Transforming the world order amid the emerging multipolarity: Evidence from the African continent

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. 2180-2198
Author(s):  
A.M. Chernysheva

Subject. As the world becomes more multipolar, global leaders change their approaches to capture the areas they dominate. Currently, advocates of the Western and Eastern models clash, with the latter demonstrating a greater efficiency. Objectives. I examine the foreign trade of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, assuming that the region's countries are teetering on the edge of the Western and Eastern approaches to determining the domination area of the leading country. Methods. The study is based on the systems approach, comparative and statistical methods for reviewing exports and imports of Sub-Saharan Africa, illustrating the case of South Africa. Results. As the global economy currently develops, the multipolar world and its emergence are showed to gain momentum, with Sub-Saharan Africa actively diversifying their foreign trade. I mention the way the USA, EU, China, India and Russia influence the region and evaluate development trends in south Africa's exports and imports, setting their further development trend. Notwithstanding the noticeable impact of the USA, Sub-Saharan Africa establish regional alliances and tend to follow the course of other States, with China becoming increasingly important. Conclusions and Relevance. Transforming the world order into the multipolar format, the third-world countries should diversify their foreign trade, following multiple vectors in their economic policy, thus ensuring their own economic security and an opportunity to raise their significance regionally and internationally.

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 1581-1596
Author(s):  
A.M. Chernysheva

Subject. As the global economy currently evolves during the emergence of the multipolar world, emerging countries strive to diversify their foreign trade and gradually escape the strict impact of the leading economies. In the multipolar world countries need their economic policies to ensure the national economic security. Objectives. I examine the foreign trade in some countries of Latin America and economic alliances there. I also evaluate trends in the development of export and import indicators of Brazil, trace the trajectory of their further development by country. Methods. In this study, I analyze documents in public domain, including statistical data on exports and imports of Brazil with reference to the USA, China, Russia, Germany, France, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. The study is based on the systems approach, comparative and statistical methods of data research. Results. Nowadays, in the current economic situation worldwide the multipolar order gains momentum. Foreign trade is being actively diversified by those countries that fall into geopolitical pursuits of leading economies. Conclusions and Relevance. Diversifying the foreign trade and adhering to the multi-faceted economic policy, countries will ensure their economic security notwithstanding the multipolar world order. Currently, the Latin American countries take much effort to diversify their foreign trade, though they are strongly influenced by the USA as an area of their geopolitical ambitions. I should mention a growing importance of China in areas of someone else's geopolitical interest.


Author(s):  
Mavhungu Abel Mafukata

The main objective of this paper is to predict the consequences of China's impending economic crisis on global economy – with reference to Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in particular. The specific objective of this paper is to investigate and explore the increasing dominance of economic practice of China in SSA. China is a critical principal player in the economy of SSA. China's influence and dominance of the SSA economy might have negative effect on SSA in case of any implosion of the Chinese economy. Data were collected from print and electronic sources extracted from the vast body of empirical scholarship of different disciplines on China in SSA.  The results of this paper revealed that China is indeed dominating the economy in SSA. Pointers are that China's economic implosion would have consequences for SSA in the same way as the 2008-2009 global economic recession had around the world. This  paper positively predicts that China's economic and financial implosion remains a possibility, and would impact on SSA.


1988 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. B. Knight

South Africa has neither a developed nor a typical underdeveloped economy. Too often it has been wrongly classified, along with, say, Australia and New Zealand, as one of the peripheral developed countries, because only a part of the economy and population have the characteristics we associate with that group. Yet its economy is distinctly different from others in sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa falls squarely into the category which the World Bank classifies as ‘upper middle-income’ developing economies, with G.N.P. per capita in 1982 ranging from $2,000 to $7,000 and averaging $2,500, thereby including South Africa, with $2,700.1 (By contrast, Kenya's G.N.P. per capita was $400 and Britain's $10,000). The World Bank's group includes Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, South Korea, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia. South Africa shares many structural economic characteristics with these semi-industrialised countries.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (35) ◽  
pp. 233-242
Author(s):  
Boris Baumgartner

