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Globalization presents opportunities and challenges for developing regions such as sub-Saharan Africa as they seek to improve their levels of socioeconomic development. Processes of globalization increasingly depend upon information and communication technologies (ICTs), and these normally need modifications to fit local contexts. This requires that processes that affect interactions between global, regional, and local levels need to be understood. It appears reasonable to conjecture that understanding the roles or effects of socioeconomic and cultural factors (among others) would lead to more effective ICT policies for sustainable development at regional and local levels. Drawing on Sen's capability theory of human development, a modified version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is presented, and validated by analyzing survey data gathered in two sub-Saharan African countries, although no claim is made as to the model's generalizability. Some diagnostics and prescriptions for how to effect sustainable technology adoption and development across the region to enhance human capabilities are then presented. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal Public Administration & Social Management / Administração Pública e Gestão Social is the property of Administracao Publica e Gestao Social and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a global appeal to protect the environment, combat climate change, eradicate poverty, and ensure access to a high quality of life and prosperity for all. The next decade is crucial for determining the planet's direction in ensuring that populations can adapt to climate change. This study aims to investigate the progress, challenges, opportunities, trends, and prospects of the SDGs through a bibliometric analysis from 2015 to 2022, providing insight into the evolution and maturity of scientific research in the field. The Web of Science core collection citation database was used for the bibliometric analysis, which was conducted using VOSviewer and RStudio. We analyzed 12,176 articles written in English to evaluate the present state of progress, as well as the challenges and opportunities surrounding the SDGs. This study utilized a variety of methods to identify research hotspots, including analysis of keywords, productive researchers, and journals. In addition, we conducted a comprehensive literature review by utilizing the Web of Science database. The results show that 31% of SDG-related research productivity originates from the USA, China, and the UK, with an average citation per article of 15.06. A total of 45,345 authors around the world have contributed to the field of SDGs, and collaboration among authors is also quite high. The core research topics include SDGs, climate change, Agenda 2030, the circular economy, poverty, global health, governance, food security, sub-Saharan Africa, the Millennium Development Goals, universal health coverage, indicators, gender, and inequality. The insights gained from this analysis will be valuable for young researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and public officials as they seek to identify patterns and high-quality articles related to SDGs. By advancing our understanding of the subject, this research has the potential to inform and guide future efforts to promote sustainable development. The findings indicate a concentration of research and development on SDGs in developed countries rather than in developing and underdeveloped countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty alleviation has been positioned high on the international development agenda following the adoption of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000. African countries initiated various missions to establish sustained economic growth by increasing productivity with an ultimate goal of poverty reduction. The significance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in poverty reduction and employment generation is widely acknowledged. Despite the high failure rate amongst SMEs, particularly in the African context, some are striving with excellent results and are demonstrating signs of growth, innovation and sustainability. This paper explores the development of SMEs as a strategic measure for job creation in sub-Saharan Africa. It examines the role of SMEs in achieving sustainable employment in Africa. This study will benefit governments in Africa, getting them to focus on the development of the SMEs, and guiding them on how best to integrate SME development to achieve poverty alleviation. The recommendations proposed in this study may be helpful in policy formulation, business operation and regulatory practice for sustainable growth and development in the sub-Saharan African context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the silent technological revolution in sub‐Saharan Africa focusing on emerging issues and challenges. In view of the centrality of technology diffusion in fostering local innovations and economic development in developing countries, it is surprising that our understanding of the challenges and opportunities in scaling‐up technologies remains limited. This paper capitalises on the ongoing silent technological revolution in sub‐Saharan Africa to present an overview of how new technologies have been adopted and utilised to achieve sustainability. The study identified a host of factors such as weak regulatory enforcement systems, lack of financial credit availability, and limited banking services, which have created conditions for technological innovations such as mobile phone‐based banking, mPedigree, "cardiopad," and M‐PEPEA to emerge. The public policy implications and directions for future research are identified and examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, the green economy concept has emerged as a fundamental policy framework for sustainable development in