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Debates on urban infrastructures in the global South have suggested that heterogeneous infrastructures may help improve urban electricity access yet also raise equality concerns. However, neither the urban inequalities associated with such electricity access nor how those inequalities play out in different urban neighbourhoods has been systematically studied. To better understand how electricity access develops in the context of heterogeneity, we examine five urban neighbourhood types in Mozambique's Greater Maputo region, where heterogeneous electricity constellations provide some access to critical services yet have been unable to advance equal access to electricity. Connectivity is increasing at city level, but affordability and reliability are compromised in some neighbourhoods, and negative health, safety, and environmental impacts are observed in others. To accelerate equal electricity access throughout the city more attention must be paid to reducing trade-offs between different access dimensions that affect specific user groups in different settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased urbanisation influences the morphometric traits of various species, often resulting in urban individuals being smaller than their non-urban counterparts. Urbanisation can affect fundamental eco-evolutionary patterns and impact species' ability to adapt to and occupy rapidly changing environments through morphological changes. We investigated the morphometric responses of two passerine species, the non-native house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and its native congener, the Cape sparrow (Passer melanurus), along gradients of spatial and temporal urbanisation in South Africa over a 52-year period. The house sparrow was significantly heavier, larger and in better condition with increasing urban infrastructure and lower urban vegetation cover, while the Cape sparrow showed opposing trends along these gradients. Temporally, the house sparrow's body mass increased consistently over the 52-year study period, suggesting changes in morphology were concomitant with increasing urbanisation over time. This study demonstrates distinct differences in the morphological responses of the non-native house sparrow and the native Cape sparrow to increasing urban development. These morphological responses may also underpin community-level changes caused by urbanisation, enhancing the capabilities of non-native species to thrive over their native counterparts in these environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solidarity against the colonial regime is one of the keys to overcoming the oppressor. This is why the 20th century, which is seen as the century of decolonization, experienced many demonstrations of solidarity from Africa to America. Palestine's long resistance against the Israeli colonial project should be considered as another decolonization movement. Unfortunately, many Arab regimes have not shown solidarity with Palestine in recent years. While the Arab states have hesitated to show full solidarity, it is the African continent that has stepped in, internationalizing the debate regarding genocide. This is, indeed, not limited to Africa. South American states also show their support for Palestine and have halted their relations with Israel. How do we make sense of this solidarity, from Namibia to South Africa and from Nicaragua to Cuba? This commentary analyzes the evolution of Global South solidarity with Palestine since the foundation of Israel, with a more focused focus on the African continent. It demonstrates that as decolonial nations, African states have once again shown their solidarity with Palestine, even though there have been some hesitant times due to realpolitik and the U.S. role in protecting Israel's status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the formal localization of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Ghana, focusing on the remixing of human rights courses for youth and young adults. While working with an NGO that focuses on providing educational resources to low-bandwidth areas, partner teachers in Ghana remixed openly-licensed human rights content provided by the Geneva Office for Human Rights Education (GO-HRE) for local delivery. Localization is crucial to ensure relevance and accessibility of educational materials to diverse learners. By adapting materials through localization, educators can address cultural and contextual mismatches, thereby enhancing comprehension and learning outcomes for a wider range of students. This process acknowledges and respects the diversity of learners and promotes inclusivity in education. This study examines the challenges faced by teachers in formal localization and identifies principles that guide effective localization practices. The research methodology involved qualitative interviews with facilitators who taught a human rights course using OER. The results revealed two main challenges of formal localization: conceptual newness and burdensome effort. Participants lacked awareness of the concept of remixing and open licensing, and they faced challenges related to the demanding nature of the localization process. However, two key principles for effective formal localization emerged: focusing on method and leveraging teacher knowledge. Teachers sought to localize the delivery and method of instruction rather than the subject matter, and they leveraged their own knowledge of students and pedagogical practice to adapt the content. Results highlight the assumptions, implications, and recommendations for OER designers and researchers. Designers should consider the cultural and contextual differences between global and local contexts and collaborate with local teachers to facilitate effective formal localization. Informal localization, driven by social relationships and practical choices, is also recognized as a significant aspect of OER adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rare consensus points to the question of normativity, with an inclination towards the Eurocentric Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, which seems to have been central to Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS). Given the universality of knowledge exerting pressure on scholars to conform with traditional theoretical perspectives, terrorism studies pose inequality from Eurocentricity emerging in "the battle for hearts and minds" research. Some of these studies fall to the allure of connivance with the progressively "authoritarian demands of Western, liberal state and media practice". Consequently, terrorism research risks being dominated by ethical and logical blindness within established research formations. In Africa, for example, some CTS scholars are subdued to cynically use their Africanity to authenticate the neo-colonial and neo-liberal agenda in terrorism research. This article explores the reimaging of subjugated knowledge through decolonisation of methods in CTS. Rooting for cognitive justice and adequate space for alternative knowledge to imperial science, the article contests the battle for Africa's hearts and minds as a failed process that needs