Solar energy is of huge interest due to the current situation with global warming. A number of solar technologies have been developed, such as photovoltaic, concentrated solar power, and solar water heating systems, to name a few. However, the technologies are being slowly implemented, and Botswana, with generous amounts of sun, is particularly suitable for solar energy. The opportunities were investigated due to the overwhelming and horrifying warnings echoed by many of the world's scientists regarding global warming. First, a handful of solar technologies were thoroughly investigated. A field study at Gakgatla village was then conducted, where the locals were interviewed. The interviews were analyzed, and solutions were suggested based on the identified needs of the locals. The biggest challenges identified were the lack of electricity in many of the households, parental figures not being supportive of the children's education, and theft. Additionally, many locals cooked with firewood. The most helpful solution but difficult to implement is photovoltaic panels. Solar water heating systems would also be helpful to the locals who predominantly had cold water. Additionally, solar cookers could help minimize exposure to hazardous smoke. Lastly, solar lamps could help students study during nighttime. Some locals also showed huge enthusiasm for what the future partnership with Botho University will bring. It is encouraged to develop a prototype of a solar cooker, particularly the parabolic solar cooker, in order to install solar cookers in Gakgatla village. Solar dryers would also greatly benefit the locals and are also suggested developments. Both of the mentioned solutions would help minimize the locals' exposure to the hazards of cooking with firewood. The solar dryers will also help eliminate bacteria by drying the food in a protected space inside a container.

Over the past decade, a third wave of autocratisation has stormed the world, hitting democracies and autocracies alike. The ongoing democratic backsliding is attributed to a range of factors. From “executive aggrandisement” and strategic manipulation of elections to "autocratic lawfare”. Such autocratic tendencies are contributing to autocratisation in dominant party regimes in Africa. If most dominant party systems are increasingly autocratising in Africa, then there is a problem with the dominant party structure that warrants academic inquiry. However, the literature on one-party dominance and democratic consolidation in Africa are a bit old, hence do not address the current debates on democratic backsliding in the continent. Botswana and Tanzania are interesting cases of autocratising dominant party systems because they have witnessed rapid erosion of democratic qualities over the decade. But what effects do these patterns of democratic backsliding have on the quality of democracy in dominant party systems in Africa? Employing a comparative research design (MSSD) and using historical institutionalism and the substantive democratic theory as well as relying on secondary data in Botswana and Tanzania (Mainly Afrobarometer surveys, V-Dem Index, CPI Index, Ibrahim Index of African Governance, and Freedom Index), this study explores this question within the framework of peace and development research. It analysed four variables: management of social tensions facing the regime, the scope of presidential power, governance performance, and the nature of the electoral competition. Findings suggest that a dominant party structure in Botswana and Tanzania creates conditions that erode the quality of democracy, hence democratic backsliding. Therefore, the thesis argues that autocratisation in Botswana and Tanzania suggests reproduction of one-party dominance at the expense of consolidation of substantive democracy. This way, a dominant party structure in Africa appears to be a peace and development research problem because it creates strong incentives for dominant parties to autocratise rather than democratise when challenged by a strong political opposition.

No description available.

No description available.

Large river water basins play a critical role in the economic, health, and biodiversity conditions of a region. In some basins, such as the Zambezi River Basin, extreme weather events introduce cycles of drought and heavy rainfall that can have extreme impacts on local communities vulnerable to environmental shifts. Annual flood pulse dynamics drive ecological dynamics in the system. In the dry season, water dependent wildlife in northern Botswana concentrates along the Chobe River- Floodplains. Elephant concentration, in particular, is matched to surface water quality declines. These flood pulse events have been linked to diarrheal disease outbreaks in the local population, the magnitude of which is associated positively with flood height. Modeling these interactions can advance our ability to predict events and develop mitigation and prevention actions. However, many challenges hinder this development including availability of data in regions that lack resources and the difficulties in create models for such large basins that account for overland water movement. This thesis presents work focused on addressing these challenges. Chapter 2 reports the development of a freely available Large Basin Data Portal (LBDP) that can be used to identify and create critical inputs for hydrodynamic models. This portal was used to create a hydrological model of the Upper Zambezi River Basin model (Chapter 3), a hydrodynamic model of the one of the three subbasins of the Zambezi River. The model was used to calculate downstream river discharges entering the Chobe-Zambezi Floodplains based on upstream rain events. The Upper Zambezi River Basin model was integrated with another more detailed model of the Chobe- Zambezi Floodplains (Chapter 4) that is designed to model the Chobe River and flood water movement in the floodplains. The models were created using the set of MIKE modeling software. The models were used to study various scenarios including water reductions that might occur due to climate change or drought and water increase that might be associated with extreme weather events. / Doctor of Philosophy / River water plays a key role in the livelihood of people and wildlife especially in region of the world suffering chronic economic challenges. The areas surrounding the Zambezi River in Africa is home to one of the most diverse ecological systems in the world. Extreme weather conditions bring cycles of drought and flooding especially in the Upper Zambezi region where wildlife, including the largest population of African elephants in the world, move closer to the Chobe River, a tributary of the Zambezi River, seeking water in the dry seasons. This research is focused on building a set of tools and models to enable studying the linkage between these events and aid in predicting the extent of the floods in the Chobe River Floodplain system based on rainfall in the Angolan high lands and other landscape features. Understanding how these dynamics are linked and the outcome in the downstream system provides a lead time for potential action.

