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This paper focuses on the Southern African Association for Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education's (SAARMSTE's) role as a platform supporting research dissemination and connecting researchers in early grades mathematics (EGM) in the Southern African region. A review of the Long Papers in SAARMSTE over the last 20 years supports the finding of the other review papers in this Special Issue: that there has been substantial growth of attention to EGM since 2013. However, two distinctions are marked when looking at conference papers rather than journal papers. Firstly, there is a particularly large expansion of work in the last 5 years, with a broadening base of participation in this work. Second, looking across all the formats of conference presentations indicates SAARMSTE's role in supporting and building EGM as a key focus of research attention, and bringing together regional and international groups with interests in this area. Given that conference proceedings usually offer a broader picture of emerging interests than journal papers, we reflect on the range of foci of attention within EGM in the SAARMSTE Proceedings, and trends within this. These trends also help us to point to areas that are likely to be of key interest in the next decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in academic library operations. In the quest to render fast, effective and efficient services, academic libraries have adopted different technologies in the past. Artificial intelligence technologies is the latest among the technologies currently being introduced in libraries. The technology which is considered an intelligent system, come in the form of robots and expert systems which have natural language processing, machine learning and pattern recognition capabilities. This paper examined the features of AI, the application of AI to library operations, examples of academic libraries with AI technologies in Sub-Saharan Africa, the need for AI in libraries and the challenges associated with the adoption of AI in libraries. The study concluded that AI holds a lot of prospects for the improvement of information services delivery in African academic libraries. Consequently, its adoption is a sinequanon to delivering robust library services in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africans' voices and contributions to communication scholarship are of interest to many Africanists. Some discourses have explored reasons for this interest. This article continues this conversation. It recognizes the challenges contributing to the limited influence of the African voice in global communication scholarship and contributes to the theorizing of the African media. There are a range of factors impeding robust African engagement in global communication scholarship. These factors are explored in this paper. However, African scholars should look beyond these factors. The first part of the article explores reasons for the lack of active African input in this discussion. The second part of the paper explores the peculiarities of Africa that should form building blocks for the emergence of African media typologies. The extant normative media theories fail to consider the realities of African governance structures and philosophies. These should lead to a media framework more reflective of the realities of Africa. Indeed, the article proposes a conversation of four media typologies that closely match the continental conditions: pragmatic authoritarianism, pragmatic progressive, pragmatic libertarianism, and civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs the concept of multidimensional heritage to examine colonial statues in Africa since the era of independences through transnational, diachronic, and multi-thematical perspectives. Colonial statues are viewed as transnational phenomena, with a focus on the African continent, emphasising the complex and evolving connections to former colonial powers in Europe. To capture the complexity of heritage uses, which is often best comprehended over an extended period, a diachronic approach is employed, and three periods are considered: colonial statues at independence (1950s to 1980); revival of (neo)colonial statues (1990s-2000s) and renewed contestations (since the 2010s). The paper also delves into various ways in which the past is used and interpreted through colonial statues, discussing aspects such as public memory, identities, diplomacy, aid, and justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mentorship may be conceptualised in terms of the form it takes, function it serves or it's learning centred nature which makes research in mentoring to receive attention within different disciplines. This article attempts to understand how a mentoring programme can contribute to enhanced research capacity building in the field of Innovation and Development (I&D) studies in Africa. It does this through a qualitative study of an African-oriented research capacity building network (AfricaLics) that aims at building a critical mass of scholars in I&D studies in the continent of Africa. Drawing on theoretical approaches in higher education that support systems of interaction thinking, the paper finds that more systematic and extensive mentorship, and awareness about different types of mentorship can enhance capacity building in the field of I&D studies. The paper recommends that development of an I&D mentorship programme must consider a mix of both structured and unstructured elements that are aligned to the local context. These context-specific elements are critical to building sustainable research capacity building programmes in academic disciplines that are transdisciplinary in nature such as I&D studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global tourism industry necessitated several responses from policymakers in order to support the industry's recovery and post-pandemic growth. Southern Africa hosts tourism-sensitive and connected economies, with many tourists who arrive in one country, often visiting neighbouring countries. Using the United Nations World Tourism Organisation's policy framework for COVID-19 mitigation, recovery, and stability for the tourism industry, this paper critically examined the Southern Africa's level of support for mitigating the impact of the pandemic and their recovery strategies for the tourism industry. Data were collected from publicly available policy and strategic documents. Findings reveal non-compliance to referenced benchmarks, lack of regional policy direction from SADC, and divergent levels of support among the member countries. The paper recommends, among others, a revision of the SADC's regional tourism programme, collaborative tourism governance through increased regional integration, and improved destination attractiveness of the Southern African region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AGRA (formerly known as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa) was founded in 2006 by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Gates Foundation to initiate agricultural transformation in Africa. Although critics have argued that AGRA’s approach insufficiently addresses the needs of African smallholder farmers, there has been little analysis of the broader politics and networks that shape AGRA, a gap this paper aims to fill. Using a network analysis and key informant interviews, we identify the actors that constitute AGRA’s network, and describe related power constellations. Our paper illustrates that AGRA’s network is dominated by foundations, intergovernmental organisations and corporations, with decision-making