transformation. Consequently, this work is a contribution to epistemological debate between the global North and South, and the subsequent theoretical contestations in CTS. We argue for hybridity by re-constructing alternative frameworks of knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strengthening of the relationship between India and Africa has yielded mutual benefits and has opened up new vistas of cooperation. Given the evolving global order and the growing traction of China in Africa, this article examines the potential for New Delhi to become a significant player in the region, considering the opportunities and limitations of the India-Africa partnership. This article presents the argument that the disparity in capabilities between New Delhi and Beijing, along with Africa's strategy of 'hedging', may hinder India's progress in achieving its broader objectives of seeking to expand its footprint across the globe. In particular, even with its reputation as a 'vishwaguru' and a 'vishwa bandhu', India may lack the capability to significantly woo African countries to support its stance on 'hard' security issues. Worryingly, the lack of robust 'people-to-people' connections further limits India's ability to expand its influence on the African continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, scholars from the Global North have written the disability script from their own perspective, writing it for persons with disabilities and for disability scholarship in the Global South. A mould has been broken and African scholars have now begun re-writing the script from their own perspectives and from the Global South's perspective. Using Decolonial Theory and the systematic review method, the paper is based on the work of Professor Tsitsi Chataika, which has impacted disability scholarship from an African context and from the Global South at large. The work contributes extensively to disability scholarship in terms of disability conception, disability theory, disability policy and inclusion of persons with disabilities in society and of students with disabilities in higher education in African countries. The scholar shifts the narrative from writing disability scholarship from the Global North to the South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Economic Research & Business Administration is the property of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University 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 Cubists' fascination with African and Oceanic art and its revolutionary influence on Western art in the early 1900s is an important stage in the development of modern art. Meanwhile in Africa, in what is now Nigeria, there was a reciprocal interest in Western figurative art, which eventually led to the establishment of academic art education in West Africa. This second story, however, is much less known and, when it is told, the adoption of Western influences has generally been seen as passive and even damaging. Now that these 'othered' voices are claiming attention and bringing their views to the art historical debate, Western and non-Western art narratives need to be retold from new perspectives. This article examines two moments, one at the beginning and the other at the end of the 20th century, when the West has enhanced its artistic production by leaning on influences from elsewhere while maintaining the right to grant or deny the status of art for cultural objects to itself. The article calls into question Western practices in categorising products of visual expression and highlights the contractual nature of art historical classifications and canons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Africa's shifting international relations through two important international gateways to the continent: Kotoka International Airport in Accra and Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa. Case studies drawing on archival, fieldwork and secondary data examine the history and development of both airports, and find these gates represent a fruitful but neglected vantage point for understanding Africa's shifting connections to the wider world. Theoretically, whilst the article affirms the value of using such critical nodal points – or 'gates' – to understand the international dimensions of African politics, it also highlights the limits of extant concepts such as 'gatekeeping' and the typology of the 'gatekeeper state'. The article instead advances an alternative approach which it calls 'gatemaking' to enhance our understanding of Africa's international relations by looking at how gates such as airports help to make (and remake) Africa's place in the world (rather than looking only at how gates shape domestic state forms, as in the gatekeeper mould). Evident to different degrees in both airports, this concept foregrounds Africa as a place that both originates and shapes key dimensions of the international, contributing to emerging debates in critical approaches to international relations. [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]

Africa's portrayal in the hegemonic imagination has been subjected to critical analysis for many decades. Three features stand out in my analysis. First, I focus on how that hegemonic imagination produces and correlates whiteness to progress through cigarette marketing. Second, I am concerned with the specifically neoliberal leveraging of the imaginary repertoire of classic European colonialism. Neoliberal colonialism repurposes old phantasmagoria according to its own modes of dominance and exploitation, engaging in a form of racialisation that is much more subtle but equally effective. Third, I use my own situated reading from elsewhere in the periphery to triangulate and break open the classic dichotomic opposition between Africa and the West. In supplanting the Africa/West dichotomy with a tripartite division of the world as analytical category, new ways in which the hegemonic idea of Africa benefits neoliberal colonialism surface. Working classes globally are driven to read their exploitation as a comparative privilege, while comprador elites are disciplined into cooperation and compliance. These ideas are investigated by means of visual analyses of tobacco ads in Africa. I focus on how youths are lured into global economic and semiotic value circuits to produce the spectacular and spectral normativity of a whitened global bourgeoisie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the years, there has been regular discourse among African social work scholars regarding the production of indigenous knowledge in Africa. Most of the arguments hold that social work knowledge creation and production is often based on Eurocentric approaches due to the dearth of African-centered social work literature from the continent. This paper attempts to explore the intellectual and philosophical underpinnings of African-centered social work education and practice. Using Ghana as a case study, information is provided on theoretical and conceptual thought processes about African-centered social work education in response to the shortage of insights pertaining to African culture. By means of purposive and availability sampling, we recruited three graduate students to be interviewed. The interviews were analyzed using thematic inquiry. We explored African paradigms and argued that the practice of social work education on the continent of Africa should not be based on the Eurocentric approaches only, to the detriment of traditional African ways of knowing. We believe that for social work education in Africa to thrive, we should embrace indigenous African practices and values of spirituality, collectivity, interconnectedness and reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comparative & International Education is the property of Canadian & International Education 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.)

