COVID-19 Manifestation, Ramifications and Future Prospects for Zimbabwe


Book Description

The advent of Coronavirus (also known as COVID-19) pandemic has caused much distress, despondence, fear and pandemonium across all nations of the world. In Zimbabwe, the emergence of the virus sent a chilling message of insecurity and need for conscientiousness and diligence, as the virus decimated humankind amid untold suffering. The pandemic came as a litmus test for the integrity and meticulousness of all the so-called professionals and institutions of integrity across the country, challenging them to stand equal to their tasks, titles and claimed astuteness. For Zimbabwe and Africa in general, the manifestation and ramifications of COVID-19, has raised so many questions around issues of peoples welfare and innovative research, especially amid the reality that the country is dependent on charity and donations from well-wishers for the vaccines it needs, over and above the modest amount it can purchase. This reality and related challenges pose interesting research questions addressed in this volume. A central question on the possibility and extent of home-grown solutions inspired by and tailored to the needs and predicaments of Zimbabwe and the African continent. The richness of the book is in the firsthand eyewitness accounts of scholars caught up in the COVID-19 challenge. The researchers in this volume have sought to capture developments, insights and evolutions as they unfold and progress. The book is handy for scholars in policy studies, risk and disaster management, social anthropology, political science, development studies, African studies and decolonial fields of studies.




COVID-19 in Zimbabwe


Book Description

This contributed volume, based on papers presented at a conference held in Zimbabwe in mid-2021, interrogates solutions to COVID-19-related problems and issues across agricultural, environmental and water sectors in Zimbabwe and assesses their scientific, economic and practical validity. Across 19 chapters, this volume unpacks the science, economics and politics of the pandemic with a focus on understanding its secondary and tertiary impact on Zimbabwe’s population. The volume is also dedicated to understanding the practical and policy-oriented approaches in tackling the pandemic and confronting the “new normal” of COVID-19. It brings together researchers, development practitioners and policy makers from various disciplines in an endeavour to understand COVID-19 trends and analyse the scientific options for mitigation, containment, innovation and ultimately pre-empt the possible emergence and impacts of other pandemics in the future




Library and Media Roles in Information Hygiene and Managing Information


Book Description

Despite the proliferation of smart technologies, the challenges of information hygiene continue to wreak havoc on the information landscape, creating a critical need to explore and analyze how such a phenomenon can be handled. Further research is required in order to better understand the various difficulties and opportunities within the field. Library and Media Roles in Information Hygiene and Managing Information explores the concept of information hygiene at a time when citizens all over the world are deluged with an avalanche of information. The book also identifies challenges and opportunities for information science practitioners and media institutions in the fight against information disorder and explores the unhygienic practices in the information value chain. Covering topics such as information regulation, digital literacy, and records management, this reference work is ideal for librarians, computer scientists, researchers, academicians, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.




Sovereignty Becoming Pulvereignty


Book Description

This book delves into the topical issue of the future of humanity and of being African in a world increasingly subjected to the power of technology and the dominance of a mercilessly self-absolved global elite. A slave is not only someone who is materially impoverished but also someone who is deprived of autonomy and sovereignty in the sense of being physically or virtually chained or shackled to human and nonhuman networks that negate the essence of the "I" or the "self". Discoursing the neologism slave 4.0 with the ongoing 21st century revolutions designed to create flat ontologies, this book argues that the world is witnessing not only the emergence of industry 4.0 but also the concomitant emergence of slave 4.0. Whereas historically, Africans were physically captured and transported across the Atlantic Ocean, minds of twenty-first century Africans are set to be nanotechnologically scanned, captured and transferred to the metaverse where they will neither own natural resources nor biologically reproduce. The book is handy for scholars in sociology, anthropology, political science, government studies, development studies, digital humanities, environmental studies, religious studies, theology, missiology, science and technology studies.




