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The voices of orphans and other vulnerable children and young people and of their carers and the professional development workers are documented and used to both criticise the inadequacies of current social development work and to create a new, alternative theory and practice of project management in Zimbabwe and southern Africa.

The perception of a global crisis of groundwater over-abstraction and pollution is assumed to include Sub-Saharan Africa, a region where groundwater resources are on average greatly under-utilized. This perception of crisis contributes to a “discourse of shortage” which in turn has led to a neglect of the potential role of groundwater to support irrigation, water security and economic growth and is underpinned by beliefs about the availability of the resource itself. However, examples from southern Africa suggest that it is the absence of the services needed to support groundwater development (including energy, drilling and pumping equipment, hard and soft infrastructure, physical access, finance and credit, and institutional support) that are the real constraint. These are likely to be more important than average hydrogeological potential in determining the viability of groundwater supplies, and examples suggest that when these factors are in place, higher-yielding sources tend to be found and developed. Rather than consider the interlinkages between these elements, a discourse of shortage in Sub-Saharan Africa appears to take precedence. Sub-genres including the village-level discourse, the transboundary discourse, and the sustainability discourse are also identified, and these are likely to reinforce the idea of shortage. The policy impact of these more dominant narratives may retard progress towards a much-needed structural change in economic activity enabled by increased agricultural production, resilience and water security.

National levels of personal health-care access and quality can be approximated by measuring mortality rates from causes that should not be fatal in the presence of effective medical care (ie, amenable mortality). Previous analyses of mortality amenable to health care only focused on high-income countries and faced several methodological challenges. In the present analysis, we use the highly standardised cause of death and risk factor estimates generated through the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) to improve and expand the quantification of personal health-care access and quality for 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2015. We mapped the most widely used list of causes amenable to personal health care developed by Nolte and McKee to 32 GBD causes. We accounted for variations in cause of death certification and misclassifications through the extensive data standardisation processes and redistribution algorithms developed for GBD. To isolate the effects of personal health-care access and quality, we risk-standardised cause-specific mortality rates for each geography-year by removing the joint effects of local environmental and behavioural risks, and adding back the global levels of risk exposure as estimated for GBD 2015. We employed principal component analysis to create a single, interpretable summary measure–the Healthcare Quality and Access (HAQ) Index–on a scale of 0 to 100. The HAQ Index showed strong convergence validity as compared with other health-system indicators, including health expenditure per capita (r=0·88), an index of 11 universal health coverage interventions (r=0·83), and human resources for health per 1000 (r=0·77). We used free disposal hull analysis with bootstrapping to produce a frontier based on the relationship between the HAQ Index and the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a measure of overall development consisting of income per capita, average years of education, and total fertility rates. This frontier allowed us to better quantify the maximum levels of personal health-care access and quality achieved across the development spectrum, and pinpoint geographies where gaps between observed and potential levels have narrowed or widened over time. Between 1990 and 2015, nearly all countries and territories saw their HAQ Index values improve; nonetheless, the difference between the highest and lowest observed HAQ Index was larger in 2015 than in 1990, ranging from 28·6 to 94·6. Of 195 geographies, 167 had statistically significant increases in HAQ Index levels since 1990, with South Korea, Turkey, Peru, China, and the Maldives recording among the largest gains by 2015. Performance on the HAQ Index and individual causes showed distinct patterns by region and level of development, yet substantial heterogeneities emerged for several causes, including cancers in highest-SDI countries; chronic kidney disease, diabetes, diarrhoeal diseases, and lower respiratory infections among middle-SDI countries; and measles and tetanus among lowest-SDI countries. While the global HAQ Index average rose from 40·7 (95% uncertainty interval, 39·0–42·8) in 1990 to 53·7 (52·2–55·4) in 2015, far less progress occurred in narrowing the gap between observed HAQ Index values and maximum levels achieved; at the global level, the difference between the observed and frontier HAQ Index only decreased from 21·2 in 1990 to 20·1 in 2015. If every country and territory had achieved the highest observed HAQ Index by their corresponding level of SDI, the global average would have been 73·8 in 2015. Several countries, particularly in eastern and western sub-Saharan Africa, reached HAQ Index values similar to or beyond their development levels, whereas others, namely in southern sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and south Asia, lagged behind what geographies of similar development attained between 1990 and 2015. This novel extension of the GBD Study shows the untapped potential for personal health-care access and quality improvement across the development spectrum. Amid substantive advances in personal health care at the national level, heterogeneous patterns for individual causes in given countries or territories suggest that few places have consistently achieved optimal health-care access and quality across health-system functions and therapeutic areas. This is especially evident in middle-SDI countries, many of which have recently undergone or are currently experiencing epidemiological transitions. The HAQ Index, if paired with other measures of health-system characteristics such as intervention coverage, could provide a robust avenue for tracking progress on universal health coverage and identifying local priorities for strengthening personal health-care quality and access throughout the world. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This book seeks to understand how firms in southern Africa absorb technology and how policy makers can hurry the process along. It identifies channels of technology transfer and absorption through trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) and constraints to greater technology absorption, and it discusses policy options open to the government and the private sector in light of relevant international experience. The book is based on case studies of sectors and enterprises selected in four countries: Lesotho, Mauritius, Namibia, and South Africa. The relationship between technology absorption and catch-up growth is particularly relevant to southern Africa because those countries are facing tremendous competitiveness challenges and must rely on greater technology absorption to raise productivity and strengthen competitiveness to gain ground in the global market. An increased market share can then generate faster growth and create more jobs. Therefore, catch-up growth sustained by technological progress and productivity growth is the fundamental solution to unemployment and poverty alleviation. Southern African firms use multiple channels for technology absorption. For example, South African auto component firms entered technology agreements with global players to meet the demanding product standards required for export. Even after the global crisis in 2009, those who licensed technologies still spent 2.23 percent of their sales revenue on royalties. In Namibia, the meat-processing industry has made continuous efforts to upgrade technology, including the recent investment in radio frequency identification technology to trace cattle. In fish processing, companies use state-of-the-art production technologies, including electronic software to record and monitor production processes, intelligent portioning equipment, and sophisticated freezer systems. In the breweries sector, state-of-the-art technology is used at every stage of production and in the marketing and distribution processes.

