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This paper aims to establish public departments’ compliance with National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ)’s records survey recommendations as well as to find out reasons for compliance and non-compliance.

This quantitative research used a survey research design and collected data using questionnaires, which were triangulated by document reviews and personal observation. A census approach was used where all 15 public departments upon which post-records survey inspections were conducted by Gweru Records Centre in the Midlands Province in 2016 were involved in the study.

The study revealed that many public departments in Zimbabwe disregarded records survey recommendations given by NAZ after records surveys. This was despite the fact that NAZ was armed with the National Archives of Zimbabwe Act (1986) which in principle is supposed to induce compliance by client departments. As a result, the records management situation in public departments has not improved much, and in some cases, it has become worse.

A lot has been published about records surveys in Zimbabwe, for example, by Chaterera (2008, 2013), Dewah (2010), Karimanzira and Mutsagondo (2015), Maboreke (2007) and Mutsagondo (2012). These studies have shown the importance of records surveys. However, none of them has evaluated the effectiveness of records surveys by examining the degree of compliance to records survey recommendations by public departments. This study thus scores a first in this regard. The study will enable NAZ to make a cost-benefit analysis of records surveys as well as to use results of this study to effect necessary operational, tactical and strategic decisions as regards the exercise.

Entrepreneurship has increasingly become a subject of interest for scholars and policymakers in an attempt to reduce poverty in agricultural communities across the world, especially in Africa. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to examine the role of entrepreneurship in reducing poverty in agricultural communities of Lower Gweru, Zimbabwe.

Exploratory research design informed the data collection and analysis in this study. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 owners of agribusinesses from various socio-economic backgrounds. The collected data from the field were analyzed using thematic analysis.

The results revealed that entrepreneurship plays a catalytic role in poverty reduction in agricultural communities through food security, skill transfer, employment creation, income generation and a decrease in food costs.

This study focused on four agricultural communities in Lower Gweru which can limit the generalizability of the results to other contexts. Furthermore, this inquiry is a cross-sectional study that did not capture the longitudinal factors that can affect entrepreneurship and poverty reduction in agricultural communities.

The research outcomes have some practical implications for the Zimbabwean government and microfinance institutions in designing policies and programs to reduce poverty in marginalized agricultural communities. The findings are also useful for non-governmental organizations in designing, monitoring and evaluating poverty reduction programs in agricultural communities.

This study advances, contextualizes and enriches the body of knowledge concerning agricultural entrepreneurship and poverty reduction in the under-researched setting of agricultural communities. Notably, this study captures the African flavor in the agricultural entrepreneurship and poverty reduction discourse by focusing on the unique Zimbabwean context.

The chapter focused on quality assurance and marketing of library services and products at the Midlands State University (MSU). The chapter's main objective was to identify the quality assurance mechanisms at the MSU Library. The major findings of the research were; the MSU library was practising quality assurance, staff was trained on the latest trends in the profession, the collection was multidisciplinary and in different forms, and that there were Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) used in enhancing service provision. The researcher recommended that the library needed to continuously train librarians on issues to do with quality, improve the infrastructure, introduce Research Data Management to enhance the Research Support Services and improve on the Information Literacy Skills training programmes. The author identified some areas for further research and the major one was that there is need for clarification on the concept of the 4th Industrial Revolution.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the consistency with which quality is maintained in the orientation process. Orientation is a key university process intended to prepare new students for life in higher education (HE). For open and distance learning (ODL), orientation can be a key process for lessening some of the challenges associated with the separation of the learner and the lecturer. Indeed, for ODL students, orientation can be fraught with a variety of challenges one of which could be quality problems.

Convenient sampling was used to obtain a total of 89 students in the first semester and 34 students in the second semester. The respondents came from all the eight districts in the Midlands province of Zimbabwe. They belonged to various degree programmes found in the eight faculties of the institution. Correlation was used to determine quality variations. Using a mixed methods approach, the study sought the views of the students and the relationships between activities done in the two semesters of 2018. SPSS version 16.0 software was used to compute Spearman’s correlations whereas content analysis was used to analyze the open-ended responses to the questa-view. This mixed methods approach helped the researchers to analyze and compare the quality of the orientation sessions.

