Determinants of Profit Efficiency of Camel Milk Traders in Five Counties in Northern Kenya
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Date
2022Author
Njoroge, Josiah, M
Type
ThesisLanguage
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Camel milk is a major source of both revenue and nutrition for pastoral communities in
Northern Kenya. However, despite the existence of significant trade in camel milk in the
region, the estimation of traders’ profit efficiency has received little attention, perhaps in
furtherance of the longstanding historical neglect of socio-economic research on camel milk.
To address this gap, this study used a cross-sectional dataset of 933 camel milk traders collected
in Garissa, Isiolo, Marsabit, Turkana, and Wajir counties in Northern Kenya to assess their
profit efficiency and identify its drivers using a stochastic translog profit frontier, and to
determine spatial profit efficiency gap across the five counties using the meta-frontier
framework. The study found that women dominated the camel milk trade in Northern Kenya
at a ratio of 4.6:1. In addition none of the five counties was fully profit efficient; in fact, the
average profit efficiency was only 43% suggesting that 57% of the profit was lost to technical
inefficiencies in the marketing system and traders’ idiosyncracies. Nevertheless, Isiolo and
Wajir counties emerged as the best, with 78% and 71% profit efficiency scores, respectively.
Being female, traders’ milk selling experience, participation in milk handling training, and
value addition significantly reduced the profit inefficiency, while the distance to markets had
the opposite effect. Accordingly, the study recommends increased investment in value addition
in camel milk, the establishment of trader milk handling safety and hygiene training programs,
and the development of road and market infrastructure to improve the profit efficiency of camel
milk traders in Northern Kenya for enhanced welfare.
Keywords: Profit efficiency. Camel milk traders. Stochastic translog profit frontier
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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