Thirty Years of Public Sector Reforms in Africa


Book Description

Over the past three decades, African countries have been reforming their public sector with a view to improving efficiency, effectiveness, accountability and transparency as part of efforts to improve the delivery of public services. Reform actions have included privatisation, public/private partnerships, commercialisation and adoption of private sector approaches in managing public organisations. This book, put together by OSSREA, reviews measures by African countries in that regard, the extent to which the measures have achieved their intended results, as well as the factors behind the failure to achieve those results, where this was the case.




Teaching and Assessment in the Era of Education 5.0


Book Description

In the rapidly evolving landscape of Education 5.0, educators and institutions grapple with unprecedented challenges in leveraging digital technologies to enhance teaching, learning, and assessment. The profound shift towards a more humanized educational experience, focusing on social and emotional growth alongside skill development, demands a paradigmatic transformation. However, a palpable gap exists in understanding and navigating the complexities of this digital transition. Educators, students, and administrators are left facing dilemmas related to pedagogical innovation, technology integration, and effective learning assessment in the digital age. Enter Teaching and Assessment in the Era of Education 5.0, a definitive guide poised to bridge the gap between the challenges posed by Education 5.0 and actionable solutions. The current educational milieu faces a conundrum as it attempts to adapt to the tenets of Education 5.0. The digital transition poses challenges, from incorporating immersive technologies to understanding the attitudes of educators and students towards digitization. Furthermore, the design and implementation of training and distance learning systems require a nuanced approach, calling for engineering expertise in training, pedagogy, and tutoring. The assessment landscape, crucial for gauging the effectiveness of learning in the digital era, grapples with contemporary trends, ethical considerations, and the ever-present specter of plagiarism. This multifaceted challenge necessitates a comprehensive resource that not only delineates the issues but offers actionable solutions to navigate this transformative journey.




Commonwealth Trade Review 2015


Book Description

Fundamental changes are taking place in the global trade landscape, and the Commonwealth, with its diverse membership, is adapting to and coming to terms with these changes. This shifting landscape offers tremendous potential for Commonwealth countries to expand their trade – both between members and their overall trade. Although it is not a trading bloc, member countries can also take advantage of and leverage the Commonwealth for greater gains, while focusing on several broader priorities to improve their trade performance. Commonwealth countries offer insightful perspectives on topical issues that can contribute to promoting the role of trade in development. This Commonwealth Trade Review addresses these issues in four parts: Part 1 – The Commonwealth in a changing global trade landscape Part 2 – Intra-Commonwealth trade: emerging dynamics and opportunities Part 3 – Unleashing the trade potential: priorities for the Commonwealth Part 4 – Perspectives on topical issues in trade




Tourism Planning and Development


Book Description

Academically complex and challenging to apply, development and planning are increasingly relevant to the growing tourism industry. This collection contains critical studies on tourism development and planning, and calls for proactive, holistic and responsible thinking. It addresses conceptual and contemporary issues in development and planning research including political trust, innovation networks, sustainability, moral encounters, enclavisation and evolutionary economics. It argues that recognition of the contextual and historical dimensions around tourism development and planning is essential to help both researchers and practitioners better understand destination and place-based decision-making. In addition, it will lead to improvements in stakeholder relations, and explains how tourism best works with localities and localities with tourism. This book was originally published as a special issue of Tourism Geographies.




Capacity Building for a Reforming African Power Sector


Book Description

Capacity building for the power sector is an important national responsibility, which Governments in Africa need to seriously address. The inability of Governments to mobilize the required level of investment and commitment to the development and retention of a wide array of skills needed by the power sector is, in part, responsible for many of the difficulties that are faced by the region's electricity industry.Under the aegis of the AFREPREN Capacity Building Theme Group, a regional study and four country studies (Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Ethiopia and South Africa) addressed the capacity building question in the African power sector. This volume presents the findings of the studies.The studies analyse issues of manpower recruitment, training and retention in national power utilities. They also highlight the challenges and implications of capacity building initiatives in a reforming electricity industry and propose innovative options for capacity building in the region's power sector.




The Routledge Handbook of Consumer Behaviour in Hospitality and Tourism


Book Description

Consumer behaviour is one of the most explored topics in tourism and hospitality marketing, interchangeably denoted by the terms ‘traveller behaviour’, ‘tourist behaviour’ or ‘guest behaviour’. Consumer behaviour acts as an origin for every tourism and hospitality marketing activity. It offers an understanding of why people tend to choose certain products or services and what sort of factors influence them in making their decision. The decision process of buying tourism products or services takes time, because they are mostly intangible in nature due to which there are many risks involved in their buying process. The Routledge Handbook of Consumer Behaviour in Hospitality and Tourism aims to explore and critically examine current debates, critical reflections of contemporary ideas, controversies and pertinent queries relating to the rapidly expanding discipline of consumer behaviour in hospitality and tourism. The Handbook offers a platform for dialogue across disciplinary and national boundaries and areas of study through its diverse coverage. It is divided into six parts: Part I offers an overview of consumer behaviour; Part II focuses on the service quality perspectives of consumer behaviour; Part III deliberates on customer satisfaction and consumer behaviour linkages; Part IV explores the re-patronage behaviour of consumers; Part V addresses the vital issues concerning online consumer behaviour; and Part VI elaborates upon other emerging paradigms of consumer behaviour. Although there is no dearth of empirical studies on different viewpoints of consumer behaviour, there is a scarcity of literature providing conceptual information. The present Handbook is organised to offer a comprehensive theoretical body of knowledge narrating consumer behaviour, especially for hospitality and tourism businesses and operations. It attempts to fill this research gap by offering a 'globalised' volume comprising chapters organised using both practical and academic approaches. This Handbook is essential reading for students, researchers and academics of Hospitality as well as those of Tourism, Marketing, International Business and Consumer Behaviour.







Development of Field Propagation Model for Urban Area


Book Description

Wireless communication is one of the most dynamic and vibrant areas of technology development in the communication field today. It has been found that severe climatic conditions disturb the propagation of electromagnetic signals at higher frequencies (greater than 30 MHz). The disturbance is mainly due to molecular absorption by oxygen for frequencies ranging between 60 and 118 GHz and due to water vapour in 22, 183 and 325 GHz bands. Rain and fog has the most significant impact, since the size of the rain drops is of the order of the wavelength of the transmitted signal. This results in energy absorption by the rain drops themselves, and as a secondary effect energy is scattered by the drops. The frequency selective absorption characteristics of the atmosphere can be approximated by a transfer function. In most of the practical channels when the signal propagates through the atmosphere the effect of many factors on the signal has to be considered along with the free space propagation channel assumption. The main objective of this study is, therefore, to find out whether, and how, the different climatic conditions are influencing radio wave propagation in GSM frequency bands in general and in Narnaul, Haryana (India) in particular. To carry out this investigation, the records of radio wave propagation along with path loss during different climatic conditions have been analyzed. On the strength of these analyses, a propagation path loss model has been developed by proposing suitable correction factors due to different climatic conditions. The validation of this developed path loss model has been verified by taking reference models and by applying practically in different urban areas. The effect of these climatic conditions on the link budget has also been analyzed.