What are the effects of Corona Virus Disease 19 (COVID-19) on inflation, unemployment, and GDP in Africa? Using geo-coded cross-sectional data taken from the World Health Organization and International Monetary Fund, we investigate the spatial distribution of COVID-19 and its effects on inflation, unemployment, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Africa by employing the Geographic Information System (GIS), multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA), and spatial statistics. The entire dataset was analyzed using Stata, ArcGIS, and R software. The result shows (1) that there is evidence of a spatial pattern of COVID-19 cases and death rate clustering behavior in Africa, verifying the existence of spatial autocorrelation. The result also reveals (2) that COVID-19 has a negative effect on unemployment, inflation, and GDP in Africa. We confirmed that (3) temperature, rainfall, and humidity were statistically significantly associated with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa. The comparison of the GDP of African countries before and after the pandemic shows (4) a large decrease in GDP, the highest in Seychelles (23 percent). The result of the study shows (5) that there has been a significant increase in inflation and unemployment rates in all countries since the outbreak of the pandemic as compared to the time before the outbreak. There is also evidence that (6) there is a significant relationship between death rate due to COVID-19 and population density; temperature with COVID-19 cases and death rate; and precipitation with death rate due to COVID-19. Therefore, respective governments and the international community need to pay attention to controlling/reducing the impact of COVID-19 on inflation, unemployment, and GDP, focusing on the indicated demographic and environmental variables.

Necessary and su cient conditions for the equality of ordinary least squares and generalized least squares estimators in the linear regression model with rst-order spatial error processes are given.

In this study, an effective robust PCA is developed for joint image alignment and recovery via L 2,1 norms and affine transformations. To alleviate the potential impacts of outliers, heavy sparse noises, occlusions, and illuminations, the L 2,1 norms along with affine transformations are taken into consideration. The determination of the parameters involved and the updating affine transformations is arranged in the form of a constrained convex optimization problem. To reduce the computation load, we also further decompose the error as sparse error and Gaussian noise; additionally, the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is considered to develop a new set of recursive equations to update the optimization parameters and the affine transformations iterative. The convergence of the derived updating equation is explained as well. Conducted simulations illustrate that the new method is superior to the baseline works in terms of precision on some public databases.

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