Today, youth unemployment is a common agenda and a critical issue of all countries; particularly in developing countries. In Ethiopia, lack of employment opportunities for educated young people is a critical development challenges facing the country. The objective of this study was to identify the determinants of graduate youth unemployment. To answer the research objective data was collected by a structured questionnaire from 312 samples of respondents, wherein a snow ball sampling technique was used and data was analyzed using mixed research design, descriptive and casual design; where a binary logistic regression model used to examine the relationship between dependent and independent variables. The result indicated that amongst the nine variables of the determinants of graduate youth unemployment; education, number of graduates, work experience, career advice, market information, family income, aspire to the low-income job, and education quality, all were significantly affected unemployment rate except entrepreneurial ability. As a result, based on these findings, it can be recommended that there is a critical need for government, NGOs and all other stakeholders to work on these determinants to reduce graduate unemployment.

This study’s aim is to conduct an empirical investigation of the impact of supply chain practices on firm performance. The prime objective of the paper is to study the impact of information-sharing practices and inventory management on firm performance. To realize the specified objective of the study, data were gathered from 170 individuals who are familiar with the supply chain practices of the companies and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The result shows a significant direct and indirect effect of information sharing and inventory management practices on firm performance. Generally, the results show that higher information-sharing practices and better inventory management practices lead to greater firm performance; and higher information-sharing leads to improved inventory management, which in turn leads to greater firm performance. Theoretically, the result provides evidence of the effects of information sharing and inventory management on the supply chain practices’ performance in a firm. The managerial implications of the results are enhancing information sharing and inventory management practices by adopting, internalizing, and building information technology into all the business operations to enhance information sharing and inventory management practices to enhance firm performance.

Today companies no longer compete merely as an independent business but rather as supply chains. Individual businesses no longer operate in isolation and neither should their strategic orientation be wholly individualistic. This attracted supply chain management concept to be used. Supply chain management primarily designed by firms to get competitive advantage over the rival firms and to overcome the intense global competition coming from globalization, innovation, free trade and economic cooperation formed in different region. The concept led to cooperation and integration among firms and with their suppliers, distributors, consumers, and transport agency. It is totally systematic coordination and management from upstream to downstream paths of an organization. The importance and research interest in supply chain management are growing from time to time; however, the number of professional materials and well-organized review literature is limited relative to the growing trend of the area. Therefore, this paper reviewed different supply chain management articles, reports, and books by concentrating on logistics practices and information sharing on supply chain performance to develop a well-organized research article that advances supply chain management understanding. Under the logistics practices, the major variables discussed were the effect of the road network, transportation cost, facility location, waiting time, inventory management and mode of transportation, whereas the effect information sharing discussed from the viewpoints of the level of information sharing and quality of information on supply chain performance.

The objective of this paper is to investigate empirically the effect of information sharing and inventory management practice on firms’ performance. To achieve the stated objective the study targeted supply chain practices of some companies operating in Ethiopia. Data were collected from 170 respondents including employees, suppliers, and distributors of the companies under investigation. Before the analysis of data, the accuracy of data entry, the existence of missing values, normality of data distribution and outliers checked and proved the nonexistence of serious issues. The specified objective and proposed hypotheses in this study tested by structural equation modelling (SEM). The result shows information sharing and inventory management practices have a direct and significant effect on the firm’s performance. Similarly, the higher share of information leads to better inventory management practice, which in turn leads to a greater performance of firms. The study concludes that information sharing has both direct and indirect effects on a firm's performance in the supply chain practices; whereas inventory management practices have a direct effect on the firm's performance. Generally, the results of the study have major theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, it offers concrete evidence on the significant effects of information sharing and inventory management in the supply chain practices on firm’s performance in developing countries; and hence contributes to the scarce body of literature and reduces the gaps of knowledge in the developing countries on the specified area of study. Besides the theoretical implication, practically the study allows the companies and industries under the considerations to recognize the significant effects of information sharing and inventory management practices on firm’s performance and to use this information to develop and enhance culture of information sharing and usage of sound inventory management techniques in the supply chain practices for the enhancement of organizational performance.

Women have been the most disadvantaged and discriminated sections of society all over the world, particularly in developing countries. This study aimed to investigate the effects of NGOs on socioeconomic empowerment of women by conceptualizing and developing five basic dimensions of women empowerment including income, saving, decision-making ability, expenditure level, and assets ownership rights of women based on empirical evidence from some NGOs operating in Ethiopia. To test the hypotheses in this paper the researcher targeted three NGOs operating in the study area for a long period of time. For analysis purposes data were collected from 80 respondents selected proportionally by stratified random sampling technique. Data collected classified, edited, and analyzed using SPSS V20. The result of the five hypotheses tested indicated the existence of a positive and significant statistical difference at 5% of significant level between prior and post involvement of women in the various intervention approaches mainly micro credit and training offered on different issues of empowerment by the NGOs to empower the women' socioeconomic perspectives.