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Swaziland is one of the countries with the highest Human Immune-deficiency Virus (HIV) rates in the world. Consequently, the increased need for care and support for people living with Acquired Immune-deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), as well as orphaned and vulnerable children, is unprecedented. The response to combat the HIV epidemic has been evident in many areas as the country continues its fight against the HIV epidemic. However, efforts to provide care and support - including Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART), management of opportunistic infections, and community home-based care - have, so far, largely stemmed from the health sector. Housing care and other non-medical support is continuing to lag behind. Lack of proper housing is one of the deprivations suffered by orphaned children and people living with AIDS, which predisposes them to attacks by opportunistic infections and other vulnerabilities and disrupts the continuum of care, whilst at times denying occupants the required privacy.

This paper focuses on creating an understanding of why housing care and support for HIV and AIDS affected is lagging behind in Swaziland. It suggests cultural, economic, political and policy issues as the underlying reasons for this, and, therefore, concludes that there is need for bold policy reforms in these areas. In order to create a proper framework for such reforms, the paper reviews the following:

1. The national housing policy's implications on the care and support for people living with HIV and AIDS and the orphaned and vulnerable children; and

2. The current human settlements related responses to HIV and AIDS in Swaziland's rural, peri-urban and urban areas.

In this context, urban development planning paradigms and the extent to which HIV and AIDS is being integrated into the development plans are discussed.

Libraries and Information Services (LIS) are being transformed by technology; consequently, LIS are having to adapt to meet their users’ changing needs and growing expectations. Included among the resource‐sharing initiatives conceived by libraries in Swaziland is the creation of a computerised network or consortium of all LIS. Reports on the preliminary investigations and formulations carried out to assess the feasibility or viability of such a network. Evaluates the existing resources and facilities, affirms and confirms the perceived need for resource sharing and library networking, establishes present obstacles for library cooperation, and proposes a scheme or framework within which the network can be achieved for optimum use.

Aims to shed some light on the modalities and the need for human resources planning in Swaziland libraries. Systematic forecasts of the libraries′ future demand for, and supply of labour should be meticulously undertaken so that Swaziland libraries can put themselves in a better position to plan for the recruitment, selection, training, and career paths of staff. Swaziland′s lack of trained personnel with sufficient knowledge to handle the intricacies of automation has necessitated the external recruitment of expatriate staff, with serious implications for the budget. Swaziland assumed the chairmanship of the SADC Regional Training Council (RTC) which now controls the affairs of the Human Resources Development Sector. One of the projects of this sector has been to create a Regional Human Resource Information System (RHRIS). This project has provided guiding principles to those in the region whose responsibility is human resources planning and development. It is essential that SWALA should develop a human resources database for the library profession through its Sub‐Committee for Human Resources. The development of a human resources audit in Swaziland libraries will help to determine what skills, knowledge, and abilities are required for particular vacancies or jobs. The idea is to collect enough information which will enable library managers to match their employees to the available jobs.

The aim of this paper is to determine corporate social reporting practices and to examine the type and extent of such reporting in the corporate reports of manufacturing companies in Swaziland over a period of two years from 2007 to 2008. This paper also aims to examine the various areas of social practices in which companies are involved.

The study uses questionnaires and corporate reports to gather information from 30 selected manufacturing companies. This research uses content analysis of corporate reports as a method to measure the extent and nature of corporate social reporting according to the number of words disclosed over the two‐year period.

Findings show that the concept of corporate social responsibility is fairly new in Swaziland and very few companies disclose corporate social responsibility information in corporate reports. However, the study finds that there is a trend of increasing corporate social responsibility information disclosures among the companies from 2007 to 2008.

The increasing trend of corporate social responsibility information disclosures indicates a positive step towards the further development of corporate social responsibility information reporting practice in Swaziland as well as other developing African countries.

The study makes an important contribution to the knowledge of corporate social responsibility in Swaziland. In addition, it also elaborates the perspective for a greater understanding of the social obligations that corporate entities owe to their stakeholders and society in general.

The purpose of this papers is to highlight the applicability of integrated simulation models for national development planning to different issues and contexts. Specifically, the authors describe one such model, the Millennium Institute’s T21 model, which is used to support planning in various countries, and explore in detail the case of Swaziland to demonstrate the model’s usefulness at different levels in the planning process.

Integrated sustainable development planning models using the system dynamics (SD) modeling method have been designed to help overcome these obstacles and support decision-makers in the assessment of alternative policies. Such models are laboratory replicas of the critical mechanisms driving development in a country while being grounded in the historical data available. They can be used to perform simulation-based policy experiments that are otherwise impossible in the real world.