located within Global North institutions. We reveal that the alliance displays characteristics of an ideological advocacy network and conclude that it can be considered a neoliberal food regime. We suggest better control mechanisms to hold accountable organisations without a political mandate, and to increase the transparency of their activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New tools are being explored to provide collective and participatory means of governing data to promote the management of data in ways that benefit those from whom data is collected. This paper discusses whether data trusts are feasible structures in an African context by outlining specific considerations that should be prioritised in the development of bottom-up and collective models of data governance on the continent. Making use of international instruments, principles and established values like Ubuntu, the paper analyses the importance of collective decision-making through collective and participatory governance, women's empowerment, and capacity-building, and how the alignment of data trusts to African contexts could help balance historical power differentials, and emphasise heterogeneity as the starting point of all discussions in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa's urbanization rate has quadrupled from 14% in 1950 to about 44% in 2022. A variety of urban growth models have been used to measure and monitor urbanization, its drivers and implications for urban planning and sustainability. This paper reviews the performance of various Cellular Automata (CA)-based urban growth models and their implications for the urbanization processes in Africa. To this end, we employ a systematic review approach to identify the final 18 articles published in Web of Science-indexed journals until 2022. Our review found that the CA-based urban growth model has been successfully used in Africa to track the impacts of urban growth, assess different city growth scenarios and compare the performance of various CA-integrated models. Yet, most of the reviewed CA-based studies have focused on more urbanized regions of the continent. The result also reveals that integrating the CA model with other statistical methods improves its broader application and practicality than a conventional CA model. Our findings give planners, policymakers, and other urban stakeholders a more in-depth understanding of the challenges of unplanned urbanization and the need for meaningful participation from urban stakeholders in city growth and sustainable land use management that balances urban growth and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the composition of families in the parish of São José de Encoge, northern Angola, in the early colonial era, using a series of 'family bulletins' collected by the Portuguese colonial government in 1910. Encoge was one of the earliest centres of coffee cultivation in west-central Africa. While not all local families participated in this economy, the census sheds light on family-based cash-crop production after the abolition of slavery in Angola. The literature on post-slavery labour arrangements in Africa almost unanimously suggests that family-extension strategies predominantly aimed to integrate young women and girls into households, using pawnship and guardianship as important methods. The family bulletins from Encoge provide a means to evaluate this assumption on a quantitative basis in an Angolan context. They indicate that, besides natural reproduction and the adoption of second wives, the incorporation of wards, nephews, and nieces was the most common form of household extension, in which elders showed a remarkable preference for male dependants. The bulletins do not provide clear evidence of the presence of enslaved dependants, although some individuals listed as servants were possibly enslaved. Overall, the data suggest that, contrary to common assumptions about agricultural labour in Africa, family-based cultivation and trade of coffee did not discriminate against men or boys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long considered a cultural contact zone, the Mediterranean has become a weaponised border zone keeping refugees from Africa and the Middle East away from 'Fortress Europe'. The Mediterranean has become excessively dangerous to cross, leading many commentators to call this maritime space a 'massive graveyard'. The widespread indifference and enmity towards migrants in Europe is, amongst other things, countered by documentary and commemorative projects by artists drawing attention to the suffering of drowned refugees. In this paper, I zoom in on documentary and memorial artistic projects by Mimmo Paladino, Jason deCaires Taylor, Christoph Büchel, Ai Weiwei and Đỉnh Q. Lê. In the frequent absence of dead bodies and specific grave sites on the 'high seas', they make claims regarding the humanity, singularity and memorability of the human lives of refugees drowned at sea. Based on a description of the artworks and their public, I make two interlinked theoretical arguments. First, the commemorative materialisations by contemporary artists are temporal claims to constitute the cultural heritage of the future. Second, given the sea's aquatic materiality, the commemorative claims of these art projects require that commemorative materialisations must spatially move from the flux of the sea to the fixity of the land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the effect of export diversification on income inequality in Central Africa through the employment channel. The sample consists of 9 countries over the period 2000–2019. A quadratic regression is applied to a panel data model using the random effect and the two stages least squares methods. The results show that export diversification increases income inequality in Central Africa. However, this effect is non-linear with the form of an inverted U. Increasing the number of wage workers reduces the marginal effect of export diversification on income inequality while increasing the number of unpaid workers increases this effect. Moreover, diversification is less likely to reduce income inequality when it increases male employment than when it increases female employment. The effect of diversification on income inequality remains non-linear in an inverted U-shape for CEMAC countries' members (CEMAC: Economic and Monetary Community of Central African States) and oil-producing countries, while it is non-linear in a U-shape for non-CEMAC countries and non-oil-producing countries. We recommend that Central African countries promote the diversification of exports while encouraging new productive activities to generate more paid jobs and to favor female employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the centre of African underdevelopment are slave trade and colonization. Expectedly, these two issues have been in the front burner of academic discourse, especially in Africa. While the literature is stuffed with forms and causes of colonialism, this current article contributes to the existing literature by interrogating the relationship between colonialism and some selected parts of Nigerian culture. The paper therefore examined the effects of colonialism on African culture, the relationship between colonisation and Nigeria's cultural crisis, including the challenges it poses for her identity. Using descriptive analysis and evidence-based research method, the study found that certain aspects of valued Nigerian culture were being eroded, especially as it related to the role of purity in religion and marriage. Findings further showed that the enthusiastic assimilation of Western culture by