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In recent years, countries across the African continent have begun implementing solutions based on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for challenges ranging across the spectrum of sustainable development. The programs which have been implemented so far have produced impressive results, and in aggregate, they demonstrate the potential of a digital Africa which applies ICT to accelerate the improvement of human development outcomes in the pursuit of a more prosperous, equitable society. However, for these programs to live up to their full potential, they must be coupled with comprehensive, national digital identity systems. Digital identification not only boosts the efficiency of individual ICT-driven development initiatives, they permit seamless coordination between both public and private programs at all levels. While some African countries have established digital identity systems, but there is room for improvement in order to make them fully inclusive, transparent, and effective. In this, African governments can use India's Aadhaar digital identity system as a model for how to accomplish these objectives within the framework of a universal, highly integrated system, even under constraints of limited resources.

In recent years, countries across the African continent have begun implementing solutions based on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for challenges ranging across the spectrum of sustainable development. The programs which have been implemented so far have produced impressive results, and in aggregate, they demonstrate the potential of a digital Africa which applies ICT to accelerate the improvement of human development outcomes in the pursuit of a more prosperous, equitable society. However, for these programs to live up to their full potential, they must be coupled with comprehensive, national digital identity systems. Digital identification not only boosts the efficiency of individual ICT-driven development initiatives, they permit seamless coordination between both public and private programs at all levels. While some African countries have established digital identity systems, but there is room for improvement in order to make them fully inclusive, transparent, and effective. In this, African governments can use India's Aadhaar digital identity system as a model for how to accomplish these objectives within the framework of a universal, highly integrated system, even under constraints of limited resources.

The geopolitical upheavals affecting the Middle East and North Africa at the beginning of the 21st century have created an arc of instability around the Balkan Peninsula, causing serious consequences for all the countries in the area as regards migration flows. Due to its peculiar geographical position, Greece has thus found itself at the forefront of the so-called migratory emergency, which has involved the European Union (UE) in the last few years. The Dublin Regulation first and then the closure of the borders, following the agreement on migrants between the UE and Turkey in March 2016, have made Greece a sort of first reception hotspot for the whole Eastern Mediterranean, giving rise at the same time to new Balkan migration routes managed by human traffickers. Historically a hinge between East and West, today's Greece constitutes the ideal starting point to interpret in a multi-scalar perspective both the weaknesses of the paradigm on which the so-called 'Fortress Europe' is based, and the geographical variety of problematic 'living spaces' that recent migratory phenomena have contributed to build over time.

This paper focuses on the establishment of agricultural innovation platforms (AIPs) in the communal areas of Hwedza in Zimbabwe. Through the efforts of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), there have been initiatives to improve agricultural productivity in Africa and Zimbabwe in particular. One such intervention has been the AIPs that seek to bring together all stakeholders who can meaningfully contribute to the improvement of agriculture. Using largely qualitative approaches, data was collected through interviews from small scale farmers as well as different actors who were involved in the AIPs. The respondents in the study also included NGO workers, academic researchers, government workers, traditional leaders, agricultural financiers, extension workers and state-owned institutions. Using Norman Long's interface analysis as the central theoretical framework, key findings showed that communal areas were active communities that had their own socio-economic network systems which govern how smallholder farmers operate. It also emerged that IPs are a result of a combination of the social and the formal/institutionalised structures that interacted in Hwedza. The paper concludes that IPs were established in Hwedza through a series of interactive processes among actors and these were not always smooth and successful.

The aim of this study is to examine Nigeria's hegemony in West Africa and its implications on Nigeria's national core development programmes. This is done via critical examination of some selected regional and national development indicators with a view to fi nd ways of improving the overall national performance as signifi cant contribution to regional development. On political impact, the study found that successive Nigerian governments were engrossed in unprecedented national corruption than development, diverting billions of dollars meant for national development in the guise of national security, regional peacekeeping, humanitarian intervention and socio-economic development of the sub region. The consequences of such political ineptitude were widespread: failed leadership, clientelism, rentierism, political apathy, escalating national insecurity, wide-spread poverty and unemployment and poor macroeconomic development. Overall, the study opines that Nigeria should shore up greater commitment and responsibility towards her national and human capital development, massively improve the infrastructure, reorientate both military and political elites to ensure integral national growth, overhaul her regional and foreign policy goals to meet her national interest goals as true catalyst for regional development.

