Suchergebnisse

Procurement is the strategy or approach to cost effectively purchase a project or service. It's a powerful strategy to demonstrate commitment in achieving "Value for Money" by meeting the client requirement throughout the life cycle of the project and able to address the consequences inherent in the supply chain. Post-disaster reconstruction and rehabilitation is a complex issue with several dimensions and stakeholders involved. Government, NGOs, and international organizations have their own stakes in disaster recovery programs, and links must be established among them as well as with the community. The most significant factor in a post-disaster reconstruction scenario is deciding on best procurement strategy based on client requirements. Effective post-disaster response is crucial and lies at the heart of disaster management agencies in almost every cautious country around the globe. This paper presents an analysis of sustainable procurement strategy for enhancing prompt and effective post disaster reconstruction. The concept will contextualised a sustainable procurement approach across the project life cycle by considering the environmental, social and economic consequences of: design; material use; production; operations; maintenance and/or End user life; disposal, reuse and recycling options; with the capabilities to address these consequences throughout the value chain, to achieved value for money. It will assist in making more informed decisions for effective and timely response in post-disaster reconstruction scenarios. Post disaster reconstruction is a period of high expectation and hope while the emotions of the entire community are still fresh with shock and grief. It is a time when governments and NGOs are helping to rebuild damage infrastructure and housing, energize economy by providing employment, health and education. It is a period where the government will need to subsidize activities that will trigger positive externalities across the economy and provide a policies or strategies that may move the country ahead despite the monetary and economic uncertainties that can affect an emerging economy like Brazil during times of post-disaster rebuilding. One such strategy could be a sustainable procurement strategy, executed in an environmentally, economically and socially sound manner that can contribute to ecological resilience of coastal disasters in a meaningful manner.

This study investigates and analyzes the nature, content, character, scope of operation, and relationship, between Islamic and statutory Laws of testate succession with a view to demonstrating the implications for family and social stability in a Muslim society. It probes the awareness, perception, preferences and satisfaction of Muslim citizens in Zaria town (in Kaduna State of Nigeria) with the two laws. The research problem revolves around the relationship between the two bodies of law, what happens in case of conflict, and the citizen's preferences in matters of succession. The study employs essentially doctrinal (review of statutory and case laws) methods supplemented by an empirical survey (interviews). Among the major findings is that the respondents prefer Islamic laws of succession and would prefer that it is given pre-eminence over statutory law. The paper recommends inter alia, that government should embark on a massive public awareness to sensitize citizens on rules of succession, even while retraining lower court judges for a better exercise of judicial discretion in succession matters.

Using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Granger causality test, this study demonstrates that M1 and M2 money demand cointegrates with real income, deposit interest rate, real exchange rates, and real stock prices. Real income, deposit interest, and exchange rates are significant determinants of the Turkish economy's long-run M1 and M2 money demand. Furthermore, our findings reveal that the wealth effect of real stock prices outweighs the substitution effect within the Turkish economy. The impact of real stock prices on M1 and M2 money demand is positive and statistically significant in the long run. While M2 is more responsive to changes in real stock prices, M1 exhibits greater stability than M2. Therefore, policymakers must recognise the significant role of the stock market in the long-run money demand function within the Turkish economy and its impact on the effective implementation of monetary policy.

The degree of concentration and market power in South African markets has been the topic of much policy discussion. However, there has been little evidence on what drives market power and the impact of the degree of competition in South African markets on economic outcomes. This paper improves on previous markup estimates for South Africa using a methodology developed by De Loecker and Warzynski (2012) applied to tax administrative data for 2010–14. The paper then explores the firm-level determinants of the estimated markups and assesses the link between competition and firm-level outcomes, including productivity, employment, and wages. The analysis finds that average markups across the economy appear to have risen between 2010 and 2014. Larger firms, higher-intensity exporters, and firms with greater sales shares charge higher markups than comparator firms in South Africa, even after controlling for efficiency. Moreover, lower product market competition has a significant, negative effect on productivity growth, employment growth, and wage growth in South African manufacturing industries. Higher sales-weighted and value-added-weighted average industry-level markups are associated with lower industry-level entry rates. The findings highlight the importance of implementing sound pro-competition government interventions and the significant economic benefits associated with such policies.