the younger generation was suggestive of a culture whose future is on a knife-edge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) and its potential to unleash the development of women in Africa. The envisaged benefits of the AfCFTA include increased trade diversification, regional integration, enhanced human security, increased foreign direct investment and technological advancement. Despite optimism about the prospects of the agreement as a local innovation spearheaded by the African Union, pessimists raise questions about the extent of stakeholder engagement. The agreement must be gender-responsive to enhance outcomes for women cross-border traders. The paper concludes that the lack of gender sensitivity confirms the need to address the specific needs of African women, especially those involved in informal cross-border trade. Hence, for AfCFTA, the policy focus should be on ensuring the formalisation of women who participate in informal trade, thus helping increase access to markets, information and growth opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an attempt at applying Samir Amin's lens in the analysis of socio-economic development in Africa. Social and economic development in Africa has been substandard, largely because of the economic system followed and because effective structural transformation has not taken place – Samir Amin's works explained what needed to be done to transform Africa (and the broader global south). It is in this context that the paper posits that post-colonial Africa has had to contend with disruptive socio-economic and political realities instituted by European colonialism, slave trade and inappropriate integration of Africa to the so-called global economy. The fundamental explanation for the poor socio-economic development in Africa is global capitalism, and one of the possible solutions is in Samir Amin's delinking proposal as well as the restructuring of the African economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article identifies some of the key challenges hindering effective social work education and practice in African nations. These problems include an orientation that is remedial or curative, involvement of non-social work graduates in social work posts, lack of a regulating or coordinating body, and an overall dependency on extrapolated curricula and Western methods among others. Most African nations although with huge wealth are wallowing in abject poverty resulting in various social maladies such as kidnapping, child abuse, substance misuse, corruption, lack of organised social welfare institutions, unsustainable development, human trafficking, unemployment, lack of leadership and social injustice, as resultant effects of exploitative colonialists and/or imperialists. These call for holistic practice interventions to solve these social ills. This paper strongly advocates that social work in the African continent should be given legal backing to ensure professional social work education and practice. The social work education curriculum should be developed to reflect African social contexts and its approaches to social work practice and not just be restricted to Western approaches alone. On this premise, this paper proposes 'cultural humility' and 'transaction between individuals and environment (TIE)' frameworks that would enhance social work education and practice in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prescottiella sudanensis is a rare, asymmetrical desmid currently known from only a few countries in equatorial Africa. During the present study, P. sudanensis cells were found in water samples from Vogel Pan located in the far north-eastern side of Namibia, thereby expanding the known geographical distribution of the species. The location of the sampling site, which is situated in a direct line halfway between the Makgadikgadi pans and Okavango Delta towards the east (Botswana) and the Etosha pans towards the west (Namibia), suggests that migrating birds are likely vectors spreading desmids from one waterbody to another. In this paper a morphological description (including dimensions) and micrographs of P. sudanensis are presented, and the known geographical distribution of the species is discussed in relation to migration routes of birds. As the genus and species names are invalid according to ICN Art. 40.1, the names are also validated in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the current situation of the provision of speech-language services in East Africa. An overview of the educational opportunities, workforce density, communication rehabilitation planning, caseload, and ethical and/or cultural challenges is provided. A narrative review was performed. All papers referring to communication disorders in East African countries were identified from EMBASE, PubMed, ISI Web of Science: Science Citation Index Expanded, and ISI Web of Science: Conference Proceedings Citation Index-Science using the following search terms: speech therapy, speech pathology, speech-language pathology, speech-language rehabilitation, speech-language therapy, logopedics, East Africa, communication disorders, communication difficulties. Two concepts were combined with a Boolean operator 'AND'. At present, there is an alarming shortage of speech-language pathologists in East Africa. This issue is mainly related to the limited availability of educational programs in speech-language pathology. Although more and more universities are beginning to offer such educational programs, the number of available speech-language pathologists is still too low to meet the needs of all children with communication disorders. In addition, speech-language pathologists are often faced with different cultural and ethical obstacles when they provide intervention to East African children with communication disorders. These speech-language pathologists are therefore challenged to take a broader view of their role as a therapist. These alternative roles often include training of other individuals in the context of community-based rehabilitation. In the future, it will be important to carefully consider the development of sustainable learning opportunities in East African contexts. Initiatives, for example, "train-the-trainer" workshops, are needed to support the speechlanguage pathologists. Existing models like the communication disability model can aid to create holistic frameworks for the development of sustainable speech-language services in the East African countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability-focused research networks and communities of practice have emerged as a key response and strategy to build capacity and knowledge to support transformation towards more sustainable, just and equitable futures. This paper synthesises insights from the development of a community of practice on social-ecological systems (SES) research in southern Africa over the past decade, linked to the international Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS). This community consists of a network of researchers who carry out place-based SES research in the southern African region. They interact through various cross-cutting working groups and also host a variety of public colloquia and student and practitioner training events. Known as the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (SAPECS), its core objectives are to: (1) derive new approaches and empirical insights on SES dynamics in the southern African context; (2) have a tangible impact by mainstreaming knowledge into policy and practice; and (3) grow the community of practice engaged in SES research and governance, including researchers, students and practitioners. This