The proposed approach has facilitated the reporting on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as well as on the cross-sector long-term ex ante evaluation of the country’s “Economic Recovery Strategy” and a proposed “Fiscal Adjustment” policy. These assessments provided essential information for improving the quality of the decisions made. Such information cannot be obtained by the application of purely economic models or sectoral tools, that are not including the fundamental feedback structures that shape development in the long run and determine its sustainability.

The new generation of global long-term Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) covers a far broader range of issues and indicators than the MDGs. The T21-Swaziland model only offers a limited subset of such issues, and future research will focus on achievements and challenges in expanding its scope to encompass the SDGs.

The T21 model has become one of the fundamental planning instruments of the country, and it has been used to evaluate national planning documents and other suggested strategies with respect to whether they are sufficient for reaching the long-term goals. Such information is then used as a basis for revision of development plans and adoption or rejection of suggested policy packages.

The MDGs (and their expanded follow-up, the SDGs) have been important step toward better governance, as they quantify key indicators of development and thereby allow for an evaluation of the degree to which these quantified aspirations are actually achieved. In addition to such hind-sight evaluations, ex ante evaluations are equally important for improvement of the quality of the decisions made. The authors propose and test a tool to support such type of evaluation, supporting integrated planning and model-based governance.

This paper constitutes a major attempt at examining financial flows within the educational system in Swaziland as well as in computing the households, relative to public contribution to unit costs in education. It found that financial resources to the education system derive from the traditional sources, that is, government, local communities and households, non‐governmental organizations, private enterprises and corporations as well as foreign aid. While the government contributes about 83 per cent of the total fund in the tertiary level, the household and families contribution is higher at the primary, secondary and high school levels. This is an indication of the fact that higher education is heavily subsidized by the government at the expense of basic education, bringing about inequality of educational opportunities within the education system. To redress the imbalance in the funding mechanism, cost‐sharing or cost recovery measures are being proposed at the higher education level.

The results of a survey carried out at eight of the 14 public libraries in Swaziland regarding the availability of HIV/AIDS information resources indicate that: limited and non‐current information on various subjects appealing to a select cross‐section of library users is available; the information resources are lacking in appropriateness; titles are duplicated, limiting resource‐sharing between regions; access is restricted and usage levels are low. It is recommended that libraries in Swaziland should contribute to the effectiveness of the campaign against HIV/AIDS by: collaborating with existing partnerships to influence the production, distribution and access to appropriate materials; embarking on high profile HIV/AIDS information exhibitions at public fora; extending information access to remote communities; and exploiting e‐mail facilities to facilitate timely access to, and solicit innovative ideas on, selective dissemination of HIV/AIDS information.

Public policy supported by effective institutions is one of the key strategies for promoting entrepreneurial activities. However, the problem is that an enabling environment that supports entrepreneurship is often lacking in several African countries. The aim of this article is to deepen our understanding of the mix of policy and institutional factors which create an enabling environment for enterprise growth in Swaziland.

Primary data are sourced from 200 enterprises across Swaziland's main regions and hypotheses are statistically tested using correlational and regression analyses.

Results show that a mix of different institutional and state support factors such as access to markets, education and training, access to finance, contract enforcement, regulations and business support programmes all have a significant and positive impact on enterprise growth.

Study implications relate to the need for specific and targeted policy interventions required to foster an enabling environment in order to stimulate enterprise growth in Swaziland.

Empirical investigations on enterprise growth in under-researched developing market contexts, such as Swaziland, are important since in many developing and emerging markets small enterprises are at the epicentre of the economy Moreover, this study adds to the stream of research highlighting that the application of institutional theory provides a detailed theoretical understanding of the actors and the process by which enterprise policy is formulated.

This study aims to investigate perception of ethical and moral conduct in the public sector in Swaziland, specifically, the relationship among: money ethic, attitude towards business ethics, corruption perception, turnover intention, job performance, job satisfaction, and the demographic profile of respondents.

The study was a survey using self‐administered questionnaires. Using stratified sampling technique in selected organisations, usable data were collected from 83 public sector employees in Swaziland.

Results indicated significant relationship among money ethic, attitude towards business ethics, turnover intention and job performance. The importance of money as a motivator was also demonstrated. Respondents hold that civil servants' involvement in corruption is high and that bribery and corruption is widespread in Swaziland.

The sample size was small and hence limits generalisation of findings, but provides preliminary information for a larger study. The need to enrich future studies with in‐depth follow‐up interviews was noted.

The respondents' perception of widespread corruption calls for a reinvigoration of government anti‐graft efforts and the need to promote ethical consciousness in the country.

This paper has demonstrated the importance of ethical awareness, the importance of money as a motivator and the state of corruption in another cultural setting – Swaziland.

Using a recently developed instrument, the environmental characteristics and constraints of Canadian public schools and those of Swaziland were captured in respective profiles for detailed comparison. Problems unique to the school in each cultural setting were identified and the adaptation processes each system had undergone were explored.