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This paper investigates the potential of Ubuntu philosophy for decolonising Participatory Research (PR) in the Global South, addressing power imbalances and research process challenges. Despite PR's focus on community involvement, it can perpetuate practices contradicting its principles, hence the rise of 'decolonising research' for fair, respectful researcher-community relationships and meaningful community knowledge. The central question is, 'How can Ubuntu serve as a tool for decolonising PR in the Global South?' Drawing from decolonisation, PR, and Ubuntu literature, we offer a novel perspective on applying Ubuntu in PR. The study demonstrates how Ubuntu promotes social change and justice, challenges Western knowledge universality, and empowers marginalised Global South communities via democratic, participatory platforms. We provide theoretical insights and practical suggestions for PR stakeholders, asserting that Ubuntu adoption can foster equitable, inclusive practices benefiting communities. The paper also invites further examination of indigenous philosophies in decolonising research, enriching knowledge production in the Global South and globally marginalised communities.

Purpose: This paper aims to confront some of the many facets of academic freedom as a whole, including the shared concerns with Western academia, its relationship to the politics of Arab society and the relevance of these issues within local political domains. It attempts to profile the problems hindering societal progress beyond the seemingly defined truth. While this subject has many facets, this article only examines academic freedom within the scope of knowledge and inquiry derived from the revered text of the Qur'an, including its relation to democracy and radicalism. It is an effort to refocus Arab intellectual dialogue on its ailing academia. It also argues for Arab society to reclaim its core culture of Islam as an enabler of learning aside from the Eurocentric perspective of academic freedom. Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses an expository and persuasive format in its novel perspective. This expository form sets out the argument of academic freedom as being indigenous to Arab-Islamic heritage and pursues a persuasive statement for its resolution. This format outlines the main familiar aspects of academic freedom and lays out its components within Arab-Islamic history. Findings: This paper provides insights and arguments supporting its main theory. It suggests that Arabs must judiciously consider what their education will look like and accomplish in the next 100 years, considering the sociopolitical status quo and the chances of changing it. It argues that academic freedom is indigenous to Arab-Islamic early history, academia and knowledge governance. Therefore, Arab academia must not ignore its heritage to examine what hinders education and intellectualism. It concludes with the point that reinstalling a culture of knowledge will create a relevant democracy. Research limitations/implications: The implications for research, practice and society are vast. Further academic freedom research would redefine terms of processes, change the role of academic leadership, debunk locally dominated politics, introduce learning-first policies, balance inequalities in gender, abolish academic tribalism and move past colonialist ideas and predominance. For researchers, this point of view would open doors for new scholastic approaches. Practical implications: This paper includes practical implications that stem from an approach that would provoke practical possibilities and call for more academic conversations. Further conversations should explore and debate the gaps in Arab-Islamic knowledge history. The Global South of the Arab World or the Middle East and Northern Africa/Southwest Asia North Africa region could consider drafting a contemporary MENA account of a Magna Charta Libertatis Academicae or a Magna Charta Universitatum that is galvanized by Arab revivable heritage. Moreover, It would be productive if Western universities that operate in the Arab World would also take an active role in denouncing undemocratic practices and not merely operate as commercial enterprises. Social implications: Realizing academic freedom in Arab institutions will have a positive spillover effect on Arab society, including thriving and free media, freedom of speech and gender issues. Academic freedom is one of the main elements in structuring free political culture that adhere to the principles of tolerance. Academic freedom is necessary for showing all contesting ideas in a better light and, ultimately, achieving a form of intellectual equipoise. Originality/value: This paper concerns academic freedom in the Arab-Islamic World. The majority of academic freedom scholarship today assumes a Western democratic context in discussing or even arguing against it. The paper's focus is a novel expansion of that literature.

In this paper, an attempt was made to locate the role of internationalisation in African Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It is argued that comprehensive international, intercultural, and global dimensions in the affairs of African tertiary institutions provide for a more nuanced and diversified higher education landscape. Through a desk study approach, dwelling mainly on existing literature, the paper examines the issues of internationalisation from the perspectives of diversity and inclusion, as well as the roles of the relevant key players within those institutions to practically deliver internationalisation strategies that will put the institution on a global pedestal while remaining locally and regionally relevant. More importantly, strategies for achieving comprehensive internationalisation are discussed drawing inferences from literature and documentary sources. The interrogation of these sources in relation to the expectations of the current and future HEIs to remain socially relevant and sustainable is carried out. HEIs in Africa must contribute to socio-economic change and engage with their quad-helix and eco-system partners to ensure that high end skills training, knowledge production, entrepreneurship and innovation are accelerated. In so doing, African HEIs must embrace diversity in its fullness including welcoming differences in gender, race, culture, nationality and providing platforms of engagement that allow for inclusion, and breaking silos to allow for a nuanced agenda of internationalisation.