paper reflects on experiences in building the SAPECS community, with the aim of supporting the development of similar networks elsewhere in the world, particularly in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British press, public and parliament are not generally thought to have played a significant role in the process of Britain’s decolonisation in Africa. Neither do most studies of the broad British metropolitan experience foreground the importance of African nationalism. This article begins to challenge both of these views by providing an assessment of the significance of the British press’s rather sensational treatment of an incident of late-colonial violence in the context of an African demonstration in Blantyre, Nyasaland, in 1960. African activists exploited the British press presence in Blantyre as a means of advancing the nationalist cause and fighting the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. British correspondents responded positively for a variety of ideological, political, personal, situational and institutional reasons. In addition, by 1960, the British press recognised the strength of African nationalism in the context of African violence and agitation across that continent in preceding months and years. Its critical articles, which interlocked with British parliamentary proceedings and specific sets of historical concerns, had important effects among two core readerships: sections of the white settler communities of the Federation, and the British Government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

African archives were predominantly outgrowths of the colonialist machinery, essential armoury in the mechanisms of control which paid little attention to comprehensively documenting the cultures and pasts of the subjugated peoples. Consequently, the genesis of conventional African archives was constituted by loss, a fact perhaps dramatically signified by the string of fires and other disasters to have hit African archival repositories from as early as 1919. Yet still, the embers of these conflagrations provide opportunities for critical reconsiderations of loss that would lead to theoretical and practical gains in the African archive. Archival loss can prod African archivists towards new ontologies of praxis and conceptions of archive that would enable recovery of all the varied registers of the African archive. Specifically, the paper examines the creation and work of the J.H. Kwabena Nketia Archives (at the University of Ghana's Institute of African Studies) and the Likpe Traditional Area Community Archives as archival sites of resistance and challenge to loss that leverage community and institutional partnerships to build and recover the African archive. Ultimately, these archives' work, and the general "African archival turn" advocated for here, have implications for African Studies and the decolonising of knowledge production in and about Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptation tracking is crucial for understanding progress in responding to climate change impacts across space and time. However, adaptation tracking is constrained by the lack of agreement on how to measure adaptation. While there has been significant focus on government plans and other documented adaptation as the basis for adaptation tracking, emerging literature also advocates for inclusive approaches that consider multiple experiences and priorities when designing and using adaptation tracking indicators. However, little literature empirically investigates the specifics of what this integrated approach is or what it could achieve. We address this gap using a thematic analysis of 48 focus group discussions and of government policies to compare the perspectives of livestock keepers and governments in Eastern Africa on climate risks and adaptation in livestock systems. The results show considerable similarities in how they perceive climatic hazards, impacts, adaptation strategies, goals, and adaptive capacities, highlighting elements that could be recognized as relevant by both sets of stakeholders. However, the differences underscore the value of an integrated approach as it supports the recognition of variations in climate risks and adaptation options across contexts as well as capturing diverse effects of adaptation across scales. Insights from this paper contribute to discussions on developing integrated adaptation tracking frameworks that take into account the contextual nature of climate hazards, impacts, adaptation strategies, adaptive capacities, and adaptation goals. Governments and livestock keepers perceive climate hazards, impacts, adaptation strategies, adaptive capacity, and adaptation goals in largely similar ways. Differences in governmental and livestock keeper perspectives provide the basis for integrating them in the development of adaptation tracking indicators. Drawing on multiple experiences, priorities, and knowledges could support more effective tracking of adaptation progress by considering the various scales and contexts within which adaptation occurs. Integration requires an adaptation tracking framework that utilizes core indicators that have broader relevance and additional ones that address the context-specificity of climate hazards, impacts, adaptive capacities, adaptation strategies, and adaptation goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seaports and their efficiency remain essential for the success of international trade globally. Notwithstanding this outcome, there is no empirical evidence on how seaport efficiency affect trade performance in Africa. This paper presents an empirical evidence of the effects of seaport efficiency on trade performance in Africa. To do so, we use data on 33 African countries for the period 2006 to 2018 and employ the gravity model for the empirical analysis. The results show that seaport efficiency enhances trade performance in Africa; the greater the level of seaport efficiency, the larger the extent of trade performance. Based on this finding, it is recommended that policy reforms that improve the efficiency of seaports in Africa should be targeted by policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, summits have gained great importance in developing relations with African countries and they have become useful tools to understand intersecting roadmaps on the continent. China, India, Japan, the United States, European countries and Russia conducted various summits and business forums targeting to develop their political, economic and military relations with Africa. In this vein, FOCAC (Forum on China–Africa Cooperation), European Union–Africa Business and Investment Summits, Japan's Africa Development Summits and Russia–Africa Summit provide some details of these powers' Africa policy. Turkey has also emerged as a new actor and summit organizer in Africa since it opened a new page for Africa in its foreign policy in 2005. After being a strategic partner to the African Union in 2008, Turkey has conducted three Turkey–Africa summits, Istanbul (2008), Malabo (2014) and Istanbul (2021), to form its roadmap in Africa. This work aims to analyse the role of Africa–Turkey summits in the development of Turkey's Africa policy and its relationship with African countries. The paper looks at all declarations comprehensively to evaluate Turkey's foreign policy discourse on Africa. Moreover, it examines Turkey's Africa policy implementations and achievements on the continent through the lens of summits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's defence industries have shown significant development in recent years. But the limited domestic market and the financial