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This chapter discusses the growing use of social media during election campaigns in Ghana. It examines how social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter became preferred tools for voter engagement, mobilisation and campaign for political parties and their presidential and parliamentary candidates in the 2020 elections in Ghana. It establishes that social media are gradually surpassing traditional/legacy media as the preferred media choice for political mobilisation, civic engagement and political communication in Ghana. The chapter reviews the European Union Election Observation Mission (EOM) report through social media affordance lens. This chapter attempts to answer two critical questions: To what extent did political parties and presidential candidates in Ghana use social media in electioneering campaigns during the 2020 elections and, which social media platforms were highly preferred by political parties and presidential candidates in engaging the electorate? The EOM's data indicators show the prominence of Facebook and Twitter as significant in political party campaigns during the period under study. Preliminary analysis also points out that the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and their presidential candidate, Nana Akufo Addo including the opposition National Democratic Congress and their leader, John Dramani Mahama, spent thousands of dollars on Facebook advertisements for extensive voter mobilisation.

In the current post-human society, artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms are rapidly being deployed in newsrooms around the world to enhance processes of news idea conception, newsgathering, writing, packaging and dissemination. Although AI adaptation has been ongoing especially in Western Newsrooms over the last decade, this process is only budding in sub-Saharan newsroom contexts. This study explores perceptions, use, prospects and challenges in the adaptation of AI and algorithms in newsrooms. This qualitative survey draws insights from 33 respondents from newspapers, radio stations, online media and community media in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia. The study found varied levels of AI adoption in several newsrooms with some newsrooms not yet using AI while others were fully experimenting with a variety of tools, functionalities – even producing their own AI tools and also in change employment patterns to accommodate the skills needed within this new field. In some of the ‘inactive AI newsrooms’ individual journalists took the onus on themselves to learn and use the disruptive technologies and while the general attitudes towards AI were positive among journalists, the attitudes among management was generally considered poor. The study concludes for the benefits to be maximally leveraged, several of the bottlenecks in application must be addressed. These include the integration of ‘humans-in the loop’, journalistic principles, decolonial and local contextual perspectives in AI development and use. Such perspectives and synergies would need to be drawn from media ecosystems – including journalism education, research, policy, industry and developers.

The purpose of this study is to propose and test an extended theory of planned behavior model to explain the significance of social media influencers’ credibility, social media usage (SMU) and social media marketing while simultaneously examining females’ intentions to purchase cosmetics online.

An online questionnaire was used to collect data from 386 female consumers of cosmetics, and the data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with the help of SmartPLS version 4.

First, the results indicated that SMU, social media influencers’ credibility and social media marketing significantly and positively impact the theory of planned behavior components, namely, attitude, subjective norms (SNs) and perceived behavioral control (PBC). Second, results confirmed that attitude, SNs and PBC significantly and positively influenced female consumers’ online purchase intentions (OPIs).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to examine an integrated model that consisted of SMU, social media marketing and social media influencers along with the theory of planned behavior constructs in their proposed research model in the context of cosmetics in India. The study also enriched the body of knowledge about using the PLS-SEM approach to predict OPI for cosmetics.

The study investigates the influence of financial transparency on citizens' trust and revenue paying behaviour of citizens of local governments in sub-Saharan Africa. It relies on the theories of stewardship and public choice in explaining the relationship between financial transparency, trust and willingness to pay.

The study applied a Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) to survey data of 404 respondents selected from four Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies of Ghana to test the hypotheses of the study.

It establishes the fact that financial transparency positively influences trust of citizens in local government and their willingness to pay taxes and levies. The study also found that both financial transparency and trust are low in the local governments of Ghana.

The study emphasises the importance of financial transparency in improving trust and willingness to pay. Thus, local governments are encouraged to seek innovative ways to enhance the quality and access to financial information by the citizens.

While prior studies focus on the measurement and determinant of financial transparency, this study links financial transparency to revenue mobilisation in the local government of sub-Saharan Africa.

This research paper aims to explore the impact artisan cooperatives have upon women employed in Sub-Saharan Africa. Impacts were detailed using the theoretical framework of social capital theory to demonstrate the networks within artisan cooperatives that connect to greater opportunities for social and economic benefits.

A phenomenological approach was used for this study based upon the shared experiences of women who were leading artisan cooperatives in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study included semi-structured interviews over Zoom with Chief Entrepreneur Founders of artisan cooperatives located in Sub-Saharan Africa. Documents from the cooperatives were analyzed to triangulate the cooperatives’ current projects and efforts.

Three prevalent themes emerged: (1) key partnerships, (2) benefits of the cooperative and (3) change and growth among the women and communities. Empowerment was felt through both economic and social impacts upon the women.

