zaipuna Yonah
NM-AIST, Arusha, Tanzania
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Papers by Zaipuna Yonah
How Information Communication Technology Can Enhance Evidence-Based Decisions and Farm-to-Fork Animal Traceability for Livestock Farmers
The Scientific World Journal
Due to changes in the livestock sector and the rise of consumer demand for comprehensive and inte...
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Due to changes in the livestock sector and the rise of consumer demand for comprehensive and integrated food security and safety, there has been a concern on the use of farm data in enhancing animal traceability and decision-making by farmers and other decision-makers in the livestock sector. To ensure high production through effective decision-making and auditable standards, producers are required to have better traceability and record systems. Therefore, this study aimed at (1) reviewing the current recording/data management and animal traceability systems used by small-scale farmers in developing countries and (2) analyzing how data management systems should be designed to enhance efficient decision-making and animal traceability from farm to fork. This study found that, still, a majority of small-scale farmers do not keep records leading to poor decision-making on the farm and policymaking. We also found that those who keep records do not store their data in electronic format, w...
External Services and their Integration as a Requirement in Developing a Mobile Framework to Support Farming as a Business via Benchmarking: The Case of NM-AIST
TRANSACTIONS ON MACHINE LEARNING AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
, Oct 30, 2020
This research article published by TRANSACTIONS ON MACHINE LEARNING AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, ...
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This research article published by TRANSACTIONS ON MACHINE LEARNING AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, Vol 8, No. 5Research on agricultural and rural development (ARD) systems in general, and farming as a business (FAAB) in particular, face the limitation of availability of credible and reliable benchmarking data, both for on-farm support for farm management decision making and off-farm support for research, investment and policy decision making. One of the main part of this limitation is to obtain reliable benchmarking data for decision making, both for current conditions and under scenarios of changed bio-physical and socioeconomic conditions. This paper presents a framework for mobile application development to support farming as a business via benchmarking (FAABB). This is done with a model that distinguishes between internal and external sources of data and between codified and computed information. Also, the paper demonstrates and emphasizes how integration should be considered as a requirement when developing a typical mobile application for ARD. The paper ends with a description of an ongoing research project at Nelson Mandela African Institution of Technology (NM-AIST) in Tanzania that aims to develop a new framework to facilitate development of mobile applications for FAABB
Holistic diagnosis tool for prediction of benign and malignant breast cancer using data mining techniques
International Journal of Computing and Digital Systems
, 2021
Globally, of all cancer diseases, breast cancer is the number one killer in women. The diseases c...
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Globally, of all cancer diseases, breast cancer is the number one killer in women. The diseases commonly occur in high income countries, but recently there is rapid increase of breast cancer in middle and low income countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa. This is due to increase in life expectancy, increased urbanization and adoption of western cultures. Although, some strategies to reduce the risks of occurrence of breast cancer are being implemented in developed countries, the case in middle and low income countries is that majority of breast cancer patients are affected by the disease due to diagnosis at late stages of the disease. Therefore, early detection of breast cancer is needed to overcome this problem. In this paper, a holistic diagnosis tool for early detection of breast cancer is proposed. The tool is software based utilizing a novel prediction model for breast cancer survivability developed by using available data mining (DM) technologies. Specifically, five popular data mining algorithms (logistic regression, decision tree, support vector machine, K nearest neighbors and random forest) were used to develop the prediction tool using Wisconsin breast cancer data set. In the paper, prediction tool training and test set results are reported. Achieved from the reported work of training sets are classification accuracies of 100% (Decision Tree); 99.8046% (Random Forest); 97.46% (Logistic Regression and Support Vector Machine); 97.07% (K Nearest Neighbors) and for testing sets are classification accuracies of 93.5672% (Decision Tree); 92.9% (Random Forest); 92.39% (Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machine and K Nearest Neighbors). These results are much better than those reported in the literature. The results show that the proposed DM disease prediction tool has potential to greatly impact on current patient management, care and future interventions against the breast cancer disease and through customization even against other deadly diseases.
An Integrated Multi-Function Information System Model for Livestock Stakeholders
2018 IST-Africa Week Conference (IST-Africa)
, 2018
Livestock sector has been constrained by various factors including extension services and lack of...
