Foreign Exchange and Industrial Sector Growth in Nigeria (1981-2015)

The study is on foreign exchange and industrial sector growth in Nigeria. Secondary data on industrial output, foreign exchange disbursement, foreign exchange rate and Nigeria foreign reserves 1981 -2015 were collected from the Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin, 2015 edition.  The E-view version 9 Econometric program was used to run a regression on the data collected. Foreign exchange availability (proxied by foreign exchange disbursement) was found to have no significant but positive influence on the Nigeria industrial sector growth. While foreign exchange rate and Nigeria foreign reserves were found to have positive and significant influence on the growth of Nigeria’s industrial sector. It is recommended that the Nigerian government should take urgent steps to tackle the foreign exchange crisis and maintain a sustainable exchange rate. The government should also ensure that foreign exchange available to importers of industrial inputs and at the same time grow the country’s foreign exchange reserves. Keywords: Foreign Exchange, Industrial Sector, Exchange Rate, Foreign Reserves, Industrial inputs

The bii4africa dataset of faunal and floral population intactness estimates across Africa’s major land uses

Sub-Saharan Africa is under-represented in global biodiversity datasets, particularly regarding the impact of land use on species’ population abundances. Drawing on recent advances in expert elicitation to ensure data consistency, 200 experts were convened using a modified-Delphi process to estimate ‘intactness scores’: the remaining proportion of an ‘intact’ reference population of a species group in a particular land use, on a scale from 0 (no remaining individuals) to 1 (same abundance as the reference) and, in rare cases, to 2 (populations that thrive in human-modified landscapes). The resulting bii4africa dataset contains intactness scores representing terrestrial vertebrates (tetrapods: ±5,400 amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) and vascular plants (±45,000 forbs, graminoids, trees, shrubs) in sub-Saharan Africa across the region’s major land uses (urban, cropland, rangeland, plantation, protected, etc.) and intensities (e.g., large-scale vs smallholder cropland). This dataset was co-produced as part of the Biodiversity Intactness Index for Africa Project. Additional uses include assessing ecosystem condition; rectifying geographic/ taxonomic biases in global biodiversity indicators and maps; and informing the Red List of Ecosystems

Organization and mobility in biological membranes as seen by deuterium and carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance

NRC publication: Ye