This paper argues that efficient performance of functions by local governments will make for stability of federalism in Nigeria. Local governments are supposed to cater for the grassroots needs, and when this is efficiently done, it allows the other tiers of government – state and federal governments - to perform their own functions without undue pressures. This way, the various tiers can concentrate to carry out their assigned duties. Using the descriptive historical method, as well as field survey, the paper concludes that the best way to ensure that local governments perform their duties efficiently is to allow them the requisite administrative and functional autonomy. This will also mean, among others, that funds accruing to the local governments should not be tampered with by higher level governments so that the local governments can have the capacity to fulfill their obligations in the coordinate administration and governance of the country.

The purpose of the study was to assess principals’ and teachers’ perceptions of the implementation of e-education policy in four selected Limpopo project schools. This study responds to South African Education Ministry rolling-out of an e-Education policy in 2004 in its strive to inform the use of pedagogical technologies in schools. The study is qualitative in nature; and interpretivism paradigm and a theory of technology acceptance model were used to guide in assessment of this phenomenon. Interviews and observations were used as data collection techniques. Four principals and twelve teachers were purposively sampled from four Limpopo project schools. The findings reveal a lack of school pedagogical technologies in Limpopo project schools. Secondly, in these schools, there are still teachers who prefer traditional pedagogies instead of blending it with digital ones. Lastly, the study reveals teachers’ stringent working conditions that deny them access to pedagogical technologies that facilitate teaching of the 21st Century skills. As part of the conclusion, the researchers recommend that Limpopo project schools be fully supplied with digital pedagogical technologies to become centre of excellence. In addition, the researchers recommend that principals and teachers be reskilled and equipped with digital pedagogies to become source of reference for other schools.

The escalation of school violence in many countries and South Africa in particular calls for concern. The purpose of this paper is to explore school violence misconceptions and professional development of teachers. This case study used a South African high school where a principal, teachers and learners were the participants. Two data generation tools were used; namely interviews and documents analysis. The findings suggest that misconceptions of school violence emanated from beliefs and values held by teachers and learners that overshadowed the harmful effects of some behaviour or acts of sexual harassment, homophobia and corporal punishment. The findings show a lack of training of teachers about school violence, which in turn implied that, they promoted violence while they believed that they were trying to curb it. We consequently argue that teachers’ professional development could be an answer for effectively tackling school violence.

Background: The era of posthumanism has signalled a shift in the modal appraisal of global warswith attendant wave of restocking of defence arsenals with high tech virtual compliant weaponry. Despite this development, most nations in Africa are yet to grapple with the fact that the world is in the virtual warfare phase of development, which calls for a change in orientation.

Methods: The study adapted a model developed in Global Defence Perspective (GDP) in lieu of survey data. Here the research assesses the placement of countries along the hierarchy of defence spending for the purpose of analysis.

Results: The authors identified acute corruption, bad leadership, appendages of belligerent nations, policy discontinuity, excessive reliance on mono-economy, declining industrial potentials, infrastructural decay, massive unemployment, weakened economies, and a host of other factors as barriers to defensive investment in Africa.

Conclusions: The discourse appealed to national administrators in Africa to rise up in order to checkmate the probable challenges that are visible through the threat or violence associated with cyber warfare.

Throughout South Africa’s institutions of higher learning, student bodies aligned to political parties dominate the campus landscape, and over the past 10 years, political politics have exerted significant influence over the functioning and policy direction of student unions at universities. The study, using the University of Zululand as a point of reference, intended to explore the connection between political parties and student unions who are affiliated with these political parties. To accomplish this, the study employed a strict systematic review of the literature. The study revealed that student unions at UniZulu are, largely, influenced by political parties and this compromises their ability to carry out their mandate, which is to be the voice of students via their engagement(s) with the University management.

The pillars upon which South Africa’s foreign policy rests have been a subject of significant scholarly enquiry, most of which have been framed from a Western paradigm. A particularly notable feature from the available literature on the pillars of South Africa’s foreign policy is the occasional tendency of the country to deviate from some of these pillars in favour of other interests. Given the above, revisiting the cornerstones of the Jacob Zuma administration’s foreign policy with an alternative Afrocentric lens is a worthy exercise. First, the exercise shall indicate whether the Zuma administration made any substantial changes to the objectives that guided the previous administrations’ foreign policy. Second, the exercise enables one to understand whether the Zuma administration was able to resist the ‘habit’ of jettisoning what is on paper in favour of other interests. Methodologically, this article adopts document study and discourse analysis in its broadest form.

