Search Results (1,000)

Urban road networks in Sub-Saharan Africa diverge from the sensor-rich, lane-disciplined environments conventional models assume. This paper establishes an empirical baseline of network efficiency and velocity decay along the 8.0 km Mile 17 to Governor’s Roundabout corridor in Buea, Cameroon, marked by a 25 m/km inbound gradient, unsignalized intersections, and a taxi share of 59.55% inbound and 65.27% outbound. Fifteen-minute PCU counts were recorded at three points across three peak windows over three consecutive weekdays (1–3 April 2026), yielding 18 h of counts and 36 floating-car GPS runs. Volume-to-capacity ratios (v/c), Peak Hour Factors, and space-mean speeds were derived for both directions, with SD, coefficient of variation, and 95% confidence intervals computed to quantify sampling uncertainty. Results show near over-saturation (v/c: 0.98–1.06) at Bonduma, particularly during the afternoon outbound window. However, the 95% confidence intervals span v/c = 1.00, indicating significant uncertainty in Level of Service classifications. Mean Travel Time Ratios ranged from 1.10 to 2.04. At Bonduma in the evening, an elevated Informal Transport Disruption Factor (ITDF = 0.96) co-occurred with only moderate volume (v/c = 0.87), consistent with, though not proof of, informal-transport-related delay. Finally, the paper introduces two new indicators, the Directional Flow Asymmetry Index (DFAI) and Corridor Velocity Decay Rate (CVDR), to quantify directional imbalances that standard v/c analysis misses. Alongside the ITDF, these metrics serve as empirical calibration inputs for a future reinforcement learning traffic control framework (BACATC). Because no AI controller was built or evaluated in this study, the findings establish a quantified field baseline rather than a demonstration of AI-based control. Full article

Rainfall-induced landslides pose a significant threat to communities and infrastructure in the eThekwini Metropolitan Region, South Africa. This paper presents a geotechnical–hydrogeological property zonation and parameterisation framework developed to support future physically based slope stability modelling. Using a weighted sum analysis in a GIS environment, the landscape was subdivided into distinct property zones by integrating lithology, slope gradient, and landform, with weights derived from a fully reproducible renormalisation of a previously published regional frequency ratio (FR) susceptibility model. This procedure provided the foundation for assigning zone-specific parameters, including effective shear strength parameters (c′ and ϕ′) and saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat), derived from laboratory testing, borehole pump testing analysis, and empirical relationships. The approach delineated four geotechnical–hydrogeological zones. A correlation of these zones against an inventory of 819 landslides revealed that over 82% of failures have occurred within Zones 2 and 3. While the hydrogeological conditions of these two susceptible zones range from intermediate to low permeability (K_sat = 10⁻⁵ to 10⁻⁸ m/s), which promotes transient pore pressure build-up, their high failure frequency corresponds closely with shared low shear strength (c′ = 5 kPa) and comparatively low effective friction angle (ϕ′ = 27.5–30°). This identifies shear strength as an important predisposing control on instability, relative to the inherently more stable Zones 1 and 4 (c′ = 10–15 kPa, ϕ′ = 30–35°). Consequently, this zonation and parameterisation approach advances landslide hazard assessment by providing a reproducible, model-ready dataset intended for future transient rainfall-infiltration simulations (e.g., TRIGRS), laying the groundwork for physically based early-warning systems, and supporting risk-informed urban development. Full article