developing countries. This paper contributes to the current debate by providing an empirical investigation of the effect of the green economy on food security in 35 Sub-Saharan African countries for the period of 2001–2015. The results provide evidence that green economy indicators have controversial effects on food security (food availability and the proportion of undernourished people). Indeed, the results show that biofuels contribute to decreased food security in Sub-Saharan African countries, whereas renewable energy improves food security. Carbon dioxide emissions have no effect on food security. The results are robust to alternative robustness checks, such as the two-step Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the economic, political, institutional, socio-cultural, and geographical determinants of financial development in developing countries? This paper uses the two-way fixed effects (with clustered standard errors) and annual panel data from 1980 to 2018 for 69 developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa, East and South Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean to address this question. The principal component analysis is employed to construct a financial development index based on three financial development indicators. This study builds on the previous studies by introducing new potential determinants of financial development such as the perception of corruption, and by exploring important quadratic and interaction effects. The results show that national income, trade openness, indices of political stability and Polity2 (a democracy score), perception of corruption, the predominant religion in the countries, and geographical factors such as territorial access to the sea explain the differences in the levels of financial development across countries and regions. A rise in national income leads to a higher level of financial development and countries with a high perceived level of corruption have a lower level of financial development. There is strong evidence of threshold effects as trade openness has a diminishing marginal effect on financial development while the auxiliary growth regressions show that financial development has an increasing marginal effect on national income. Of the five regions studied, East and South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have the highest and lowest levels of financial development, respectively. Also, fuel-exporting countries, least developed countries, and landlocked countries tend to have lower levels of financial development. These results have relevant policy implications for developing countries in their continued efforts to achieve better financial development and ultimately, sustainable economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - Green building (GB) is globally acclaimed as the most formidable solution to the adverse effects that buildings and construction activities have on the climate and environment. Nonetheless, current evidence suggests that the adoption of GB in developing countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is at a snail's pace and characterized by the absence of GB codes and frameworks. This paper aims to determine the current level of adoption and implementation of GB concepts and technologies in the Ghanaian construction industry (GCI). Design/methodology/approach - An exploratory method of investigation involving a quantitative approach was used to achieve the objectives of this study. A literature review was conducted, and a questionnaire survey was conducted among 292 stakeholders in the GCI. The survey data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics as well as other quantitative analysis techniques. Findings - The analysis revealed that the five most applied green building technologies (GBTs) are technologies for optimizing site planning, building orientation and configuration, use of natural ventilation, integrative use of natural lighting with electric lighting systems, application of energy-efficient lighting systems and use of permeable paving: low-traffic areas. Notably, the majority of the GBTs belong to the energyefficiency technologies category. Research limitations/implications - The findings indicate that GBTs are gaining momentum in Ghana and that there is a need for ongoing research to develop new and more environmentally friendly building technologies to aid in the preservation of our society and natural resources to achieve United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) 12 and 13. Originality/value - In effect, this study will enhance the awareness of GB development and contribute to the GB body of knowledge, particularly in the context of developing countries. It would also be useful to the GCI's contribution to achieving the UN SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Building Research & Information is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study explores the formulation and implementation of occupational health and safety management (OHSM) policies by multinational manufacturing firms operating in sub‐Saharan Africa and how they influence employees' quality of life (QOL). We used Afrifoods (pseudonym), a food manufacturing multinational company in Ghana as a case. Gathering qualitative data through interviews, focus group discussions, and archival sources, we found that despite the prevailing institutional deficiencies in sub‐Saharan African countries especially in ensuring the implementation of health and safety policies, food manufacturing multinational companies formulate and implement health and safety policies. And, the high rates of unemployment notwithstanding, employees of manufacturing companies prioritize safe and healthy working environment and consider it the first and most important attribute of their QOL. Employees also consider being able to provide their family needs as well as being recognized for the efforts expended at work as other