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Regional economic integration and economic upgrading in global value chains: selected cases in Africa.

ABSTRACT: This study examined the impact of regional economic integration on economic upgrading in global value chains (GVCs), of the East African Community (EAC), Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), from 2000 to 2015. Using the Least Square Dummy Variable (LSDV) technique, the results showed that regional economic integration is not a significant driver of the economic upgrading of their Members, in GVCs but one-period lagged backward participation in GVCs is. Considering labour productivity as an alternative measure of productivity in the place of productivity linked with participation in GVCs (economic upgrading), regional economic integration turned out to be a weak positively significant determinant. At a disaggregated level, regional economic integration significantly determined labour productivity in both EAC and SACU but not in ECOWAS. More regional efforts are needed to sufficiently aid the contribution of these African RECs to their Members' economic upgrading in GVCs.

SUBMITTER: Obasaju BO

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7889827 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Regional economic integration and economic upgrading in global value chains: selected cases in Africa.

Obasaju Barnabas Olusegun BO Olayiwola Wumi Kolawole WK Okodua Henry H Adediran Oluwasogo Sunday OS Lawal Adedoyin Isola AI

Heliyon 20210203 2

This study examined the impact of regional economic integration on economic upgrading in global value chains (GVCs), of the East African Community (EAC), Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), from 2000 to 2015. Using the Least Square Dummy Variable (LSDV) technique, the results showed that regional economic integration is not a significant driver of the economic upgrading of their Members, in GVCs but one-period lagged backward particip ...[more]

PMID: 33644440

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Project description:The objective of this work was to identify industrial scenarios for the most promising microalgal biorefinery value chains on the basis of product selection, yields, and techno-economic performance, using biological characteristics of algae species. The development, value creation, and validation of several new processing routes with applications in food, aquafeeds and non-food products were particularly considered in this work. The techno-economic performance of various single product value chains (SP) and multiproduct value chains (MP) was evaluated for four industrial microalgal strains. Cost-revenue optimization was done for a 10 kton microalgal dry weight y-1 simulated biorefinery plant, using flow sheeting software for equipment sizing, mass and energy flow modeling, and subsequent techno-economic evaluation. Data on yield, material and energy consumption were based on pre- and pilot size production plants (TRL 5-6). Revenue optimization was accomplished by first analyzing the performance of single product value chains of the microalgal strains. Subsequently, a strategy was developed to exploit almost all biomass based on the most promising microalgal strains. The cultivation costs are most of the time the major costs of the value chains. For the single product value chains common process bottlenecks are low product yields, especially for soluble proteins where only a small fraction of the biomass is leading to economic value. The biorefinery costs (excluding cultivation) vary significantly for various species, due to the species-specific operating conditions as well as differences in product yields. For the evaluated single product value chain scenarios the costs for utilities and other inputs were in general the highest contributing expenses. A biorefinery approach significantly increases the biomass utilization potential to marketable products from 7-28% to more than 97%. Although the cascading approach increases the total production costs of the multiproduct value chains significantly, this is more than compensated by the increased overall biomass revenue. For all selected multiproduct chains there is a significant potential to become profitable at a relevant industrial scale of 10 kton per year. Additional insights in the product functionality, quality, and their market size are needed to narrow down the wide range of foreseen product revenues and resulting profits.

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Dataset Information

Regional economic integration and economic upgrading in global value chains: selected cases in Africa.

Publications

Regional economic integration and economic upgrading in global value chains: selected cases in Africa.

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