Search results

This chapter reviews the contribution of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) to Africa developmental transformation by exploring key activities around three key areas where NGOs have impacted Africa's development namely environmental, social and economic context. This perspective emphasises the central role of NGOs in triggering developmental changes in Africa. Exploring the complexities of NGOs' management and its impact on the development of Africa through a collective action lens, we discovered that although NGOs have been responsible for developmental growth in Africa, there exists a certain tussle between the NGOs and state actors due to relegation of the state. With recent calls for accountability and transparency, NGOs would have to include more strategies geared towards collaborative partnerships and more inclusion of state in order to maintain sustainable growth. We conclude by reflecting on the socioeconomic impact of NGOs and implications for sustainable development in Africa.

Many approaches on the economic aspect of hospital acquired infections (HAIs) have two major limitations: first, the lack of distinction between resources attributable to the management of HAI and resources absorbed by the main clinical problem for which the patient was hospitalized, and second, the lack of an adequate method for calculating the relative costs. These assume that the resources used by HAI can be determined by measuring the extra days of length of days (LOS) of infected patients versus non‐infected patients and attribute to extra‐LOS a value to the mean total cost. The aim of the article is to test a cost‐modelling method that could overcome these limitations by applying the appropriateness evaluation protocol to the medical charts of patients with hospital‐acquired symptomatic urinary tract infection (UTI) or sepsis, and by using cost‐centre accounting.

The paper explains and tests a model for calculating costs of HAIs.

The data analysis showed that it is not always true that infections protract LOS: five out of 25 sepsis cases have extra‐LOS and eight out of 25 UTI cases have extra‐LOS, while the cases of sepsis that arose in surgery ward and intensive care units and urinary tract infections in ICU are without prolongation of LOS. The data analysis also showed that, using the mean total cost, the three cases of sepsis in the general surgery and the six in the ICU did not incur costs, nor did the two cases of UTI in ICU, so that they appear to be infections at zero cost. Moreover, the weight of the cost for the bed, or for the diagnostic services, or for the pharmacological treatment, varied widely depending on the site of the HAI and the ward where the patient was hospitalized.

The method can be applied in any hospital.

The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically how operational performance and contextual factors contribute to differences in overall patient care costs across different hospitals.

Administrative data are employed from a sample of hospitals in New York State to construct measures of contextual factors, operational performance, and cost per patient. Operational performance and cost variables are adjusted to account for case mix differences across hospitals. Hierarchical regression is used to analyze the effects of contextual and operational variables on cost performance.

Increased length of stay, increased patient volume, and educational mission were associated with higher cost per patient. Mortality performance was associated with lower cost per patient. However, it was not found that location, size, or ownership status had a significant relationship with cost performance.

This paper identifies several significant relationships between contextual and operational variables and hospital costs. From a managerial perspective, these findings highlight the fact that some drivers of cost in hospitals are under the control of managers. One of the primary cost drivers in the study is length of stay, which implies that there is significant room for improvement in healthcare performance through a focus on operational excellence.

For researchers, the present study highlights the relative importance of operational versus contextual factors, with respect to cost performance in hospitals. The results of this study also provide direction for additional research into the role operational performance might play in determining the overall organizational performance in a hospital.

Africa's business environment (BE) is characteristically unfriendly and poses severe development challenges. This study evaluates the impact of business climate on productivity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Macroeconomic data for 51 sub-Saharan African economies from 1990 to 2018 are employed for the analysis. The seemingly unrelated regression model is used to address inter-sectorial linkages.

The study uncovers several findings. First, a high start-up cost substantially leads to productivity losses by limiting the funds available for investment in productivity-enhancing labour and technology and limiting the number of businesses that see the light of day. The productivity impacts of start-up costs are most enormous for industry, followed by services and agriculture. Second, economies with favourable financing environments tend to be more productive economy wide and sector wise. Third, high taxes and tax inefficiency lower productivity by reducing the resource envelope of firms, thus lowering investment amounts. Fourth, poor business infrastructure inflicts the most damage on productivity. Lastly, business administration and macroeconomic environments impact sectoral and economy-wide productivity.

SSA economies must strive to lower the cost of starting a business as high start-up costs injure productivity. One way of reducing start-up costs is to create a one-stop shop for registering and formalising a business. Another way is to automate business registration and administrative processes to reduce red tape and corruption.

The authors extend the body of knowledge by analysing sectoral and economy-wide productivity effects of various business climate indicators while accounting for inter-sectoral linkages, cross-sectional dependence and endogeneity.

Post-harvest losses are major problems faced by farmers and this is due to their poor access to credit considered as a low rate of financial inclusion. This paper aims at analysing the relationship between financial inclusion and post-harvest losses in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU).

The study engaged data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation [FAO] for post-harvest losses. Also, it engaged data from Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest [BCEAO] for financial inclusion over the period 2000 to 2020. The study applied the Instrumental Variable Two-Stage Least Squares (IV-2SLS) and Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) to test the robustness of the results.