determinants of their QOL. Multinational firms operating or intending to go into sub‐Saharan Africa should consider health and safety policies as indispensable in their business strategy formulation, if they wish to get the maximum benefit from their employees. Governments must also intensify monitoring to ensure firms' compliance with national health and safety laws at their work sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, social entrepreneurship has gained popularity as a vehicle for positive change in developing countries. The multiplicity of stakeholders, diverging sociocultural contexts and the hybrid mission complicate the process of legitimacy construction for social entrepreneurs as a basis for the acquisition of scarce resources. This study investigates how social entrepreneurs operating in Sub‐Saharan Africa and Asia tackle this challenge of bridging conflicting directions in discursive interaction with their European funders. We conduct a multimodal discourse analysis to uncover discursive strategies for legitimacy construction by combining linguistic data from interviews with visual data from social media accounts. Legitimacy construction, and thus resource acquisition, centers on three aspects which interlink pragmatic, cognitive and moral legitimacy: developing innovative solutions, mobilizing private‐sector efficiency, and contributing to local empowerment. Presenting these aspects as mutually reinforcing overcomes contradictions between social and business logics and provides an expanded space for legitimacy construction of social entrepreneurship. Discursively constructing legitimacy around a 'glorified version of social entrepreneurship' mobilizes resources but downplays the risk of being an entrepreneur in the Global South, contributing to increasing corporatization of social purpose organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In achieving a desirable sustainable economic growth in developing countries, the role of financial development and international migrant remittances cannot be underplayed. This study attempts to investigate the dynamic interactions between the migrant remittances and the financial sector development from a multidimensional perspective in 22 sub-Sahara African countries using a panel vector autoregression model over the period 2004-2017. Specifically, the study focuses on the multidimensions of financial development including financial depth, financial access, and financial efficiency in financial institutions (FI) and their relationship with the remittances. The findings suggest that: First, the migrant's remittances are detrimental for the overall FI while the FI are found to positively influence the remittances inflows. Second, the relationship between the remittances and the FI varies with the dimensions of FI. There is a positive dynamic interaction between the remittances, the financial efficiency, and financial access, except for the financial depth. The analysis in this investigation offers relevant policy directives especially on the role of remittances in building stable FI of the sub-Saharan African economies and other developing states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustainable production and use of small-scale biogas energy are required to ensure clean household energy access in developing countries, including the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region. This is influenced by market risks, which can be identified as political, economic, social, technical, legal, and environmental (PESTLE). This study examines peer-reviewed and grey literature for the period from 2000 to 2020 to identify the PESTLE constraints and assess their impact on the sustainable development of the technology in the SSA region. The production of biogas with small-scale plants is commonly done by rural and peri-urban households. Results show that economic constraints are the most dominant and reducing at a slow pace. This is followed by political constraints, which have received much attention in the last two decades. Despite the policy improvements, broader national bioenergy policies and interventions are still to make significant gains, especially in the Central African region. In order of significance, the Southern, East, and West Africa regions have made greater progress in reducing the constraints. To achieve the sustainable development of the technology, there is a need to further address the PESTLE constraints at national and regional levels. This study partly deduces that the unsustainable production, use, and inadequate regulation of the small-scale biogas sector are delaying its transition in the SSA region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how energy policy measures for realizing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 7 and 13 in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) could be framed towards achieving energy justice by 2030. Both goals highlight interdependent and conflicting interactions that policymakers should be aware of whilst working to realize them. This position is quite challenging for developing countries that seek to simultaneously resolve the rising inequality of access to modern and affordable energy systems as stipulated in the SDG 7, whilst at the same time working to meet their international obligations towards the attainment of SDG 13. This article seeks to resolve this conflict by proposing some viable measures for a synergy between SDGs 7 and 13. It further examines the paradoxical situation faced by countries in the SSA region and argues for a contextualization of the two goals within the energy justice framework. The proposed approach entails a systematic transition from fossil fuels to low-carbon through socio-economic policies that take into account social injustices and further incorporate sustainable actions such as developing renewable energy technologies, diversification of energy options, energy efficiency, and