At the recent South African Banking Associations inaugural summit held on September 2010, it was estimated that the unbanked South Africans have put approximately R12 billion “under their mattresses” (Greyvenstein, 2010). This money would have a huge impact in the banking system if it was banked. It is widely held that whilst this problem is not uniquely South African and as per the latest Finscope survey results, since 2004, when Finscope first began tracking the number of adults not being served, a steady decline has been noted over the years in the number of banked individuals. The 2009 survey shows a further 2% deterioration when compared to 2008 in the financially excluded category. The 2009 Finscope report findings also show for the first time since 2004, a decline in the percentage number of South African adults who are banked from 63% in 2008 to 60% in 2009. The financial services sector has been identified as playing a crucial role in this transformation through its financing activities. It is therefore in this context that Beck and de la Torre (2006) argued that broad access to financial services is related to economic and social development. The South African government has therefore implemented various initiatives to combat these challenges. These initiatives, some together with the private sector, include the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment Act, Financial Sector Charter, Dedicated Banks Bill and the launch of the Mzansi initiative.The Government is aware that broad-based BEE cannot happen unless previously disadvantaged individuals, especially the poor, are able to access financial services – in order to borrow and invest in small businesses, to save and to protect themselves against risks. The basis of the research is therefore to explore some of the reasons for the low access to financial services in South Africa’s Foundation of the Pyramid (LSM 1- 4) and to find possible solutions by building a model that could possibly work based on propositions related to aspects of the literature around employment status and income, access to credit, some type of identifiable address / dwellings, education, use of technology and costs. The analysis of the proposed model using frequency, descriptive statistics and the results of the chi-square test upheld all but one of the propositions and showed the possibility of this model to work in South Africa. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

To examine the barriers faced by the financially excluded, this research investigates financial inclusion as a sub-concept of social inclusion. The study assesses two demand-side barriers confronting the involuntarily financially excluded: financial literacy and self-efficacy. It thus goes beyond previous work that has sought to increase access to financial services by addressing supply-side barriers (specifically accessibility, affordability, availability and eligibility), mainly through various technological advances. Employing a preintervention/ post-intervention field experiment to measure the financial behaviour of individuals, the study monitored the use over a six-month period of an appropriately developed banking offering. Banking was offered to participants from rural areas near four distinct towns in Ghana, following the provision of training on financial literacy and selfefficacy. The results showed that regardless of whether participants received training in both, either or neither, they did not use their bank accounts for their financial transactions or savings. Secondarily, the results indicated that although financial literacy training may improve the financial knowledge of individuals, it does not necessarily lead to increased confidence on the part of the individual with regard to using formal financial services. In contrast, although the self-efficacy training (both on its own and together with financial literacy) did not translate into financial inclusion, participants reported that it had provided them with skills to guide their financial decision-making. Moreover, limited qualitative results obtained from participants indicated that they find the cash economy in which they operate adequate to their needs as members of their communities. As the main findings of this study suggest that developing the financial knowledge and attitude of the financially excluded, having addressed supply-side barriers of financial inclusion, still does not encourage the use of an appropriately developed banking offering, the explanation for the (non-)usage of banking products must lie elsewhere. The structure of an economy has to be seen as central to financial inclusion in that the influence of the cash economy and the informal economy mean that financial inclusion is not a precondition for social inclusion. This has serious implications for policy in sub-Saharan Africa. It may be that financial inclusion should be regarded as a result of an improving economic situation, rather than a contributory cause. Stakeholders should consider financial inclusion alongside and as part of policy initiatives designed to improve educational levels, digital skills, and a general understanding of the formal financial and, indeed, economic system. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / PhD / Unrestricted

Post deregulation, many U.S. airlines created hubs with banked schedules, however, in the past decade these same airlines began to experiment with depeaking their schedules to reduce costs and improve operational performance. To date there has been little research that has investigated revenue and operational shifts associated with depeaked schedules; yet understanding the trade-offs among revenue, costs, and operational performance at a network level is critical before airlines will consider future depeaking and related congestion-management strategies. This study develops data cleaning and analysis methodologies based on publicly available data that are used to quantify airport-level and network-level revenue and operational changes associated with schedule depeaking. These methodologies are applied to six case studies of airline depeaking over the past decade. Results show that depeaking is associated with revenue per available seat mile (RASM) increasing slower than the rest of the network and the industry as a whole. Depeaking is associated with improved operations for both the depeaking airlines and competitors. Airports benefit from increases in non-aeronautical sales associated with connecting passengers spending more time in the terminal. The underlying reasons driving airlines' scheduling decisions during depeaking vary greatly by case. Results from the study provide insights for airlines that are considering depeaking and the airports which are affected. The results suggest that losses in RASM and no improvement in operations could potentially lead an airline to repeak, and that RASM is prone to fall when a strong competitive threat exists.

This thesis deals with design and implementation of a versatile control unit, which is primarily designed for control of solar collectors. It describes the various stages of design. First, the system of solar collectors is introduced. Its input-output parts are analyzed and the requirements are determined for the control unit. The characteristics of temperature sensors are examined, the work deals with continuous variable speed circulators. The following part is dedicated to hardware and software implementation of the objectives of the work. The boards were designed in Eagle design environment, the firmware was written in C programming language. In conclusion, the evaluation of the results of the proposed system and possible ways of its further development are discussed. The versatile control unit can be deployed in practice realistically.