An in-depth understanding of the factors that enhance carbon footprints is a plausible pathway to enthrone environmental sustainability. Currently, the implications of energy and mineral depletion for carbon footprints in South Africa and Nigeria have received minimal empirical attention. The few available studies are non-exhaustive, often limiting broad-based policy refinements. With datasets spanning more than five decades (1971–2022), the novel Fourier Bootstrap Autoregressive Distributed Lag estimator was selected to account for structural breaks and nonlinearities. The empirical findings reveal divergent environmental pathways: South Africa’s carbon footprint (0.666% increase) is more related to energy depletion, reflecting coal-dominated electricity generation. Mineral depletion emerges as the primary culprit in Nigeria (10.856% increase), attributable to unregulated mining activities, including gas flaring and deforestation. Both countries face common challenges from urbanization (0.094% and 0.087% increases) and economic growth (0.107% and 0.046% increases). Trade openness shows insignificant effects. Short-run carbon footprint reductions from resource depletion improvements do not persist, underscoring the need for policy consistency. Policy effectiveness analysis identifies coal phase-out (0.9) and carbon pricing (0.8) as South Africa’s highest-return interventions. Mining regulation (0.9), green mining (0.9), and artisanal formalization (0.9) emerge as Nigeria’s priorities. The integration frameworks outperform siloed approaches. This implies South Africa may capture higher returns from policy coherence, while Nigeria may depend more on enforcement capacity. These findings provide evidence-based guidance for context-specific environmental policy design in resource-dependent economies. Full article

Blockchain-based electronic voting has yet to reach the electoral environments that could benefit from it most. Existing systems are designed for well-connected, grid-powered urban settings and fail precisely where digital voting could widen participation the most; this gap motivates a framework engineered from the ground up for low-infrastructure conditions rather than one adapted to them. Across much of Africa, four deployment barriers stand in the way: intermittent connectivity that excludes an estimated 43% of the population, identity documents that remain valid for up to ten years and degrade conventional face recognition from 99% to below 80%, power demands of 200–250 W that rule out battery-powered operation, and cryptographic designs locked to a single algorithm regardless of operating context. This paper presents AdaptVote, a five-layer framework built on the premise that these barriers must be removed jointly rather than in isolation. At its core, the AI-FOLM algorithm anchors INT8-quantised ArcFace embeddings to age-stable craniofacial ratios on a Xilinx Zynq-7020 FPGA, reaching a 96.7% True Accept Rate at 0.1% False Accept Rate over 6–10 year age gaps—2.2 percentage points beyond the state of the art. A nullifier-based protocol allows ballots to be cast entirely offline with Merkle-tree integrity, an adaptive ECDSA/EdDSA/BLS layer cuts Ethereum settlement costs by 60–86%, and the complete polling station runs at 4.2 W peak power and 28 Wh per 12 h session, a 99.3% energy reduction over GPU baselines. A twelve-hour field deployment with 300 voters at Mohammed First University, Nador, Morocco, conducted under 35% network availability, recorded a 95.7% first-attempt authentication rate (95% CI: 92.7–97.5%), 99.2% system uptime, and a 53.3% reduction in average voting time relative to paper ballots ($p<0.001$). Together, these results suggest that trustworthy electronic voting can be engineered for, rather than merely adapted to, low-infrastructure electoral settings. Full article

Sustainable development depends on whether emerging economies can convert foreign direct investment (FDI) into durable, knowledge-based capabilities rather than transient, low-skill employment. This paper asks how FDI catalyzes sustainable human-capital formation and whether multinational enterprises (MNEs) can help build the institutions that underpin a knowledge-economy transition. Using a single-equation instrumental-variables (2SLS) model for human-capital formation, with secondary-school enrolment as the dependent variable over 46 annual observations for Morocco (1975–2020), we find a positive and statistically significant FDI effect (β = 0.0029 per million USD of FDI inflow, p = 0.006), robust in sign and significance across OLS, 2SLS, and Dynamic OLS specifications. The result is consistent with a skill-demand channel through which knowledge-intensive MNEs are associated with higher private and social returns to education and with increased targeted public and private training investment. Sectoral evidence from Morocco’s aerospace and automotive clusters shows enrolment in vocationally oriented program growing 312% between 2005 and 2022, concentrated in curricula co-designed with foreign investors. Communications infrastructure carries a positive and significant coefficient across all four estimators but loses significance once urbanization is added as a control, so we do not treat it as a confirmed independent channel, while public education expenditure carries a negative and significant coefficient that is not stable in sign under Fully Modified OLS, indicating that its independent contribution is not well identified with the present instrument set. We interpret these findings through a sustainability lens, linking the mechanism to Sustainable Development Goals 4 (quality education), 8 (decent work and growth) and 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure), and we specify three boundary conditions—skill specificity, investor commitment, and state coordination capacity—and argue that the mechanism should be expected to transfer to other developing economies, including in the MENA region and sub-Saharan Africa, only where these conditions co-occur, rather than as a general claim. The study advances the literature on MNE-led institutional co-creation and offers policy guidance for designing FDI strategies that support inclusive, sustainable knowledge-economy development across the MENA region and sub-Saharan Africa. Full article