crisis created sustainability problems for the industry. To increase its arms sales, Turkey began to search for potential markets to expand, and Africa emerged as an excellent market to enter. Turkey had already invested in Africa through its multi-track diplomacy, a necessary condition for arms sales. While the multi-track diplomacy and increased engagement helped Turkey's arms exports, they are insufficient to explain the recent rise of Turkish arms exports, which have been showing an upward trend since 2021. This paper argues that the increase in arms exports is the function of multi-track diplomacy, no-strings-attached arms export policy and the demonstration effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right to sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) are integral to and manifest in LGBTIQ rights including homosexuality and same-sex marriage. International law promotes these rights and prohibits discrimination on these grounds. Many western countries endorse these rights and prohibitions in parliamentary legislation or judicial fiat. In comparison with all other jurisdictions worldwide, and within the African sub-region, only South Africa specifically prohibits unfair direct or indirect discrimination based on "sexual orientation" in its national constitution. This paper explores African approach to SOGI and LGBTIQ rights including homosexuality and same-sex marriage. It argues that despite the threat of homocapitalism, prevalent Afrocentrism and religions reject these form of "new rights" for being immoral, ungodly, unnatural and un-African, thereby underlining the limits of human rights in the sub-region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls for humanity to act on environmental changes are becoming increasingly critical. The growing polycrisis including the impact of ongoing conflicts in contested geopolitical spaces and the struggles for ways to sustain a livelihood in areas of precarity and poverty, are just some of the intersecting challenges which have given rise to a Code Red alarm by the United Nations surrounding issues related to climate change. Rich narratives and stories of climate actions from Africa offer examples of potential paths. This paper explores how such narratives inform local development and climate action. A key message is that stories and narratives, created by various peoples, disciplines, and systems of knowledge, can all be powerful genres and sources for agentic change that can inspire and embolden development practice and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review provides an overview of the progress made in remote sensing application for soil moisture, vegetation and inundation mapping in wetland environments. The main objective of the paper was to assess the link between soil moisture variations and vegetation characteristics in wetland remote sensing studies. To achieve this objective, relevant literature was gathered from established search engines, e.g. Science Direct and Web of Science, along with specific search strategies and key phrases. Three hundred and ninety-three journal articles on wetland remote sensing published between 1980 and 2023 were collected and subjected to a comprehensive analysis. The findings indicate that remote sensing of wetland moisture, vegetation and inundation has been increasing, from three published work in the 1980s to 22 in the 1990s, to 88 between 2001 and 2010, and to 278 between 2011 and 2023. Results showed that there has been an improvement in the application of remote sensing in mapping of wetland moisture, inundation and vegetation in Africa between 2015 and 2023. Despite wide application of remote sensing to map these aspects, very few studies (2.1%) have focused on establishing the relationship between them. The analysis indicated that the launch of new Sentinel-1 radar and Sentinel-2 optical sensors in addition to the Landsat series, along with a variety of analytical methods, provided a great opportunity for derivation of soil moisture and vegetation data which can be used to establish the soil moisture–vegetation nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, Chinese FDI has become an integral investment source for African countries and has, therefore, engendered studies seeking to understand the determinants of these flows. In a quest to identify the factors that stimulate these flows, this paper assesses whether the ease of starting a business induces Chinese FDI flow to Africa. The analysis is based on panel data for 46 African countries between 2004 and 2018. The results from fixed-effects estimations suggest that Chinese FDI is attracted by the ease of starting a business in African economies. This finding also holds for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and is robust across all estimations. The results also provide corroborating evidence that identifies Chinese FDI as market and resource-seeking, attracted to large markets and economies with abundant natural resources. The findings suggest that improving business regulations could be a stimulant for Chinese FDI flow to Africa. In evaluating the nexus between Chinese FDI and business start-ups, this paper provides new evidence to complement the dated studies on this theme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Nguni term inkaba refers both to the umbilical cord and the navel. In this paper, we use the idea of the umbilical cord to explain an enduring intellectual connection that many African scholars feel towards African epistemes. By drawing on the term inkaba, the paper explores the idea of "umbilical sense" as an intellectual instinct that one develops in relation to a range of knowledges that have been marginalised. This sense speaks to the intellectual orientation drawn from growing and developing as persons within indigenous communities. We argue that the desire and ability to respond to the conceptual shortcomings in Western academe stems from an umbilical sense, or a navel sense – ukuzwa ngenkaba in Nguni languages. Drawing on African writers such as Mazisi Kunene and Ifeanyi Menkiti, we propose that the acquisition of knowledge forms part of an African conception of personhood that links one to many corpuses of historical knowledges. Knowledge thus forms part of how we emerge as persons and, in turn, make other persons. We explore the implications of our concept for current debates on the decolonisation of knowledge and the meaning of post-human knowledge with the emergence of artificial intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we reexamine the determinants of nonperforming loans through the impact of supervisory devices in credit risk management in Africa. The paper employs bank-specific, macroeconomic and institutional data for a panel of 14 universal banks over the period 2009 to 2020. We develop models that capture the role of regulatory supervision on credit risk. Findings from the Panels Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) and the system GMM shows that previous year's NPL and inflation significantly affect NPLs in the banking space of Gana. Bank size and financial development are inversely associated with NPLs. The interactive term of regulatory quality and government effectiveness on NPLs has net negative effect. This suggest that regulatory quality enhances the reductive effects of government effectiveness on NPLs. Our findings in general lends credence to the financial instability theory as NPLs in the Ghanaian context has been the outcome of activities of speculative borrowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 2021, the largest free trade area in the world measured by number of participating