SME finance and the construction of value in Rwanda

Purpose This article explores how entrepreneurs, banks, the government and alternative lending respond to finance gaps for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). This article considers valuation as a sociological construct where actors use different calculative devices, forming an assemblage that partly positions valuation of entrepreneurial finance as a contested and socially constructed process. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the concept of ‘calculative devices’, the study articulates discursive institutional practices embedded within SME lending. This case study draws on analyses of 30 semi-structured interviews and archival data, government reports, and newspaper articles. Findings The study identified three triggers in Rwanda that were rooted in the informal and unincorporated nature of the SME governance structure; the lack of capacity for SME owners to manage their own projects; and normalising language around collateral requirements that marginalised the realities of SMEs; contributing to stagnation for SME finance. Practical implications The research provides direction for understanding how calculative devices create new forms of valuation of entrepreneurship in developing countries, particularly when human and non-human actors come together in an assemblage. The study calls for further research to demonstrate the embedded power of valuation practices and the performance of value in entrepreneurial finance. Originality/value The study brings new findings to the market creation literature by extending the notion of distributive calculative agency to SME finance. The study mobilises theory to interpret how discursive institutional practices are embedded within a country’s finance infrastructure, yielding unintended consequences for SME growth

Морфологическая диагностика фолликулярных опухолей щитовидной железы

ЩИТОВИДНОЙ ЖЕЛЕЗЫ НОВООБРАЗОВАНИЯ /ДИАГНЭНДОКРИННЫХ ЖЕЛЕЗ НОВООБРАЗОВАНИЯЩИТОВИДНОЙ ЖЕЛЕЗЫ БОЛЕЗНИКАРЦИНОМА ПАПИЛЛЯРНАЯ ФОЛЛИКУЛЯРНАЯДИАГНОСТИКА ДИФФЕРЕНЦИАЛЬНА

Simulation of Internet of Things Water Management for Efficient Rice Irrigation in Rwanda

The central role of water access for agriculture is a clear challenge anywhere in the world and particularly in areas with significant seasonal variation in rainfall such as in Eastern and Central Africa. The combination of modern sensor technologies, the Internet, and advanced irrigation equipment combined in an Internet of Things (IoT) approach allow a relatively precise control of agricultural irrigation and creating the opportunity for high efficiency of water use for agricultural demands. This IoT approach can thereby increase the resilience of agricultural systems in the face of complex demands for water use. Most previous works on agricultural IoT systems are in the context of countries with higher levels of economic development. However, in Rwanda, with a low level of economic development, the advantages of efficient water use from the application of IoT technology requires overcoming constraints such as lack of irrigation control for individual farmers, lack of access to equipment, and low reliability of power and Internet access. In this work, we describe an approach for adapting previous studies to the Rwandan context for rice (Oryza sativa) farming with irrigation. The proposed low cost system would automatically provide irrigation control according to seasonal and daily irrigational needs when the system sensors and communications are operating correctly. In cases of system component failure, the system switches to an alternative prediction mode and messages farmers with information about the faults and realistic irrigation options until the failure is corrected. We use simulations to demonstrate, for the Muvumba Rice Irrigation Project in Northeast Rwanda, how the system would respond to growth stage, effective rainfall, and evapotranspiration for both correct operation and failure scenarios

Chinese investment in the Sierra Leone telecommunications sector: international financial institutions, neoliberalism and organisational fields

The article investigates the relationship between the Sierra Leonean government and international financial institutions in financial lending for the development of the country’s telecommunications infrastructure. The authors address two interrelated topics: 1) efforts by African countries to free themselves from Western-dominated programmes of neoliberal reform exercised through lending agreements; 2) an evolving economic relationship between African countries and China, particularly with respect to an emerging form of unequal exchange, and a false sense of empowerment in negotiation by African countries. Using the organisational field as a conceptual framework in the context of neoliberalism, the authors examine the power dynamics between foreign capital and Sierra Leone to understand how these relationships are affected and transformed by the availability of China as an alternative source of investment. They find evidence to support the coexistence and interdependency of multiple organisational fields that are affected by field-level changes yielding social, political and economic consequences for all the actors

Entrepreneurial financing: how global and regional export intentions affect financial and non-financial choices for small and midsized enterprises in low-income countries