Ghana is often considered a peaceful country due to its ability to manage electoral disputes. However, the role of peacebuilding institutions such as the National Peace Council (NPC) is often overlooked in all the analysis. Using documentary sources, this paper analyzed the petitions of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) and the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) before the Supreme Court of Ghana; the content of the speeches delivered at the Kumasi Peace Accord; the National Peace Council Act 2011 (Act 818), and selected literature on infrastructure for peace to appraise the role of the NPC in promoting peaceful election in the year 2012 in Ghana. The paper examined the NPC role in election 2012 on different phases: pre-election phase, Election Day phase and post-election phase. In the analysis of these events, the over-riding objectives remain appraising the NPC as a proactive peacebuilding institution. An examination of the potential challenges of the NPC is in regard to pointing out, indirectly, the nature of support it needs to be able to work effectively. The paper recommends that since election remains the source of conflict in Africa and also conflicts being the bane of development in the continent, the feasibility of establishing a continental-level peace infrastructure will not be a misplaced idea.

The Lean Thinking ideology has established tools and techniques needed to reduce non-value-added activities such as waiting time, overproduction, transportation, motion, inventory and defects within an organization's value stream. Numerous organizations across the world have applied Lean Thinking and have attained vast benefits. This research examined the obstacles or barriers to Lean implementation at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) in Ghana. The research used the concurrent mixed methods research design. A total of  clients of DVLA were sampled for the study using a simple random sampling approach. The data analysis for the study was grounded on the standardized Z-test and thematic analysis. The results from the study revealed that lack of top management support, consulting cost in Lean, stringent requirements and approval, lack of knowledge in Lean, and lack of government support for research and collaboration in Lean were the barriers in the Lean implementation process. It was therefore recommended that management and employees of DVLA should focus on identifying and eliminating the obstacles in Lean implementation which affect their operations.

Objective We examined the divergent patterns, prevalence and correlates of contraceptive use among parenting adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa using the Demographic and Health Survey datasets of 17 countries. Design We included a weighted sample of 9488 parenting adolescent girls in our analysis. Current contraceptive use was defined as the use of any methods to delay or avoid getting pregnant at the survey time. We reported the prevalence of any contraceptive use for all countries and used multilevel binary logistic regression analysis to examine the individual and contextual factors associated with contraceptive use. Outcome measures Contraceptive use. Results We found an overall contraceptive prevalence of 27.12% (CI 27.23% to 28.03%) among parenting adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa, ranging from 70.0% (CI 61.76% to 77.16%) in South Africa to only 5.10% (CI 3.04% to 8.45%) in Chad. The prevalence of contraceptive use was lowest in West andCentral Africa, with most countries having less than 20% prevalence. Increasing age (adjusted OR (aOR)=1.46, 95% CI 1.28 to 1.65), being married (aOR=1.63, 95% CI 1.43 to 1.87), having a secondary or higher level of education (aOR=2.72, 95% CI 2.25 to 2.3.27), and media exposure (aOR=1.21, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.36), were associated with higher odds of contraceptive use in the pooled data but preference for a higher number of children (more than five children) (aOR=0.61, 95% CI 0.52 to 0.72) was related to lower likelihood of use. Significant heterogeneity was observed in the country-level disaggregated results. Conclusion African countries differ widely when it comes to contraceptive use among parenting adolescent girls, with only three countries having a relatively high prevalence of use. The governments of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly those in West and Central Africa, should invest in expanding access to contraceptives for adolescent mothers to prevent repeat pregnancy and improve the overall well-being of parenting adolescent girls.

World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus disease (COVID-19) a pandemic in March 2020. Currently almost every country in the world has reported cases with moderate to high mortality rates. The European Union (EU), the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK) are the severely affected countries. Nevertheless, the WHO is very much concern about countries with weak health systems. The clinical characteristics of COVID-19 varies extensively, ranging from asymptomatic infections to severe as well as critical pneumonia with high mortality rates in the elderly and patients with co-morbid medical illness. Convalescent Plasma Therapy (CPT) has been successfully used in treating various viral disease outbreaks such as 1918 influenza pneumonia pandemic, poliomyelitis, measles, mumps, Machupo virus, Junin virus, Lassa virus, Ebola etc. High-titer specific antibodies maybe capable of binding to Coronavirus-19 (CoV-19) and neutralize the viral particles, inhibit entry to uninfected cells, and trigger potent effector mechanisms such as complement activation as well as phagocytosis. Therefore, in most countries with very weak health systems with no Intensive Care Units (ICUs) or trained ICU physicians, early initiation of CPT for severely COVID-19 patients may be rewarding. Therefore, solidarity control trials on CPT for COVID- 19 patients involving large number of patients are urgently needed.