This study examines the association between financial development and selected telecommunications infrastructure indicators in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), focusing on mobile cellular subscriptions (MBS) and fixed telephone subscriptions (FTS). It also examines whether urbanization moderates these associations and explores the relationships of trade openness, final consumption expenditure, and economic growth with telecommunications infrastructure. The study is based on an unbalanced panel of 44 SSA countries with data for the period 1981–2021 and includes two-way fixed effects (TWFE) models as the baseline specification, Panel Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) to estimate long-run associations within the cointegrating framework, and TWFE models with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors as a robustness procedure. The results indicate that financial development is positively and significantly associated with both FTS and MBS across the main specifications, with a substantially stronger association for MBS. These results validate the hypotheses that financial development has a positive relationship with the fixed and mobile telecommunications infrastructure. The moderation analysis also shows that financial development is positively associated with MBS when the level of urbanization increases, while such a positive moderating relationship is not statistically significant for FTS. Trade openness is generally positively associated with telecommunications infrastructure, while the associations of final consumption expenditure and economic growth vary across the MBS and FTS specifications. Overall, the findings suggest that the association between financial development and telecommunications infrastructure is technology-specific and varies with the level of urbanization. Robustness tests with the balanced panel sample and the post-1990s subsample generally give similar results, but caution should be taken in comparing results across specifications because of the differences in samples. The findings provide evidence relevant to the telecommunications infrastructure dimension of the broader Sustainable Development Goal 9 agenda, but they should not be inferred as evidence of comprehensive SDG 9 progress or causal effects. Future studies should use more comprehensive digital infrastructure indicators, disaggregated data, and better identification strategies to mitigate potential reverse causality and other forms of endogeneity. Full article

This study examines the complex dynamics of water scarcity and infrastructure challenges in eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Despite its coastal location, the municipality faces persistent water shortages driven by rapid population growth, urbanization, climate change risks, aging and deteriorating infrastructure, and service delivery constraints. Communities including KwaXimba, Phoenix, Inanda, and Tongaat experience inconsistent access to clean water. The study aimed to identify root causes of scarcity, assess the effectiveness of existing water infrastructure, and propose sustainable, community-informed strategies to improve water resilience and equitable access. A qualitative research design was adopted to capture lived experiences and perceptions of water access across seven wards (1, 3, 52, 54, 56, 57, and 61), representing approximately 357,492 residents. Focus group discussions involved five randomly selected participants per ward, identified through councilor databases. Structured discussions were recorded for accuracy. Data were transcribed and analyzed using NVivo through systematic coding, thematic analysis, and organization of data into structured project folders aligned with research objectives. The analysis revealed recurring themes related to infrastructure decay, climate vulnerability, rapid urban expansion, and service delivery inefficiencies, highlighting significant barriers to reliable water access and community well-being. Findings provide evidence-based insights to guide policymakers, planners, and water authorities in strengthening infrastructure planning, climate resilience, and sustainable water governance. Full article