Purpose: The study explores how the intention to export affects financing and non-financing variables for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a low-income country (LIC). The objectives of this study are (1) to discern between regional and global exporting and (2) to evaluate its policy-making implications. Design/methodology/approach: Primary survey data were collected from 330 Rwandan SMEs and were analysed using ordered logistic models as an application of the Expectation-Maximisation Iterating Algorithm, which was tested for robustness using a Sampling Model Variation. Results: Alternative sources of finance are the predominant choice to finance the intention to export within and outside Africa. As the scope of export intentions broadened from regional to global, there was a shift in preferences from less formal to more formal lending technologies, moving from methods like factoring to lines of credit. Moreover, reliance on bank officers became more significant, with increasing marginal effects. Finally, the study determined that government financing schemes were not relevant for SMEs pursuing either regional or global exporting. Originality: This study accentuates how export distance alters SME financing priorities. The results also contribute to understanding how the value of relationship lending changes when less familiar markets (i.e. global exporting) are the objective. Moreover, the study offers a new perspective on how institutional voids affect entrepreneurial financing decisions in LICs. Implications: While alternative sources of finance predominate the export intentions of Rwandan SMEs, establishing a robust banking relationship becomes crucial for global exporting. Despite this implication, the intention to export should prompt more transparent communication regarding government financial support programs. There is an opportunity for increased usage of relationship lending to customise support for SMEs involved in exporting, benefiting both the private and public sectors

Beacon-Enabled Cognitive Access for Dynamic Spectrum Access

In dynamic spectrum access networks, the unused licensed spectrum used by primary users (PU) is opened to unlicensed secondary users (SU) for improving spectrum efficiency. We design a simple time-based threshold policy for collective protection of PUs, enabled by an out-of-band channel. In particular, multiple SUs may be widely distributed in a geographic location. The interference that collocated SUs cause to each other, termed self-interference, becomes a major source that may degrade the SUs communication performance. We establish an analytical framework for carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) based coexistence mechanisms when integrated into a family of time based threshold policies, and study its performance though theoretical analysis

Chinese investment in Sierra Leone telecommunications: an affront to the West?

The chapter is written for an edited volume on the Chinese development model in Africa (Routledge). Using DiMaggio and Powell's (1983) three mechanisms of institutional isomorphic change, we examine the extent to which increased Chinese investment in Africa has resulted in shifts in the organisational field and hence a change in the relationship between African nation-states and the (traditional) international funding organisations (such as IMF and WB). We are using an ongoing dispute between the Sierra Leonean government and the World Bank as a case study, which has resulted in the World Bank's suspension of a major ICT infrastructure project. This is a qualitative study that argues that African countries are becoming increasingly emboldened in their relationship with the West and its institutions because of alternative funding sources

An Optimum Tea Fermentation Detection Model Based on Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

Tea is one of the most popular beverages in the world, and its processing involves a number of steps which includes fermentation. Tea fermentation is the most important step in determining the quality of tea. Currently, optimum fermentation of tea is detected by tasters using any of the following methods: monitoring change in color of tea as fermentation progresses and tasting and smelling the tea as fermentation progresses. These manual methods are not accurate. Consequently, they lead to a compromise in the quality of tea. This study proposes a deep learning model dubbed TeaNet based on Convolution Neural Networks (CNN). The input data to TeaNet are images from the tea Fermentation and Labelme datasets. We compared the performance of TeaNet with other standard machine learning techniques: Random Forest (RF), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Decision Tree (DT), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), and Naive Bayes (NB). TeaNet was more superior in the classification tasks compared to the other machine learning techniques. However, we will confirm the stability of TeaNet in the classification tasks in our future studies when we deploy it in a tea factory in Kenya. The research also released a tea fermentation dataset that is available for use by the community

A Data Descriptor for Black Tea Fermentation Dataset

Tea is currently the most popular beverage after water. Tea contributes to the livelihood of more than 10 million people globally. There are several categories of tea, but black tea is the most popular, accounting for about 78% of total tea consumption. Processing of black tea involves the following steps: plucking, withering, crushing, tearing and curling, fermentation, drying, sorting, and packaging. Fermentation is the most important step in determining the final quality of the processed tea. Fermentation is a time-bound process and it must take place under certain temperature and humidity conditions. During fermentation, tea color changes from green to coppery brown to signify the attainment of optimum fermentation levels. These parameters are currently manually monitored. At present, there is only one existing dataset on tea fermentation images. This study makes a tea fermentation dataset available, composed of tea fermentation conditions and tea fermentation images

The Quiet Politics of Internet governance and the Business Stakeholder Groups - a hegemonic power perspective

Interorganisational governance of the Internet is a responsibility shared across multiple stakeholders presumably with an interest in facilitating a free and open Internet. This research examines the relationship between the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and three business stakeholder groups participating in the multistakeholder model of Internet governance. We argue that participatory forms of quiet politics produce a particular form of power within Internet governance that ultimately benefits ICANN. Using textual linguistic analysis on meetings transcripts, we operationalise hegemony as a dependent variable by linking stakeholder participation to the Internet governance policy-making agenda. We identify a ‘master variable’ that characterises the tone and rhetoric of the data, then apply statistical methods to construct a model with hegemony. Structural Equation and Panel Data models are used to measure variation across the three groups of business stakeholders to understand how hegemony is produced. Findings reveal that the business stakeholders’ use of language that expresses hesitation and uncertainty, without flexibility or complexity facilitates and in fact perpetuates a power asymmetry that theoretically would benefit ICANN