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Livestock sector has been constrained by various factors including extension services and lack of access to on-farm and off-farm information for decision making by policy makers and other stakeholders. This paper reports how application of ICT was used to solve problems by using the web and mobile technologies which are fast-growing within the livestock value chain in Sub-Saharan Africa. The developed platform provides records keeping features that allow farmers to use their mobile phones to store data into online databases. Posted data are analyzed and easily be used for decision making and project long term benefits to farmers and other decision makers. Moreover, keeping this information for a long time can help identifying risks and predicting the future. Furthermore, this technology is going to assist farmers to access extension services online through mobile phones. By linking farmers with extension workers, the platform has the potential to increase effectiveness in extension ...
A Secure Maturity Model for Protecting e-Government Services: A Case of Tanzania
Advances in Computer Science : an International Journal
, 2014
E-Government Maturity Models (eGMMs) are widely used in the implementation and development of e-G...
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E-Government Maturity Models (eGMMs) are widely used in the implementation and development of e-Government services. These models outline various stages for e-Government development. Information security and privacy are considered as the most significant challenges in implementing e-Government services, but unfortunately very few designs of eGMMs have considered security as a specific issue. However, even these few security responsive models consider security mostly at the transaction stage, and as such it is insecure to depend on security mechanisms provided at transaction stage only. This paper develops a four-stage holistic secured eGMM for protecting e-Government services with Tanzania used as a case study. The proposed secured e-Government maturity model has been designed by including the security layers which consist of technical and non-technical security related aspects in each of its four maturity stages. The model design process is based on the ISO/ IEC 27002 security stan...
Low-frequency computer-based multiphase variable-amplitude variable-frequency oscillator
Holistic Diagnosis Tool for Early Detection of Breast Cancer
Globally, of all cancer diseases, breast cancer is the number one killer in women. The diseases c...
more
Globally, of all cancer diseases, breast cancer is the number one killer in women. The diseases commonly occur in high income countries, but recently there is rapid increase of breast cancer in middle and low income countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa. This is due to increase in life expectancy, increased urbanization and adoption of western cultures. Although, some strategies to reduce the risks of occurrence of breast cancer are being implemented in developed countries, the case in middle and low income countries is that majority of breast cancer patients are affected by the disease due to diagnosis at late stages of the disease. Therefore, early detection of breast cancer is needed to overcome this problem. In this paper, a holistic diagnosis tool for early detection of breast cancer is proposed. The tool is software based utilizing a novel prediction model for breast cancer survivability developed by using available data mining (DM) technologies. Specifically, five popul...
Towards a Secure Maturity Model for Protecting e-Government Services in Tanzania: A Stakeholders View
Advances in Computer Science : an International Journal
, 2014
E-Government Maturity Models (eGMMs) are widely used as a tool for guiding the development and im...
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E-Government Maturity Models (eGMMs) are widely used as a tool for guiding the development and implementation of e-Government services. The government of Tanzania recognizes that e-Government services can accelerate the achievement of a sustainable social and economic development in the country. However, despite the good benefits provided by e-Government services, information security and privacy are the most significant obstacles for e-Government services adoption. Unfortunately, very few designs of e-GMMs have considered security as a specific issue. However, even these few security responsive models consider security mostly at the transaction stage. Responding to this security weakness of eGMMs, in our earlier work a holistic secure e-Government maturity model that includes security layers consisting of technical and non-technical security related aspects in each of its four maturity stages was developed, but the model was not yet tested and evaluated. This paper reports on the t...
A Framework for Timely and More Informative Epidemic Diseases Surveillance: The Case of Tanzania
Journal of Health Informatics in Developing Countries
, 2018
Background: A number of health facilities in the United Republic of Tanzania use different Hospit...
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Background: A number of health facilities in the United Republic of Tanzania use different Hospital Management Information Systems (HoMISs) for capturing and managing clinical and administrative information for report generation. Despite the potentials of the data in the systems for use in epidemic diseases surveillance, timely extraction of the data for integrated data mining and analysis to produce more informative reports is still a challenge. This paper identifies the candidate data attributes for epidemic diseases surveillance to be extracted and analyzed from the Government of Tanzania Hospital Management Information System (GoT-HoMIS). It also examines the current reporting setup for epidemic diseases surveillance in Tanzania from the health facilities to the district, regional, and national levels. Methods: The study was conducted at the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly, and Children (MoHCDGEC), Tumbi Designated Regional Referral Hospital (TDRRH), M...
Design and Development of a Web Based Digital Repository for Scholarly Communication: A Case of NM-AIST Tanzania
International Journal of Knowledge Content Development & Technology
, 2014
Institutional repositories are essential research infrastructures for research-based universities...