Given the important role that music plays in traditional African education, this paper uses Mthandeni’s song titled ‘Xenophobia’ as a guide in the discussion of the phenomenon of xenophobia in South Africa. The paper begins by discussing the importance of music in African societies and its role as a tool of social transformation. It then goes on to trace the colonial roots of xenophobia. Furthermore, the paper discusses literature on the manifestations of xenophobia in post-1994 South Africa. In writing the paper, the author consulted journal articles, books, government reports and news articles. The paper argues that even though the South African government has condemned the xenophobia and xenophobic violence, it has not done enough to educate the South African public on Pan-African values. Therefore, the paper recommends that the South African government must consciously and energetically educate South African citizens about Pan-African values and the fact that South Africa’s destiny is intrinsically linked to the rest of the African continent.

“Things Fall Apart”, a novel founded on strong African culture and proverbs, illustrates a clash between traditions and missionary-driven civilization in the Igbo community of Nigeria. The author, Chinua Achebe, relates to the African pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial dispensations. Achebe explores art and literature to redefine thoughts on the vibrancy of the pre-colonial representative institutions in Igboland for peaceful co-existence, which contradicts the generally acclaimed non-existence of political authority in the community. It
appreciates the giant strides of Africans to fervently preserve their cultural heritage, and resist the new religion supported by imperialism, and its trappings such as racism, abolition of indigenous practices, divide and conquer, and the break-up of African tribal societies under colonialism. Through textual analysis, this article highlights the ideological impetus for the book and draws a relationship between Okonkwo’s stance against foreign domination and current anti-western insinuation in Africa. It also draws a dialectical connection and dichotomy between African 'evil culture' and 'evil religion' associated with colonial domination, and engages its implications for contemporary Nigerian state and Africa.

Environmental conservation efforts have faced several challenges across Africa. In instances where environmentally unsustainable practices such as micro-subsistence artisanal mining have been conceptualised as poverty driven, the availing of alternative livelihoods has nonetheless failed to facilitate their end. Given how these practices are a source of income for many (despite the negative environmental impacts), there is a need for practitioners to examine how sustainable environmental praxis (an amalgam of both the western scientific model and indigenous knowledge systems), can be introduced in such spaces. In examining these issues, original data was collected through questionnaires (distributed to 30 micro-subsistence artisanal miners at Braeside), while two semi-structured in-depth interviews were also held with purposively selected NGO participants. The findings showed how within rural communities (with relatively low literacy levels), an indigenous knowledge-based, multi-sectoral approach to environmental conservation reaps higher rewards. Due to the agrarian history of most African communal systems, the study noted how there is no shortage of indigenous, conservational knowledge, with implementation being the main challenge. In making small scale artisanal mining align with the sustainable development triangle, recommendations are made for environmentalists to proactively engage artisanal miners in a new paradigm that prioritises local knowledge and collaborative community-based initiatives.

The crisis of development in the face of environmental degradation in Ogoniland with regards to environmental clean-up project and the attendant conflicts so far generated since the unveiling of the United Nations Environme-nt assessment report in 2011, has remained a topical issue. However, years after the submission of UNEP report, little has been done by the Nigerian state and Shell Petroleum Development Company Programme (SPDC) in addressing the environmental challenges facing Ogoni people. This paper argues that the character of the Nigerian state is blameworthy for why UNEP report has not received the kind of attention recommended. Documentary methods of data collection were deployed and data collected were analysed through content analysis. While relying on the rentier state theory and post-colonial state theory as analytical frameworks, we recommend that recovered loot from foreign countries should be invested in Ogoni clean-up project so as to promote human and environmental security.

It’s undeniable that corruption is a worldwide phenomenon that is witnessed both in the developed and developing world. Nevertheless, by narrowing this down to Africa, the continent has witnessed vast amount to corruption activities in the post-colonial era and this has continued to be a widespread occurrence that has made those politically connected get richer and the general populace poorer. This has led to most African states to remain underdeveloped, unindustrialized, marginalized and lacking basic socio-economic development. By narrowing this down to South Africa as a point of departure, the post-1994 South African government was widely expected to be a driving force in reviving the country’s economy as a result of the destabilization policies of the erstwhile apartheid regime. Nonetheless, 25 years into democracy, corruption has manifested itself to be a stumbling block to the country’s development framework(s). The African National Congress (ANC) government (since 1994) has been embroiled and implicated particularly since the Jacob Zuma era in immense corruption scandals that have benefited a few cronies at the expense of the poor. This paper aims to unearth the drivers of corruption in the South African public sector post-1994.