Online shopping has become increasingly popular in the past two decades. Yet, despite its popularity, the use of online stores on the African continent pales in comparison to other parts of the world. Moreover, in many economic contexts in Africa and including Ghana, there has been very limited research on the subject of online adoption and in particular, the fundamental factors that can influence its initial adoption, especially among young and relatively educated consumers who constitute the largest demographic group there. We, therefore, make a determined effort to fill this growing knowledge gap by exploring some fundamental factors associated to shop online by young and educated consumers. This exploratory research draws on the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework and focuses on five variables of interest namely perceived ease of use, government support infrastructure, and economic considerations about pricing, perceived convenience and use intentions of online retail stores. Evidence collected from 294 research participants provides support for our research propositions Finally, our research contributions and future study directions are considered in the concluding part of the paper.

Forecasts and alternative scenarios of COVID-19 mortality have been critical inputs into a range of policies and decision-makers need information about predictive performance. We identified n=386 public COVID-19 forecasting models and included n=8 that were global in scope and provided public, date-versioned forecasts. For each, we examined the median absolute percent error (MAPE) compared to subsequently observed mortality trends, stratified by weeks of extrapolation, world region, and month of model estimation. Models were also assessed for ability to predict the timing of peak daily mortality. The MAPE among models released in July rose from 1.8% at one week of extrapolation to 24.6% at twelve weeks. The MAPE at six weeks were the highest in Sub-Saharan Africa (34.8%), and the lowest in high-income countries (6.3%). At the global level, several models had about 10% MAPE at six weeks, showing surprisingly good performance despite the complexities of modelling human behavioural responses and government interventions. The framework and publicly available codebase presented here ( https://github.com/pyliu47/covidcompare ) can be routinely used to compare predictions and evaluate predictive performance in an ongoing fashion.

This study examined the concepts and practices of tourism resilience vis-Ã -vis its vulnerability from shocks and external forces such as natural disasters, climate change, catastrophic events, and virus outbreaks (SARS, Ebola, and recently, the Corona Virus or COVID-19). Espousing a grounded perspective on resilience as emerging from this new phenomenon that is yet to be explored and analyzed, several studies and theories of tourism resilience were reviewed. These are: resilience cycle or "Holling Loop"; the different types of resilience with an emphasis on adaptation and transformation; resilience as adaptation, anticipation, and preparedness from shocks. In addition, this study synthesized the different approaches of selected countries that already went through past virus outbreaks focusing on China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong's post-SARS recovery actions, and the community resilience of Africa against the Ebola virus. From these literature reviews, insights were drawn for policy and planning considerations of the government and other stakeholders to adopt multi-level strategies that are sustainable, inclusive, adaptive, and innovative. Tourism recovery plans should also be centered on the solidarity of actions and resilience through systematic adaptation and transformation.

ABSTRACT
Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is among the largest social protection programmes in Africa and has been promoted as a model for the continent. This article analyses the political drivers of the programme, arguing that elite commitment to the PSNP needs to be understood in the context of shifts within Ethiopia's political settlement and the government's evolving development strategy. While food security had long been a priority for the ruling party, the 2002/03 food crisis—coming on the back of a series of other political shocks—was perceived as an existential crisis for the ruling coalition, prompting the incorporation of the PSNP into the existing rural development strategy. Foreign donors provided policy ideas and pushed for reform, but it was not until incentives flowing from the political settlement were favourable that elite commitment was secured. Even then, longstanding ideological commitments shaped the productive focus of the programme, ensuring consistency with the development strategy. While the removal of the PSNP is now unthinkable, the extent to which this represents a broader commitment to social protection remains an open question.

Since their introduction in the North Sea, most resource-rich countries in Africa are introducing or reinforcing local content policies (LCPs) and regulations, to propel socio-economic development. Local content is now a prerequisite for granting an exploration licence to international oil companies (IOCs) and suppliers in the Gulf of Guinea region (GGR). This paper analyses and compares factors of success and impediments in LCPs from two perspectives: the North Sea (Norway, UK, and Denmark), and the Gulf of Guinea (Angola, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Equatorial Guinea). Through this, we glean policy lessons for the Gulf of Guinea countries. The study finds that the policy implementation in the GGR is constrained by inadequate infrastructure, industrial base and supplier base, technical and financial capacity of domestic firms and weak regulatory institutions - among other things. Also, the LCP is overly ambitious and prescriptive, ignoring the GGR's actual state of industrial development. To engineer resource-based development in the GGR, these countries must move beyond their preoccupation with local content regulations and instead address the above challenges in order to facilitate the development of better linkages.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a form of violence against the girls and the women and also an infringement into the rights of the women in the society. It is practiced mostly in Africa, but migration has revolutionized its spread to almost all parts of the world. The government and the constituted authorities, our traditional rulers, the legislative, the judiciary, and the law enforcement agents have the machineries to stop this inhuman behavior, but they lack the will and the necessary information about the incidence and consequences of FGM. The review involved Internet and literature search mostly those written on the African continent and some that were specific to Nigeria from 1999 to 2018. This article reviewed the spread, the obstetrics and the gynecological complications, the roles of the traditional circumcisers, and the negative and the positive roles of the caregivers, especially its medicalization in the abandonment of FGM in Nigeria. The article also looked critically at the best ways to achieve zero tolerance to FGM. To achieve the targeted zero tolerance to FGM, the identified factors have to be tackled holistically.

