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A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Library and Information Science at the Department of Library and Information Science at the University Of Zululand, South Africa, 2015 / The present study aims to create awareness of infopreneurship practice amongst LIS graduates and to train LIS students to acquire all necessary skills for effective infoprenuership practice in this present ICT proliferated society. The study will also help to save graduates from extraordinary increases in the rate of unemployment and the high rate of poverty in our present economy. Infopreneurship practice is linked to entrepreneurship as it describes individuals that sell and market information products and services mostly through the internet and other traditional mediums with the intention of making profits as a means of livelihood. Infopreneurs are experts in the information field/discipline that provide specialized information services in exchange for money. Infopreneurship is an information-based business practice, by information specialists and professionals, as a way of providing specialized information products and services to satisfy customers’ needs, in exchange for money. Studies of Ocholla (1999); David and Dube (2013); Allen (2001); Chandler (2007); and Mason and Dobson (2008) have identified the challenge of increased rates of unemployment of Library and Information Sciences (LIS) graduates. This is due, in part, to the limited availability of library jobs. The poor level of adequate planed awareness programme of infopreneurship and the changes of technology is alarming. The purpose of this study is to investigate the status and development of infopreneurship in Nigeria and South Africa. Therefore, it is important to understand the level of awareness of infopreneurship practices among LIS graduates and to ensure LIS students acquire all necessary skills for effective infopreneurship in the present day ICT community. The study focused on information-based businesses owned by LIS graduates and other graduates of related fields, in selected cities from the two countries. The objectives of this study are: To describe and explain the concepts infopreneurship in the informal sector. To establish the level of those graduates involved in infopreneurship from the eight (8) cluster information fields/disciplines. To investigate and describe the areas and/or types of infopreneurship.  To investigate the impact infopreneurship has on information entrepreneurers and societal development. To find out what challenges infopreneurers encounter. To find solutions that will help to improve infopreneurship practice in Nigeria South Africa. A Case study/qualitative content analysis research methodology was applied for this study. The interview was the major instrument used to gather responses from information-based business owners. It was supported by data gathered from the observation method. A combination of purposive and snowball sampling techniques of non-probability sampling methods were used to generate the sample size, and frame, from the eight clustered information business categories of respondents for this study. The target population for this study was chosen from the lists of all registered information-based businesses as well as LIS graduates practicing infopreneurship in Nigeria and South Africa. The sample size of 160 information-based business owners, LIS graduates and others related information discipline was picked from eight (8) clustered business areas and/or discipline,which include information communication technology (ICTs), mass media/communication, telecommunication, libraries, archive and records management centers, publishing and printing sectors, computer science, and LIS education. The findings show that infopreneurship is a growing practice in both countries, although a majority of those individuals practicing infopreneurship are not familiar with the term infopreneurship. The study also revealed the numbers of LIS graduates involves in the infopreneurship practice, despite the increase growth in this field that few LIS graduates are involved in infopreneurship practice in both countries. However, infopreneurship in recent times, has added more new area/types to the practice such as, internet blogging, software and hardware installation, tracking services, trouble shooting, web designing, programming, CCTV installation, online TV, amongst others. Infopreneurship practice has served as an eye opener to LIS graduates and other related fields of studies for job opportunity and self-dependency. The majority of graduates that joined the information-based business sector joined because of the need for money to survive and escape the high rate of poverty in society. Infopreneurers are faced with different challenges such as insufficient funding, equipment, and infrastructure. An additional issue is the difficulty in licensing of businesses, due to the high cost and the unnecessary requirement for registration of businesses and the tax imposed on smaller infopreneurs is outrageous. The study recommends that LIS schools create more awareness of infopreneurship practice among students, and also review the infopreneurship courses, or include learning content that focuses on business skills acquisition and practical vocational skills acquisition programs. The study also recommends that governments provide a positive support plan by creating a good business atmosphere for young graduates who want to start their personal business.