Search

This paper focuses on Shane Godbolt's commitment to international librarianship and global health and her guiding principles for international working. The authors examine and celebrate how these have been applied in practice, impacting many. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the link between foreign direct investment (FDI), democracy and economic growth on a panel of eight Southern African countries for 1980-2014 using the system generalized method-of-moment (GMM) estimator. We find that FDI has a direct positive effect on economic growth and that strong democratic institutions are a significant driver of economic growth in the sample countries. The impact of FDI on economic growth is dependent on the level of democracy in the host countries. This implies that countries with strong democratic institutions are better able to absorb the positive spillovers from FDI. In policy terms, Southern African countries should sustain the institutional reform policy agenda already in place in order to benefit more from the significant inflows of FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores common factors associated with not meeting minimum dietary diversity (MDD) among 27,072 children aged 6–23 months in Eastern and Southern Africa using data from nine Demographic and Health Surveys from 2013 to 2016. MDD was defined as consumption of more than or equals to five of eight food groups including breast milk in the past 24 h. Equity gaps were calculated as the difference in MDD prevalence between the top and bottom wealth quintiles. Logistic regression was conducted to identify common factors for not meeting MDD at the household, maternal and child levels across two or more countries to inform regional policies to improve children's diets. Kenya had the highest MDD wealth equity gap (40.4 pts), and South Africa had the smallest (14.4 pts). Equity gaps for flesh foods or eggs (up to 39.8 pp) were larger than for grain or legumes (up to 20 pp). Common risk factors for not reaching MDD included younger child age (6–11 months) (n = 9 countries), no formal maternal occupation (n = 6), not receiving vitamin‐A supplementation (n = 3), younger maternal age (n = 3), lower maternal education (n = 3), no media (n = 3) or newspaper (n = 3) exposure, lower household wealth quintile (n = 3), use of nonefficient cooking fuel (n = 2), longer time to get to the water source (n = 2), not listening to the radio (n = 2) and higher birth order (n = 2). Priorities for improving MDD in the region include introducing diverse foods at a young age from 6 months with early nutrition counselling, promoting higher maternal education, increasing food purchasing power and ensuring the support of younger mothers. Key messages: Diets of children in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) lack diversity.A number of common risk factors predict dietary diversity across countries.Risk factors for low dietary diversity include wealth, education and media access.Wide equity gaps were apparent for most food groups in ESA.Interventions addressing affordability and access to diverse diets are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the economies of South Africa and its neighbours (Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe) are tightly integrated with each other. The multiple interconnections suggest that South Africa's GDP growth rate should affect positively its neighbours'. However, our review of the available econometric evidence and our panel growth regressions suggest that there is no strong evidence of real spillovers in the region after 1994, once global shocks are controlled for. More generally, we find no evidence of real spillovers from South Africa to the rest of the continent post-1994. We investigate the possible reasons for this lack of spillovers. Most importantly, the economies of South Africa and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa might have decoupled in the mid-1990s. That is when international sanctions on South Africa ended and the country re-integrated with the global economy, while growth in the rest of the continent accelerated due to a combination of domestic and external factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Local trade in non‐timber forest products (NTFPs) is increasing globally, yet the causes have been little studied. We examine household shock as a driver of NTFP trade in five southern African countries, with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS‐related illness and death. Over the past two years, 95% of trader households experienced at least one shock, with family illness and death recorded for 68% and 42% of households, respectively. Almost 40% had entered the trade because of HIV/AIDS‐related shocks. Additional shocks included natural disasters, crop pests or failure and livestock loss. The sale of NTFPs was the third most common coping strategy, after kinship and agricultural adjustments. Coping strategies differed between sites and type of shock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Southern Africa is probably the most unevenly developed region on earth, combining the most modern technologies and an advanced working class with the world's extremes of inequality and social militancy. The two most extreme countries, both with settler-colonial populations and accumulation processes that created durable class/race/gender distortions and extreme environmental degradation, are South Africa and Zimbabwe-both of which Neil Smith visited in 1995. His contribution to our understanding of political economy, before and after, was exemplary. We consider in this article how Smith's theory assisted in the understanding of crisis-ridden financial markets within the framework of capital overaccumulation and intensified spatial unevenness; the politics of scale, difference and community; and the ways that class apartheid and durable racism in the two countries together fit within contemporary geopolitical economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mid-tropospheric closed-lows (cold-core cut-off lows and warm-core tropical lows) are important rain producing weather systems for the southern Africa region. Over South Africa, most wide-spread flood events are caused by these systems. It is therefore important to explore the potential impact of anthropogenic forcing on the occurrence of closed-lows and extreme rainfall events over the region. Coupled global circulation models (CGCMs) can not be directly applied for this purpose because of their relatively low spatial resolution-some form of downscaling is required to adequately resolve these systems and the rainfall they cause. In this study, a variable-resolution atmospheric global circulation model is applied as a regional climate model to simulate closed-low characteristics over southern Africa under current and future forcings. The model is forced with greenhouse gas concentrations according to the A2 SRES scenario and with sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and sea-ice as specified by the CSIRO Mk3 CGCM. The model projects a general decrease in closed-low frequencies over the region, which occurs in association with a general strengthening of the subsiding branch of the Hadley cell. However, the climate-change signal shows variation in time and space and certain sub-regions are projected to experience an increase in closed-low frequencies during certain seasons. A general increase in extreme rainfall events is projected over southern Africa despite the projected decrease in closed-low frequencies. It is deduced that this increase in extreme rainfall events is driven by intense convective rainfall events occurring within more frequently forming tropical-temperate cloud bands. Over Mozambique, extreme rainfall events are projected to increase in association with more frequently occurring closed-lows. