SNA of Tanzanian Markets

SNA Project Proposal: Daniel Trusilo

To be undertaken for credit in D217

Research Question:

Who are the significant actors in the emerging market environment of Tanzanian?

Background:

The United States Military Academy Network Science Center (NSC) has been developing “tool kits” for U.S. Embassy staff in developing countries. In 2012 the NSC produced a series of reports for U.S. Embassy Ethiopia detailing network analysis done on the Ethiopian markets. The reports provide embassy staff with information that allows decision-makers the ability to identify key “nodes” that are influential in the developing markets based on organizations, schools, events, positions and locations as attributes. The analytical tools are intended to help develop “an effective engagement plan as well as a mathematically-backed set of recommended steps” in order to assist firms in entering the emerging market.

The NSC has collected similar data for Tanzania and would like an analysis done on the data set in order to identify key areas of interest as an initial step towards preparing similar “tool kits” for U.S. Embassy Tanzania.

For further information about the USMA NSC check out their blog: http://blog.netsciwestpoint.org/

Objective:

The objective of this network analysis will be to identify key agents or organizations that impact market entry in Tanzania. The analysis will aim to provide information in a similar format to that of the Ethiopian “tool kits” in order to provide decision makers with comparative data. Ultimately, this analysis is intended to assist the NSC’s efforts to shed light on engagement strategies for interested actors in emerging markets.

Hypothesis:

It is hypothesized that network analysis of the Tanzanian market actors will reveal certain agents and organizations that act as brokers of information and others that represent bridges, connecting multiple agents or organizations.

Methodology:

This analysis will first use similar methods as the NSC generated Ethiopia report in order to provide useful data for follow-on NSC objectives. To that end we will use a single-mode network model that demonstrates how agents are connected through organizations. This agent network model will be analyzed using four measures of centrality: degree centrality, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality and eigenvector centrality. An organizational network will also be analyzed using the same four-centrality measures.

Additionally, clique analysis will be conducted to identify groups within the emerging market actors. This analysis will allow the identification of organizations or agents that may act as one block when determining market entry. This will be particularly interesting to look at as the military often plays a significant role in both private and public organizations in many developing countries.

Other Considerations:

Because the data being analyzed will have been collected by a third party, biases can not be ruled out. Additionally, the data will represent a limited data-set as not all actors will have been identified by the data collection team in country due to limited local knowledge. It could be useful and interesting to “create” hypothetical agents and organizations in order to test the robustness of the findings and account for possible missing nodes.

Lastly, it will be important to underscore that all identified “key” actors in the market will have been identified for the slice of time being analyzed. As in many developing countries, situations on the ground often change on extremely fast time scales and key nodes may lose significance quickly. It would be interesting to conduct a follow-up study using the same analysis techniques with a second set of data in order to identify changes over time in key market actors.