regional alignments and/or cooperation. Overall, the measures outlined in this article aim to help the SSA region achieve energy justice towards 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Better water supply, sanitation and hygiene systems are among the sustainable development goals which need to be achieved by 2030. However, it is challenging for developing countries especially sub-Saharan Africa to achieve sustainable sanitation and hygiene. Thus, a systematic review has been conducted to provide a deep discussion of the current and previous works on challenges facing sanitation and hygiene sector in SSA countries. The results indicate that lack of financial resources, rapid population increase, socioeconomic disparities among the urban inhabitants, topography, lack of skilled, and experienced personnel, inadequate policies and strategies, and people's behaviours and attitudes were identified as the main constraints to sustainable sanitation and hygiene in SSA. Moreover, it recommended that SSA countries can achieve sustainable sanitation and hygiene if there are political commitments, an increase of education and awareness on sanitation to the community, and cooperation among the government, non-government organisations, civil societies, and communities in addressing the issues of sanitation. These efforts will lead to enhanced and improved sanitation and hygiene services in the SSA region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximately one billion people in the Global South, a large proportion of which reside in rural sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian sub-continent, live without access to electricity. Meanwhile, there is a growing appreciation of the vital role that energy access plays in advancing human wellbeing. This is epitomised by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal Seven, which ambitiously aspires to achieve universal access to modern energy by 2030. I argue that while such global initiatives represent important normative pursuits, their technical orientation tends to occlude consideration of issues relating to justice in energy systems. Drawing upon recent critical scholarship, I demonstrate how issues of distributive, recognition and procedural injustice are generated in the course of provisioning energy services for populations in the Global South. I argue that a failure to recognise and address these injustices has negative consequences for the wellbeing of several populations, including future generations. In order to better elucidate these issues in Global South contexts, I build upon Brand-Correa & Steinberger's (2017) analytical energy-wellbeing framework to include an ethical imperative to ensure energy justice when provisioning energy services. The paper concludes with three avenues for future research that can help mobilise this analytical framework in practice. • Issues of energy justice tend to be occluded by a technical framing of energy poverty in the Global South • A eudaimonic conception of wellbeing is more just and sustainable • Energy services represent the most practical interaction between human needs and energy systems • Issues of distributive, recognition and procedural justice need to be addressed in order to advance wellbeing through energy services in the Global South [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within a broad framework for comprehensive advancement, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) directly address the importance of safe transport to human development. We analysed some 29 000 crashes recorded in Namibia between 2012 and 2015 to identify connections between road safety and sustainable development there and, by extension, throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing countries. The results indicate that the heavy reliance on transport services for basic mobility, especially in rural areas, contributes to negative development outcomes in terms of significant burden of injuries and death, many of which affect younger people of prime working age. The results also suggest that development pressures such as increased commercial traffic and more private vehicles increase the burden of roadway crashes. Many of the underlying factors contributing to these crashes are attributable to driving behaviours and safety cultures that must be addressed as part of programmatic socioeconomic development in order to mitigate the negative effects of transportation and more fully realise its potential to support sustainable development. We document additional ways in which the provision of safe transport is interrelated to successful attainment of the broader SDGs including those not explicitly addressing safe transport such as 4, 5, 8, 9, 16, and 17. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While for a long time only regarded as subordinate factors, it is meanwhile accepted that financial systems and capital flows play a key role for economic development and growth. Against this background many countries of the Global South founded new, or liberalised existing, stock exchanges, albeit with different results. Whereas in various Asian countries these markets have attracted sizable amounts of investment capital for domestic companies, this is not the case for most stock exchanges in Africa and especially Sub-Saharan Africa. Although there is an increasing number of Sub-Saharan African stock exchanges, the majority is institutionally weak, small, illiquid and thus unattractive to most international investors, resulting in low portfolio investment inflows to Sub-Saharan Africa. Nonetheless, Africa is becoming increasingly portrayed as continent of opportunities with immense growth prospects which led to a new and growing appetite for investment in Africa in general and Sub-Saharan Africa in particular. In this situation the new UN-supported Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative (SSEI) comes into play which aims