Why do governments in some developing countries implement international standards, while others do not? Focusing on the politics of bank regulation, this book develops a new framework to explain regulatory interdependence between countries in the core and the periphery of the global financial system. Drawing on in-depth analysis of eleven countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, it shows how financial globalization generates strong reputational and competitive incentives for developing countries to converge on international standards. Regulatory interdependence is generated by relations between regulators, politicians, and banks within developing countries, and international actors including investors, peer regulators, and international financial institutions. We explain why it is that some configurations of domestic politics and forms of integration into global finance generate convergence with international standards, while other configurations lead to divergence. This book contributes to our understanding of the ways in which governments and firms in the core of global finance powerfully shape regulatory politics in the periphery, and the ways in which peripheral governments and firms manoeuvre within the constraints and opportunities created by financial globalization.

Abstract
It has been several years since the term "Afropolitanism" was coined and instigated an intense debate in both the offline and online world. Although Afropolitanism is celebrated for highlighting positive depictions of Africa, it has also been criticised for its supposedly exclusive and elitist focus. Several scholars have distinguished Afropolitanism from Pan-Africanism by framing it as the latter's apolitical younger version. Following the discussion around these perceived differences, this paper investigates how Afropolitanism negotiates the African diaspora discourse in relation to Pan-Africanism. Thus far, the study of Afropolitanism has remained mostly limited to the field of literary and cultural studies. In order to move the discussion on this term further, this paper explores the lived experiences of twelve black Londoners with Afropolitanism and Pan-Africanism. By using the notion of "performance," I show that Afropolitanism and Pan-Africanism are constructed and deconstructed in both diverse and overlapping ways. The narratives emerging out of this dialogue question the centrality of the Middle Passage epistemology and the tendency to essentialize experiences in the African diaspora discourse.

China-Pakistan's economic corridor provides a strategic link to Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI) and its global outreach. The infrastructural connectivity between China and Pakistan is primarily focused on the trade route to get access in the markets of theMiddle East, Europe, and Africa. In the context of CPEC,what does infrastructure mean? What does it reflect/represent? And to whom is it? Are the major questions that have been explored in this paper.Infrastructural development encompasses a holistic social sphere that relates to physical and institutional structures. It also facilitates the flow of commodities, including capita land sources of production. After the 9/11 incident, Pakistan became a front line state against the war on terror; then, its internal and external factors compelled Pakistan towards Chinese-led infrastructural development to consolidate State power. This paper is an attempt to explore the politics of infrastructure development in the context of CPEC. The findings are based on empirical evidence with strong insights from a theoretical framework. Positivist, post positivist, and critical approaches have been used to explore the relationship between CPEC and the politics of infrastructural development.

Scholarly book chapter ; "Though the existence of Jewish regional cultures is widely known, the origins of the most prominent groups, Ashkenaz and Sepharad, are poorly understood, and the rich variety of other regional Jewish identities is often overlooked. Yet all these subcultures emerged in the Middle Ages. Scholars contributing to the present study were invited to consider how such regional identities were fashioned, propagated, reinforced, contested, and reshaped--and to reflect on the developments, events, or encounters that made these identities manifest. They were asked to identify how subcultural identities proved to be useful, and the circumstances in which they were deployed. The resulting volume spans the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, and explores Jewish cultural developments in western Europe, the Balkans, North Africa, and Asia Minor. In its own way, each contribution considers factors--demographic, geographical, historical, economic, political, institutional, legal, intellectual, theological, cultural, and even biological--that led medieval Jews to conceive of themselves, or to be perceived by others, as bearers of a discrete Jewish regional identity. Notwithstanding the singularity of each essay, they collectively attest to the inherent dynamism of Jewish regional identities" --