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Institutional repositories are essential research infrastructures for research-based universities. A properly dimensioned institutional repository has the potential to increase research impact and enhance the visibility of an institution through its scholarly outputs. The aim of the study reported in this paper was to design and develop a web-based digital repository for scholarly communications using NM-AIST as a case study. The system was developed using open source software. Findings obtained from system validation tests show that the system is a viable solution to the major challenges encountered in the management and sharing of scholarly information at the institution.
A Review of Characterization Approaches for Smallholder Farmers: Towards Predictive Farm Typologies
The Scientific World Journal
, 2019
Characterization of smallholder farmers has been conducted in various researches by using machine...
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Characterization of smallholder farmers has been conducted in various researches by using machine learning algorithms, participatory and expert-based methods. All approaches used end up with the development of some subgroups known as farm typologies. The main purpose of this paper is to highlight the main approaches used to characterize smallholder farmers, presenting the pros and cons of the approaches. By understanding the nature and key advantages of the reviewed approaches, the paper recommends a hybrid approach towards having predictive farm typologies. Search of relevant research articles published between 2007 and 2018 was done on ScienceDirect and Google Scholar. By using a generated search query, 20 research articles related to characterization of smallholder farmers were retained. Cluster-based algorithms appeared to be the mostly used in characterizing smallholder farmers. However, being highly unpredictable and inconsistent, use of clustering methods calls in for a discu...
Multi-country investigation of factors influencing breeding decisions by smallholder dairy farmers in sub-Saharan Africa
Tropical Animal Health and Production
, 2018
Artificial insemination (AI) and selective bull mating are considered as robust methods for dairy...
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Artificial insemination (AI) and selective bull mating are considered as robust methods for dairy cattle breeding. Globally, these methods have been used to enhance productivity and realize rapid genetic gains. However, these technologies have had low adoption rates in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Even though available evidence suggests that this is due to various infrastructural and technical challenges. There is limited information about what drives this low uptake of AI from a farmer's perspective. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to determine and characterize factors that influence the choice by smallholder farmers between bull service and AI for dairy cow breeding. Further, the relationships between the breeding choices and the bio-physical elements of dairy farming, mainly, farmer characteristics, household income levels, farm management practices, and institutional support structures, were investigated. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews from a total of 16,308 small-scale dairy farmers in Ethiopia (n = 4679), Kenya (n = 5278), Tanzania (n = 3500), and Uganda (n = 2851). The questionnaire was coded in an electronic form using Open Data Kit (ODK) platform to allow for real-time data entry and management. Descriptive statistics, chi-square test, and a t-test were used to evaluate the independent and dependent variables, while logistic regression and factor analysis were used to identify factors that influenced farmers' breeding decisions. Results showed that there was a significant difference in animal husbandry practices between farmers who used artificial insemination (AI) and those who practiced bull mating. The majority of farmers who used AI kept records, purchased more animal feeds, had more labor by hiring workers whose average wages were higher than those of bull service farmers. However, farmers who used AI pay more for services such as water access and breeding while their service providers had to cover long distances compared to farmers who used bulls. This indicates limited access to services and service providers for AI farmers. The ratio of AI to bull service users was even for Ethiopia and Kenya, while in Uganda and Tanzania, more farmers preferred bull service to AI. It was established that the factors that influence farmers' breeding decision were not the same across the region. Factors such as farmer's experience in dairy farming, influence of the neighbor, farmer's ability to keep records, and management practices such as water provision and availability of feeds had a significant association (p < 0.001) with AI adoption among dairy farmers. In contrast, large herd and large land size negatively influenced AI adoption. Institutional settings including cost of AI service and the distance covered by the service provider negatively affected (p < 0.001) the choice of AI as a breeding option. There was a high probability of continued use of a specific breeding method when there was a previous conception success with that same method. Based on the results obtained, we recommend that improvement of institutional settings such as the availability of AI service providers, as well as better access to services
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Farmers' experience, water availability, and feed access significantly influenced AI adoption (p < 0.001) but larger herds negatively impacted it.
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On the Identification of Required Security Controls Suitable for Converged Web and Mobile Applications
International Journal of Computing and Digital Systems
, 2016
Contemporary development of information systems for service delivery is at the present a matter o...
