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The low presence of female teachers serving in schools in deprived rural areas is one of the main constraints militating against girls' access and achievement in basic education in Ghana. Studies suggest that low self-esteem among girls is a key factor preventing them from attaining higher levels of education, which can be enhanced through more gender sensitive teaching methods, and the presence of female teachers as role models. This paper investigates the reasons why the majority of...

The use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) by cancer patients is very common and varies between populations. The referenced English literature has no local study from Africa on this subject. This study was conducted to define the prevalence, pattern of use, and factors influencing the use of CAM by cancer patients at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Enugu (UNTH-E), Nigeria Face-to-face interviews using semi-structured questionnaire were used to determine the use of...

This bacteriological study of osteomyelitis in our hospital was done with a view to reducing the morbidity rates associated with this disease. Clinical specimens were collected from 60 clinically diagnosed patients. The wound swabs and pus samples were inoculated onto blood agar, chocolate agar and MacConkey agar plates, while blood cultures were set up using Brain heart infusion and Thioglycollate broths. Direct Gram-stained smears were examined microscopically. The bacterial isolates were...

This paper examined the various roles women play in environmental education to promote environmental protection in Nigeria. The paper maintained that Nigeria like most countries in Africa face serious environmental challenges on several fronts including poverty, pollution, land degradation, water security, forest fires, deforestation, climate change and urbanisation due mainly to population pressure. The importance of environmental education has been strongly emphasized not just through...

The World Health Organization has identified 56 countries with critical health care provider shortages. This article describes an innovative collaboration between Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, and the University of Asmara, Eritrea, aimed at increasing the number of qualified nursing faculty in Eritrea. Eritrean graduate nursing students used distance education technologies and in-country clinical support to complete a program of study that prepared them for an advanced practice...

Electricity generation capacity from Ntaruka and Mukungwa hydropower plants in Rwanda, a tiny country in the Central Africa has been declining due to the fall in water levels of lake Burera and Ruhondo. Climate change is thought to be one of the factors causing the decline in water levels in the lakes. A study to establish an energy baseline that will save as a reference for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of measures being implemented to reduce vulnerability of the Rwanda's...

The on-going decline in water levels in the rivers powering Rwanda's Hydro-power stations has confirmed the vulnerability of the energy sector to the impacts of climate change in Rwanda – a small country in Central Africa. At the community level, the field level intervention being implemented aims at improving management of the watersheds supporting the power stations and would eventually contribute to supporting the communities in poverty alleviation. A community vulnerability baseline...

This study investigated how reading is taught in Botswana Government schools. The findings indicate that inadequate reading instruction by teachers, their inability to model and provide students with research-based proven strategies, lack of reading specialists/coaches in the primary schools, the use of only basal series as the primary texts for reading, were responsible for the presence of many struggling readers and non-readers in the Botswana Government Primary Schools. The study is...

This paper considers how patterns in use-wear/residues relate to debates about the nature of the day-to-day lives of the people who created the Lapita Cultural Complex. Changes in subsistence and settlement patterns have often been proposed as being the result of the introduction of new kinds of agriculture to the Bismarck Archipelago by people using Lapita pottery (Green 2002:95-120; Kirch 1997:45-52; Spriggs 1997:67-106). In contrast, several recent use-wear/residue studies of stone tools...

Over the past decade, and coinciding with the rise in HIV/AIDS incidence, there has been a spectacular increase in the number of orphans in Malawi. Few orphans eat as many as two poor meals a day; most have few clothes, no shoes, bedding or soap. Hungry, poorly clothed children do not go to school or if they go, do not stay. Without completing at least primary school, job prospects are low. Without education or work orphans remain poor and become involve in casual sexual relationships....

This study examined the Phonological Sensitivity of newscasters in the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) to sound-spelling discrepancies in English. This is an often ignored but essential variable in English studies, hence its need. Thirty newscasters from one zonal and one non-zonal station provided the data. Respondents were examined based on the framework of Orthographic Complexity which employs rhyme-matching, alliteration-oddity detection, elision and phoneme counting tasks. Epi-info...

In this response I argue that the notion of quality is embedded in the tension between powerful patterns of inherited epistemic and symbolic understanding and the dynamic of the creative, imaginative moments of understanding and design. This would take the idea of co-producer / creator of knowledge beyond the boundaries of (re)packaging commodities for the knowledge market as it would also be located in the disciplinary patterns of knowledge domains.

It is critical for higher education institutions to examine their performance measures (such as throughput and research output rates) to improve their competitive advantage. The article proposes that creativity is the key to obtaining that competitive advantage. However, there may be certain barriers to creativity within the organisational climate which might inhibit this. The article documents findings regarding the empirically derived barriers to creativity within selected higher education...

In the past two decades universities in South Africa have started to develop and implement sexual harassment policies to protect their staff and students against this type of harassment. The article first looks at the negative impact of sexual harassment on students from a health, psychological and academic perspective.The focus then shifts to policy implementation. While policy development has been relatively successful it is unclear if the implementation of sexual harassment policies is...

This editorial attempts to capture some of the most salient deliberations which transpired at a symposium on higher education quality assurance (QA) in South Africa. It also raises the question of whether the discourse can potentially widen democracy or not. We contend that, on the basis of our analyses of the various disparate contributions, the QA can potentially extend the boundaries of democratic engagement on condition that notions of freedom, autonomy, accountability, citizenship and...

Against a background of Durkheim's theory on changing forms of social solidarity, it is argued that social change and lack of trust have made quality assurance, as part of regulatory architecture, a seeming inevitability. There are powerful pressures for regulatory frameworks, level descriptors and specified standards that are, above all else, transparent. Implications for democracy are considered. Theory from education and political science suggests that the 'enhancement' of students -...