Business opportunities in the Ethiopian fruit and vegetable sector

The horticultural sector in Ethiopia is growing strongly. Major part of this growth is created by investments in the floriculture sector. Recently more and more in terest from the Dutch private sector is shown in the Ethiopian fruits and vegeta ble sector. Export of fruit and vegetables has been limited but is now growing strongly with new investors coming in. Both in Europe and in the Middle East there is a growing interest for products from Ethiopia. Presently, the main export products are fresh beans, strawberries, tomatoes, courgettes, peppers and fresh herbs. A potential new crop is table grapes. The Government of Ethiopia gives high pri ority to the development of the horticulture sector and in 2008 the Horticultural Development Agency has been established with a specific focus to promote and support the further development of the horticulture sector. It is concluded that the further development of the fruit and vegetable sector in Ethiopia for export to Europe and the Middle East has good perspectives and provides interesting opportunities for foreign investors. The sector is however still in its infant stage. Facilitating conditions for doing business are not yet op timal, but are expected to improve in the near future. For growers who consider starting operations in Ethiopia it is important to carefully select a location and ensure getting the logistical and cool chain well organised beforehand. For companies considering sourcing from Ethiopia it is important to build good relations with the potential growers, provide hands on guidance and train ing and invest in organising the logistical supply chain well

Goodness-of-fit tests via phi-divergences

A unified family of goodness-of-fit tests based on $\phi$-divergences is introduced and studied. The new family of test statistics $S_n(s)$ includes both the supremum version of the Anderson--Darling statistic and the test statistic of Berk and Jones [Z. Wahrsch. Verw. Gebiete 47 (1979) 47--59] as special cases ($s=2$ and $s=1$, resp.). We also introduce integral versions of the new statistics. We show that the asymptotic null distribution theory of Berk and Jones [Z. Wahrsch. Verw. Gebiete 47 (1979) 47--59] and Wellner and Koltchinskii [High Dimensional Probability III (2003) 321--332. Birkh\"{a}user, Basel] for the Berk--Jones statistic applies to the whole family of statistics $S_n(s)$ with $s\in[-1,2]$. On the side of power behavior, we study the test statistics under fixed alternatives and give extensions of the ``Poisson boundary'' phenomena noted by Berk and Jones for their statistic. We also extend the results of Donoho and Jin [Ann. Statist. 32 (2004) 962--994] by showing that all our new tests for $s\in[-1,2]$ have the same ``optimal detection boundary'' for normal shift mixture alternatives as Tukey's ``higher-criticism'' statistic and the Berk--Jones statistic.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/0009053607000000244 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Pilot to improve linkage of domestic tomato supply chains to local high segment markets

The pilot aims to link smallholder tomato farmers in both Kenya and Tanzania to local high segment markets as supermarkets, hotels, restaurants and hospitals

Diffusion processes in demographic transitions: a prospect on using multi agent simulation to explore the role of cognitive strategies and social interactions

Multi agent simulation (MAS) is a tool that can be used to explore the dynamics of different systems. Considering that many demographic phenomena have roots in individual choice behaviour and social interactions it is important that this behaviour is being translated in agent rules. Several behaviour theories are relevant in this context, and hence there is a necessity of using a meta-theory of behaviour as a framework for the development of agent rules. The consumat approach provides a basis for such a framework, as is demonstrated with a discussion of modelling the diffusion of contraceptives. These diffusion processes are strongly influenced by social processes and cognitive strategies. Different possible research lines are discussed which might be addressed with a multi-agent approach like the consumats.