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This study aims to explore network typology and the role of networks in immigrant entrepreneurs’ (IEs) business operations in South Africa (SA).

In-depth interviews were carried out with 25 IEs operating their business ventures in SA, selected via the purposive sampling method.

The findings indicated that IEs in SA use social networks most often, with minimal use of international business networks. In addition, the findings showed that IE networks’ key roles include providing them with access to referrals and resource provision. However, whilst resource provision emerged as a significant role, finance appeared as the main resource provided by networks.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this original paper provided theoretical and empirical contributions to research on network typology and its role for IEs. Thus, the study extended the current literature on the intersection of IEs and their networking behaviours.

This paper presents the findings of assessing the strategies required for improved work-life balance (WLB) of construction workers in Eswatini. This was done to improve the work-life relationship of construction workers and, in turn, improve the service delivery of the construction industry in the country.

The study adopted a quantitative research approach using a questionnaire administered to construction professionals in the country. The data gathered were analysed using frequency, percentage, Mann–Whitney U test, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The findings revealed that the level of implementation of WLB initiatives in the Eswatini construction industry is still low. Following the attaining of several model fitness, the study found that the key strategies needed for effective WLB can be classified into four significant components, namely: (1) leave, (2) health and wellness, (3) work flexibility, and; (4) days off/shared work.

The findings offer valuable benefits to construction participants as the adoption of the identified critical strategies can lead to the fulfilment of WLB of the construction workforce and by extension, the construction industry can benefit from better job performance.

This study is the first to assess the strategies needed for improved WLB of construction workers in Eswatini. Furthermore, the study offers a theoretical platform for future discourse on WLB in Eswatini, a country that has not gained significant attention in past WLB literature.

This paper aims to emphasize the need for a strategic approach to employee retention beyond financial benefits. This is directly proportional to employee retention. Bringing out the retention measures preferred by employees, depicting the relationship of demographic profile with employee retention tendency and exploring implications giving importance to beyond paycheque factors are the objectives of the study.

This study uses applied qualitative approach with a realistic view to collect the details of retention measures and practices from purposively selected 36 health-care experts by the conduct of interview using a one-to-one discussion with written notes. With quantitative approach, opinion survey was administered to receive the perceived opinion of randomly selected 350 health-care employees on paycheque and on beyond paycheque factors boosting their intention to stay. Bhattacharya and Ramachandran’s health-care study framework on retention was applied for the identification of the factors.

Both paycheque and beyond paycheque benefits are important for retention. Most respondents prefer beyond paycheque factors practiced at sampled hospital. Age, marital status and residence of employees are significantly associated with retention. The strategic initiatives of the sampled hospital to retention concerning motivational needs of employees in the workplace are thank you board, camp head, ad act camp, success corner and so forth.

Addressing health-care work and relationship-related issues in terms of employee retention giving importance to beyond paycheque benefits – remedy for compassion fatigue health-care employees face in routine works, meeting promises made by management regarding paycheque or beyond paycheque benefits, employees participative in decisions in medical, clinical and in functional areas, reducing workload and role stress by the conduct of role analysis.

Many research studies are emphasizing the contribution of financial benefits to employee retention. Only a few studies have been carried out exploring and emphasizing the importance of beyond financial benefits motivating employee retention. This is the study of evidence from a hospital that gives strategic importance to beyond paycheque elements as well as paycheque elements.

Against a milieu of fragmented research that documents indigenous practices related to food security, and the heterogeneous settings from which the studies have been conducted, this study aims to synthesize the evidence of indigenous knowledge-food security nexus to strengthen the call for the revitalization of indigenous knowledge (IK) as part of the mechanisms to manage food security challenges being aggravated by climate change.

Drawing on insights from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), this study reviews 122 articles accessed from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, which covered indigenous methods used for producing, gathering, processing, preserving and storing diverse food sources that indigenous people deploy in securing their food systems.

The surge in attention to focus on IK-food security nexus tends to be influenced by the growing acknowledgement of climate change impacts on food systems. Essentially, the IK-based practices adopted address all the four food security pillars that are specified by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) as availability, accessibility, utilization and stability. The main motivation behind the continued use of IK-based ways relates largely to the interest to be food secure against climatic shocks and partly to the desire to maintain people’s food cultures and food sovereignty.