Mostly, youth in northern Ghana migrate to the south from November to May, the period of high labour demand shortfall as a result of no rainfall for farming activities in the north. This has resulted in the huge concentration of youth in major slumps in Accra and Kumasi and as a consequence, putting a lot of pressure on the already poor social amenities, thereby, worsening living conditions and perpetuating poverty. As a mitigating measure to address this trend of youth out migrating from the northern part of Ghana, the Government of Ghana instituted a Labor Intensive Public Work (LIPW) programme under the World Bank funded Ghana Social Opportunity Project (GSOP). The project constructed dams/dugouts in some communities to engage the youth in dry season farming. This study investigated the impact of the LIPW built facilities on youth out-migration. With the aid of an ANOVA test, the researchers compared three communities with LIPW facility and three communities without LIPW facility in the Daffiama Bussie Issah District. It was revealed that the project has no significant impact on youth out-migration. Using Participatory Learning for Action (PLA) approach, the youth recommended the formation of a dry season farming committee to oversee dry season farming and the formation of a Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLA) to assist them, in mobilizing funds for dry season farming.

The search for peaceful coexistence among states in Africa has been a turbulence issue among academia and policy makers. Much time has been devoted to the field of policy science towards finding a lasting solution to the problem of national integration in the continent of Africa. Studies have traced this issue from the perspective of colonisation and its impacts on the African people while little attention has been dedicated to the quest towards national integrations by Africans. However, this paper will interrogate these lapses and proffer solutions vis-à-vis Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa. The methodology used in gathering data in this investigation was secondary sources and the technique of content analysis was applied. The results showed that African leaders have devoted much time in sustaining their personal empires, self-aggrandizement against national interest, and these among others have led to crises of different types ranging from communal clashes to civil war, farmer and herdsmen clashes, and so on. The investigation has revealed that political or ethnic intolerance is an issue that has challenge the African people. This has been situated due to artificial creation of political entity against natural evolution of state in most African states. Hence, policies of national integration should be cognisance of the beliefs and history of developing nations.

This paper focuses on the nexus between political struggles among ethnic groups and the security situation in Nigeria. It critically explores how deliberate manipulation of ethnicity by political elites generates insecurity in the country. In-depth interviews were conducted to generate primary data, which were analysed using NVivo 10. Among others, this paper finds that in an attempt to compel desired outcomes from democratic processes, Nigerian political elites trigger distractions among the masses by tensing up the polity through the politicization of ethnicity that magnifies pre-existing cleavages and pitches people against themselves. This situation creates room for the politicians to wriggle-in their interest over and above that of the populace. The study concludes that proto-nationalism is a major source of insecurity in Nigeria. This paper recommends that, due to the ethnic diverseness of the country, criminal law should be invoked on incitement on the basis of ethnicity for achieving political ends.

Foreign aid as a ratio to the Gross Domestic Income for Sub-Saharan (SSA) countries has been on the rise from an estimated 4% in 1970 to around 17-20% in 2013. However, the causality of foreign aid on economic development has been weak for SSA countries. The weak relationship between economic development and foreign aid is what motivates the pursuit of this study. The objective of this paper is to explore the nature of, and if there is a significant part, relationship on the puzzle of foreign aid and economic development in the SSA countries. The study uses a qualitative method employing literature to sift out themes that are of use in order to meet the objective. The findings of the study indicate that foreign aid has been increasing whilst there is no positive response from the economic development front for the aid receiving countries. Also the findings of our study indicate that foreign aid has caused corruption and inefficiency to increase in the aid receiving countries. Lastly, there are countries that have become aid dependent, in funding their budgets, again, and worsening inefficiency. Policy recommendations arising from the findings point mainly to two things. Sub-Saharan countries need to strongly adopt a zero tolerance to corruption so that national resources are devoted to where they benefit the country at large. Secondly, the study recommends that Sub-Saharan countries need to shun aid and start to mobilise resources domestically so that the dependency syndrome can be dealt with.