TITLE:
Identifying Strategic Development Objectives for African Countries Using Dominance-Based Rough Set Approach: The Poverty String Theory
AUTHORS:
Jean-Charles Marin, Bryan Trudel, Kazimierz Zaras
KEYWORDS:
International Development, African Countries, International Aid, Economic Growth, Strategic Objectives, Rough Set Theory, Dominance-Based Rough Set Approach (DRSA), Selection of Portfolio Projects, Multi-Criteria Analysis, Sustainable Development
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.9 No.7,
July
26,
2018
ABSTRACT: The objective of this article is to expose the
results of a research using Dominance-based Rough Set Approach (DRSA) to help
African countries and international organizations (both non-governmental
organizations and governmental organizations), to identify economical,
sociological, political and technological strategic objectives for
international development. We hope that the results of this research will aid
politicians and leaders to prioritize African countries strategic development
objectives according to political, economical, sociological and technological
(PEST) needs. In this study we use 23 various indicators to classify all the
African countries according to the following three different categories: [A]
African countries that are doing well according to the selected indicators; [B]
African countries that need support to acquire category A status; [C] African
countries ranked the lowest and needing special support with regard to the
criterion or criteria considered. The three categories are delimited by
tertiles obtained from the average ranking of countries. The chosen criteria
are measured in order to provide decision rules based on this classification.
These decision rules thus focus on the political, economic, sociological and
technological needs of countries with respect to improve their development and
classification. We strongly believe that by targeting these identified needs,
this research will help the development of African countries, target and
prioritize International funding, evaluate economic growth and sociological
improvements. Our results, from both the correlation matrix and DRSA, clearly
demonstrate that top priority should be given to analphabetism, school life and
reducing the amount of adolescents pregnancies in order to improve both
economically and sociologically. Also, our analysis of the African map
belonging to the overall classification results, puts the light over the fact
that most countries in category C are, geographically connected to one another,
what we named the “Poverty String’’. This is the first research of a series of
three articles using DRSA in identifying strategic objectives for international
development. The second research will discuss the use of DRSA to identify
strategic objectives for Bosnia Herzegovina as a potential candidate to the
European Union. The third research will use DRSA to help define poverty for all
the United Nations countries and propose decision rules for international
development.