Abstract The Sub-Saharan Africa belongs to the most underdeveloped regions in the world economy. This region consists of forty nine countries but it’s world GDP share is only a small percentage. There are some very resource rich countries in this region. One of them is Angola. This former Portuguese colony has one of the largest inventories of oil among all African countries. Angola recorded one of the highest growth of GDP between 2004-2008 from all countries in the world economy and nowadays is the third biggest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria and South Africa. The essential problem of Angola is the one-way oriented economy on oil and general on natural resources. Angola will be forced to change their one-way oriented economy to be more diversified and competitive in the future.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lori Ann Post ◽  
Salem T Argaw ◽  
Cameron Jones ◽  
Charles B Moss ◽  
Danielle Resnick ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Since the novel coronavirus emerged in late 2019, the scientific and public health community around the world have sought to better understand, surveil, treat, and prevent the disease, COVID-19. In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), many countries responded aggressively and decisively with lockdown measures and border closures. Such actions may have helped prevent large outbreaks throughout much of the region, though there is substantial variation in caseloads and mortality between nations. Additionally, the health system infrastructure remains a concern throughout much of SSA, and the lockdown measures threaten to increase poverty and food insecurity for the subcontinent’s poorest residents. The lack of sufficient testing, asymptomatic infections, and poor reporting practices in many countries limit our understanding of the virus’s impact, creating a need for better and more accurate surveillance metrics that account for underreporting and data contamination. OBJECTIVE The goal of this study is to improve infectious disease surveillance by complementing standardized metrics with new and decomposable surveillance metrics of COVID-19 that overcome data limitations and contamination inherent in public health surveillance systems. In addition to prevalence of observed daily and cumulative testing, testing positivity rates, morbidity, and mortality, we derived COVID-19 transmission in terms of speed, acceleration or deceleration, change in acceleration or deceleration (jerk), and 7-day transmission rate persistence, which explains where and how rapidly COVID-19 is transmitting and quantifies shifts in the rate of acceleration or deceleration to inform policies to mitigate and prevent COVID-19 and food insecurity in SSA. METHODS We extracted 60 days of COVID-19 data from public health registries and employed an empirical difference equation to measure daily case numbers in 47 sub-Saharan countries as a function of the prior number of cases, the level of testing, and weekly shift variables based on a dynamic panel model that was estimated using the generalized method of moments approach by implementing the Arellano-Bond estimator in R. RESULTS Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa have the most observed cases of COVID-19, and the Seychelles, Eritrea, Mauritius, Comoros, and Burundi have the fewest. In contrast, the <i>speed</i>, <i>acceleration</i>, <i>jerk</i>, <i>and 7-day persistence</i> indicate rates of COVID-19 transmissions differ from observed cases. In September 2020, Cape Verde, Namibia, Eswatini, and South Africa had the highest speed of COVID-19 transmissions at 13.1, 7.1, 3.6, and 3 infections per 100,0000, respectively; Zimbabwe had an acceleration rate of transmission, while Zambia had the largest rate of deceleration this week compared to last week, referred to as a <i>jerk</i>. Finally, the 7-day persistence rate indicates the number of cases on September 15, 2020, which are a function of new infections from September 8, 2020, decreased in South Africa from 216.7 to 173.2 and Ethiopia from 136.7 to 106.3 per 100,000. The statistical approach was validated based on the regression results; they determined recent changes in the pattern of infection, and during the weeks of September 1-8 and September 9-15, there were substantial country differences in the evolution of the SSA pandemic. This change represents a decrease in the transmission model R value for that week and is consistent with a de-escalation in the pandemic for the sub-Saharan African continent in general. CONCLUSIONS Standard surveillance metrics such as daily observed new COVID-19 cases or deaths are necessary but insufficient to mitigate and prevent COVID-19 transmission. Public health leaders also need to know where COVID-19 transmission rates are accelerating or decelerating, whether those rates increase or decrease over short time frames because the pandemic can quickly escalate, and how many cases today are a function of new infections 7 days ago. Even though SSA is home to some of the poorest countries in the world, development and population size are not necessarily predictive of COVID-19 transmission, meaning higher income countries like the United States can learn from African countries on how best to implement mitigation and prevention efforts. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT RR2-10.2196/21955


10.2196/24248 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. e24248
Author(s):  
Lori Ann Post ◽  
Salem T Argaw ◽  
Cameron Jones ◽  
Charles B Moss ◽  
Danielle Resnick ◽  
...  