This study deploys the food security pillars provided by the FAO (2012) to demonstrate that IK-based ways of food management are capable of addressing all the four food security dimensions, a critical observation toward revitalizing IK in managing growing food security challenges that are intensified by climate change in SSA.

This study aims to find out how the e-records management subject has been researched and tackled by researchers in the Eastern and Southern African Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA).

This research paper applied a bibliometric survey, where a quantitative survey of the literature pertaining to the study of e-records management in the ESARBICA region, covering the period from 2000 to 2016, was conducted applying bibliometric methods. The survey aimed at providing descriptive data that cast a spotlight on the features and development of the e-records management base literature in the ESARBICA region.

The research data display a lamentable outlook in the contribution to the electronic records management body of knowledge from the ESARBICA region. Few research articles from professionals in the records and archives management are being published. These figures call for increased investments in electronic records management research by institutions in ESARBICA, as management of electronic content has become the centre of political and socio-economic development. Follow-up studies need to be done to counter limitations placed on this research paper. The findings show that there is under production of research publications in the ESARBICA region. The region only contributed 2 per cent of the total world output in the period under review and in the study of electronic records management from journals indexed by Scopus.

A bibliometric study places researchers at the mercy of analysing incomplete information due to limitations of resources. The variance in use of terminology (key words) by authors in published research articles may entail some being left out in an analysis of articles the same subject matter. As much as due diligence was placed on using Boolean search methods to counter such limitations they are unavoidable. An interpretation of bibliometric or citation analysis research is subjective as some analysts may label results incomplete or unreliable; hence, this paper finds itself in the same predicament. Inability to access the Thompson Reuters Web of Science database left the authors with Scopus as the only option, as Google Scholar was overlooked due to difficulties of having to rely on third-party software for analysing its indexed content that are mostly inaccurate and or ambiguous.

The findings of this study help uncover areas in e-records management, which have been researched over the years, and identify the prominent e-records management researchers in the ESARBICA region.

A number of bibliometric studies have been conducted; however, none has been conducted to establish e-records management research trends in the ESRABICA region.

This paper aims to provide an analysis of gender strategies in the planning, programmes towards the implementation of Africa’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). It involved the identification and disaggregation of climate risks on women key climate affected sectors (water, energy, agriculture, health, energy).

This involves review of vast scholarly and academic research, to establishment of linkages and interlinkages between the risks. A diagnostic analysis was done on the NDCs to understand the orientation of gender considerations in the NDCs of African countries, and then an assessment on emerging opportunities and empowerment of women to address climate change was carried out as an un-detachable component of gender considerations.

Poverty, cultural barriers and inequality, climatic risks such as floods, occurrence of infectious diseases and water scarcity create life threatening situations for women as well as their livelihood Analysis on the NDCs (and INDCs) of all African countries show that over 85% of actions reference gender. At the regional level West Africa has the highest gender actions in their NDCs (41%), East Africa 25%, Southern Africa 15%, Central Africa 8% and North Africa 6%. The coping responses of women, their knowledge about the environment and the environmental services they offer, provide great opportunities for them in the climate change scenario which is seldom spoken about. Empowerment of women by providing access to Information, education, training; sensitization on various facets of climate change; the risks, consequences, possible sustainable solutions (Adaptation and mitigation) and their basic rights especially with regards to land and ownership is necessary, and can help reduce the climatic risks they face.

The limitation of this study was time constraint as the research was done during my fellowship at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa which was a short period in relation to the fact that the authors were assigned to other duties.

Though most African countries are making an effort towards gender integration in their NDCs, they need to carry out systematic gender analysis; collecting and using sex-disaggregated data; establishing gender-sensitive benchmarks and indicators; and developing practical tools to support increased attention to gender perspectives.