at transforming stock markets into instruments for supporting sustainable development and green growth. Based on conceptual considerations surrounding the development-through-stock-exchanges argument, this exploratory research addresses the actors involved in this initiative and takes their rationales under closer scrutiny. We argue that the initiative not only serves as a tool for sustainable development, but also as a promoter and facilitator of new international investment opportunities, specifically for international and institutional investors in their drive to enlarge and diversify their portfolios – resulting in various challenges for Sub-Saharan stock exchanges and their local stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nigeria remains one of the hardest developmental puzzles in Africa. This state of affairs largely reflects the disconnect between the abundance of Nigeria's natural and human resources and its extraordinarily reversed socioeconomic development. The interrelatedness of these trajectories is one of disjuncture, even when the developmental potentials of the nation are not in doubt. This gives an account of Nigeria's developmental trajectories in a way that shows how the crucial contradictions and exceptionality of the country can suggest sustainable developmental pathways for it, with implications for Africa as a whole. This article is based on an idea that has the potential to offer crucial insights into Nigeria and counter the continued temptation to deal with sub-Saharan Africa as a homogeneous mass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many rural water supplies in sub-Saharan Africa demonstrate high operational failure rates, particularly those using handpumps to extract groundwater. The supply of spare parts for pump maintenance is one of the weak links in the quest for sustainability and there are very few examples of sustainable supply chains throughout the subcontinent. There are a number of key reasons for this, which are specific to the rural African context. These include: the separation of the supply of pumps from the supply of associated spares; low pump density resulting in low profits; poverty and immobility among end-users; inflexible approaches to technology choice; and restrictive policies and maintenance systems. Field research in four African countries—Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia— indicated that the supply of handpump spare parts to rural areas is not a viable stand-alone commercial activity, despite many initiatives with this ultimate aim. There is a critical need for realism in the rural water sector and for implementers to move away from the perceived wisdom that the private-sector alone is the solution to the spare parts conundrum. Integrated service provision, appropriate technology choice and, where necessary, non-profit sector options provide a multifaceted solution that must be embraced if present and future rural water services are to be sustained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge management (KM) is a focus for knowledge-intensive businesses and organisations, irrespective of the size and geographical location. While it is important to make the local knowledge become global, the efforts to manage the knowledge processes and the specific impact of the enablers require thorough understanding of the local factors to ensure its success and sustainability. Most of the previous models and frameworks of KM do not consider the differences in regions and countries and the specific local organisational factors that could affect KM. We conducted an empirical study of six research organisations in sub-Saharan Africa to understand the particular local context in which the KM occurs. We identified variations in factors such as the local cultures and beliefs, the persistent underfunding, and the operating environment influences in these organisations. Based on these, we argue for the importance of a context specific model of KM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar hybrid mini-grid systems possess the potential to substantially support electrification in sub-Saharan Africa. While their technical reliability has been proven, their financial viability is achieved only by heavy subsidization as of now. Due to the growing importance of results-based financing, we ask whether newly developed business models leveraging on the value added of electricity supply in rural areas (such as the KeyMaker Model) bare the potential to substantially reduce amount of grants required to finance the initial capital investment and thus contribute to a sustainable form of development. The principle of the KeyMaker Model is based on utilizing the locally supplied mini-grid electricity to establish a local agro-processing project, the revenues of which are an additional income stream for the mini-grid operator, while the project creates an end-market for the local farmers to sell their produce. We have developed two scenarios (without and with KeyMaker Model) for four rural villages in Nigeria as a case study to scientifically assess the potential of KeyMaker Models. We simulated and optimized the mini-grid systems using the software tool HOMER. We then assessed their financial viability. Our analysis demonstrates grant finance requirements ranging from 82% to 99% of the total investment for the base-case mini-grid projects without consideration of the KeyMaker Model. We find that a well-selected KeyMaker Model such as cocoa bean processing reduced the grant requirement by 68 percentage points, while processes based on maize, palm oil and cassava processing achieved reductions of 36, 26 and 8 percentage points, respectively. Hence, we conclude that the value added by the introduction of new local business models bares the potential to reduce grant requirements for the socially and economically necessary electrification across the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]