Background Since the novel coronavirus emerged in late 2019, the scientific and public health community around the world have sought to better understand, surveil, treat, and prevent the disease, COVID-19. In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), many countries responded aggressively and decisively with lockdown measures and border closures. Such actions may have helped prevent large outbreaks throughout much of the region, though there is substantial variation in caseloads and mortality between nations. Additionally, the health system infrastructure remains a concern throughout much of SSA, and the lockdown measures threaten to increase poverty and food insecurity for the subcontinent’s poorest residents. The lack of sufficient testing, asymptomatic infections, and poor reporting practices in many countries limit our understanding of the virus’s impact, creating a need for better and more accurate surveillance metrics that account for underreporting and data contamination. Objective The goal of this study is to improve infectious disease surveillance by complementing standardized metrics with new and decomposable surveillance metrics of COVID-19 that overcome data limitations and contamination inherent in public health surveillance systems. In addition to prevalence of observed daily and cumulative testing, testing positivity rates, morbidity, and mortality, we derived COVID-19 transmission in terms of speed, acceleration or deceleration, change in acceleration or deceleration (jerk), and 7-day transmission rate persistence, which explains where and how rapidly COVID-19 is transmitting and quantifies shifts in the rate of acceleration or deceleration to inform policies to mitigate and prevent COVID-19 and food insecurity in SSA. Methods We extracted 60 days of COVID-19 data from public health registries and employed an empirical difference equation to measure daily case numbers in 47 sub-Saharan countries as a function of the prior number of cases, the level of testing, and weekly shift variables based on a dynamic panel model that was estimated using the generalized method of moments approach by implementing the Arellano-Bond estimator in R. Results Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa have the most observed cases of COVID-19, and the Seychelles, Eritrea, Mauritius, Comoros, and Burundi have the fewest. In contrast, the speed, acceleration, jerk, and 7-day persistence indicate rates of COVID-19 transmissions differ from observed cases. In September 2020, Cape Verde, Namibia, Eswatini, and South Africa had the highest speed of COVID-19 transmissions at 13.1, 7.1, 3.6, and 3 infections per 100,0000, respectively; Zimbabwe had an acceleration rate of transmission, while Zambia had the largest rate of deceleration this week compared to last week, referred to as a jerk. Finally, the 7-day persistence rate indicates the number of cases on September 15, 2020, which are a function of new infections from September 8, 2020, decreased in South Africa from 216.7 to 173.2 and Ethiopia from 136.7 to 106.3 per 100,000. The statistical approach was validated based on the regression results; they determined recent changes in the pattern of infection, and during the weeks of September 1-8 and September 9-15, there were substantial country differences in the evolution of the SSA pandemic. This change represents a decrease in the transmission model R value for that week and is consistent with a de-escalation in the pandemic for the sub-Saharan African continent in general. Conclusions Standard surveillance metrics such as daily observed new COVID-19 cases or deaths are necessary but insufficient to mitigate and prevent COVID-19 transmission. Public health leaders also need to know where COVID-19 transmission rates are accelerating or decelerating, whether those rates increase or decrease over short time frames because the pandemic can quickly escalate, and how many cases today are a function of new infections 7 days ago. Even though SSA is home to some of the poorest countries in the world, development and population size are not necessarily predictive of COVID-19 transmission, meaning higher income countries like the United States can learn from African countries on how best to implement mitigation and prevention efforts. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) RR2-10.2196/21955


Author(s):  
Mukovhe Maureen Nthai

The development of Africa is not only a problem to the Africans alone but also to the world at large. This is because some regions of the world also depend on Africa for their livelihoods. In Sub Saharan Africa one of the rural development strategies identified is land reform. Post-colonial African governments have argued that land reform would alleviate the majority of the people in the region from poverty, create employment, and address inequality. This is the position adopted by the post-apartheid government in South Africa beyond 27 April 1994. However, the South African post-apartheid land reform has had some significant complexities in its implementation – especially with regard to funding. Funding was impeded by widespread corruption in government. In addition, there has been immense lack of interest in making funds available for land reform in South Africa from non-governmental entities and donors.


Subject Outlook for the brewery industry in sub-Saharan Africa. Significance Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is home to one of the fastest-growing beer markets in the world, albeit from a low base. Following the lead of SABMiller, which earned 14% of its global beverage profits from SSA in 2013 (excluding South Africa), large international brewers are implementing strategies to supply low-cost products tailored to local tastes and contexts. Impacts Increased alcohol consumption could drive an upswing in lifestyle-related diseases, creating demand for specialist medical care. Efforts to reduce alcohol consumption in South Africa through strict licensing may result in lost income for slum-based home brewers. Rising demand for beer will vary geographically -- with increases concentrated in non-Muslim states and certain sub-national regions.


2007 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald I. Templer ◽  
Heather Joy Connelly ◽  
David Lester ◽  
Hiroko Arikawa ◽  
Leah Mancuso

IQs were correlated with the z score of suicide rate minus z score of homicide rate using nine regions of the world—established market economies, formerly socialized Europe, India, China, other Asian nations, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, Middle East Crescent, and the USA. Correlations were .85 and .83 with crude rates and age-adjusted rates, respectively. The homicide findings are consistent with previous research in individual countries showing that less intelligent persons commit homicide more often. However, the present findings of a positive correlation between IQ and suicide rates are the opposite of what has been found in the more definitive studies within countries. Explanations for the apparent paradox and for the findings more generally were offered.


Zootaxa ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 3183 (1) ◽  
pp. 49 ◽  
Author(s):  
OTTILIE C. NESER

The genus Astichus Förster (Eulophidae: Entiinae) is recorded for the first time from sub-Saharan Africa and four newspecies are described from South Africa: A. micans n. sp., A. silvani n. sp., A. gracilis n. sp. and A. naiadis n. sp. .Astichusspecies are known as parasitoids of Ciidae (Coleoptera) tunnelling and living in bracket fungi. The South African speciesemerged together with Ciidae from a variety of bracket fungi from many localities in the region. They are easily separatedfrom known Astichus species from other regions in the world by their distinctive colour and patterning. A key to the SouthAfrican Astichus species, distribution maps, and notes on biology are included, as well as identifications of Ciidae and bracket fungus specimens encountered in the study.


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