This paper examines the macro–micro impact of drought in South Africa using a computable general equilibrium model calibrated to the structure of the South African economy. Drought is represented as a severe supply-side shock: a 50% decline in total factor productivity in agriculture, forestry and fishing. The analysis traces how this shock is transmitted from agricultural production to prices, trade, employment, household income, consumption and welfare. The results show that agricultural output falls by 19.5%, agricultural prices rise by 43.3%, and agricultural imports increase by 84.8% as the economy shifts towards external supply. These sectoral effects generate wider macroeconomic losses, including a 1.0% decline in real GDP, a 1.7% increase in unemployment, a 1.2% fall in household income and a 1.5% reduction in household consumption. Welfare declines for both rural and urban households, but rural households experience larger losses because of their stronger dependence on agriculture, farm income, livestock assets and food markets. The findings show that drought is not only an agricultural or hydrological event; it is an economy-wide and distributional shock transmitted through production, price, trade and labour-market channels. Although imports help to cushion domestic scarcity, they do not fully offset higher prices or welfare losses. Policy responses should therefore combine drought-resilient agricultural investment, water-resource resilience, targeted social protection, food-supply stabilisation and rural livelihood diversification. Full article

Against the backdrop of accelerating globalization and the reconfiguration of ecological security patterns, border regions—serving as critical carriers of national spatial governance—exhibit pronounced spatial heterogeneity and stage-dependent characteristics in land use evolution that warrant systematic investigation. This study focuses on global border zones to reveal the trends and evolutionary pathways of land use change, thereby providing a scientific basis for border spatial governance. Using the period of 1992–2020, four phases of global land cover data from the European Space Agency (ESA) were employed. Buffer zones of 50 km, 100 km, and 150 km were established along global national boundaries, and the study period was divided into three decadal stages. Border types were classified into terrestrial borders, coastal borders, and island borders. An integrated indicator system was constructed, including the Single Land Use Dynamic Degree (SLUDD), Integrated Land Use Dynamic Degree (ILUDD), and Weighted Composite Transition Intensity. A multi-scale nested analytical framework coupled with transition matrices was applied to assess land use evolution across global, continental, and bilateral national scales. The results indicate the following: (1) Distinct evolutionary pathways exist among border types. Terrestrial borders exhibit a combination of development and ecological restoration, with staged peaks in urban expansion; coastal borders are dominated by a unidirectional conversion from cropland to built-up land; and island borders demonstrate concurrent agricultural decline, ecological recovery, and built-up expansion. (2) From 1992 to 2020, global border land use underwent a transition from high-intensity transformations to low-intensity steady adjustments. Major changes were centered on the expansion of production space, outward diffusion of built-up areas, and vegetation restructuring. High-intensity changes were concentrated near boundary zones and attenuated significantly with increasing buffer distance. (3) At the continental scale, stable hierarchical patterns emerge in terms of change intensity, spatial gradients, and transition structures. Borders in Eurasia and North America show higher activity, Africa exhibits widespread diffusion, and South America and Oceania are characterized by forest boundary reshaping and vegetation adjustments, respectively. (4) Typical border regions can be categorized into three evolutionary types: forest ecological frontiers, agricultural expansion zones, and land–sea composite corridors. Regional trajectories vary significantly, with Southeast Asia transitioning rapidly toward stabilization, West Africa retaining periodic high-intensity disturbances, and South America remaining in a low-intensity adjustment state. This study clarifies the evolutionary patterns and boundary effect ranges of global border land use, providing theoretical support and empirical references for resource allocation and ecological regulation in border regions. It also lays the groundwork for refining border typologies, quantifying driving mechanisms, and developing differentiated cross-border governance strategies. Full article

