Examining the Factors Affecting Export Performance for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Tanzania

This article presents the findings of the study on the export trade barriers among Tanzanian SMES. The SMEs’ sector has tremendously expanded in Tanzania over the three last decades. Despite this expansion, it is absurd that most of the SMEs remain focusing on the narrow domestic markets. This paradox needs to be explored in details. The paper uses data, which was collected by the author during a Masters’ research study which was conducted in Dar es salaam, Tanzania in 2015. Three hypotheses were developed and a structured questionnaire that involved 130 SMEs’ owners was used to correct data. Findings show that among other barriers, export competencies, especially inadequate and instable financial capital (.008), language (.000), production technology (.069), ICT and information search competencies (.000), standard of products produced by the SME (.000), restrictive entrance procedures into the country (.005), export market characteristics such as complicated business laws/regulations (.001), customers’ indifference with foreign goods(.000), price uncertainty in the export markets(.000), product competition in the export market(.000), and complicated travel accreditation (passport/Visa)(.000) were the most significant barriers. Equally, national business environments, especially uneasy accreditation for export of goods (.000), complicated business laws and procedures (.002), unconducive trade financing for SMEs (.000), and higher taxes charged on production and export (.053) were also responsible for limited export. Generally, SMEs owners’ fear of export market was the most significant barrier (.001), followed by the national business environments (.011), and finally SMEs’ export competencies (.016). The article concludes that focusing on individual components in each of the three categories reveals no consistence within the classification where in all categories both very significant and relatively less significant barriers were. Thus, the study recommend specific and context sensitive analysis of export barriers. Keywords: Export Barriers, SMEs Internationalization, Tanzani

An Unsupervised Approach for Overlapping Cervical Cell Cytoplasm Segmentation

The poor contrast and the overlapping of cervical cell cytoplasm are the major issues in the accurate segmentation of cervical cell cytoplasm. This paper presents an automated unsupervised cytoplasm segmentation approach which can effectively find the cytoplasm boundaries in overlapping cells. The proposed approach first segments the cell clumps from the cervical smear image and detects the nuclei in each cell clump. A modified Otsu method with prior class probability is proposed for accurate segmentation of nuclei from the cell clumps. Using distance regularized level set evolution, the contour around each nucleus is evolved until it reaches the cytoplasm boundaries. Promising results were obtained by experimenting on ISBI 2015 challenge dataset.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Biomedical Engineering and Sciences (IECBES), 2016 IEEE EMBS Conference on. IEEE, 201

Hubungan Alih Fungsi Lahan Pertanian Sawah dengan Ketersediaan Pangan di Kabupaten Sleman dan Kabupaten Bantul, Daerah Istimewa YOGYAKARTA

Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah mengetahui alih fungsi lahan pertanian sawah dan faktor yang mempengaruhinya, mengetahui ketersediaan pangan, dan mengetahui hubungan alih fungsi lahan pertanian sawah dengan ketersediaan pangan di Kabupaten Sleman dan Bantul. Penelitian ini menggunakan data sekunder dengan periode pengamatan tahun 2004-2013. Metode yang dipergunakan adalah analisis pertumbuhan, perhitungan ketersediaan pangan, analisis crosstab, dan uji korelasi Pearson. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa Kabupaten Sleman dan Bantul selama sepuluh tahun (2004-2013) mengalami alih fungsi lahan pertanian sawah sebesar 632 hektar dan 608 hektar. Faktor jumlah penduduk, dan faktor fasilitas sosial dan ekonomi dengan alih fungsi lahan pertanian sawah di Kabupaten Sleman dan Bantul memiliki hubungan yang tidak saling mempengaruhi. Kecamatan yang memiliki surplus ketersediaan pangan tertinggi adalah Kecamatan Pakem di Kabupaten Sleman dan Kecamatan Jetis di Kabupaten Bantul. Berdasarkan uji Korelasi Product Moment didapatkan bahwa tidak ada hubungan signifikan antara alih fungsi lahan pertanian sawah dengan ketersediaan pangan di Kabupaten Sleman dan Bantul