countries came into effect. This African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which links 54 countries and 1.3 billion people, is designed to foster rapid economic growth and pull tens of millions of people out of poverty. Despite the fact that this project raises issues central to International Political Economy (IPE) scholarship, major journals in the field including Review of International Political Economy (RIPE) have given it negligible attention. The paper begins by asking why the AfCFTA has remained at best, marginal, and at worst, absent in the IPE literature. Drawing on the critical and postcolonial literature in the field to address this question, the paper identifies IPE's Eurocentrism as the root cause of the discipline's oversight of the continent. After uncovering the implications and costs of this oversight, the paper discusses the insights that emerge from a close consideration of the AfCFTA, including the Pan-African ideology which undergirds the project and insights that contribute to the literature on regionalism. Highlighting the implications of both the AfCFTA and the analysis, the paper additionally discusses the promises and challenges in the future trajectory of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The setting up by the African Union of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which should govern matters relating to, inter alia, trade in goods and services, investment, trade facilitation, intellectual property rights, and competition policy is a step in the right direction. However, this paper argues that the limited inclusion of informal economy actors such as informal cross border traders (ICBTs) appears to undermine the potential of the AfCFTA as the architecture for inclusive socio-economic development in Africa. The paper advances the need for African countries to craft policies which are sensitive to and respond to the circumstances of ordinary people on the ground and not a wholesale application of policies such as neoclassical integration theory, the outcome of which deserts ordinary people. Such policies must be transcendental to the extent of being informed by views from the ground, which does not appear to be the case with the AfCFTA on the score of ICBTs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-colonial economy of African countries has continued to manifest all the characteristics of its colonial origins in terms of its structure, direction, and composition. Export of primary commodities continue to take precedence over exports of manufactured products. The African Continental Free Trade Area emerged after series of negotiations to address the problem of structural transformation through value added production, services and increased agglomeration in African economies. This paper examines the extent to which the AfCFTA can foster structural transformation and socio-economic development in Africa. The paper found that despite the challenges that may affect the implementation of the agreement, AfCFTA holds great potentials for the realisation of the social transformation in Africa through creation of regional value chains, unlocking the opportunities in free movement of factors of production and enhancing a stronger voice for Africa in the negotiation of trade and investment agreements with other regions of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive literature has investigated the driving forces behind high-technology exports, but most studies focus on developed countries and developing countries outside Africa. The purpose of this paper is to assess the main factors determining export-oriented technological change, using the technological content of exports (high-tech, medium-tech and low-tech exports) as a proxy. For this purpose, instrumental variable regressions are applied to a panel dataset of 33 African countries. The findings revealed that the main determinants of high-technology exports are: imports of components, rule of law, human capital, FDI inflows, GDP per capita and manufacturing. For medium-technology exports, the determinants identified are similar to high-technology exports with population included. The main determinants of low-technology manufactured exports are imports of components, rule of law, population, FDI inflows, GDP per capita and manufacturing. These give policymakers in African countries a targeted approach in formulating policies related to exports by technological category. This paper contributes to the literature in that it assesses the main factors determining export-oriented technological change, using different levels of technological content of exports (high-tech, medium-tech and low-tech exports). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper emerged from a talk delivered to the community and members of the Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO) for Black History Month in October 2022. A growing body of evidence exposes the persistence of racism and inequality within health service provision and the psychological professions. This has led to a commitment across all professional bodies to address as a significant matter. This paper explores the links between racism and intergenerational trauma and the consequences on Black men's mental health. The author probes the gaps in services and inequalities using a psychoanalytic lens. Men from Africa and the Caribbean face disproportionate rates of mental health diagnoses and poor care provision. However, little or no consideration is given to intergenerational trauma and cultural factors. At the heart of the paper sits the question: What happens to Black men in the mental health system and why? The author considers whether cultural insensitivity might be a barrier to accessing mental health care and explores the differential treatment options, outcomes, and possible reasons and solutions for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past five years, there have been growing calls for transformative responses to sustainability challenges, supported by increased transformative action in the pursuit of environmental justice. In parallel to this development within the policy arena, the concept of transformation and its potential is also attracting more attention within the research community. This paper uses the example of the Urban Natural Assests for Africa (UNA) programme to explore what transformative change might mean for cities and how this might be achieved through enacting just processes. It explores in some more detail different approaches to transformative change to explain how and why an enabling perspective on transformation is considered to be fruitful in developing the understanding of transformative capacity for change. The paper then explores how the programme was able to foster this capacity, with what consequences for the African cities and what it implies for the nature of change for urban social and environmental justice in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the importance of national governments and national-local relationships for scaling up local climate action to achieve global goals. From the Sustainable Development Goals to the New Urban Agenda to the Paris Climate Change Agreement, the achievement of global sustainability goals will depend on deep changes to national infrastructure and urban systems. Through an analysis of climate action planning and investments in exemplary cases in Africa, the paper highlights the opportunities and challenges that come with integrating national governments into urban-focused priorities and needs, especially for mobilising financial resources. The paper finds that scaling up city climate action in the