Water is a primary shared resource that connects all species across the landscape and can facilitate shared exposure to a community of waterborne pathogens. Despite remarkable global progress in sanitation and hygiene development in the past two decades, infectious diarrhea remains a prominent public health threat in sub-Saharan Africa. This thesis identifies and discusses persistent challenges limiting the success of current waterborne disease management strategies and several existing research hurdles that continue to impede characterization of microbial transmission and transport. In this work, the Chobe River watershed in Northern Botswana serves as a target study site for the application of hydrological modeling tools to quantify emergent water quality and health challenges in Southern Africa. A watershed model with extensive data requirements, the Hydrological Simulation Program – Fortran (HSPF), is used to identify primary data gaps and model assumptions that limit the progress of model development, and guide opportunities for data collection, tool development, and research direction. Environmental pathogen exposure risk and epidemiological outbreak dynamics are best described by interactions between the coupled human and environmental processes within a system. The challenge of reducing diarrheal disease incidence strengthens a call for research studies and management plans that join multiple disciplines and consider a range of spatiotemporal scales. / Master of Science

Text in English / The purpose of this study, was to identify and describe factors, which facilitate or impede learning in clinical learning settings. The study adopted an exploratory descriptive approach, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative designs. Data collection tool, comprised of two sections: Section 1 focused on demographic characteristics. While section 2 addressed study variables of clinical setting, staffing, patient care/ practice standards, nurse manager's commitment and interpersonal relationships. The last section had two parts; part 1 being close ended Likert type scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Part 2, was open ended, and solicited respondents' feelings opinions and experiences on factors they perceived to facilitate or impede clinical learning. The findings indicate that the majority of settings studied did not provide adequate factors to facilitate clinical learning. Factors such as availability of learning experiences, acceptable unit organization, space and resource availability, and accessibility to students, adequate staffing with qualified staff who actively participate in teaching, appropriate and quality patient care role modelled, lecturer availability and involvement in clinical teaching, team building and inclusion of students in the team, committed nurse managers involved in students' learning, conducive relationships among staff, students and patients, comfort relationships, advocacy and creating conducive relationship by the nurse manager, were identified as necessary for learning. These factors however, were found to be either lacking, inadequate or inaccessible to students. Findings were based on data from a quota sample of 202 participants proportionately drawn from students, nurse managers and nurse lecturers. The study made recommendations to improve and enhance the conduciveness of clinical practice settings used for learning in Botswana. / Health Studies / D.Litt. et Phil. (Advanced Nursing Science)

Foreign aid as an economic policy was previously widely accepted as a way to assist least developed economies to achieve economic growth. Over the years, aid effectiveness has been questioned, whilst aid dependency has continued to rise. To assist in aid reduction, various economists have proposed aid exit strategies that countries could adopt to reduce aid dependency. However, the adoption of these strategies has been rather slow. The purpose of this study was to review and assess the current literature on the different proposed foreign aid exit strategies, in terms of their feasibility and ease of implementation, taking into account the current state of African economies. The analysis focused on the exit strategies recommended by Tandon (2008), Moyo (2009) and Fee (2012). The main finding of this study suggests that the aforementioned exit strategies are feasible, but not necessarily easy to implement, due to the limitations faced by many least developed countries. / Economics / M. Com. (Economics)

