External debt, debt overhang, crowding out effects and capital formation in Nigeria and South Africa

The deficiency of saving in Sub-Saharan Africa, as represented by Nigeria and South Africa has led to shortages in funding capital formation, thereby necessitating external borrowing. This has slowed down and restrained economic growth and development. The questions of external debts determinants, effects and causal relationships with capital formation are yet to be adequately responded to; mainly due to weak and nonrigorous methods employed in the previous studies. The focus has not been effective and specific. The objective of this study is fourfold; determine factors affecting external debt accumulation, examine effects of external debt on capital formation, assess impact of debt overhang and crowding out effects on capital formation and investigate causal relationships between external debt and capital formation in Nigeria and South Africa. Autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) and Vector Autoregressive (VAR) modeling on time series data covering three decades were employed in the study. The results have established that, interest rate and external debt service are the most statistically significant variables explaining external debt accumulation scourge in the selected countries. Additionally, the study has discovered that, external debt has significant negative effects on capital formation in the same manner with debt overhang and crowding out effects. However, these impacts are proven to be more pronounced on capital formation in Nigeria than in South Africa. It is also established that external debt and capital formation Granger causes each other. The overall implication of the research findings is that speed of capital formation has been retarded by the negative effects of external debts. Measures by the government should be tailored towards improving capital formation by designing policies that will reduce the burden of debt accumulation and reducing the cost of external debt services. This can be done through enhancing the debt management process and improving efficiency in funds utilization, so as to ensure timely repayment and servicing of debts

The Impacts of Oil Price and Exchange Rate on Food Prices in Nigeria

This empirical research examined the interconnecting relationship between oil price, exchange rate and food prices in Nigeria. The study applied annual time series data from 1972 to 2016. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) techniques were used in the process of estimating the model. The main results disclosed that there is a long run association among the considered variables. The error correction term indicates significant negative sign. Among the two independent variables in the model, exchange rate is affecting food price more than the oil price counterpart since some of the food items are imported. The result has robust implication on policy recommendations in Nigeria. Food production has a vital role in influencing food prices in Nigeria. The Central Bank of Nigeria must consider exchange rate as a factor influencing food price in its quest for achieving inflation target. Keywords Oil price; exchange rate; food price; ARDL; Nigeria DOI: 10.7176/JESD/10-8-08 Publication date: April 30th 201

Ramadan tafsir of the glorious Qur’an goes virtual during Covid-19 lockdown in Nigeria

The researchers were motivated by the adoption of digital communication applications and social media platforms by some Islamic scholars in Nigeria to conduct annual Tafsir of the glorious Qur’an in Ramadan 2020 in the midst of coronavirus lockdown. The paper adopted Lull’s Gratification Theory for theoretical explanation of virtual interaction between the scholars who conducted the Tafsir from an isolated places and the audience who watched or listened from their homes in adherence to safety measures to stop the spread of the disease. Methodologically, the study adopted a cross-sectional research design and purposive sampling technique to elicit secondary data from the target participants. The study found that there is usage of digital medium of communication and interaction between Islamic clerics and their followers. This explains the flexibility of Islam to embrace development, adopt and adapt it in conformity with Islamic rules and regulations. The findings also show that Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram are the most common internet based interactive platforms which Islamic scholars explored and disseminated their Tafsir virtual to the audience. The paper concludes that internet has enabled people not only to interact virtual but Tafsir and other forms of Islamic preaching can be conducted without co-presence of the preachers and the audience. The option of live streaming video on Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram which consume a lot amount of data has enabled Muslim users to followed the Ramadan Tafsir from distant places

Renewable Energy, Regulation, Employment and Environmental Sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper examines the impact of employment, regulatory quality and urbanization on environmental quality by using renewable energy as a metric of environmental indicator in sub-Saharan Africa. The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) theory was used as the theoretical framework while the difference Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) was utilised as the estimation technique. 45 sub-Saharan African countries covering the period of 2008 to 2016 were used as the sample size. The result reveals that increase in employment and income is at expense of environmental quality while regulation quality and urbanization increase environmental quality. As such, policymaking in the region should support the development of renewable energy by providing incentives that encourage private sector investment in renewable energy; implement sound policies and regulations that promote private sector employment and smart cities development. Keywords: Renewable energy; environment, regulation, employment, sub-Saharan Africa DOI: 10.7176/DCS/9-7-04 Publication date:July 31st 201

Synthesis and characterisation of some mixed ligands adducts of benzoylacetone and salicylaldehyde

A series of four mixed ligand complexes were synthesized by reacting benzoylacetone and salicylaldehyde with different metal chlorides in ethanolic medium. The complexes have been characterized by molar conductance measurements and spectral techniques such as IR and Uv-visible electronic spectra. Decomposition temperature was also determined. The results indicated that the compounds have bands at 400-500cm-1, with very sharp melting points. This proved the formation of metal-oxygen bond, purity and high thermal stability of the compounds that could lead to a high antimicrobial activity.Keywords: Adduct Synthesis, Ligands, and Complexe