The results show that financial inclusion reduces post-harvest losses by 1.2%. Therefore, given this result, policies to improve farmers’ access to credit by increasing the rate of financial inclusion, is a necessary condition for the reduction of post-harvest losses.

Social implication of this study is that it contributes to the policy debate on the enhancement of food security by reducing post-harvest losses. The reduction in post-harvest losses and food security, will improve the welfare and livelihood of the society. This aims for the actualization of sustainable development goal of food and nutrition security (SDG-2).

The findings imply that efforts by governments and policymakers to improve farmers’ access to credit by increasing the rate of financial inclusion would reduce post-harvest losses in West African countries that are members of the WAEMU. Also, investment in education, ICT and building warehouse for farmers will help in reducing post-harvest losses. It implies that educated farmers have more opportunities to be financially inclusive than those who are not educated.

This paper aims to apply the augmented reality (AR) technology to assembly design in the early design stage. A proof‐of‐concept system with AR interface is developed.

Through AR interface, designers can design the assembly on the real assembly platform. The system helps users to design the assembly features to provide proper part‐part constraints in the early design stage. The virtual assembly features are rendered on the real assembly platform using AR registration techniques. The new evaluated assembly parts can be generated in the AR interface and assembled to assembly platform through assembly features. The model‐based collision detection technique is implemented for assembly constraint evaluation.

With AR interface, it would be possible to combine some of the benefits of both physical and virtual prototyping (VP). The AR environment can save a lot of computation resource compared to a totally virtual environment. Working on real assembly platform, designers have more realistic feel and the ability to design an assembly in a more intuitive way.

More interaction tools need to be developed to support the complex assembly design efficiently.

The presented system encourages designers to consider the assembly issues in the early design stage. The primitive 3D models of assembly parts with proper part‐part constraints are generated using the system before doing detailed geometry design.

A new markerless registration approach for AR system is presented. This generic approach can be also used for other AR applications.

Augmented environments superimpose computer enhancements on the real world. The pose and occlusion consistencies between virtual and real objects have to be managed correctly, so that users can look at the natural scene. The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel technique that can be used to resolve pose and occlusion consistencies in real time with a unified affine properties‐based framework.

First, the method is simple and can resolve pose and occlusion consistencies in a unified framework based on affine properties. It can improve third dimension of the augmented reality system to a large degree while reducing the computing complexity. Second, the method is robust to arbitrary camera motion and does not require multiple cameras, camera calibration, use of fiducials, or a structural model of the scene to work. Third, a novel feature tracking method is proposed combing narrow and wide baseline strategies to match natural features between reference images and current frame directly.

It is found that the method is still effective even under large changes of viewing angles, while casting off the requirement that the initial camera position should close to the reference images.

This paper describes some experiments which have been carried out to demonstrate the validity of the proposed approach.

Digital media technology is becoming an integral part of our daily activities, with widespread penetration in various application domains including arts, medicine, education, and commerce. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the horizon of emerging digital media technologies in electronic financial trading with reference to a novel application drawing expertise from two important fields of study, namely: digital media (video and image) processing and augmented reality.

The paper presents an ergonomic study that considers the potential utility and usability of augmented reality (AR) in finance. In order to justify the outcome of this ergonomic study, the authors describe the technology under study (CYBERII) and its implementation in finance. This ergonomic study is based on a comparative analysis of the use of AR with a counterpart virtual reality (VR) approach used for the same application.

The comparative analysis highlights an added value in the shift from the use of VR to AR in electronic financial trading. This added value is gained from augmented realism and less constrained interaction. The paper discusses the challenges and rewards of the emerging digital media technologies in meeting the needs of electronic commerce applications, particularly in electronic financial trading. The main considerations taken into account are the realism of rendering, system portability, and widespread usability.

This study motivates further ergonomic studies involving the evaluation of augmented reality integration including CYBERII technology, in the field of electronic commerce.

The purpose of this research was to explore the stickiness of players' motivation in a virtual community and to explore the important factors for gamers.

In this research, motivation was the independent variable; the virtual community was the mediator; and stickiness was the dependent variable. An online questionnaire survey was conducted, with users of augmented reality (AR) as the research objects. Statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS and AMOS software to verify the research model and research hypotheses, to understand the relation between player motivation and stickiness and to determine whether there were any changes in the virtual community.

The authors found that the relation between players' motivation in AR-based games and the virtual community had a significant positive impact. Ingress had a significant positive impact on the virtual community and stickiness, and Pokémon had a significant positive impact too. The virtual community of the Ingress game played a completely mediating role in motivation and stickiness, but the virtual community in Pokémon did not have a mediating effect.

The novel approach adopted in this study enabled us to determine the causal relation between player motivation, the virtual community and stickiness, on the basis of the theoretical framework formulated, and the latter was used to construct a path analysis model diagram. The correlation between motivation and the virtual community, between the virtual community and stickiness, and the causal relation between all three was verified. The study results and conclusions may help companies understand how to use virtual communities in AR games to improve stickiness and motivate gamers to continue playing.