Extreme heat events are associated with increased morbidity and mortality, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. However, evidence from disadvantaged urban settings in Africa remains scarce. This systematic review aimed to synthesize existing research on the health impacts of extreme heat in Africa’s disadvantaged urban communities. A systematic literature search was conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines across eleven databases (PubMed, Cochrane, VHL, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, Research4Life, DOAJ, Emerald, Taylor & Francis, Annual Reviews, and IRIS), carried out over two search periods (December 2023–March 2024 and December 2024–February 2025). Eligible studies were published between 2010 and 2024 in English, French, or Portuguese, and examined direct or indirect heat-health effects in disadvantaged urban settings. Screening of 96,608 titles and 59 abstracts yielded 21 eligible studies. Geographically, the evidence was concentrated in South Africa (n = 7), Kenya (n = 6), and Tanzania (n = 4), with single studies from Cameroon, Egypt, Nigeria, and Ghana. Heat-related morbidity was examined in 17 studies and mortality in four. Commonly reported conditions included dehydration, heat exhaustion, skin rashes, heatstroke, and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Extreme heat was further associated with mortality from non-communicable diseases, pneumonia, and acute respiratory infections. Children, older adults, and the most economically deprived communities exhibited heightened vulnerability, driven by adverse socioeconomic and environmental conditions. The available evidence confirms substantial heat-health impacts on disadvantaged urban populations across Africa, while revealing a notable research gap in French- and Portuguese-language literature. These findings underscore the urgent need for expanded, geographically and linguistically diverse research to inform climate adaptation strategies and health protection policies. Full article

Built cultural heritage in East Africa is often interpreted and taught through monument-based, stylistic, or externally derived frameworks that insufficiently account for the region’s overlapping environmental, cultural, historical, and socio-spatial processes. Responding to this theoretical and pedagogical gap, this article develops a regionally grounded theoretical model of East African built heritage as a layered system, with particular attention to Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, interpretive approach, combining a critical literature review, analysis of selected built heritage layers, and expert perspectives from East African and European/international respondents. The findings show that East African built heritage is shaped by five interrelated layers: environmental foundations, indigenous and vernacular systems, Swahili/coastal Indian Ocean urbanism, colonial reconfiguration, and postcolonial/contemporary transformation. These layers do not form a linear historical sequence; rather, they overlap, interact, are disrupted, and are reinterpreted through material practices, spatial transformation, memory, environmental knowledge, and everyday use. The article argues that East African built heritage is defined by a layered system that is hybrid, fragile, unevenly recognized, partly intangible, and negotiated. It concludes that architectural education must move beyond object-based conservation knowledge transfer toward competency building in historical interpretation, environmental understanding, community engagement, adaptive reuse, and critical design intervention. Full article

Historically, mpox was thought to be a geographically constrained ‘disease of poverty,’ leading to decades of neglect by global health actors. Waning population immunity from the cessation of smallpox vaccination and prolonged scientific neglect created conditions that enabled the monkeypox virus (MPXV) to adapt cryptically. This ultimately contributed to the emergence of unprecedented global public health crises. This review aims to systematically trace the history, epidemiology, genomic evolution, and reservoir ecology of mpox in West Africa from 1970 to 2025. Following PRISMA guidelines, 110 articles met the inclusion criteria and were synthesized to map the virus’s trajectory. For nearly four decades, an “Era of Silence” (1970–2016) masked the silent enzootic circulation of MPXV within West African wildlife, primarily rodents and small mammals. This epidemiological quiescence ended with the 2017 re-emergence in Nigeria, which signaled a fundamental paradigm shift. The disease profile transitioned from sporadic, rural paediatric infections to sustained, urban and secondary transmission among young adult males. This shift was often associated with sexual networks, especially among men who have sex with men, and was characterized by novel clinical presentations, including genital and perianal lesions. Genomic analyses revealed that clade II diverged from clade I approximately 3500 years ago and is uniquely defined by the deletion of virulence factors, such as the complement-binding protein. Importantly, the clade IIb lineage, which triggered the 2022 global outbreak, exhibits accelerated microevolution consistent with APOBEC3-mediated hypermutation. This host-driven mutational signature provides genomic evidence supporting the hypothesis that clade IIb circulated cryptically within human-to-human transmission chains in West Africa as early as 2014. Ecologically, while no definitive reservoir has yet been identified, evidence suggests diverse rodents and an expanding host range. The transformation of mpox from a rare zoonosis to a global threat underscores the severe consequences of delayed intervention, demanding robust, integrated “One Health” surveillance. Full article