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Communication Science at the University Of Zululand, South Africa, 2017 / This study examines the function and purpose of public television broadcasters across two countries (South Africa and Nigeria) in order to highlight best practices in public broadcasting for the benefit of the public (who ought to be the target audience). The original idea of public broadcasting was aimed at informing the public about the truth without commercial or political provocation and influence. This study examines whether society has come to accept inappropriate broadcasting practices because of prolonged exposure to these practices. When incorrect behaviour is practised continually over a prolonged period, it becomes accepted as normal in society and this is referred to as normalcy. In this regard, the study was further aimed at investigating and comparing the attitude of viewers towards commercial advertising interruptions during public television viewing time. Literature review within this study also focused on factors which influence viewer rating of public television in Nigeria and South African which ought to be informative and educational while providing suitable entertainment. This study employed a survey method and was conducted among the inhabitants of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and Ibadan, South-West, Nigeria. The study was interesting in that viewers’ attitudes across the two countries differed significantly. Generally, South African TV viewers were more accommodating with regards to accepting commercial interruptions during viewing time. On the other hand, Nigerian TV viewers felt that commercial interruptions are disturbances and must not be included in the programmes of public television. The study confirmed that the motives of viewing public TV and behaviour of viewers during the commercial interruptions on the programmes of public TV stations have greatly influenced the attitudes of viewers towards commercial interruptions. Finally, the study offers recommendations guidelines in areas that need more attention based on findings of the study. The study also indicates the limitations of the investigation and provides suggestions for future research.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Social Work at the University of Zululand, 2017 / An analysis of the social service practitioners’ practice tools in Africa towards the enhancement of professional responsibility to the client system is essential including investigating the ethical dilemmas experienced by the practitioners daily. These tools serve as sources of evaluating social work practice and administration that spur practitioners to provide a virtuous professional service and as enlightenment for the effective, efficient and reflective practice. The National Association of Social Workers (2008) and the South African Council of Social Service Professional (SACSSP, 2005) and their ethical values and principles served as this study principal document that directed this research venture. The researcher sought to understand the nature and extent of the challenges facing social work practitioners and administrators and compared their experiences within two different geo-political zones of Africa. Hence, the research philosophy engaged the “diamond metaphor,”in the sense it is multifaceted and within a blended research paradigm. It depicts the uniqueness and value of each study area. The study employed the comparison-evaluative approach depicting a Multi-Phase-Transformative mixed methods research design characterised by a six way dimensionalapproach of explorative, evaluative, descriptive, comparative, qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to reconnoiter the experiences of social work practitioners 135 and 47 administrators which in total 182 respondents from three different regions namely: KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) and Lagos State and Imo State (Nigeria). Each setting for data collection differs within a multi-level mode and each data including the tested hypotheses were refined to actualise the subject situation and the analytical discussion of the methodology components. Data that was gleaned from the dispersed research tools used for the study were analysed by the utilisation of descriptive statistics, multiple comparisons and post hoc test correlations in testing the stated hypotheses with the Statistical Programme for Social Sciences (SPSS Version 21.0). However, the thematic gleaning of the responses was deciphered through discourse analysis (Soini and Birkeland, 2014:215-216; Gross, Alba, Glass, Schellenberg and Obrist, 2012:3). The findings of the study revealed that rural social work interventions are directly weakened by a poor support system that the social workers experience, thus, the lack of proper literacy and qualification levels in the rural areas largely contributes to weaker social work interventions in both Nigeria and South Africa. Furthermore, the study revealed that administrators avail themselves to more continuous professional development than the social workers do, while the overall qualification attributes for the respondents needed upgrading to cater for specialised areas. The study revealed that the lack of the analysed and aligned training needs of individual practitioners serves in fact to clog personal development plans which the subsequently affects the development of work plans and the signing of performance agreement job descriptions, thus, the