Using flows of biophysical resources between countries, new research has defied conventional methods of analysing trade in terms of cash flows. Labelled 'ecologically unequal exchange', this research quantifies net resource transfers from global South to global North countries. This article explores the unequal exchange implications for Africa as a primary exporter of physical resources, and hence one of the biggest losers from ecologically unequal exchange. As well as ecologically unequal exchange, the article employs the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis and the Growing Smile model to argue against export-oriented industrialisation models of development, and for the political restructuring of the uneven global value regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas so-called dictator fiction in Latin America is already established as a significant literary subgenre, it is only recently that an increasing number of studies have started to deal with its counterpart set in Africa. In fact, both inside and outside the postcolonial African continent, dictator novels have been written in several languages, including English, French, Arabic, and Kikuyu. One of the most outstanding achievements among recent studies of this kind of fiction is Magali Armillas-Tiseyra's The Dictator Novel: Writers and Politics in the Global South (2019), which examines dictator novels in two different regions – Africa and Latin America – by using the keyword "Global South" to connect them with each other. After taking a genealogical overview of some dictator novels by both African and non-African authors, the present essay will critically investigate Armillas-Tiseyra's argument in order to reconsider fictional African dictators depicted in contemporary novels, especially those written in English, from a global and transborder perspective. The aim of this essay is to clarify both the challenges and prospects of the current studies of this literary subgenre in/about Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) has been developed to generate knowledge that effectively fosters the capabilities of various societal actors to realize sustainability transformations. The development of TDR theories, principles, and methods has been largely governed by researchers from the global North and has reflected their contextual conditions. To enable more context-sensitive TDR framing, we sought to identify which contextual characteristics affect the design and implementation of TDR in six case studies in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and what this means for TDR as a scientific approach. To this end, we distinguished four TDR process elements and identified several associated context dimensions that appeared to influence them. Our analysis showed that contextual characteristics prevalent in many Southern research sites—such as highly volatile socio-political situations and relatively weak support infrastructure—can make TDR a challenging endeavour. However, we also observed a high degree of variation in the contextual characteristics of our sites in the global South, including regarding group deliberation, research freedom, and dominant perceptions of the appropriate relationship between science, society, and policy. We argue that TDR in these contexts requires pragmatic adaptations as well as more fundamental reflection on underlying epistemological concepts around what it means to conduct "good science", as certain contextual characteristics may influence core epistemological values of TDR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the challenges facing urban planning higher education institutions in the global South that engage with knowledge production, education and training and the ways they are tackling urban equality concerns. Drawing on interviews with urban pedagogues and practitioners, and examining institutional histories across Asia and Africa, we use a five-point framework to analyse these challenges: what to teach, how to teach, whom to teach, who teaches and where to teach. We find that different institutional arrangements and choices made by educators affect the answers to these questions in different ways. These questions are also closely connected to the questions of planning "for what", and planning education "to what end", and relate to concerns regarding values and processes and to outcomes for urban equality in the South. Considering these cases together offers an opportunity to contribute to a Southern dialogue on the evolution of planning education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the Global North and South, there have been exciting engagements with the concept of the archive in recent decades. These debates are of both scholarly and political significance, especially when it comes to contemporary struggles for minority rights, belonging, and recognition. The overlapping fields of gender, sexuality, and queer studies have made major contributions to rethinking the archive - to raise new and important questions about gendered and sexualised intimacies, affect, memory, historical formations, activism and contemporary cultural practice. Contributing to this growing body of work, the present Special Issue: Intimate Archives: Interventions on Gender, Sexuality and Intimacy presents cutting-edge scholarship in African studies - working from various disciplinary standpoints - to occupy, engage and play with the archive as a politically urgent and intellectually productive theme. In this introduction, we underscore how the contributions to the volume mobilise the 'archive' as more than an institution or a place; it works as an underlying metaphor and a call for thorough contextualisation and a radical re-imagination of the historical experiences - the intimate historicity – of gendered and sexualised lives amidst societal and political change, from colonialism to liberation, from criminalisation of sexual 'deviance' to ongoing struggles for visibility and rights not only in Africa but in the broader Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disability studies globally is concerned, in various ways, with questions of systemic injustices and inequities that persons with disabilities are subjected to. Persons with disabilities are often positioned as the objects of research rather than equal thinkers and knowledge bearers in their own right. These issues are amplified in the context of African societies, where access is even more challenging than in wealthier countries, and many persons with disabilities are excluded