Re-imagining Indigenous Knowledge and Practices in 21st Century Africa


Book Description

This book is on the re-imagination of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) and practices in 21st century Africa. Framed from an anti-colonial perspective, the book critically interrogates epistemological erasures and injustices meted against African IKS and practices. It magnifies the different contexts where African IKS were and continue to be used effectively for collective and personal benefit. Beyond the legitimate frustration and disheartenment expressed by the contributors to this volume over the systematic colonial efforts to render inferior and delegitimate African systems of knowing and knowledge production, the book makes an important contribution to the quest to correct misconceptions and misrepresentations by Eurocentric thinkers and practitioners about African indigenous knowledges. The book makes an informed claim that the future and vibrancy of African indigenous knowledge and practices lie in how well scholars of knowledge studies and decoloniality in and on Africa are able to join hands in articulating, debating and fronting their vitality and relevance in varied real-life situations. More importantly, the book provides a re-invigorated overview and nuanced analyses of the important role and continued relevance of African IKS and practices in the understanding, interpreting and tackling of the social unfoldings of everyday life and dynamism. Without romanticising African IKS and practices, the book provides added insights and pointers on policy and trends. It is an important addition to critical debates on knowledge studies across fields.




The Southern African Development Community Treaty-Nexus


Book Description

Since its establishment in 1980 the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has largely been a state driven organization, with the people of Southern Africa, though enshrined in the treaty, remaining observers in the SADC democratization and integration agenda. The Southern African Development Community Treaty-Nexus: National Constitutions, Citizen’s Sovereignty, Communication, and Awareness, edited by Korwa Gombe Adar, Dorothy Mpabanga, Kebapetse Lotshwao, Thekiso Molokwane, and Norbert Musekiwa, brings in the people of Southern Africa, the key beneficiaries of the integration agenda, in the SADC democratization and integration epistemology. Using the new concepts of sadcness and sadcnization, this book operationalizes from legal, communication, and awareness perspectives, the nexus of the people of Southern Africa, democratization, and integration in the SADC region. From legal and communications lenses, the contributors argue that democratization and integration are about people (citizens), the sovereigns, and not merely the abstract actors called nation states. Using the case studies of Angola, Botswana, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, the contributors engage in this epistemology and assess, among other things, the peoples' of Southern Africa—the Southern Africa Development Community integration nexus.




Counting the Cost of COVID-19 on the Global Tourism Industry


Book Description

This book profiles preliminary findings on the impact of COVID-19 on the travel, tourism and hospitality sector. Starting with a narrative relating COVID-19 to the global development agendas, the book proceeds with a focus on global tourism value chains and linkages between COVID-19 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Other perspectives addressed in separate chapters include impacts of COVID-19 on various industries within the global tourism value chain including aviation, airports, cruise ships, car rentals as well as ride and share car services, hotels, restaurants, sporting, pilgrimage and religious tourism, gaming and entertainment, and the stock market. The book also includes chapters on corporate, philanthropic and public donations, as well as tourism economic stimulus packages. It then concludes with a chapter focusing on building back a better tourism sector post-COVID-19 that strongly draws from the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030) and the disaster cycle. To this end, this book is suitable as a read for several professionals in disciplines such as tourism and hospitality studies, economics, sustainable development, development studies, environmental sciences, geography, politics, planning and public health.




Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation


Book Description

Extreme weather and climate events, interacting with exposed and vulnerable human and natural systems, can lead to disasters. This Special Report explores the social as well as physical dimensions of weather- and climate-related disasters, considering opportunities for managing risks at local to international scales. SREX was approved and accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on 18 November 2011 in Kampala, Uganda.




Global Trends 2030


Book Description

This important report, Global Trends 2030-Alternative Worlds, released in 2012 by the U.S. National Intelligence Council, describes megatrends and potential game changers for the next decades. Among the megatrends, it analyzes: - increased individual empowerment - the diffusion of power among states and the ascent of a networked multi-polar world - a world's population growing to 8.3 billion people, of which sixty percent will live in urbanized areas, and surging cross-border migration - expanding demand for food, water, and energy It furthermore describes potential game changers, including: - a global economy that could thrive or collapse - increased global insecurity due to regional instability in the Middle East and South Asia - new technologies that could solve the problems caused by the megatrends - the possibility, but by no means the certainty, that the U.S. with new partners will reinvent the international system Students of trends, forward-looking entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades will find this essential reading.




Historical Perspectives on the State of Health and Health Systems in Africa, Volume II


Book Description

This book focuses on Africa’s challenges, achievements, and failures over the past several centuries using an interdisciplinary approach that combines theory and fact and evidence-based practices and interventions in public health, and argues that most of the health problems in Africa are not a result of scarce or lack of resources, but of the misconceived and misplaced priorities that have left the continent behind every other on the globe in terms of health, education, and equitable distribution of opportunities and access to (quality) health as agreed by the United Nations member states at Alma-Ata in 1978.