selected African countries benefits from a constructive multi-level relationship between local and national institutions and stakeholders to shape and improve the legislative, financial and operating frameworks to enable systemic change. Large-scale urban climate action can be enabled by formal multi-level institutional arrangements, links to politically prioritised policy frameworks, and transformative aims that address both climate and socio-economic benefits for communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on Nigeria, this paper explores the efforts of an online youth leadership programme, Days of Change, which succeeded in galvanising, uniting, and engaging Nigerian youth both online and offline, across social, class, and ethnic divides concerning nation building. The paper provides a unique example of the ways in which online media have become veritable sites of popular urban youth cultures, from which young people negotiate the unstable landscape of post-coloniality that the African state has foisted on its vulnerable youth population. More importantly, the paper seeks to lay the groundwork for further theorisations on how social media can be utilised as a vehicle for anti-colonial youth engagement Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The professional stage act of one of South Africa's newest musical prodigies, Sho Madjozi, may be analysed as a quintessential Afropolitan example of the innovative and hybrid combination of music, costume, and dance in urban youth popular culture in Africa. This paper analyses the dynamic intersection between costume, music, and dance, presenting it as a crucial site where urban youth popular culture can reimagine tradition, while simultaneously demonstrating that contemporary African cultural identities exist in a constant state of flux. The paper borrows from scholarly insights on hybridity, identity, the Afropolitan and popular culture, as well as other writings in youth agency and popular culture, to argue that South Africa's Sho Madjozi belongs with a tradition of contemporary urban youth performance culture that continuously resurrects and destabilises elements of the past as it reimagines the future. Sho Madjozi's unique style as a rap artist in Tsonga is presented as an illustration of the progressive role that contemporary urban youths in Africa can play as proponents of cultural preservation, even as they stand at the cross-roads between the old and the new. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on interviews with Africans of binational parental heritage to expand the literature on identity formation in two ways. First, it takes on the factors that shape primary identity formation more fully by extending it beyond the current focus on state constrictures on primary identity formation. We argue in this paper that in addition to state constricture, closeness of family ties is yet another factor that shapes the primary identity of individuals with binationality. Individuals claim the identity of that parent whose extended family members have a cordial relationship with them as evident in communication patterns, visits, presence at rites of passage, and the extent to which extended family members embrace them as one of their own. Second, we interrogate the literature on hybridity beyond its focus on types to highlight the instrumental and intrinsic purposes to which hybridity can be put. We show how individuals with a primary identity would choose a secondary identity for instrumental reasons such as the education or work opportunities it provides. The intrinsic value of secondary identity is the entertainment options and sense of self it provides. This piece, focusing on both the factors that shape primary identity as well as when/for what purpose such individuals choose a secondary identity, highlights the agency of such individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Engineering Education Research Network in Africa (EERN-Africa) was created to enable connections between practitioners and researchers with a shared interest in African engineering education contexts. Recognising the importance of developing an African voice in the engineering education research space, the EERN-Africa community has interacted in a dynamic and dialogic way with our own teaching and research practices across diverse African contexts, with an ethical commitment to democratic and inclusive community-building. The objective of this paper is to reflect on the current status of the Community of Practice (CoP), and the challenges and opportunities in sustaining and growing the CoP. A collaborative analysis of perspectives on this emerging identity is presented, using an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) methodology and drawing on collective written reflections and discussions. Six broad themes on the value that the CoP has for both individuals and the group were identified: networking, capacity development, emotional support, impact on professional identity, social and environmental impact, and breaking borders. This paper contributes an approach for collaborative capacity-building in EER through a virtual CoP, underpinned by the spirit of ubuntu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of libraries in preparing students to thrive during their studies and innovate after university is growing in importance. Information is more easily accessible through digital channels and is increasingly abundant. Generative Artificial intelligence (AI) adds to this reality and increases the need for digitally driven information literacy skills. This paper aims to guide librarians by discussing the digitalization of information creation, retrieval, and use. It recommends the training of both digital and information literacy for students. Librarians are called upon to provide clear guidelines to their universities to steer the use of generative AI. The implications of digital information sources and generative AI are discussed with the role of librarians in context. Information literacy and digital literacy are related. Academic libraries should include digital topics in information literacy training. Information literacy should be trained at the start of university education and before students begin dissertation writing. University libraries should propose guidelines for the use of generative artificial intelligence tools by students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One in five child deaths under age 5 are a result of severe wasting. Malnutrition at early ages is linked to lifelong consequences, such as reduced cognitive skills, reduced earnings in adulthood and chronic health conditions. Countries worldwide have committed to addressing child undernutrition, and ending hunger is foundational to the Millennium Development Goals. In this paper, we study the intergenerational effect of providing free tuition in secondary school on future children’s nutrition. We combined a novel longitudinal dataset that captures educational policies for 40 African countries from 1990 to 2019 with the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). We identified three countries that introduced free secondary education several years after implementing free primary education. Exploiting this variation in timing we estimate the additional impact of providing free secondary education over free primary education. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we find that introducing free secondary education significantly reduced wasting. Cohorts exposed to free secondary had an 18% relative decrease in wasting. The impact on cohorts exposed only to free primary was smaller and not statistically significant. Expanding free secondary education has long-term, intergenerational benefits and is an effective path to reducing malnutrition. Results are robust to different specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific evidence on the safety and efficacy of pharmaceutical drugs, substances and herbal medicines is important in medical advertising and promotion. Following guidelines for conducting a scoping review, we systematically searched PubMed, SCOPUS and Web of Science to identify in peer reviewed articles medications that were promoted and used widely in Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also searched for information about how safety concerns about untested/or not properly tested drugs were communicated to the public during the pandemic. Of the 2043 articles identified, 41 papers were eligible for inclusion. Most studies were clinical trials (n = 11), systematic reviews (n = 9), quantitative studies (n = 9) the rest were qualitative studies, reviews and reports. We found that following global trends, several drugs, traditional and herbal treatments were used and repurposed for the treatment of respiratory symptoms of COVID-19 in Africa. The results highlighted the value of some herbal medicines for treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the risks posed by the unregulated sharing of advice and recommendations on treatments in Africa, and globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High levels of stress and burnout, low help-seeking behaviour and unhealthy coping in healthcare professionals (HCPs), are a critical concern globally. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) reduce stress, are a healthy coping mechanism and have become increasingly popular among HCPs, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, HCPs' busy schedules require the intervention to be accessible, pragmatic, and context specific. Key to this goal is approaching mindfulness from a multicultural perspective, especially in diverse settings such as Africa. This paper aims to provide practical tips to ensure that the MBI offered is effective with multicultural HCPs during intense stress. Four tips each discuss the curriculum, implementation, and sustainability, respectively. The tips are elucidated by practical examples of regulating stress in healthcare settings and to offer a guideline to help structure future MBIs to be culturally and context appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that the current quest for decolonisation and decoloniality struggles are primarily embodiments of disenchantment with the development doldrums in the continent after decades of political independence. While both decolonisation and decoloniality sound like intellectual pursuits concerned with knowledge production, they are in essence efforts towards recasting and rebooting development in the continent. Despite ingrained differences both decolonisation and decoloniality, aspire towards unmasking the futility and incompleteness of Euro-American epistemological traditions and worldviews. Despite differences in the usage of concepts, both decolonisation and decoloniality reframe the notion of 'delinking' made popular by Samir Amin. In effect, Amin may rightly be conceived as a precursor of the decolonisation struggle. Apart from agitating for a pluriversality of epistemic traditions and 'ways of knowing', both decolonisation and decoloniality seek to reposition Africa in global relations of power and politics and from the above engender sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his theory on delinking, Amin shows how Africa is linked to global Capital. For Amin, it is in this link that Africa's underdevelopment resides. An important element in this linking process is the role that the comprador bourgeoisie plays in its relationship with global Capital, which facilitates the continued underdevelopment of Africa. Amin raises the question of the role that the African comprador bourgeoisie played as agents of imperialism in keeping Africa linked to Europe. From this standpoint, Amin presents the possibility of approaching Africa's underdevelopment from another dimension – the possibility of exploring Africa's underdevelopment as an internally driven process initiated by home-grown African capitalists who accumulate for their own account. Extending the logic of the comprador bourgeoisie, this paper argues that Capital in Africa is responsible for internal under development. African Capital too, together with international Capital consciously participates in under developing Africa. We argue that internal underdevelopment is based on a capitalist logic that contains all the standard phenomena associated with Capital, namely, inequality, unemployment, and poverty. Furthermore, exploring the rise of our case studies, viz; the Dangotes, Motsepes, and the Dos Santos', we show how instrumental each of them are in the internal underdevelopment of Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profundity of Samir Amin's contributions to the quest for the development of Africa and the global South is beyond questioning. From the onset, Amin focused on ways to promote autonomous development in the periphery. He advocated delinking and remained true to these convictions till the very end when he concluded that the challenge was not so much about the South moving out of the crisis of capitalism as it was about its moving out of a global capitalist system in crisis; or moving beyond capitalism. This paper interrogates the suitability of this central plank of Amin's political economy vis-a-vis Claude Ake's contention that the greatest impediment to African development inheres in the nature of its politics and that the solution is to be sought therein. We argued that the challenge for contemporary Africa is not so much about exiting the anarchial global capitalist system as it is about striking internal balance in the context of the larger systemic perturbations. But beyond comparing, we mapped the place of contemporary African intellectuals in the continent's development schema along the path of Ake's proposition and in pursuit of the shared vision of these two illustrious scholar-activists for a democratic and prosperous Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poultry population in Africa is mostly composed of local or indigenous chickens appreciated for the unique taste and texture of their meat. However, with the ever-increasing population growth, the free-range or backyard poultry farming system is no longer adapted to supply people with protein requirements. Crossbreeding local hens with an improved rooster weakens the thermotolerance and disease resistance of the offspring in African areas. In this context, the available breeds need to be preserved. The improvement of their productivity should be actualized through the implementation of a sustainable production programme that is simple and less expensive for the farmer, taking into account: feeding, habitat and chicken care. Scientific research should invest more time on the identification and characterization of all available breeds or chicken ecotypes allowing us to know production performances and their nutritional needs. Feeding with locally available resources, vaccination and use of indigenous medicine requiring training of farmers are essential perspectives. This paper focused on the productivity and resilience of indigenous chicken ecotypes in various African tropical environments and some essential factors to improve the birds. For this, a critical analysis was made based on the available data on the birds from research databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]