This article captures the perspective of the Chief Entrepreneur Founders and their observations and experiences the women shared with them. Emic perspectives from the women who participate in the artisan cooperatives is the focus of future research.

These social enterprises serve as exemplary models for other cooperatives to provide dignified and sustainable work to impact the lives of women serving in these communities.

This study contributes research on social entrepreneurship within artisan cooperatives. It provides a baseline for further research on the artisan sector specifically for the sustainable development goals of gender equality, decent work and economic growth.

This paper aims to identify the unidimensionality and reliability of 84 factors that influence the performance of construction projects and develop a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model.

The study adopted a deductive research approach and started by identifying the positive factors that influence construction project performance. This was followed by the modification of the identified factors. After that, a questionnaire was developed out of the factors for data collection. Exploratory factor analysis was used to establish the factor structure of the positive factors, and this was verified using CFA afterwards. A model fit analysis was performed to determine the goodness of fit of the hypothesised model, followed by the development of the confirmatory model.

The study demonstrated substantial correlation in the data, sufficient unidimensionality and internal reliability. In addition, the estimated fit indices suggested that the postulated model adequately described the sample data.

The paper revealed that performance can be enhanced if stakeholders identify and leverage the positive factors influencing performance. The paper suggests that project stakeholders, particularly government, project owners, consultants and construction firms, can improve project performance by critically examining economic and financial systems (EFS), regulation and policy-making systems (RPS), effective management practices (EMP) and project implementation strategies (PIS).

The contribution of this paper to the present literature is identifying the positive factors and developing the confirmatory factor model. The model comprised 42 positive variables under four indicators: EMP, RPS, PIS and EFS.

The appropriation of artificial intelligence (AI) into everyday workplace practices is becoming pervasive. Some of the industries that have seen the improved appropriation of AI include the automotive industry, food chains and other retail businesses. The media industry in developed countries has also been appropriating AI into newsrooms ecologies. This development has left news media workers, especially in developing countries, questioning the viability of their jobs in the foreseeable future as machines take over and disrupt newsmaking and production processes. The unknowns that come with AI adoption have been met with both utopian and dystopian views in African newsrooms, especially in countries that understand less on how to deploy AI affordances. Premised on the technology acceptance model and the concept of technological appropriation and a qualitative methodology that used structured interviews with community media journalists from the Western Cape province of South Africa, this chapter examined journalists' perceptions of AI deployment in the community media space. The findings of the study show that community media journalists hold both utopian and dystopian views on the utility of AI in the community media space. While most journalists perceive AI as enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of the newsmaking process, there is a significant number of journalists who perceive AI as inimical to the legitimacy and credibility of the profession. Furthermore, AI is also seen as a threat to jobs within the journalism profession. These findings resonate with previous studies that have shown that journalists are divided on the perceived utility of AI in newsrooms.

Globally, consumer’s inclination towards functional foods had noticed due to their greater health consciousness coupled with enhanced health-care cost. The fact that probiotics could promote a healthier gut microbiome led projection of probiotic foods as functional foods and had emerged as an important dietary strategy for improved human health. It had established that ice cream was a better carrier for probiotics than fermented milked due to greater stability of probiotics in ice cream matrix. Global demand for ice cream boomed and probiotic ice cream could have been one of the most demanded functional foods. The purpose of this paper was to review the technological aspects and factors affecting probiotic viability and to standardize methodology to produce functional probiotic ice cream.

Attempt was made to search the literature (review and researched papers) to identify diverse factors affecting the probiotic viability and major technological challenge faced during formulation of probiotic ice cream. Keywords used for data searched included dairy-based functional foods, ice cream variants, probiotic ice cream, factors affecting probiotic viability and health benefits of probiotic ice cream.

Retention of probiotic viability at a level of >10⁶ cfu/ml is a prerequisite for functional probiotic ice creams. Functional probiotic ice cream could have been produced with the modification of basic mix and modulating technological parameters during processing and freezing. Functionality can be further enhanced with the inclusion of certain nutraceutical components such as prebiotics, antioxidant, phenolic compounds and dietary fibres. Based upon reviewed literature, suggested method for the manufacture of functional probiotic ice cream involved freezing of a probiotic ice cream mix obtained by blending 10% probiotic fermented milk with 90% non-fermented plain ice cream mix for higher probiotic viability. Probiotic ice cream with functional features, comparable with traditional ice cream in terms of technological and sensory properties could be produced and can crop up as a novel functional food.

Probiotic ice cream with functional features may attract food manufacturers to cater health-conscious consumers.