Search

The agro-processing sub-sector of the manufacturing industry has high recognition on the South African government's development agenda. Yet, the contribution of the sector to the economy with respect to the foreign trade earning appears to be low in comparison to its potential and counterparts in the developed world. The objective of this study is to analyze the South African agro-processing sub-sector of the manufacturing industry trade performance in global value chains perspective and identify the potential policy recommendations to improve the sector benefit. The paper also gives an overview of South Africa's agro-processing sector global value chains participation and the benefits from this in the form of value-added trade earning through backward linkages. The study used secondary data derived from Statistics South Africa (Stats SA); International Trade Center, COMTRADE; and Quantec EasyData (2017) and focused only on the agro-processing sector defined as food, beverage, and tobacco. The study results in general show that in each specific period the growth in real export and import values of agro-processing sub-sector of manufacturing industries has a decreasing trend with few exceptions. The results also indicate that South Africa has relatively low shares of foreign value-added products in its exports of food, beverages, and tobacco products in the agro-processing sub-sector of manufacturing industries goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Antenatal care (ANC) is an essential platform to improve maternal and newborn health (MNH). While several articles have described the content of ANC in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), few have investigated the quality of detection and management of pregnancy risk factors during ANC. It remains unclear whether women with pregnancy risk factors receive targeted management and additional ANC., Methods and Findings: This observational study uses baseline data from the MNH eCohort study conducted in 8 sites in Ethiopia, India, Kenya, and South Africa from April 2023 to January 2024. A total of 4,068 pregnant women seeking ANC for the first time in their pregnancy were surveyed. We built country-specific ANC completeness indices that measured provision of 16 to 22 recommended clinical actions in 5 domains: physical examinations, diagnostic tests, history taking and screening, counselling, and treatment and prevention. We investigated whether women with pregnancy risks tended to receive higher quality care and we assessed the quality of detection and management of 7 concurrent illnesses and pregnancy risk factors (anemia, undernutrition, obesity, chronic illnesses, depression, prior obstetric complications, and danger signs). ANC completeness ranged from 43% in Ethiopia, 66% in Kenya, 73% in India, and 76% in South Africa, with large gaps in history taking, screening, and counselling. Most women in Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa initiated ANC in second or third trimesters. We used country-specific multivariable mixed-effects linear regression models to investigate factors associated with ANC completeness. Models included individual demographics, health status, presence of risk factors, health facility characteristics, and fixed effects for the study site. We found that some facility characteristics (staffing, patient volume, structural readiness) were associated with variation in ANC completeness. In contrast, pregnancy risk factors were only associated with a 1.7 percentage points increase in ANC completeness (95% confidence interval 0.3, 3.0, p-value 0.014) in Kenya only. Poor self-reported health was associated with higher ANC completeness in India and South Africa and with lower ANC completeness in Ethiopia. Some concurrent illnesses and risk factors were overlooked during the ANC visit. Between 0% and 6% of undernourished women were prescribed food supplementation and only 1% to 3% of women with depression were referred to a mental health provider or prescribed antidepressants. Only 36% to 73% of women who had previously experienced an obstetric complication (a miscarriage, preterm birth, stillbirth, or newborn death) discussed their obstetric history with the provider during the first ANC visit. Although we aimed to validate self-reported information on health status and content of care with data from health cards, our findings may be affected by recall or other information biases., Conclusions: In this study, we observed gaps in adherence to ANC standards, particularly for women in need of specialized management. Strategies to maximize the potential health benefits of ANC should target women at risk of poor pregnancy outcomes and improve early initiation of ANC in the first trimester., Competing Interests: MEK is a member of the PLOS Medicine Editorial Board., (Copyright: © 2024 Arsenault et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)