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Education must be accessible to all citizens, including those incarcerated in penitentiaries, to contribute to the socio-economic development of the countries. In Malawi, to enhance incarcerated people's access to quality education in correctional facilities, the Malawi Prisons Service (MPS) included education as a strategic objective in its five-year strategic plan covering the period between 2016 and 2021. This article analysed and compared this strategic education objective against reality to ascertain its implementation and relevance during the implementation period. Guided by Bunning's model of strategic planning, the study employed a qualitative content analysis research method using the 'hybrid approach'. The study mainly used data from the semi-structured interviews involving purposively selected 25 educators and officials from five young offenders' rehabilitation centres in Malawi. Findings revealed a mismatch between the contents of the strategic education objective and the actual reality. The study identified characteristics of Bunning's ritual approach since it was revealed that the strategic plan was developed to please the government and development partners. From the education objective viewpoint, the strategic plan was hardly used during the five years since the educational activities remained the same (even worse) after the implementation period. The young offenders' facilities were still stuck in the punitive philosophy, as evidenced by limited resources in the education section and the management's priority on coerced farming instead of education. It was recommended that the correctional administrations needed to prioritise the provision of quality education for school-aged offenders in correctional policies.

PurposeTo report a case of corneal neovascularization misdiagnosed as total limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD).MethodsThis is a case report of a 61-year-old woman who has a history of bilateral idiopathic scleritis, keratitis, and uveitis for more than 20 years. She was diagnosed with total LSCD in her left eye based on clinical presentation alone and was confirmed as a candidate for limbal transplantation at several major tertiary eye care centers in the United States. After referral to the Stein Eye Institute, in vivo confocal microscopy (IVCM) and anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT) were performed to clarify the diagnosis.ResultsSlit-lamp examination of the left eye revealed 360-degree severe thinning at the limbus and peripheral corneal pannus and neovascularization that spared the central cornea, a smooth epithelium without fluorescein staining at the central cornea, an uneven surface, and pooling of fluorescein at the peripheral cornea accompanied by minimal fluorescein staining of the sectoral peripheral epithelium. IVCM showed that epithelial cells in the central cornea exhibited a corneal phenotype and that the morphology of the epithelium in all limbal regions except the nasal limbus was normal. Epithelial cellular density and thickness were within the normal range. AS-OCT showed severe thinning in the limbus and a normal epithelial layer in the cornea and limbus. Based on the findings of IVCM and AS-OCT, we concluded that the patient had minimal LSCD, and limbal stem cell transplantation was not recommended.ConclusionsClinical presentation alone is insufficient to correctly diagnose LSCD in complex cases. Additional diagnostic tests, such as IVCM, are necessary to confirm the diagnosis before any surgical intervention.

The issue of possible provision of prisoners’ conjugal rights in jurisdictions not yet allowing them, such as Malawi, is still an intricate debate amongst the stakeholders. However, the most important stakeholder in the issue, the prisoner, is usually left out of the discourse. This study analyzed the perceptions of randomly sampled 305 prisoners on conjugal visits at one of the central prisons in Malawi. Both qualitative and quantitative data from prisoners’ perceptions were collected and used concurrently. The key finding was that prisoners (male and female) in Malawi generally had positive perceptions regarding conjugal visits since more than 80% of the respondents (n=305) reported that conjugal visits were good and recommended their possible introduction in Malawi. These incarcerated persons opined that conjugal visits reduced problems of homosexuality, sexual assaults, physical violence in prisons, supporting prisoners’ rehabilitation and reintegration efforts as well as helping prisoners in preserving and establishing family ties. Prisoners also viewed conjugal visits as another way of dealing with the HIV and AIDS problem in Malawi prisons. Though the potential challenge was reported to be its costs, it was opined that the programme was still worthy of introducing. It was therefore concluded that the prisoners’ voice is also valuable in not only conjugal visits discourse but also in all issues related to law and policy that concern them.

This study aims to analyse enterprises' performance in terms of the National Innovation System – NIS in three Africans countries: Egypt, Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon. Drawing inspiration from the Schumpeterian approach of innovation and using the World Bank Enterprises Survey (WBES-2016) data, we estimated a multinomial logit model. The results show that innovation system's different spheres (academic, governmental, enterprise, societal and environmental) of the quintuple helix contribute more to improving the performance of technological innovation in Egypt than in other countries. In addition, the analyses enabled us to highlight the embryonic state of the NIS in Africa. Thus, underlying innovation policies have been proposed to improve enterprises' performance in terms of the NIS in the different countries studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews the following works: Electric Santeria: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion. By Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesus. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 271. [...]

Abstract: Gravity and magnetic data from the global EGM2008 and EMAG2 datasets are used to identify geophysical anomalies in large igneous province (LIP) plume centre regions with the goal of [...]