Results yielded a positive and high significant correlation between first and second semester variables (r=0.916, p=0.000), a finding indicating that staff members in the Midlands Regional Campus of Zimbabwe Open University have not changed their ways of conducting orientation. On a scale of 1 (least effective) to 5 (most effective), the average ratings for the presentations in the first and second semesters were 4.08 and 4.26, respectively. In the qualitative analysis, adequacy of the venue, timing, coverage of aspects and use of media were all rated positively for the two sessions. However, for the two sessions, some students mentioned negative sentiments to do with the provision of needed materials at time of student registration, the public address system, orientation packages, time management and communication.

This paper looks at the process of orientation as it was done at one regional campus of an ODL institution in Zimbabwe. It also analyses the quality of the orientation using correlation as a lens that measures consistency and also by critically analyzing content in the respondents’ voices. Implications are that the findings and recommendations can also be applied in other ODL (and even non-ODL) institutions with a view of finally coming up with common policies and procedures with regards to providing quality service and support to the twenty-first century student.

Findings were relevant and could be used for designing applicable orientation programmes in ODL institutions and for improving the quality of student support and services.

While a number of studies have been carried out on orientation in HE, it would appear that research on orientation in ODL institutions, especially in Zimbabwe, appears minimal, hence this study covers an unexplored niche.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the impact of a growth enhancement support scheme (GESS) on the enabling environment of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. The main aim is to investigate the impact of the GESS on access to rural farm credit and the transport cost of smallholder farmers in the agricultural transformation agenda (ATA) in Nigeria.

This paper adopts a survey research technique, aimed at gathering information from a representative sample of the population, as it is essentially cross-sectional, describing and interpreting the current situation. A total of 1,200 were sampled across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria.

The results from the use of a double-hurdle model indicate that the GESS has a significant impact on farmers’ access to credit, but does not significantly impact on rural farm transport cost, which subsequently influences the price of food in the country.

This implies that if the Federal Government of Nigeria is to work toward an ideal agricultural transformation agenda, transport networks should be closely aligned with the GESS priorities to provide connectivity to rural areas that provide most of the country’s agricultural output.

This research adds to the literature on the agricultural and rural development debate in developing countries. It concludes that embracing a rural finance and transportation infrastructure should form the foundation of the ATA in Nigeria, which, in turn, would provide a conducive environment for a more widespread rural economy in sub-Saharan Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the nature and adequacy of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting among Zimbabwe's hotel groups.

Content analysis was used to examine websites, annual reports and mission statements of Zimbabwe's hotel groups.

Zimbabwe's hotel groups gave primacy to financial performance rather than social and environmental themes in their CSR reporting. In comparative terms, the hotel groups lag behind some of their developed world's counterparts in CSR reporting.

Future studies may examine the actual CSR practices adopted by Zimbabwe's tourism and hospitality sector. Research efforts should also be directed towards producing a framework to guide the effective design of CSR dedicated pages on corporate websites.

The research findings suggest that CSR initiatives and reporting are still a peripheral issue among Zimbabwe's hotel groups. A need for legal compulsion and third party verification to enhance the hotel groups' CSR reporting was identified. Further, the crafting of CSR policies and their institutionalization are complementary moves that should be adopted by the hotel groups.

This is perhaps one of the first papers exploring CSR reporting in the Zimbabwean hospitality context in particular, and the developing world in general. It is hoped that this paper stimulates further research involving the CSR practices and reporting of the entire tourism and hospitality supply chain in the developing world context.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the multinational oil companies (MOCs) corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Nigeria. Its special focus is to investigate the impact of the global memorandum of understanding (GMoU) on reducing incidents of electoral violence in oil-producing communities.

This paper adopts a survey technique, aimed at gathering information from a representative sample of the population, as it is essentially cross-sectional, describing and interpreting the current situation. A total of 1,200 households were sampled across the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

The results from the use of a combined propensity score matching and logit model indicate that the GMoU model made a significant impact in deterring occurrences of electoral violence when interventions on cluster development boards are designed to mitigate the intricate of political clashes in the region.