South African cities are marked by deepening social and spatial inequalities that produce exclusion, vulnerability, and contested forms of belonging. In this article, these inequalities are understood as the result of historically entrenched processes of colonialism, apartheid spatial planning, and contemporary economic exclusion that continue to shape urban life. These realities not only shape the socio-historical context of Christian mission but also expose the inadequacy of specific ecclesial forms—such as racially and linguistically differentiated synodical structures, centralised theological training institutions, and the historical distinction between “kerk” (church) and “sending” (mission), including mission paradigms characterised by a movement from institutional centers to marginalised communities under paternalistic control. This article argues that faithful participation in the missio Dei, understood here as the Triune God’s redemptive and transformative activity in the world, into which the church is called to participate rather than initiate, requires a reimagined missional ecclesiology shaped in, with, and from the margins. Framed by a broader transforming missiological paradigm and drawing on qualitative literature, this article critically engages key streams within African urban theology, missional ecclesiology, and discourses of power and marginalisation, patriarchy, and ecclesial control to interrogate how churches often reproduce dependency, paternalism, and unequal agency in urban spaces. Using the Reformed Churches in South Africa (RCSAs) as an illustrative case, this article demonstrates how inherited missionary structures have constrained the theological and missional agency of so-called mission churches—that is, churches established among Black and Coloured communities under conditions of financial, administrative, and theological dependence on historically white “mother churches”. Full article

Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a climate-sensitive mosquito-borne zoonosis long regarded as a rural, pastoral disease, yet accelerating tropical urbanization and intensifying climate variability may be reshaping its epidemiology at the urban–peri-urban interface. This narrative review examines how global climate change and urban-specific climatic conditions jointly shape RVF virus (RVFV) vector habitats, transmission, and burden in tropical and subtropical cities, synthesizing 51 of 412 English-language records identified by a structured, non-systematic search of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar (2009–2026) and selected for relevance to urban and peri-urban RVF. This research draws on human, livestock, and vector evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and Indian Ocean islands across epidemic and inter-epidemic periods. The synthesis indicates that impervious surfaces, poor drainage, and open water storage can recreate the water-retaining function of rural dambos, sustaining a year-round larval habitat, and that Culex quinquefasciatus dominance together with peri-urban cattle may form an amplification bridge to humans. Direct evidence remains scarce, anchored by a single peri-urban serosurvey and limited urban slaughterhouse entomology. Critical gaps include urban primary-vector ecology, infection-rate data, urban-heat effects, city-specific exposure studies, and coupled climate–urban burden models. We conclude that RVF is a plausible emerging urban threat warranting proactive inter-epidemic surveillance and integration of RVF into urban planning and One Health systems. Full article

Positioned as a node of low-end globalization, the Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui represents a transnational urban space with many ethnic restaurants, grocery stores, shops and cheap hotels. As a vertical hub of superdiversity, the building features significant number of people from South Asia (e.g., India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal), Southeast Asia, Africa and beyond. Unlike most ethnic enclaves and multicultural areas that feature horizontal spatial organization, the Chungking Mansions conceptually represents a vertical ‘Little South Asia’ or ‘Little UN’ condensed into one building. The transient and anonymous Chungking Mansions is something of a ‘non-place’ but it also has a sense of community. The building over time gained a bad reputation as a mysterious, dodgy, shady and dangerous ethnic place where violence and crimes take place. This article aims to demystify the Chungking Mansions from under-explored sociolinguistic/multilingual perspectives. Languages and symbols inscribed in the linguistic/semiotic landscape, we argue, represent important anthropogenic impacts on geography and nature, which constitute salient entry points into understanding how migration, low-end globalization and superdiversity leave traces on the urban landscape. This study documents and shows how various multilingual signs and cultural and religious symbols enact ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious identities and produce and reproduce social meanings alongside the building’s verticality. These materially and symbolically contribute to a vertical geography of superdiversity. Full article