Background Achieving financial risk protection for the whole population requires significant financing for health. Health systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) are plagued with persistent underfunding, and recent reductions in official development assistance have been registered. To create fiscal space for health, the pursuit of efficiency gains and exploring innovative health financing for health seem attractive. This paper sought to synthesize available evidence on the nature of innovative health financing instruments, mechanisms and policies implemented in Africa. We further reviewed the factors that hinder or facilitate implementation, the lessons learnt on the structure, the development process and the implementation. Methods We conducted a systematic scoping review of the literature to analyze the nature, type, and factors impacting the implementation of innovative health financing mechanisms in the World Health Organization (WHO) African region. Results Innovative health financing mechanisms are increasing in the WHO African region as a result of international policy, the need to improve healthy eating and social life of the populace, advocacy and the availability of international mechanisms to which countries can subscribe. The 41 documents included in this review reported ten innovative financing mechanisms in 43 out of the 47 WHO Africa region member states. The most common mechanisms include an excise tax on tobacco products (43 countries) and alcoholic beverages and spirits (41 countries), airline ticket levy (18 countries), sugar-based beverages tax (seven countries), and levy on oil, gas and mineral tax (four countries). Other mechanisms include the human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) trust fund, the social impact bond, the financial transaction tax, mobile phone tax and equity funds. Funds generated from many mechanisms are not allocated to health, although some portions are allocated to health-related activities. In some countries where mechanisms implemented are public health-related, emphasis is placed on positive health behavior beyond raising funds. Persistent resistance from industries due to conflicting economic policies is a major challenge. Conclusions Leveraging international policies and setting up intersectoral committees to develop and implement innovative mechanisms that involve excise taxes are recommended as possible solutions to the conflicts of interest. [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]

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One of the fundamental fallacies of racism is the confusion between biological accidents such as: body, colour, environment, size, shape, and melanin with metaphysical essences like; soul, mind, and intellect. Personness for instance is an essential category that does not depend on the above accidental attributes. Since time immemorial, racism has been reinforced by deeply entrenched social structures. These structures are the offspring of both overt and covert racism. Structural racism is epitomised by ideologies that have been well disguised under facades of science. These ideologies include: Eugenics, Social Darwinism, Modernisation theory and Neo-liberalism. This paper critically analyses the religious, political, psychoanalytic, historical and economic construction of structural and institutional racism that reinforces honorary whiteness in the African social milieu. The paper argues that the purpose of racism is constructing Black and Brown people as entities in dire need of White Saviourism and White Paternalism. This consequently culminates into imperialism, neo-colonialism, subjugation and exploitation. The paper further contends that racism is crystalised through mental colonialism which rides on socially constructed racial binaries, dichotomies and hierarchies such as: White (righteous) and Black (evil), North (top) and South (bottom), West (Sun-rise) and (Sun-set), Aryan and Honorary Aryan, White and Honorary White. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the challenges of climate change and prospects of harnessing opportunities from the challenges to advance the socioeconomic development and sustainability of Sub-Saharan African countries. The methodology of the study is exploratory, involving a comprehensive survey and review of conceptual and empirical literature on the nature and manifestations of climate, environment and social changes and the dynamic relationships between climate change, the environment and social change. From the information gathered on how climate change impacts on the environment and how environmental changes impact on the climate and how both changes collectively impact on social change and the economy, the authors identified potential opportunities that can be harnessed to advance the economy of Sub Sahara Africa. The exploratory literature review revealed that though the interdependent cause and effects of the complex interwoven relationships between man, climate and environment have negative effects on the socio economy, scientists, sociologists, economists, state and non-state actors and their institutions should not remain passive and should not only try to counter or mitigate the negative effects but should as well explore and harness potential opportunities such as investment on cost effective renewable energy projects, development of carbon finance markets for sale of carbon credits through massive agricultural plantations, clusters of energy efficient industrial SMEs, developing technology capable of reducing pollution and converting waste to wealth projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates risk-oriented frameworks for explaining environmental, social, and economic changes faced by fishing and herding communities in the Turkana Basin during and after the African Humid Period (AHP, 15–5 ka). The orbitally-forced AHP created moist conditions, high