from education altogether. This situation reinforces their epistemic vulnerability. As such, there is limited work on doing disability research from the frame of reference of those in these African societies. This article operates at the nexus of two scholarly traditions. The first of these is the field of disability studies, which is generally dominated by Global North thinking than ideas and experiences from the Global South, and which has addressed questions of knowledge and participation quite extensively, but most commonly in high-income countries. The second is the long-standing political and epistemological African Renaissance lens for understanding and rebelling against imperialism and neo-colonial advances in formerly colonized African societies. I integrate and engage these two scholarly traditions to contribute to charting possibilities of what critical disability studies might look like and mean, from the premise of an African Renaissance. Central to this discussion is building on African theorization while also challenging the dominating and hegemonic white-centric theorization that dominates the field and epistemology in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, educators in higher education (HE) were expected to educate, generate knowledge, and do community service. With some commentators arguing that an academic must 'publish or perish', the expectation to create knowledge through research became overemphasized. The concept is widespread in HE institutions around the world. It aids to keep staff, particularly those in universities, constantly engaged with relevant knowledge works in their fields of expertise. According to this viewpoint, research publications are the most important factor in determining whether an academic or an administrator gets employed, promoted, acknowledged, retained, or not hired. The idea of 'publish or perish', on the other hand, is based on the dominant Western knowledge creation realities, which largely misrepresent or ignore African realities. To avoid perpetuating inequalities in academia, it is critical to re-examine how this idea informs knowledge creation in Africa. For example, the enormous number of publications required for one to advance up the academic ladder comes at a hefty cost that is not always feasible to low-paid academics in Africa's resource-poor countries. This limits promotion of some individuals. Basically, for many Africans, what matters is the information gained, not how many times one's work is acknowledged in scholarly publications. We need to establish knowledge-creation processes that are tailored to African realities. To that goal, we must strike a balance between having numerous publications with the potential to have an impact on society, given that developing solutions to development concerns appears to be more vital for Africa right now. This paper problematizes the 'publish or perish' concept for African academics, especially those intending to make an impact in their society with a purpose of eliminating inequalities in academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on migrant children and young people has often focused on the global North and less on South–South migration. This article discusses language and its effect on how young migrants access Ghanaian schools. Through interviews with 68 pupils, 21 parents and 40 teachers and principals from 30 schools across Accra, we found that children and young people from francophone countries were placed in lower than age‐appropriate grades due to their lower command of English. Our study highlights the complex linguistic barriers facing migrant youth in an anglocentric educational system. The article discusses the relevance of our results in other postcolonial multilingual nations in the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has caused significant disruptions regarding the extent to which households can access basic services and resources in cities around the world. Previous studies have indicated a predictive relationship between the consistency of resource access and food access among urban households. These investigations, however, have predominantly been isolated to Southern Africa and have not accounted for other dimensions of food security. To test whether these results are observable outside Southern Africa, and with a more multidimensional measure of food security, this investigation proposes a method for building an index of urban household food access, utilization and stability. The scores for the constructed index are then compared across household survey samples collected from five cities in the Global South. The investigation then assesses the predictive relationship between the consistency of household resource access and this more multidimensional index of food insecurity. While the general trend of inconsistent resource access predicting food insecurity is confirmed, there are geographic differences in the strength and quality of this relationship. These findings suggest that the resource access disruptions inflicted by COVID-19 will likely have a heterogeneous impact on urban food security dependent upon the affected resource and the city in which a given household resides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing community of international relations (IR) scholars who argue for the importance of investigating Global South approaches to IR scholarship, making room for theories and concepts that challenge the discipline's Eurocentricity, and debating the merits and pitfalls of globalizing IR by including perspectives from various Global South locations. In addition to acknowledging this existing critical scholarship that aims at resisting mainstream epistemologies and methodologies of knowing and doing IR, this article's central contribution is to probe the epistemic hegemony and knowledge-production hierarchies that are emerging from within the Global South. The article does not seek to uncover the truth about the representation of Global South actors by Global South IR communities. Instead, it is interested in demonstrating how epistemic hegemony and knowledge-production hierarchies do not exist only in relationships of exclusion and Othering but also in relations of inclusion and Selving. We illustrate our argument with an analysis of the representations of "Africa" in China-based IR intellectual communities. We find that Chinese discourses on solidarity, friendship, community, and shared history lead to a narrative of sameness and Selving whereby Chinese postcolonial experiences are taken to be expandable and applicable to other developing states, making Chinese perspectives seem representative of others, thereby silencing and representing African voices at once. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a society we are compelled by emotion. Although we can be rational beings, we often find ourselves making irrational decisions based on how we emotionally feel about certain situations. This paper critically analyzes surveyed participants responses to whether the values of a development organization or the emotional strategic marketing they utilize influence their drive to donate financially overseas. Two participant groups were surveyed, young adults aged 18-25 and middle-aged adults aged 40-60. Using two commercials outlining fictional organizations, one utilizing an emotional marketing tactic and the other a rational value-based tactic, the study attempted to discover which commercial participants were drawn to most. The analysis looked to prove that the emotional commercial would be more compelling over the value-based commercial. However, the results of the study showed that while emotionally compelling advertisements have worked in the past, the participants surveyed indicated that informative commercials showing what the organization does and where the money is going, is a higher motivator for donating to overseas organizations. Donors do not just want to know what the issues are, they want to see how the organization is going to sustainably help overcome them. Overall, the results disproved the hypothesis. However, these results are positive as they indicate that society is progressing in terms of awareness and understanding their impact and responsibility in relation to Western donations overseas. This research should help donors and organizations mutually understand each other's desires to create more cohesive and regular donors, bridging the West with the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few decades, across the Global South, there has been a rapid expansion of extensive social welfare programs targeting low-income people. This rise of social protection in Latin American countries and across Southern Africa has been praised as being "the really big development story of the last twenty years" (J. Ferguson) and as a "development revolution from the Global South" (Barrientos, Hanlon, and Hulme). Social policy became a "key domain of policy innovation" in the Global South. The new thinking was deeply rooted in a conviction that it is better to give money to poor people directly so that they can find the most effective ways to escape from poverty themselves, rather than build government (or philanthropic) for such purposes. Millions of poor citizens, previously ignored by the state, have become direct beneficiaries of cash transfer programs, that are non-contributory and paid directly from state treasury, being nominally conditional on an income test. The new modalities of distribution in the Global South were associated with both new kids of political claim-making and new possibilities for political mobilization. One of the novelties of new social assistance programs can be seen in abandoning one of the main conceptions of traditional welfare states: traditional social payments are conceived as instrument for dealing with (short) interruptions adult heads of households cannot earn wages to support their families. The new cash transfer programs start from a different understanding of what constitutes a 'normal' situation in the Global South, the fact of mass, structural unemployment, supposing that social support is needed only for "dependent" categories. In Southern Africa, South Africa has led the way with an extensive national system of social payments, anchored by old age pensions, childcare grants, and disability payments. Other countries from the region followed suit. It is by now well documented that cash transfer programs worked and have a "positive development impact". Considering the impact of cash transfer programs on individuals and households, the evidence suggests that those benefits are often go beyond a program's core objectives. Unfortunately, despite the unambiguous successes of the cash transfer programmes as well as the broad acceptance they enjoy across nearly the whole range of society, they are still nonetheless restricted by a conservative understanding of "deserving" and "non-deserving poor", and therefore they do not offer any benefits to working age, able-bodied men. The main goal of the article is to understand and explore the political as well as social significance of these new developments in Southern Africa, especially regarding the potential introduction of a universal basic income grant, but also in providing an input into ongoing discussions on the reforms of development aid provided in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trove opens possibilities for collaborative, transnational and comparative research from scholars in the Global South, who often work with limited financial resources. Indeed, Trove has been indispensable for the South African-based historians in the International Studies Group, who would otherwise face difficulties accessing Australian primary sources. It also enables Australian perspectives to be incorporated into African histories, fostering the emergence of new historical insights. However, mass digitisation has the potential to create an unevenness in transnational history by privileging certain connections, particularly between British settler colonies. These reflections will offer crucial perspectives from a network of early career historians outside Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most states in Africa, if not all, adopt the measures of security theorized, studied, and practiced by the West, yet conflict and insecurity abound. Over-dependency and over-reliance on Western security models culminate in the "one-size fits all" model of critical security studies produced by the West. However, in Africa, insecurity is growing. This paper argues that there is a need for security models that address African countries' particular cultures, values, and realities, hence our advocacy of afro-democracy. This study introduces the concept of afro-democracy as a model that can facilitate security and development in Africa. It also argues that the field of critical security studies should welcome contributions from other parts of the world, namely the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 is a trigger event which is changing the complexion of African tourism and the directions of African tourism research. This article offers an overview and commentary on the state of African research produced during the uncertain times of 2020-2021 in specific response to the immediate impacts and changes which have been catalysed by the pandemic. The article is a progress report to capture and profile the body of focussed contributions on COVID-19 and tourism which have appeared for sub-Saharan Africa. Further, it is a contribution towards strengthening our understanding of tourism and change in the Global South. Overall, the discussion serves to highlight an emerging African scholarship which is engaged on a range of issues around three core themes of ramification, adaptation and transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is awash in data—by 2020 it is expected that there will be approximately 40 trillion gigabytes of data in existence, with that number doubling every 2 to 3 years. However, data production is not equal in all places—the global data landscape remains heavily concentrated on English-speaking, urban, and relatively affluent locations within the Global North. This inequality can contribute to new forms of digital and data colonialism. One partial solution to these issues may come in the form of crowdsourcing and volunteer geographic information (VGI), which allow Global South populations to produce their own data. Despite initial optimism about these approaches, many challenges and research gaps remain in understanding the opportunities and barriers that organizations endemic to the Global South face in carrying out their own sustainable crowdsourcing projects. What opportunities and barriers do these endemic organizations face when trying to carry out mapping projects driven by their own goals and desires? This paper contributes answers to this question by examining a VGI project that is currently mapping public libraries across the African continent. Our findings highlight how dramatically digital divides can bias crowdsourcing results; the importance of local cultural views in influencing participation in crowdsourcing; and the continued importance of traditional, authoritative organizations for crowdsourcing. These findings offer important lessons for researchers and organizations attempting to develop their own VGI projects in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has happened since Dipesh Chakrabarty, at the turn of the millennium, paradigmatically called for a "provincialization of Europe". The paper connects with three major trends in current history of technology, exploring these threads with regards to the Global South in general and post/colonial Africa in particular: (1) exemplifying and (later) disentangling transnational connections; (2) rethinking (colonial) infrastructures; and (3) exploring technologies-in-use, everyday practices and perceptions. Unpacking established Science and Technology concepts such as Thomas P. Hughes "Large (Socio)Technical Systems" (LTS) approach for post/colonial contexts, the paper argues that we need to move beyond the much-invoked "key figures" and drivers of global technological (ex)change and scrutinize place- and time-specific landscapes of technology instead. In particular, we need to pay closer attention to seemingly peripheral actors and actants as well as to the manifold interrelations between the human and the "natural" world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I interrogate whether the deployment and development of the Metaverse should take into account African values and modes of knowing to foster the uptake of this hyped technology in Africa. Specifically, I draw on the moral norms arising from the components of communal interactions and humanness in Afro-communitarianism to contend that the deployment of the Metaverse and its development ought to reflect core African moral values to foster its uptake in the region. To adequately align the Metaverse with African core values and thus foster its uptake among Africans, significant technological advancement that makes simulating genuine human experiences possible must occur. Additionally, it would be necessary for the developers and deployers to ensure that higher forms of spiritual activities can be had in the Metaverse to foster its uptake in Africa. Finally, I justify why the preceding points do not necessarily imply that the Metaverse will have a higher moral status than real life on the moral scale that can be grounded in Afro-communitarianism., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Purpose: The availability of children's surgical care in lower middle-income countries is lacking. The authors describe a hub and spoke global training initiative in children's surgery for adult teams from district hospitals (spokes) comprising general and orthopaedic surgeons, anaesthetists, and nurses and specialist children's surgical trainers from tertiary centres (hubs) in delivering the course., Methods: The training course developed in Vellore, trained several sets of district hospital adult teams and trainer teams in India. Six specialist children's surgical trainer teams were invited from African countries to the course delivered in Vellore, India. The aim was to train them to deliver the course in their countries., Results: Participants underwent a precourse 'train the trainer' program, observed and assessed the suitability of the district hospital training course. The program received positive feedback, government supported planning of similar courses in some of the countries and discussions in others., Conclusion: The availability of children's surgical care is similarly limited in the Asian and African continent, and the regions have shared challenges of disease burden, lack of access, poverty, deficient infrastructure, and trained human resources. They would benefit from this 'South to South' collaboration to impart training skills and modules to the children's surgical trainers., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This introduction to our special issue addresses scholars' failure, in recent times, to consider and analyse the forms of capitalism that have developed on the African continent. To redress the balance, it takes up the study of economic arrangements on the continent – property, infrastructure, debt, financialization, regulation – as well as exploring the history and politics of the scholarly field of African economics as an intellectual and institutional project. In the process it considers the advantages (and drawbacks) of seeing Africa as part of the 'Global South'. Central to the special issue is the question of how to marry an analysis of intimate and smaller-scale economies centred on household, family and (often informal) labour regimes, on the one hand, with a recognition of large-scale processes such as the central banking systems imposed by states, the increasing prevalence of high-tech finance, the emergence of continent-wide regulation, and the influence of multilateral development agencies and the international publishing industry, on the other. How, we ask, can the importance of these institutions, so unlike in size and scale, be reckoned without assuming that the bigger and more powerful ones always prevail? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines The Gambia's campaign from 1977-83 for a new international mechanism to protect human rights in the Commonwealth of Nations. President Dawda Jawara's crusade for a Commonwealth Human Rights Commission complicates the dominant scholarly interpretation of human rights history, which tends to dismiss or overlook African participation in the international human rights movement. The article explains The Gambia's display of human rights idealism as a strategy to attract aid and legitimacy in the global arena. It also shows how The Gambia's project was thwarted by the 'Old Commonwealth', including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Western member states worked together to surreptitiously weaken and defeat The Gambia's initiative, while deflecting blame and counting on 'New Commonwealth' governments in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific to play the role of antagonist. Overall, the article contends the Commonwealth Human Rights Commission was killed because it threatened illusions and assumptions about the human rights movement that were convenient for western powers. With the use of archival sources from the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, this article spotlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of