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Contemporary development of information systems for service delivery is at the present a matter of bringing together use of web and mobile applications. However, this advancement in the field of computing is happening at the expense of increased security risks to the system users and owners. This is due to the fact that the advancement in systems security controls is not taking place at the same pace. In the converged web and mobile applications, developers lack formal development standards for security design and verification. As a result, applications are built with ad hoc implementations of security controls depending on context of usage. In view of the above, this paper attempts to put forward a possible set of security controls considered to be suitable for addressing the security demands in converged web and mobile applications environments. To achieve this objective, use is made of a Livestock Data Center (LDC) system as a case study for analysis and reasoning. By design, the system can be accessed through web and mobile applications. The overall process involved here had the following phases: the first phase involved reviewing existing security controls and assessment of their usage in the converged web and mobile applications. The output from this stage was a review of security controls assessment report. The second phase involved devising and proposing a possible, security assessment model for the converged web and mobile applications. The last phase of this process, involved employing the proposed security controls assessment model and the case study to identify the possible security controls suitable for the converged web and mobile applications. The approach used for security controls assessment involved a combination of white box and black box techniques. Whereas the platforms used for Web and mobile applications development were PHP and Java, respectively. This last item has been done to practically assess the security controls at an application level, and consequently to come up with suitable controls for the same.
A Review of Open Access Publication in Tanzania
New forms of scholarship are emerging in the world. These aim at providing freely accessible rese...
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New forms of scholarship are emerging in the world. These aim at providing freely accessible research materials through scholarly communication. There are two common ways of providing open access to research outputs namely, through the open access journals and through discipline or institutional-based open access repositories, that is: Open Access Institutional Repositories (OAIR) driven by open access publishing. In principle, open access to research outputs maximizes research access and thereby also research impact, making research more productive and effective. Today, institutional repositories are becoming major components of the technical infrastructure of successful research-based institutions. It is a trend now observed in most universities and in particular research-based institutions in developing countries. Recently, there has been a high uptake of institutional repositories by higher learning institutions in Tanzania. Despite this fact however, the study on the status of open access publications in the country have not been undertaken. This paper provides an overview of characteristics of open access repositories as a global publishing concept. It then applies the same, as a case study, to review open access publications in Tanzania, and summarizes the status of a growing body of evidence on adoption and usage of open access publications in the country. It also assesses the contribution of Tanzanian institutional repositories in the scholarly communication. In the assessment, performance of Tanzanian institutional repositories, as reflected through global visibility and impact of their repositories in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), is examined. In addition, the performance of Tanzanian universities in archiving and sharing research findings through institutional repositories, based on the Ranking Web of Repositories (RWR) is examined. Findings from the examination of the identified open access repositories reveals that, out of the 5 Tanzanian institutional repositories in the study, only 2 are listed in the RWR. These two are ranked at 1060 th and 1362 nd positions (out of 1983) in the world ranks, as at July 2014. This implies that only 40% of the identified repositories in Tanzania are visible and incorporate good practices in their web publications. It is also revealed that much studies have focused not on open access institutional repositories, but on the factors contributing to adoption of open access scholarly communication in the country. Hence, the relevance of the research reported in this paper.
Distance Training Programme (DTP) students’ and DTP administration managers’ perceptions on mobile SMS technology to support offline distance learning communications activity at the University of Rwanda
Open Science Repository Communications Technologies
, Aug 5, 2014
The paper reports on surveys of Distance Training Programme (DTP) students' and DTP administratio...
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The paper reports on surveys of Distance Training Programme (DTP) students' and DTP administration managers' perceptions on mobile SMS technology to support offline distance learning communications activity at the University of Rwanda, College of Education (UR-CE), and the willingness of DTP students and managers to incorporate an SMS communication at the UR-CE into DTP Programme. Methods used were questionnaires and interviews with DTP students and DTP management staff. The paper concludes that majority of respondents surveyed indicated the need to associate a bulk-SMS to alert DTP students on the availability of printed notices, examination results, assignment submission due dates, etc. Mobile SMS could be used as alerts to maintain and support a timely contact communication to students taking offline distance learning education at the UR-CE.
Towards a Mobile-based DSS for smallholder livestock keepers: Tanzania as a case study
Building a useful and responsive Decision Support System (DSS) requires a deep understanding of t...
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Building a useful and responsive Decision Support System (DSS) requires a deep understanding of the pertinent application domain before starting the system design. In this paper we report about an attempt to develop a mobile-based DSS for smallholder livestock keepers with Arusha region as a case study. The objective of the reported study is to provide an information tool for decision making to the smallholder livestock keepers. The development process involved: 1) employing information gathering techniques to understand smallholder livestock keepers’ information needs 2) studying the current methods that are used for information flow among livestock stakeholders. (i.e. smallholder livestock keepers, extension officers and livestock researchers) 3) analysis of the current situation within Arusha: located in the northern parts of Tanzania in terms of mobile phones penetration, with prospects of leveraging the high mobile phone penetration rate for enhanced information sharing among t...