Climate change is a serious threat to humanity and views from mostly those affected indicates that there is still a big disconnect between the ambitious agendas set by various stakeholders involved (International organizations, governments and regional organizations), and the real grassroots initiatives, actions and programs being implemented in the ground. There is also inarguably increasing evidence that climate change is amplifying gender inequality, the vulnerability of women and children; consequently, a serious barrier to the achievement of the Paris Agreement, UN 2030 Sustainable development goals, the 2063 Africa Union Agenda.

Though there exist many research papers on climate and gender and also on NDCs, creating a link between gender risks and climate policies, strategies and programs gives the issue of gender and climate change “high importance”. An integrated approach on identifying the risks makes policies coherent.

This paper examines the influence Japan’s participation in the TPP negotiations will have on the course of subsequent East Asian economic integration, and mainly from the perspective of the three Northeast Asian countries of Japan, China and the ROK. In the first half, as a premise thereto, we first bring together the development of the FTA policies of China, the ROK and Japan, and then the connections with East Asian economic integration.

In schools, one form of student participation is through the school prefects. Paucity of information is available on the leadership skills needed by high school prefects in Eswatini. Therefore, this study sought to find out the leadership skills needed by prefects in the Manzini region of Eswatini. The design of the study was descriptive correlational, targeting prefects from secondary schools in the Manzini region in Eswatini. One hundred prefects from 10 secondary schools were randomly sampled. A self-administered questionnaire validated by three lecturers from the Department of Agricultural Education and Extension, University of Eswatini and one teacher from Ngwane High School was used for data collection. The inter-item reliability coefficient established using Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.79. Findings revealed that the leadership skills needed by prefects were: respecting other learners; ability to motivate other learners; ability to solve problems; responding to learners’ concerns; ability to manage resources, among others. The study concluded that prefects should be afforded leadership skills in interpersonal relationships, management of people, problem solving, resource management, counselling and motivational skills. Therefore, the study recommended that the school prefects should be empowered in these needed leadership skills.

The relationship between economic growth performance and achieving inclusive growth, especially concerning poverty rate, is a subject of continuous argument in economic literature. Although some argue that this relationship is deterministic, i.e. achieving economic growth will definitely reduce poverty and enhance inclusive growth, others believe that the relationship between growth and poverty is conditional, depends mainly on the status of income distribution in this country, i.e. if the growth is combined with a significant improve in distribution then it will reduce poverty.

Africa is a clear example of the nexus between economic growth and poverty reduction. Although many African countries manage to achieve relatively high growth rates, hit two digits in some cases, during the last decades, poverty still widely spread in those countries. Of the 30 poorest countries in the world, 24 are African countries. And about 50% of African people still live under the poverty line. Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), which could be considered as one of the fastest growing regions in Africa, is not an exception; although the region achieves relatively high growth rates, poverty and inequality are still among the region’s main development challenges.

This paper found that the economic growth rate achieved in COMESA countries could not be considered as inclusive growth as it does not combine with adequate enhancement in inclusiveness indicators. And that the structural characteristics of those countries economy and its inelasticity are the main reasons behind this inefficiency.

In this context, this paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of economic growth achieved in COMESA countries in achieving inclusive growth and to identify the main factors affecting this relationship by using two steps data envelopment analysis. Although this method is originally developed to evaluate the relative economic efficiencies, the main contribution of this paper is the adaptation of data envelopment analysis to evaluate the efficiency of economic growth achieved in COMESA countries in enhancing inclusive growth dimensions such as poverty rate, inequality, unemployment, education, health, and then to identify in its second step the main indicators that could be used to explain the variation in efficiency scores.

This study aims to evaluate faculty research repositories used in higher education institutions, their different levels and functions with regard to research information management. This is revealed through the selected studies reviewed.

A systematic literature search of journal article studies on research repositories in higher education institutions was carried out on several databases, namely, Ebscohost, Emerald Insight, Science Direct, Sage, Google Scholar, SA e-Publications and citation databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. The systematic review was conducted in accordance with the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines. The time frame for the analysis was 2015 to 2021.

The findings are presented on the motives for developing faculty research repositories the services provided and benefits derived from faculty research repositories and what is the utilization of faculty research repositories.

The results show that the development of research repositories at the faculty level enhances sharing, analysis, evaluation and preservation of scholarly research produced.