African and Global South actors in human rights history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Global Evaluation Agenda 2020 calls for evaluation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within an equity-focused and gender-responsive lens. Most of the methodologies and materials come from the Global North. However, gender issues and evaluation capacity in the Global North do not necessarily match with those in the Global South. The Global South has rich experiences related to equity and gender. An important group to target to build capacity is young and emerging evaluators (YEEs). Objectives: This study investigated the gender responsive evaluation training experiences and needs of YEEs in Africa. Method: A total of 72 respondents completed an online survey that was administered over a 7-day period. The quantitative survey was self-administered in French and English, and was distributed through existing Voluntary Organisation for Professional Evaluation (VOPEs) and youth evaluators forums. Results: Respondents were from 23 African countries. Most of the respondents were YEEs, although many of the respondents did not self-identify as an YEE. One-third of respondents have participated in training programmes on gender responsive evaluation or a gender focus on evaluation. Virtual trainings have not been used. Topics included evaluating gender focussed interventions and gender responsive aspects of evaluation studies in general (including applying gender perspective to all types of policies, and participatory approaches to ensure gender equity). Conclusion: This study has practical value for training and mentoring of YEEs in gender focused evaluations in Africa. It will contribute to efforts of the South-to-South project and global efforts that ensure that 'no one is left behind' from a gender lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine grassroots cinematic connections between China and Africa by using Queer University, short for the Queer University Video Capacity Building Training Program, a 3-year (2017–2019) participatory video production program between Chinese and African queer filmmakers and activists, as a case study. Through interviews with Queer University organizers and participants, I discuss the transnational politics and decolonial potentials underpinning these grassroots initiatives. Drawing on Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih's critical term "minor transnationalism," I study transnational queer grassroots collaborations in the Global South, and, in doing so, unravel the hopes, promises, and precariousness of emerging people-to-people exchanges taking place in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The call to a global education project involves transformations of educational ideologies, policy formulation, systems restructuring, and curriculum reforms that go beyond national/local considerations. While advocates of globalization have identified inherent advantages in these transformations, the paper argues that in terms of the 'globalism' of its origins, values, and the standards it advocates in education, there is much that meets the eye. It uses attributes such as the origin of the global ideology, the main agents of global educational decision making, and the proposals of the kind of global history curriculum, to argue that a deeper consideration of these attributes reveals Euro-North America as generators and regulators of ideation while Africa and the Global South in general are forcefully involved consumers to the detriment of national and indigenous education orientations that should be prioritized. The paper concludes that until such times when issues of egalitarianism are considered in its ideation, decision making and flow of knowledge(s) within which Africa and the Global South find representation, globalization of education would continue to be seen as the perpetuation of the entrapment of Africa within the global matrices of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even if data analysis in Africa has allegedly allowed analysts to expand the boundaries of inquiry, social science research in the continent has been hindered by several problems. Some of these problems could be viewed as subcategories of the idols that Francis Bacon had identified. We show in the present article that bad data lead to bad analyses, which in turn lead to misleading interpretations and misleading interpretations lead to a type of knowledge that is distinctively different from real and objective knowledge. We conclude by recommending that to avoid most, if not all, of the research problems in Africa, social science researchers should realize that social phenomena are embedded in an infinite web of relations from which only true meaning can emerge. It follows that, to gain a proper appreciation of such network of relations, social phenomena must be approached at various levels from different perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent characterizations of publics – as expressed through concepts like 'networked publics', 'hashtag publics', 'ad hoc publics', 'calculated publics', and 'engineered publics' – or notions describing processes of circulation – such as 'virality', 'shareability', and 'spreadability' – fail to appreciate that publics are not just digitally constituted but also manifest themselves in, and are intimately connected to, physical spaces. 'The politics of things' refers to the way in which things, objects, infrastructures, and physical space remain crucial to political communication in a digital age as well as to the manner in which bodies, objects, and urban space become politicized and digitally remediated. Drawing on fieldwork carried out during the 2011 and 2016 Zambian elections, this article proposes a material, mobile, and spatial approach to political communication. It hereby extends the relevance of the recent material and infrastructural turn in media and communications in a political context. It examines the physical recirculation of digital content, the digital remediation of physical space, and the communicative role of bodies, objects, and the built environment. Problematizing common dualisms between 'online' and 'offline' as well as 'public sphere' and 'public space', it argues for an exploration of publicness and processes of circulation across digital and physical spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate on different forms of political mobilization and self-organization in Africa refers to the established concepts of civil society and social movements. Knowing that the majority of studies on civil society and social movements focus on the Global North, we ask whether these concepts may be applied to Africa. We need to consider different forms of self-organization and the potential limits of the concepts. At the same time, 'unusual cases' from Africa may help us to sharpen our understanding of the concepts and to explore their analytical range and borders. This applies particularly to the observation that the terms civil society and social movement are often used interchangeably, which ignores the existing differences between the concepts. Therefore, we first consider