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The purpose of this paper is to support the development of effective strategies that enhance community water supply systems. The study examined service constraints and willingness to pay for better services in community-managed water supply services using empirical evidence from beneficiaries of a small-town water supply system in Ghana.

A survey design of both descriptive and exploratory research is adopted, the descriptive survey handles the quantitative aspect, while the exploratory survey handles the qualitative aspect. The authors collected data using a structured survey questionnaire from 387 beneficiaries who were public standpipe and domestic users. Descriptive statistics, Kendall's coefficient of concordance and Cragg's two-step model were the methods of analysis employed.

The respondents ranked lack of capacity (managerial) as the topmost constraint of the community-managed water system. The findings indicate that 57% of the beneficiaries were not willing to pay, whiles 43% were willing to pay. Also, results from Cragg's two-step regression model indicate that different sets of factors affect willingness-to-pay and amount-to-pay decisions. The study revealed that while a willingness-to-pay decision is influenced by income, education, marital status and customer service, the estimated-amount-to-pay decision is more influenced by income and education.

Building on the empirical evidence, the findings indicated that the water and sanitation management team can increase the current fee of GH¢ 5.00/1 m³ (≈US$ 0.87) by increasing beneficiaries charge for a bucket of water from GH¢ 0.10p (≈US$ 0.017) to GH¢ 0.21p (≈US$ 0.036) for better services within the community. Importantly, the additional charge should take into consideration income and education which were noted to significantly influence the beneficiary's amount-to-pay decision for better services in the community-managed water supply system.

There is a huge gap between actual and achievable yields of maize which threatens household food security in Ghana. Low adoption of improved maize production technologies coupled with poor compliance with Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) recommended maize production practices is identified as the cause of low yields. This study assessed farmers' compliance with CSIR recommended production practices and its effects on yield.

Using a structured questionnaire, a cross-sectional survey of 150 respondents were interviewed for the study. Descriptive statistics, awareness and compliance indices, probit model and Garret ranking technique were the methods of analysis employed in the study.

The results showed that farmers are highly aware, have adopted and hardly comply with standards of applications of CSIR recommended production practices. Farm size, age, educational level and female gender significantly influenced compliance with recommended production practices. Also, compliance with recommended production practices increase maize yield.

Policies aim at addressing yield gap in maize production should be targeted at improving farmers' level of compliance with production practices by addressing some constraints through farmer credit and subsidy programmes to help farmers increase their level of compliance. The fact that farmers have adopted recommended production practices does not necessarily mean they will have higher yields. The study generates important insights about how well farmers have been adhering to standards of adoption of recommended production practices.