Design and Implementation of Livestock Data Marts for a Web and Mobile-Based Decision Support System for Smallholder Livestock Keepers: Case Study of Tanzania
Design of data marts is a fundamental task when preparing data destined for implementation of a D...
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Design of data marts is a fundamental task when preparing data destined for implementation of a Decision Support System (DSS). To answer questions on the underlying users information needs, a data-mart designer is challenged to distill the relevant information from various data sources, enable in-depth data analysis and provide ease of access of information to targeted DSS users. This paper presents the design of data marts for analysis of livestock datasets using dimensional modelling techniques. The designed data marts are then implemented for supporting information and knowledge extraction, leveraging large quantities of livestock data from livestock data source that was identified in the case study environment. Appropriate data mart dimensions and facts were modeled in order to ease data analysis and queries in a rolebased information decision support model that was adopted in studied context. Data models based on dimensional modelling (star schema model) are provided and discus...
Fostering Distance Training Programme (DTP) Students' Access to Semester Examination Results via SMS at University of Rwanda-College of Education
This paper presents a situation analysis and implementation of Distance Training Programme (DTP) ...
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This paper presents a situation analysis and implementation of Distance Training Programme (DTP) Semester Examination Results Access (SERA) through Short Message Service (SMS) available anytime and anywhere. 'Texting' or SMS mobile phone messaging is rapidly increasing communication in business and community service. The prompting scenario addressed in this paper is the release of semester examination results (marks) at one and only one place: The UR-CE main campus notice board, regardless of the geographical dispersion of intended audience: The DTP students. To study the DTP students' access to semester examination results via mobile SMS implementation possibilities, analysis of available telecommunication infrastructures, and services coverage in the country (Rwanda) was done. Then a survey was conducted on the information system implementation status at UR-CE, and the DTP management staff and students perceptions toward mobile SMS to support DTP administration communi...
Towards a Web-based Digital Repository: Identification of Needs and Behavior of Users
International Journal of Computer Applications
, 2014
Web usage behavior of users have an impact on the development of a web-based application. Web usa...
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Web usage behavior of users have an impact on the development of a web-based application. Web usage analysis is therefore necessary so as to better serve the needs of a webbased application. The process involves analyzing interaction of a user with a web application. Web usage analysis provides useful information that can help improve the service delivery and functioning of a web-based system. The aim of the study reported in this paper is to elicit and study users' needs and requirements towards establishment of an institutional webbased repository for scholarly communication. Questionnaires were used to collect data that reflected web usage behavior and the underlying technical, legal and financial requirements. Analysis results show that there is high usage of the internet as a source of scholarly information and users access their institution websites regularly. Although there is no proper resource management system, the legal requirement for publishing guarantees high research throughput. Results also show that majority of researchers consulted support repository establishment as alternative publishing platform to remove subscription and distribution barriers imposed by journals. In addition, most web usage studies have been system focused. Statistics extracted from web log files and web usage behavior from the users' perspective revealed useful information from which a requirements specification model is developed for the proposed repository system.
An Approach for Systematically Analyzing and Specifying Security Requirements for the Converged Web-Mobile Applications
International Journal of Computing and Digital Systems
, 2014
As the use of web and mobile applications is becoming pervasive for service delivery and user mob...
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As the use of web and mobile applications is becoming pervasive for service delivery and user mobility support, enterprises are now increasingly fighting against a huge number of emerging security threats which interfere with the process of service delivery. As an attempt to help the enterprises in dealing with the emerging security threats in the converged service delivery architecture, this paper presents a methodology for security threat analysis and security requirements specification in web/mobile applications development. The presented methodology is based on a case study Livestock Data Center (LDC) system, which is being developed and it allows both web and mobile interfaces as service delivery channels. Hence the system serves as a representative of other similar setups of service delivery. In addition to the processes of analysis and security specification, the methodology involves threat modeling as well. There are several threat models in the literature. The STRIDE threats model is one among the existing threats models that is used to identify security threats that needs to be addressed in systems such as the LDC system. The STRIDE threats model has been used to identify the likely security threats to our case study. On applying the STRIDE threats model the following threats were identified as prominent: sensitive data exposure, weak server side controls, client side injection, and weak authentication and authorization. The identified security threats were compared to existing threats in traditional web and mobile applications separately in order to figure out the changes when the two computing platforms come together. The findings from our case study have shown that the proposed methodology for security threat analysis and security design can be useful in security requirements specifications in the converged web-mobile applications during development, and can be generally used to assist developers of other similar systems.
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