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Living with physical hazards is an everyday issue for the people of Bangladesh because different seasons bring different kinds of uncertainties. Sometimes traditional knowledge and practices (Alam, 2007) help them to adjust to these conditions; in some occasions, these hazards turn into catastrophic disasters causing deaths and bringing unbearable damages in different sectors. In addition to the tangible damages incurred due to hazards, in most of the cases, these hazards injure the internal social organizations at different levels (for example, household, community, and institutional) and affect their assets. Thus, the community resilience is greatly weakened, which makes people susceptible to upcoming hazards. Scientists suggest that climate change-induced threats and uncertainties in the forms of erratic rainfall patterns that result in drought conditions and sometimes floods, abnormal foggy conditions, change in the wind direction and the characteristic patterns of seasons, anomalies in the temperature regimes, and the occurrence of cyclones will bring new dimensions to existing situations. These natural hazards, temperature rises, and sea level rise–induced inundations will contribute to the breakdown of the traditional systems of living; they also bring change in topographical factors (for example, flooding), biophysical factors (changes in the crop yields, runoff, risks of the spread of infectious diseases, changes in the vegetation pattern), and socioeconomic factors (per capital income, health, education, population density) (World Bank, 2001).

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on higher education (HE) across the globe, including in Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi HE system is going through an abrupt transition and transformation to cope with the crisis. This chapter is based on data collected from teachers and students of Bangladeshi public and private HE institutions regarding teaching and learning during the COVID-19 lockdown. In Bangladesh, some universities switched to online distance teaching and learning quickly during this period, and others lagged behind in this regard. Teachers and students from both groups of public and private universities participated in the study, including those who attended online teaching and learning activities and those who did not participate. This chapter highlights both teachers’ and students’ perspectives regarding students’ future preparedness for participating fully in the changing landscape of HE, especially technology-enhanced teaching and learning. Understanding these perspectives of teachers and students is important to address the digital divide and social justice issues in the policy and practice. Within the HE sector in Bangladesh, it is especially vital while transforming its education system and adapting emerging technologies to address the challenges of education in future emergencies.

Leadership is basically about influence and ability to cultivate followership. This chapter examined the nature of indigenous socio-political leadership in Africa using Zimbabwe, Sudan and Nigeria as caselets and compared this with the post-colonial or modern-day leadership realities. A survey was conducted among senior executives at Lagos Business School, Nigeria, with a sample size of 200 persons, to find out their perception of the African indigenous leadership system. An overwhelming 90% believe that culture plays a big role in shaping African leadership style. However, two-thirds of the respondents agreed that Africa lacks proper institutional structures to support good leadership, thus encouraging corruption (97% of the respondents) and non-accountability among the leaders. Also, only 5% thought cultural orientation was the reason why the African followers do not hold their leaders accountable. In other words, it is not in the African culture not to hold leaders accountable for their actions. So, what went wrong? We attempted a deeper look at the effect of colonial rule and the attendant militarisation of the African continent. Our conclusion is that the colonisation of the continent by Europe brought significant distortion to the traditional African indigenous leadership institutions and the psyche of the African leader and the followers alike. Post-colonial Africa has witnessed 133 recorded coups d’etat between 1952 and 2016. This chapter is recommended to all those who seek a deeper understanding of the nature of the African indigenous leadership practices and the factors that have shaped these over the years.