Browsing by Author "Teshome, Tessema"
Item Improving Supply Chain Integration for Competitiveness in the African Continental Free Trade Area - The case of Ethiopian manufacturing Industries in Addis Ababa(Addis Ababa University, 2020-06) Teshome, Tessema; Gulelat, Gatew (PhD)The manufacturing industries in developing countries have been facing unprecedented competitiveness pressure generated by different new business trends. To cope with these pressures, the manufacturing industries had tried to upgrade their operations by using different manufacturing techniques. Despite these efforts; the manufacturing industries have not yet made their share of markets. Like in any other developing country, manufacturing industries in Ethiopian are facing the same challenge. A number of causes for the low performance of the Ethiopian manufacturing industries had been identified by different researchers. One of the causes identified by these researchers was a weak Supply Chain Integration (SCI). In the near future, on top of the existing challenges of the Ethiopian manufacturing firms, other challenges from the African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) are going to emerge. One of these challenges could be fierce competition from African products that enter into Ethiopia with very low border tariffs and import duties. Unless the Ethiopian manufacturing firms get prepared in every aspect to compete in the free market, their existence would be in question. With this understanding, this research was conducted with the main objective of identifying the aggregate causes of weak SCI, identifying challenges that could emerge with ACFTA, and finally developing a model that can help to improve the SCI for competitiveness in ACFTA. The main reason for selecting the SCI model as a technique among the different techniques was that effective supply chain management (SCM) and supply chain integration (SCI) are becoming increasingly critical factors for business success. Besides, the issue of competitiveness in ACFTA is the issue of competitiveness in the Supply chain. The primary data for this research was collected from 27 managers of 14 different manufacturing firms by administering a questionnaire. Secondary data was also collected from different online sources. The data collected were more qualitative which were analyzed with qualitative data analyzing procedure. The quantitative data were also analyzed using Excel tools. In the end, the research has identified the aggregate causes for the weak SCI of Ethiopian manufacturing industries; have also identified possible Challenges that could emerge with ACFTA. At last but not least, a SCI model had been developed. Finally, the researcher has found out that the benefits of SCI and the benefits of ACFTA to be similar, which led the researcher to conclude that SCI and ACFTA are complementary. In other words, an efficient SCI helps for competitiveness in ACFTA; in reverse the ACFTA also supports the improvement of SCI.