• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF APPLICATIONS OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA DAVID K SMITH Abstract. There continues to be considerable interest in the potential for applying Operational Re- search in less-developed countries. A recent paper provided a bibliography of published research from West Africa. This paper extends that bibliography to the other sub-Saharan nations, with the omission of South Africa. In some parts of this region, there have been numerous applications described in the literature, while in others there is very little on record. As in the earlier paper, the material has been collected from a wide range of journals, extending from the regular O.R. literature to many application journals. In addition to the references, the paper describes the manner of collection of this information, and discusses the resulting picture of O.R. in sub-Saharan Africa. 1. Introduction In 2008, the author published a bibliography of papers relating to applications of Operational Re- search (O.R.) in 18 countries of West Africa [302]. This paper complements that bibliography, by apply- ing the same principles to identifying the O.R.-related literature for the remaining nations of mainland sub-Saharan Africa, with the exception of South Africa. Apart from Madagascar (Malagasy Republic), the African islands in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans have been excluded. The Mediterranean nations of North Africa do not feature in this work. The decision to restrict the scope of this second bibliography was on the basis of a sense of homogeneity in development, even though there is considerable diversity in many other aspects of the nations | government, history, climate, relations with the developed world, and so on. As in the earlier work, the intention of this paper is to provide a collection of published literature that is as complete as possible. The two papers may then form the foundation of future studies of the possibility and reality of using O.R. in each of the countries studied. 2. Compilation As has been explained earlier, the scope of this paper is those less-developed sub-Saharan African nations which were not included in [302]. These countries are listed later in the paper. (Table 2) Many are former colonies of the European powers (United Kingdom, France, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Italy and Germany) and retain cultural and linguistic links with their colonial power. But any student of twentieth century history will be aware that independence from European administration has not proceeded smoothly, and several of the countries discussed have seen revolutions and civil wars, sometime needing intervention from the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity or another external agency. Most, if not all, of the countries listed in this paper are recipients of overseas aid from the governments of developed nations and also from charities, relief agencies and other non-governmental organizations. Sometimes staff associated with the donor countries or organizations have used O.R. in their work and published an account of that. Generally, though, the pressures on the time and energy of Date: September 1, 2011. Key words and phrases. Operational Research, East Africa, West Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Developing Countries, Information. 1 2 DAVID K SMITH such men and women preclude publication in the academic literature. Accordingly, much experience of the use of O.R. in developing countries is unpublished, and known only to those involved. Aggarwal [4] was employed to study various O.R. problems in Somalia, one of the countries discussed below. In his account of working in that country, he pointed out that the concept of O.R. in developing countries is different from that found in the developed world. The term \O.R." may not be used to describe the approach being taken. It is more common for research workers to refer to a particular quantitative technique such as mixed integer programming or multi-criteria analysis than to use the term \O.R.". It might be argued that this shows a positive attitude towards problem solving; researchers know that a model has to be built, and the tool-bag of O.R. methodology provides a technique. On the other hand, the user may neither recognise that other methodologies exist, nor be aware of the approach and philosophy of the O.R. scientist. So, it is easy for such one-off interventions to be seen as the only way that models can be built. Further, decision-makers have different assumptions from those familiar in \traditional" O.R. methodology. Aggarwal makes the comment: \The primary objective pursued in each case was to make the situation tolerable for as many people as possible." With Aggarwal's comment in mind, the scope of this bibliography was determined to be papers which describe a case-study or a practical example of O.R. in a country, part of a country, or several countries, and which develops methodology for (1) \What if?" questions or (2) \Science of Better" questions either of which may make the situation being studied \more tolerable". The papers in the bibliography may describe a practical application or they may describe analysis after some event. There are comparatively few reports which present details of implementation. Whether or not these papers are accounts of an implementation, practically all have used field data. 2.1. Sources of information about published papers. As in the earlier paper, the author used a variety of sources, to compile this bibliography. The principal ones, as before, were • International Abstracts in Operations Research; • Google Scholar • ISI Web of Science • Previous bibliographies • Online databases provided by publishers and the merits and demerits of each are discussed there. 3. The evidence Topic count Topic count Topic count Agriculture 134 Malaria 9 Education 4 Health 60 Nutrition 9 Environment 4 Water 42 Government 8 Tourism 3 Forestry 29 Land resources 8 Waste management 3 Energy 20 Veterinary work 7 Emergencies 2 Economics 19 Food 6 Industry 2 Conservation 12 Location 6 Planning 2 Transport 12 Mining 6 Relief 2 Development 11 Finance 5 Pollution 1 Society 11 Communications 4 Table 1. Frequency of papers devoted to topics O.R. IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 3 The bibliography contains over 300 papers. What is the nature of these, and how are they distributed? Future researchers may be concerned about what problems have been considered (the topics) and what country or countries the work relates to. The combination of topic and country may also be relevant to some studies. Classification of the material is, in several cases, an ad hoc process. However, there are many common themes across the papers. The major topics are self-evident as being of priority for the government and people of less-developed countries. The minor topics identified are often associated with these major ones, but it has seemed appropriate to identify particular subjects. Table 1 shows the count of papers by topics. Agriculture is the most common subject that is modelled. Given the nature of the countries, this is not surprising. Nor is it surprising that health is ranked immediately below. The bibliography excludes several papers which model the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Although such models are mathematical in nature, they have not been included because their purpose is enlightenment and explanation rather than action. There is considerable variation between the economies of the countries included here. The bibliography includes references to subsistence agriculture and to the operation of national stock exchanges. Table 2 shows the count by countries. In both tables, the total number of papers in the bibliography is less than the total in the tables because several papers have been classified under several topics or make reference to more than one country. The association of a paper with a country is generally on the basis that there is a reference to the country in the paper's title, abstract or list of key-words. A few papers have no national association, as they refer to models and problems in several, unspecified, sub-Saharan countries. Because one might expect larger countries to feature in more papers, Table 3 shows the number of papers per country divided by the square root of the population, and then mapped to the range (0; 100). This table may be described as a measure of the impact of O.R. in the countries. Finally, Table 4 shows the growth of the number of publications with time. This indicates, as one might expect, that there is a steady increase in the number of papers being published. One hopes that there is a similar increase in the application of O.R. methodology. One other feature deserves comment. Reference has already been made to the colonial powers which governed much of sub-Saharan Africa until the middle of the twentieth century. It will be seen that in both Table 2 and Table 3,the highest ranked nations are those which were part of the British Empire, and most remain part of the British Commonwealth. This bias towards English-speaking nations is significant. It may be that the use of the English language as the means of international research communication makes it more difficult to publish work by those whose first language is not English. It may be that English- speaking researchers from developed countries gravitate to collaborate with researchers who speak the same language. It may be that there is less research work being carried out in those countries which were governed by other European powers. It may be that the countries with lower ranks have had more civil instability since independence than the others. All four explanations are credible, and the answer is probably a combination of these four causes. In order to try and be fair to all countries, wherever possible, the searches which have given rise to this bibliography were conducted in international databases, searching in a manner which located the terms in the major European languages.

Load more

  102

Copy Link