their different perspectives: A study of civil society analyses the features of associations in a public sphere or arena and their role in politics and society. A study of social movements looks at processes of mobilization and action. Second, we point out the normative implications of the two concepts, especially with regard to liberal democracy, degree of politicization and relation to violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the era of sustainable development, it is important that the regions of the world work in unison to realize greater welfare for humanity and the planet. To do this, persistent inequalities based on destructive power and dominance relations need to be critically illumined and brought to an end for the sake of inclusive sustainable development. This article discusses the outcomes of a narrative inquiry into the story of Africa's sustainable development as told by the global North. By means of a critical social narrative analysis of the official inaugural Sustainable Development Goals reports, the contribution sheds light on the 'implied author' and 'master narrative' behind the texts by critiquing the values, norms and ideologies evoked by the social narrative's storyworld. The article concludes by highlighting that a key opportunity is available to Africa to tell a different story and craft a new narrative in an empowering manner that advances inclusive yet authentic global sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we draw on the contradictions in, and the geopolitics of, international election observation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's 2006 and 2011 elections to identify and analyse the emergence of a neo-third world behaviour among African states intended to counter the excesses of Western liberal democracy promotion on the continent. We argue that the decision by African states to quickly endorse the 2011 elections and close ranks around Joseph Kabila's government, amidst mounting international criticisms of the electoral process, should be understood in the context of a new form of third worldism that is emerging in the global South in response to the unrestrained exercise of US power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognising the impact of religion on state action, this article identifies two variables that interact to affect the type and level of violence employed by Western states against Third World targets. First, variation in the degree to which the prominent Christian denominations and organisations within these states view evangelisation as either an individual-level or national-level process – Christian individualism vs Christian nationalism – has determined church support for using violence as a tactic. Second, the level of influence that churches and missionary organisations have over their home states affects the ability of Christian actors to directly impact state actions. Western violence against Third World peoples is expected to be lowest when churches and Christian organisations view evangelisation in primarily individualistic terms and have significant influence over the state. The article examines the relationships between concepts of evangelisation, Christian influence over state policies, and levels of violence against the Third World by examining British, French and German colonialism during the late colonial period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on men and masculinities in South Africa, and the related intervention programmes, depends largely on theories of gender developed in the Global North. Such theories define masculinity as socially constructed and accomplished relationally in social action. Masculinity does not have an “inner essence.” This article argues that Northern gender theories offer inadequate accounts of African masculinities because of their being embedded in western epistemologies. In order to account fully for the complex lives of African men, scholars need to develop theories of masculinity based on African conceptions of reality. Such theories should treat masculinity as both socially constructed and as being influenced by unseen elements of personhood, as encapsulated in traditional African thoughts. To illustrate these ideas, the author uses anthropological and philosophical literature on African concepts of personhood, together with examples taken from personal experiences and observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The musical identity of the African continent is sustained in the popular imagination by the idea of its unity. This identity emerges from a constellation of ideas about Africa's distinctiveness constructed by generations of scholars who have diminished its diversity to substantiate the claim that shared principles of musical structure and function in sub-Saharan cultures can be read as ideal types for the continent as a whole. The idea of a singular "African music" is predicated on the notion that African "traditional" music of precolonial origin in sub-Saharan Africa possesses a set of distinctive features that are essential to its identity. Musical cultures as diverse as Aka, Ewe, Shona, Yoruba, and Zulu are subsumed within a singular frame of reference; others that do not possess these features are, by implication, excluded. To make sense of this myth of a singular "African music" we must reckon with the universalising impulse that sustains it. This means interrogating the discursive formations out of which it has been fashioned. Whose interests does it serve? Taking a decolonial perspective on the power dynamics that structure global south-north relations in the academy, this article points to the ways in which the north perpetuates its authority and dominance over the south by subsuming others within its cultural and intellectual ambit. Decolonising "African music" means dismantling the hegemony of "continental musicology" and the myth of a singular "African music" that is its creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MOOCs have been seen as holding promise for advancing Open Education. While the pedagogical design of the first MOOCs grew out of the Open Education Movement, the current trend has MOOCs exhibiting fewer of the original openness goals than anticipated. The aim of this study is to examine the practices and attitudes of MOOC educators at an African university and ask whether and how their practices and attitudes become open after creating and teaching a MOOC. Activity Theory is used to contextually locate the educators' motivations and to analyse their practices in terms of striving towards an object. With this lens we describe how educators' openness-related practices and attitudes change over time in two different MOOCs. Two sets of conceptions of open practices are used to detect instances of change, providing four dimensions of changed open educational practices. Semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and artefacts provide data for this rare study, which considers these issues from the perspective of the Global South. Through studying the educators' practices in relation to openness, it becomes evident how open practices are emergent and responsive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]