This implies that CSR interventions of MOCs play a vital role in reducing incidents of electoral violence in Nigeria’s oil producing region.

Reducing the increasing electoral violence in the oil host communities, will, in turn, create an enabling environment for more extensive and responsible business of Multinational Corporation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper extends and contributes to the literature on CSR initiatives of multinational enterprises in developing countries and the rationale for demands for social projects by host communities. It concludes that business has an obligation to help in solving problems of public concern.

The following is an annotated list of materials that discuss the ways in which librarians can provide library users with orientation to facilities and services, and instruct them in library information and computer skills. This is RSR's 11th annual review of this literature, and covers publications from 1984. A few items from 1983 have been included because of their significance, and because they were not available for review last year. Several items were not annotated because the compiler was unable to secure them.

The anecdote of this paper is to bring the aid effectiveness debate to the sub-national level using the change in night lights as an alternative measure of economic activity. We observe non-robustness of results regarding the effects of aid types on development in antecedent literature to arise due to the effects of aid being treated as a unitary component. provoked by such insightful observation and literature deficiency we employed geocoded data to examine Causal links between the varying types of aid and local economic development in Malawi.

The main objective of the empirical examination is to examine the distributional effects of distinct aid types in local towns in Malawi. For that purpose, the authors thus have a panel dataset for each aid type indicator. Allowing for fixed time and town effects, the baseline light density growth regression model to estimate the effectiveness of disentangled aid on night light intensity was accomplished by employing a spatial dynamic panel data (SDPD) approach with instrumentation. Thus, panel regressions were performed to investigate both conceptual and policy implications.

Cross-city evidence shows that category aid type brings both negative and positive results depending on location within a country. There are cities and locations where certain aid type(s) does not matter whereas it matters most in some. This speaks to different levels of growth between different regions and cities in Malawi. As a result, we observe the size of the effect of distinct aid type(s) on economic activities to vary (increase/decrease) with the size of the location.

It may be interesting to generalize results from this study to a panel case over long periods of time using dynamic modelling with both threshold analysis and interaction effects Institutional factors need also to be includes in similar analyses. The authors leave this for a follow-up study. Second, the most immediate opportunity is application of the methodology to the other countries with geo-coded AidData. The authors expect to expand the analysis by taking into account other determinants of aid effectiveness at the local level, including the characteristics of donors and varieties of targeted development programmes.

Results in some geographical locations and towns indicate that the authors do not have sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis of the research study at 5% level. However, other geographical locations like Zomba indicate that aid category has a significant bearing on local economic growth. Therefore, as opposed to unitary aid approaches, we recommend distribution of relevant disentangled growth-enhancing aid type to specific administrative regions but with a bias toward smaller socially and economically deprived regions and towns.

The unique insight from this study is that foreign aid-growth benefits are symmetric and skewed toward large towns. If such unbalance aid-growth benefits anomalies are not addressed in a transparent manner it has the possibilities of promoting interregional migration which from Nielsen et al. (2011) and Findley et al (2011)'s evidence might trigger regional tensions and violent armed conflicts. Thus, there is need for equitable distribution of social and economic developmental aid free from political or ethnic inclination but based on transparent needs assessment model(s). Locations where social and developmental aid types seem to have negative or no effect serves as a salient indicator of aid leakages due to rent seeking tendencies of bureaucrats or weak institutions which ultimately pose welfare burden on citizens.

Apart from contributing to the extant literature on aid and economic growth, this paper relates to at least three other strands of research. First, the work partially answers a call by Minoiu and Reddy (2010), Schmid (2013) and Khomba and Trew (2019) for researchers to examine the growth effects of distinct aid types on local economic development. Second, the increase in aid volumes to Africa and the worsening of economic conditions has been the subject of considerable interest amongst development economists (e.g. Ravenhill, 1990; Lancaster, 1999; Easterly, 2003; Bräutigam and Knack, 2004 and Collier, 2006). This makes the use of a major aid recipient developing economy (Malawi) as a laboratory an anecdote. Third, use of disaggregated as opposed to unitary aid data with an African flavour.