Balancing Industrial Competitiveness with Regional Value Requires Policy Wisdom

Industrial competitiveness and regional value are fundamentally consistent yet different in that the former relates to businesses while the latter is concerned with households(regional employment,taxes and the environment).In a market-based economy,most enterprises are able to'vote with their feet'and move to regions that are favorable to them.For a region,enterprises contribute to regional value only when they set

Strategic Agricultural Commodity Value Chains in Africa for Increased Food: The Regional Approach for Food Security

The challenge Africa faces the most is how to feed the 2.4 billion people in 2050. This will require a transformational agriculture. Africa doesn’t need subsistence agriculture, but rather agriculture linked to the market where market demand and the consuming habits are taken in consideration. Agriculture evolves in an environment where small holders are linked to markets (national and regional), where economies of complementarity and economies of scale are taken advantage of by producers and private sector. In short, Africa will need a paradigm shift to industrialise and commercialise its agriculture sector in order to increase food production, and income and to create jobs in and outside the sector. Africa needs agribusiness and agro-industries to domesticate the benefits of the sector, to create wealth in the sector and retain that wealth in the continent. Agricultural commodities regional value chains for increased food should be the target for Africa. The continent remains the region with the highest prevalence of under-nourishment. Since agriculture remains the mainstay of most African economies except the mineral producers, the sector deserves a close attention from leaders. It accounts for 65% of employment and 40% of Africa’s export earnings and accounts for 17% of the GDP. This shows how important the sector is. Agriculture needs to be seen as a conduit for farmers to get connected to markets, a conduit for revenue, for jobs and for transformation. Africa needs to come back on the international scene as food sufficient continent and even food exporter. This can be achieved only with a stable, productive agricultural resource base. Thus, achieving and sustaining food security and economic prosperity in Africa will require significant efforts to modernize the continent’s agriculture sector through injection of agribusiness and agro-industries and through the application of science and technology in agriculture. In essence, agriculture needs to be viewed as knowledge based entrepreneurial activity. Smart investments in agriculture will have multiplier effects for the whole economy and hence induce prosperity to other sectors. In recent years, a renewed focus on agriculture has been evident in policy and development agendas across the African continent. This paper outlines the status of agriculture, agribusiness and agro-industries in Africa, their role in the agenda of agricultural transformation and economic transformation and the focus on regional value chain to increase food production, transformation and trade. The paper adopts a new thinking in agriculture, which reflects a regional value chain approach. The author covers such issues as: need for agricultural transformation, the role of value chain in agricultural sector, the need for regional value chain for increased income and increased food, the role of markets and the common denominator of all, the regional integration to push forward the African agriculture agenda. Evidence shows that it is agricultural growth, through its leverage effects on the rest of the economy that typically enables poor countries, poor regions and ultimately poor households to take the first steps toward economic transformation. Therefore agricultural productivity, at the small holder’s level, has the potential to lift millions of Africa’s vulnerable out of poverty and provide sustainable jobs. Other factors, namely “the rapid urbanization” and “increased population growth”, are quoted to be of critical importance. Africa population is projected to double, attaining the 2.3 billion people mark over the next 40 years representing half of the globe’s total population. This could trigger competition for resources and can have devastating effects on natural resources if not rightly channelled.

An Adaptive Lasso Grey Model for Regional FDI Statistics Prediction

To overcome the deficiency of traditional mathematical statistics methods,an adaptive Lasso grey model algorithm for regional FDI(foreign direct investment)prediction is proposed in this paper,and its validity is analyzed.Firstly,the characteristics of the FDI data in six provinces of Central China are generalized,and the mixture model’s constituent variables of the Lasso grey problem as well as the grey model are defined.Next,based on the influencing factors of regional FDI statistics(mean values of regional FDI and median values of regional FDI),an adaptive Lasso grey model algorithm for regional FDI was established.Then,an application test in Central China is taken as a case study to illustrate the feasibility of the adaptive Lasso grey model algorithm in regional FDI prediction.We also select RMSE(root mean square error)and MAE(mean absolute error)to demonstrate the convergence and the validity of the algorithm.Finally,we train this proposedal gorithm according to the regional FDI statistical data in six provinces in Central China from 2006 to 2018.We then use it to predict the regional FDI statistical data from 2019 to 2023 and show its changing tendency.The extended work for the adaptive Lasso grey model algorithm and its procedure to other regional economic fields is also discussed.

Landscape Design outside National Maritime Museum

With the development of urban construction and improvement of living standard, modern people have had higher requirements on culture. National Maritime Museum collects and displays maritime culture and civilization of China, it is a signifi cant cultural facility in New Binhai District of Tianjin. The museum shows us the splendid picture of yel ow terrestrial civilization and blue maritime civilization over the past 2,000 years in China. Landscape design outside the exhibition hall of the museum has the integration of culture and museum as the starting point, and makes brand-new explorations in landscape humanistic care and landscape designs of green buildings.