Suchergebnisse

Three approaches - value added approach, capital consumption approach, capital cost approach - are utilised to assess the relative factor intensities in small and large firms in Kenya

Study on the problems of farmers on the settlement schemes, which has the ultimate objective of making recommendations for improving the present poor rate of repayment

Durch die hohe Abhängigkeit vom Regenfeldbau ist die Ernährungssicherheit Kenias weiterhin eine große Herausforderung. Diese Studie untersucht den Einsatz optischer und Radarbilder zur Kartierung und Überwachung des Maisanbaus. Manuelle Digitalisierung der Felder und ein automatischer Segmentierungsalgorithmus wurden genutzt, um ihre Grenzen festzulegen. Zusätzlich wurde mittels einer überwachten Klassifikation die Landnutzung im Untersuchungsgebiet identifiziert. Der Blattflächenindex (LAI) des Maises wurde ermittelt und dann aus den Feldern modelliert. Dieser modellierte LAI wurde mit ausgewählten Vegetationsindizes und dem von Sentinel-2 abgeleiteten LAI korreliert. Im Anschluss wurden die Werte der Rückstreuung des Radars der Maisfelder in der Anbausaison 2015/2016 extrahiert, um die Überwachung und Analyse für einzelne, aber auch aufeinanderfolgende Anbausaisons zu unterstützen. Letztendlich wurden Anwendungen, insbesondere zur Entscheidungsfindung in der Politik identifiziert. ; Food security in Kenya remains a challenge due to the overreliance on rainfed agriculture. This study explored the application of optical and radar images in the mapping and monitoring of maize. Manual fields' digitization, coupled with an automatic segmentation algorithm was applied in the extraction of the field boundaries. A supervised classification was additionally undertaken to identify the various land uses within the study area. Maize leaf area index (LAI) was destructively estimated and then modelled from the fields. This modelled LAI was correlated to selected vegetation indices and to the Sentinel-2 derived LAI. Finally, the radar backscatter values were extracted for the maize fields for the 2015 and 2016 planting season to aid in the in-season and cross-season fields monitoring and analysis. Last but not least, areas of policy where the study results can complement the policy making exercise were also identified.

The significance of having a positive environmental impact has rapidly been growing. More and more industries are beginning to identify and implement the ways in which they can be environmentally friendly. One such way is green procurement. In many developed countries where green public procurement is at the fore-front of procurement activities, many industries have implemented it, including the healthcare industry. In Kenya, a developing country in East Africa, sustainability is a well-known concept, with the country striving to achieve its Millennium Development Goals (of which certain goals on sustainability are included) by 2015. However, green procurement is not as widely developed as it could be. The focus of this thesis is on green procurement in Kenyan Hospitals. The thesis aims to reveal the level of awareness of green procurement in the hospitals, the extent to which they may have implemented green procurement, as well as the opportunities that these hospitals have for implementing green procurement. After the research, only one hospital was revealed to use environmental criteria for most if not all its procurement processes. This hospital was a private for-profit hospital. In the other hospitals interviewed (a public hospital and a faith-based hospital), use of environmental criteria was not a priority. One of the reasons for this was lack of awareness. Another reason was lack of policies and other mandates from the government. Many felt that the hospitals (in particular the public one) are most likely to implement green procurement should the government be involved and include it in the form of a law. Overall, the basic concepts of green procurement were known and the hospital representatives interviewed understood the significance of implementing it. Also, the hospitals do have the opportunities to implement green procurement, as the research did not discover any major hindrances impeding them.

Export of cut flowers from East Africa to Europe is an example of how tightened quality regulations and increasing concern with social and environmental issues have created a highly codified industry. For producers participating in value chains driven by large retailers, adopt-ing social and environmental standards is a requirement and specificities are dictated by the buyers. In this paper focus is on private social standards and the opportunities and challenges they pose for labour organizations, especially trade unions. By incorporating the concept of labour agency, global value chain analysis is widened to encompass not just industrial development but also labour development. The analysis reveals how strongly-driven retailer chains offer more room for labour to exert its agency than the traditional auction strand of the value chain. Labour organizations can choose to 'ride' the standards, exploiting them to gain influence and advance their own projects. They can also choose to position themselves against the social standards, thereby contesting the legitimacy of private social standards and at the same time delimiting themselves from exploit-ing some of the opportunities offered by these standards. Labour organizations have been able to influence social standard setting and implementation, and to use standards to further labour representation at production sites. However, their ability to seriously challenge the prevailing governance structure of the flower value chain towards more labour representation appears extremely limited. Indeed, it poses a tremendous task to challenge a governance structure that is driven by large powerful retailers employing strategies such as cost-cutting and just-in-time ordering – strategies that put additional pressure on suppliers and promote labour flexibilization and not labour organization.