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, it is recognized that traditional narrow approaches to environment and health relations are insufficient to comprehend and respond effectively to the complexity of factors influencing human health. In response, a new approach, referred to as Ecohealth has emerged with the goal of assessing the multiple interactions that occur between components the ecosystem, the local and global political economy, and cultural systems, on the one hand, and the ways in which these biosocial interactions influence the nature, concentration, and entwinement of health problems in human populations, on the other. Those contributing to the development of the Ecohealth orientation also seek to identify evidence-based strategies for improving the health and living conditions of human populations and the sustainability of the ecosystems in which they live. Within anthropology and public health, in particular, one reflection of the broader Ecohealth approach is expressed in the concept of syndemics, which was developed during the 1990s to label the various interactions among comorbid diseases and other health conditions that increase the burden of suffering in populations and the encompassing social relations and conditions that amplify the likelihood of adverse disease interactions occurring. In southern Africa, a notable synergism has developed between HIV/AIDS and food insecurity that significantly threatens the health and well-being of diverse populations in the region. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the key epidemiological, environmental, social, and political economic features of the entwined HIV-affected food insecurity and food insecurity-affected HIV syndemics of southern Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on conservation and development often point out that interventions rely on anti-political manoeuvring to acquire legitimacy and support. Recent ‘aidnography’, in particular, has done much to expand and add nuance to our understanding of the complex, micro- (anti-)politics at work in conservation and development interventions. In doing this, however, aidnography seems to have led the focus away from two crucial, broader issues related to conservation and development interventions: how they are regulated through the wider, neoliberal political economy, and how this fuels and obscures (global) inequality. Drawing on empirical research on a transfrontier conservation and development intervention in Southern Africa, this article argues that the differential workings of anti-politics in practice warrant a renewed appreciation and a more explicit political operationalization of the concept. This is done by re-emphasizing anti-politics as an essential political strategy within conservation and development interventions and as an intrinsic element of the wider political economy of neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phylogeography of the white-tailed mongoose Ichneumia albicauda is examined using phylogenetic analyses based on partial sequences of the mitochondrial control region. The phylogeny is used to: (1) Analyse the phylogeographic pattern of I. albicauda; (2) discuss the existing delimitation of subspecies; (3) test if the coloration of the tail tip, generally white but occasionally black in West African specimens, is a species polymorphism or if it has phylogenetic significance. Our results suggest a north–south division within white-tailed mongoose populations, and within the northern clade, we observe an east–west subdivision. This phylogenetic pattern is partly in concordance with the traditional division into six subspecies. The white-tailed mongoose probably originated in southern Africa, from where it dispersed northwards and colonized eastern and western parts of Africa, as well as the Arabian Peninsula. Colour polymorphism observed in Western populations reflects variation at the individual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim To determine the functional relationships between, and the relative importance of, different driver variables (mean annual precipitation, soil properties, fire and herbivory) in regulating woody plant cover across broad environmental gradients in African savannas. Location Savanna grasslands of East, West and Southern Africa. Methods The dependence of woody cover on mean annual precipitation (MAP), soil properties (texture, nitrogen mineralization potential and total phosphorus), fire regimes, and herbivory (grazer, browser + mixed feeder, and elephant biomass) was determined for 161 savanna sites across Africa using stochastic gradient boosting, a refinement of the regression tree analysis technique. Results All variables were significant predictors of woody cover, collectively explaining 71% of the variance in our data set. However, their relative importance as regulators of woody cover varied. MAP was the most important predictor, followed by fire return periods, soil characteristics and herbivory regimes. Woody cover showed a strong positive dependence on MAP between 200 and 700 mm, but no dependence on MAP above this threshold when the effects of other predictors were accounted for. Fires served to reduce woody cover below rainfall-determined levels. Woody cover showed a complex, non-linear relationship with total soil phosphorus, and was negatively correlated with clay content. There was a strong negative dependence of woody cover on soil nitrogen (N) availability, suggesting that increased N-deposition may cause shifts in savannas towards more grassy states. Elephants, mixed feeders and browsers had negative effects on woody cover. Grazers, on the other hand, depressed woody cover at low biomass, but favoured woody vegetation when their biomass exceeded a certain threshold. Main conclusions Our results indicate complex and contrasting relationships between woody cover, rainfall, soil properties and disturbance regimes in savannas, and suggest that future environmental changes such as altered precipitation regimes, N-enrichment and elevated levels of CO2 are likely to have opposing, and potentially interacting, influences on the tree–grass balance in savannas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the role of migration on the spread of AIDS in Eastern and Southern Africa. Growth of urban population in the East African region correlated with the increase in AIDS cases; Conflicts in Sudan and the Horn of Africa creating populations vulnerable to the disease; Concerns that the disease will spread among refugee populations displaced from Southern African countries.