lake levels, and unusual hydrological connections across much of northern and eastern Africa. As arid conditions set in and rainfall decreased between 5.3 and 3.9 ka in eastern Africa, Lake Turkana (NW Kenya) shrank dramatically. Shoreline retreat coincided with an expansion of open plains, creating new ecological conditions and potential opportunities for early herders in the basin. In this changing landscape, economies shifted from food procurement (fishing/hunting aquatic resources) to food production (herding), likely through both in-migration by pastoralists and adoption of herding by local fishers. Early pastoralists also built at least seven megalithic pillar sites that served as communal cemeteries during this time. Recent research has shown that local environmental dynamics – both during and after the AHP – were complex, demanding a more careful interrogation of the notion that post-AHP life entailed new and/or heightened risks. Risk-buffering strategies might include mobility, diversification, physical storage, and exchange. Archaeologists working around Lake Turkana have proposed that economic shifts from fishing to pastoralism entailed increased mobility as a risk-buffering strategy to deal with aridity and resource unpredictability, and that pillar sites – as fixed landmarks in an unstable landscape – provided settings for congregation and exchange amongst increasingly mobile herding communities. However, recent research has shown that local environmental dynamics in the Lake Turkana basin – both during and after the AHP – were more complex than previously thought, necessitating re-evaluation of the notion that post-AHP life entailed new and/or heightened risks. Here, we explore risk buffering strategies (e.g. mobility, diversification, physical storage and/or exchange) as only one category of potential explanation for the new social practices observed in the region at this time. Gauging their applicability requires us to (a) assess the spatial mobility of communities and individuals interred at pillar sites; (b) evaluate whether and how mobility strategies may have changed as pastoralism supplanted fishing; and (c) examine alternative explanations for social and economic changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late twentieth century, HIV/AIDS-related global public health discourses in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) have been driving cultural change there. Cultural change refers to local critical consciousness about the value of the royalist state's traditionalist policies and projects that get branded as a 'Swazi Culture'. Using feminist discourse analysis of health policy documents, supplemented by ethnographic insights, this article shows how global health discourses addressing the epidemic are critical of traditionalism predominately on grounds that it creates harms and transmission risk in gender- and sexual-based violence and inequalities for women. This criticism echoes a longer history of external interrogations of local sociocultural practices, today including kingship, as a gendered problem for health, a move that simultaneously interrogates state traditionalism but, in turn, solidifies the state's own cultural reifications. More broadly, this case shows how gender and sexuality reshape relationships between nation-states, health systems, and culture in postcolonial Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, African states have witnessed a surge in digital activism aimed at demanding political accountability and social change. Although there is a budding literature on digital activism in Africa, it is unclear whether it translates into tangible social change on the continent. Similarly, the surge of digital repression by African leaders is yet to be accounted for. Using qualitative data, the author claims that digital activism amounts to 'small gains' as against holistic changes in the form of reform and restructuring of socioeconomic and political institutions, systems and policies that engender political repression, human rights violation, and socioeconomic miseries on the continent. The study argues that the surge of digital repression by African leaders is aimed at frustrating use of the internet and digital technologies for mass mobilisation and physical protests considered a threat to the longevity of their repressive rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies acknowledge that COVID-19 is a game-changer resulting in an operational "new normal" across organizational endeavours including university governance. One effect of COVID-19 on social change organizations like universities in Africa is that it intensified operational disruptions. The study utilizes narrative analysis to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on university governance using South Africa-Nigeria settings as a template to generalize for Africa. Its data stems from a methodological qualitative orientation, implying that the narrations derive from unstructured interviews with key players within the university system. It is anchored on a conceptual framework founded on the ontology of African administrative and organizational culture that dialectically prompts epistemological analysis. The ontology facet deals with the status quo of university governance before COVID-19, denoting universities as mini societies reflecting the continent's general operational culture. The epistemology aspect dealt with knowledge generation, indicating innovation African universities need to adopt to operate effectually during and aftermath of COVID-19. It finds that e-university governance application in Nigeria is underdeveloped compared to South Africa's model which is basic. However, it concludes that improved investment in digitalizing operations of universities is imperative for their successful governance in a post-COVID-19 pandemic epoch in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]