A rare case of giant malignant phyllodes tumour and long term survival

Phyllodes tumours are rare breast neoplasm. Its clinical spectrum ranges from a benign and locally recurrent form of behaviour to malignant and metastatic forms. The age at risk is between 35 and 45 years. Giant phyllodes tumours are larger than 10cm in diameter. Case Report: Herewith, we present a rare case of giant malignant phyllodes tumour (40x30x20cm) in a young lady who survived 10 years post- treatment in which most literature reported 10-year survival of 23% to 42%. The patient had mastectomy and radiotherapy to the anterior chest wall. Conclusion: A young lady with a giant malignant phyllodes tumour survived 10 years following treatment

Assessment of the exchange parameters of Amberlite IR-45 (OH) resin from its elution with saturated Na2SO4

Simple quantitative technique has been developed for assessing the exchange parameters of Amberlite IR - 45 (OH) using column chromatographic techniques from the displacement of exchangeable hydroxyl ions of the resin by sulphate ions. The results obtained showed retention time of 33min, retention volume of 56.5cm3, void volume of 18 cm3, and exchange capacity of 41 mmole/g and exchange site density of 2.4682 x 1022 sites /g

ADOPTION AND ACCESS OF E-LIBRARY SERVICES IN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES OF NORTH WEST ZONE OF NIGERIA

This paper examined the adoption and access of E-library services in University library of North west zone of Nigeria. Survey research method was adopted to carry out the study using descriptive research methodology. The population used under this study comprised all the state federal, state and private universities in North–West Geo-political zone of Nigeria, comprises of seventeen (17) studied universities, the population considered to be subject of the study includes other professional and non-professional staff in the Nigerian university libraries on the position of university librarian circumstantially. The sample size depends on the nature of the research of the study. It is however proposed to have a sample of seventeen (17) universities, therefore the number of the universities is manageable, and therefore no sampling is required. The instruments used data collection is questionnaire. Stratified sampling technique was used in selecting the secondary population of the study. Data was also analyzed using descriptive analysis using frequency tables and percentages. Stratified sampling technique was used in selecting the secondary population of the study. The administration of the questionnaire was carried out by the co researchers and assisted by three (3) research assistants. The study found that, adoption and accessing of the electronic library services and resources in Nigerian university libraries of North-west Geo-political Zone are basically for the purpose of effective, reliable, and adequate library information dissemination. The study has also identified that some universities have for long adopted and established the electronic unit earlier than other university libraries in the North-west Geo-political Zone of Nigeria. Consequent to that, it has been identified that all the sampled university libraries have established the electronic unit for the purpose of information dissemination via electronic devices for rapid and speedy information services. The study has further revealed that majority of the electronic unit or managers of the electronic section are specialists in the area of library and information science. The study recommends that encouragement from the government will give enough room and opportunity to provide adequate transformation of information electronically in Nigerian University libraries of north-west geo-political zone. There is the need for the university libraries to concretely form a consortium for the formation of unified electronic services and electronic resource sharing e.g. Universities library consortium, Hinary, Lefel, etc. One of the greatest challenges or threats to the adoption and accessing or sustainability of using the electronic resources in Nigeria is the issue of power supply. Efforts should be made by the authority concern to provide alternative in case of power failure during the transformation services. The alternative probably might be the provision of solar power or standby generator in order to alleviate the challenge of inadequacy or none supply of electricity power supply. University libraries being an academic institution library should try by all means to promote their electronic resources and services for the university community members to be aware of their availability and existence. Article visualizations

Deep Sequence Models for Text Classification Tasks

The exponential growth of data generated on the Internet in the current information age is a driving force for the digital economy. Extraction of information is the major value in an accumulated big data. Big data dependency on statistical analysis and hand-engineered rules machine learning algorithms are overwhelmed with vast complexities inherent in human languages. Natural Language Processing (NLP) is equipping machines to understand these human diverse and complicated languages. Text Classification is an NLP task which automatically identifies patterns based on predefined or undefined labeled sets. Common text classification application includes information retrieval, modeling news topic, theme extraction, sentiment analysis, and spam detection. In texts, some sequences of words depend on the previous or next word sequences to make full meaning; this is a challenging dependency task that requires the machine to be able to store some previous important information to impact future meaning. Sequence models such as RNN, GRU, and LSTM is a breakthrough for tasks with long-range dependencies. As such, we applied these models to Binary and Multi-class classification. Results generated were excellent with most of the models performing within the range of 80% and 94%. However, this result is not exhaustive as we believe there is room for improvement if machines are to compete with humans

Analyzing the Impact of External Debt on Capital Formation in Nigeria: An Autoregressive Distributed Lag Approach

This study aimed at examining the impact of external debt to the growth and development of capital formation in Nigeria. Time series data was utilized for a period from 1980 to 2013, employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) modelling. The result of stationarity tests reported a mixed integration at both I(0) and I(1) hence warranting the use of the ARDL. The ARDL estimation also showed the presence of long run relationship amongst the variables. It was also proved that the variables were independently related in the long run. The impact of external debt on capital formation has been established to be negative and statistically significant while savings came out as the only variable with a bidirectional causal relationship amongst the variables. Interest rate was found to be statistically significant even though weak. The other variables were found to be of unidirectional casual effects. Short-run dynamics of the relationship between the variables have also been examined using ARDL error correction modelling. It was established that the disequilibrium in the previous period will be adjusted within the current period by 68 percent showing a speedy adjustment rate. The coefficient of ECM term has the expected sign and significant at one percent. Going by these findings therefore savings should be giving priority and encouraged internally in order to boost the speed of the growth of capital formation in the economy. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n1p17