A holistic environmental flows (EFlows) assessment, undertaken as part of Ecological Reserve determination studies for selected surface water, groundwater, estuaries and wetlands in the Usuthu/Mhlatuze Water Management Area, South Africa, led to recommendations for modified releases from the Jozini Dam to support the socially, economically and ecologically important Pongola Floodplain situated downstream of the dam. The EFlows study analysed various permutations of flow releases from the dam based on the recommendations of pre-dam studies, and augmented by more recent observations, inputs from farmers and fishermen who live adjacent to the floodplain and discussion with the operators of Jozini Dam. The EFlows method used, DRIFT, allowed for the incorporation of detailed information, data and recommendations from a decades-old research project on the Pongola Floodplain that was undertaken prior to the construction of the Jozini Dam into a modern-day decision-making framework. This was used to assess the impact of a series of different flow releases on nature and society downstream of the dam. It was concluded that, within historic volumetric allocations to the floodplain, a release regime could be designed that considerably aided traditional fishing and grazing without necessarily prejudicing other uses, such as agriculture.

The present work was carried out in the framework of the Lesotho-Italy cooperation project “Renewable Energy Maps for Lesotho,” launched in 2016, with the main purpose to produce a series of maps aimed to support the Government of Lesotho in planning and expanding the exploitation of renewable energy sources (wind, solar and hydro). A multiple regression model specifically developed for sediment yield assessment in Lesotho catchments is here presented with a view to contributing to the follow-up of development projects in the field of hydroelectric energy. The “Lesotho model,” based on observations at 16 gauging stations, takes into account the proportions of agricultural and sedimentary bedrock areas as explanatory variables. Statistical reliability tests proved the model robustness after previous models, developed at continental or sub-continental scale, revealed to be ineffective or hardly applicable. A map of simulated sediment yields at sub-catchment level is provided, as an example of model application.

The United Nations Millennium declarations of 2002 set eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved by 2015. The papers presented in this publication endeavour to address how libraries and information professionals in East, Central and Southern Africa seek to make themselves relevant to national development by asking themselves how libraries and information centres could contribute to the attainment of these MDGs.; Sjoerd Koopman, Co-ordinator of Professional Activities, IFLA Headquarters, The Hague, Netherlands; Benson Njobvu , President, Zambia Library Association, Zambia.; \"\"I recommend this volume for academic and public libraries and all readers interested in African libraries and information services and how they can work towards the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.\"\"Martha S. Speirs in: African Research and Documentation 111/2009

Water availability underpins development, stability and progress in developing regions and this is recognized and adopted in global public-policy-making institutions. Linking water to development is a core principle of Integrated Water Resource Management (UNESCO 2009) and access to clean drinking water was recognized by the United Nations as a human right at its 64th General Assembly Plenary meeting in July 20

Engen Refinery plant is part of the Engen Petroleum Limited, with operations in Southern Africa. The plant is situated in KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa and it operates 24 hours a day, every day, including weekends. Although Engen operates 24 hours 7 days a week, the plant has to be shut down occasionally for maintenance. These shutdown periods are also used as an opportunity to implement most projects, especially those that could not be implemented during the normal run of the plant. In order to ensure that the plant operations are not interrupted, it is preferable to work on the equipment while the plant is not operational. The shutdown periods are very limited in time, so it is of utmost importance to complete tasks within the given turnaround period in order to get the plant back on line in time to deliver products as scheduled to customers. The main objective of this study is to explore the causes and consequences of delays in project execution and their impact on the success of the project. The study identified poor communication, repetition of tasks, resource allocation, scope change, procurement process management, inadequate planning and poor budget estimates as major contributors to delays and cost escalation during project execution. It is recommended that Engen Refinery put some means together to improve the above-mentioned issues