Career choice is one of the most daunting decisions one has to make, since it has implications that affect a variety of aspects in one’s life. For adolescents, career decision–making is even more challenging because it is done at a time when adolescents are going through a period of identity formation, and when their core personalities have not yet been fully formed. It is therefore essential to provide systematic career guidance programmes that will assist adolescents in their career development in order to empower them to make realistic career choices. The school, as a place where adolescents spend most of their time, can be used as a vehicle to promote meaningful career development amongst adolescent learners. However, the contribution by adolescents themselves in determining the appropriate content and career guidance services/activities that will best address their needs is vital. Senior secondary school learners, in particular, are in a position to articulate their career planning needs and to identify the deficits in existing career guidance programmes. The situation in Botswana where career guidance forms only a quarter of the public secondary school guidance and counselling programme, which, with all its four components, is allocated only one 40 minute–period per week deserves special attention. Hence, this study set out to determine: * the career planning needs of Senior Public Secondary School Learners in Gaborone, Botswana as articulated by the learners themselves; * the extent to which the current career guidance programme in Senior Public Secondary Schools meets the needs of the learners. A mixed methods design, consisting of the use of a questionnaire to collect the quantitative data and a qualitative method in the form of focus–group interviews, was used to collect the data for the study. The findings of the study highlight several challenges which hamper the provision of a systematic career guidance programme to the learners, which include limited time, lack of trained personnel and less than optimal career service delivery practices. The lack of key career exploration activities in schools, such as the use of internet resource materials and career video/audio tapes, job–shadowing, career field–trips/excursions and, in some cases, career talks, results in learners experiencing unmet career needs. This situation affects the extent to which the curriculum in place addresses the career planning needs of the learners. No significant differences were noted in the needs of the learners according to gender. The study reveals that the Career Guidance Programme provides the relevant theoretical frame–work for providing the necessary assistance to learners to make informed career decisions. However, the actual implementation of the programme in the different schools leaves a lot to be desired, with several learning outcomes for the career guidance programme in both Form 4 and Form 5 not being achieved. The effectiveness of the annual career fair as a major method of disseminating career information to learners also came into question since most learners expressed having gained minimal benefit from it. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

Career choice is one of the most daunting decisions one has to make, since it has implications that affect a variety of aspects in one’s life. For adolescents, career decision–making is even more challenging because it is done at a time when adolescents are going through a period of identity formation, and when their core personalities have not yet been fully formed. It is therefore essential to provide systematic career guidance programmes that will assist adolescents in their career development in order to empower them to make realistic career choices. The school, as a place where adolescents spend most of their time, can be used as a vehicle to promote meaningful career development amongst adolescent learners. However, the contribution by adolescents themselves in determining the appropriate content and career guidance services/activities that will best address their needs is vital. Senior secondary school learners, in particular, are in a position to articulate their career planning needs and to identify the deficits in existing career guidance programmes. The situation in Botswana where career guidance forms only a quarter of the public secondary school guidance and counselling programme, which, with all its four components, is allocated only one 40 minute–period per week deserves special attention. Hence, this study set out to determine: * the career planning needs of Senior Public Secondary School Learners in Gaborone, Botswana as articulated by the learners themselves; * the extent to which the current career guidance programme in Senior Public Secondary Schools meets the needs of the learners. A mixed methods design, consisting of the use of a questionnaire to collect the quantitative data and a qualitative method in the form of focus–group interviews, was used to collect the data for the study. The findings of the study highlight several challenges which hamper the provision of a systematic career guidance programme to the learners, which include limited time, lack of trained personnel and less than optimal career service delivery practices. The lack of key career exploration activities in schools, such as the use of internet resource materials and career video/audio tapes, job–shadowing, career field–trips/excursions and, in some cases, career talks, results in learners experiencing unmet career needs. This situation affects the extent to which the curriculum in place addresses the career planning needs of the learners. No significant differences were noted in the needs of the learners according to gender. The study reveals that the Career Guidance Programme provides the relevant theoretical frame–work for providing the necessary assistance to learners to make informed career decisions. However, the actual implementation of the programme in the different schools leaves a lot to be desired, with several learning outcomes for the career guidance programme in both Form 4 and Form 5 not being achieved. The effectiveness of the annual career fair as a major method of disseminating career information to learners also came into question since most learners expressed having gained minimal benefit from it. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.