policies are not then applied. The study’s results indicated that the administrators’ gendered pattern impacted significantly on the ethical code outcome in the study areas. Outcome analysis confirmed that thesocial workers’ understanding of ethical code application has significantly correlated with their integer years of practice experience, whereas, the perceived difficulties presumably had partial correlations within the study areas. Moreover, the ethics concerning the integrity of profession, the professional responsibility, the service delivery and the competence/confidentiality explained for the integer years of practice experience. Furthermore, the integer years significantly ensure that social workers are coping with ethical dilemmas on familiarity and their professed complaint anxieties on the Ethical Code in the three study areas. Conversely, the study advocated for the assimilation of interactional justice approach that would enhance advocacy on social justice, human rights and professional accountability as well as stimulate competence within the bucolic social worker’s career. Social justice cognizance should be visible within the equity on performance. The study’s recommendations included advocating for quality rural social work interventional support and improvement on qualification and literacy level in the rural areas; also that there should be the recognition of a greater prioritisation of NASW/SACSSP ethical codes. As such, experienced practitioners should mentor newer practitioners to enhance effective and efficient professional responsibility with client-systems. Additional studies should explore the professional responsibility of practitioners amid the Service Charter for Victims of Crime (victims’ charter) designed to uphold social justice and to nurture a human rights philosophy in guaranteeing the material, psychosocial and emotional needs of victims. Hence, further research on utilising the study’s finding models for urban domain and proper professional training, adherence to these models and awareness of legal ethics is recommended. Further studies should focus on examining administrators-practitioners relationship outcome to policies regulations as they are geared towards the Code; likewise to inspect social entrepreneurial activity using the Service Delivery Model to re-bolster industrial social work.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Würzburg, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 262-292).

This diploma thesis analyzes the economic diplomacy of China in Africa. It focuses on searching for motives, players and instruments used for its implementation. The starting point is a theoretical description of economic diplomacy in general followed by a more specific description of foreign policy and economic diplomacy of China. The main part of the thesis is dedicated to the analysis of particular areas of economic diplomacy of China in Africa - mainly trade, investments and development aid - where it is possible to observe implementation in practice. The thesis further deeply analyzes the sector of natural resources where all the particular instruments and players meet. Marginally it includes an analysis of others specific parts as health diplomacy and soft power. The complex picture is drawn in the section of case study of Nigeria which is the typical example of the Chinese strategy of economic diplomacy. The concluding paragraphs of the thesis evaluate the overall implications of China's presence in Africa.

Muslimische Frauen in Nigeria sind »eingeschlossen«, aber nicht eingesperrt. Was bedeutet das aus ihrer Sicht? Die Ethnologin Katja Werthmann untersuchte während eines sechzehnmonatigen Feldforschungsaufenthaltes in Kano, der größten Stadt Nordnigerias, zentrale Aspekte des Alltagslebens dieser Frauen. Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich vorwiegend mit Frauen an der Schnittstelle zwischen Tradition und Moderne, Arm und Reich, Abhängigkeit und Autonomie. Individuelle und kollektive Strategien im Umgang mit kulturellen Normen und gesellschaftlichen Realitäten stehen im Vordergrund dieser Studie. Katja Werthmann betrachtet Frauen im islamischen Afrika nicht aus eurozentrischer Perspektive als homogene Gruppe, sondern als konkrete, handelnde Personen in einem komplexen sozialen Umfeld.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Education in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor Of Education (D.Ed.) in the Department of Curriculum and Instructional Studies at the University Of Zululand, 2018 / The study examined pre-service teacher training in Open and Distance Learning based Universities in South Africa and Nigeria. The specific focus of the study was on the initial teacher education programmes at Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) and Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE/PGDE) phases in the two ODL based universities. The theories of self determination, humanism, transformational learning, distributed learning, and transactional distance served as the frameworks for the study. Information for the study was gathered through survey. Anonymous web-based questionnaire was designed and used to obtain information from the pre-service teacher trainees in the two ODL based universities. Interviews were conducted for a selected number of academic and support staff members from the two universities. A combination of purposive and stratified random sampling was used to generate the sample frames of the participants for the study. The sample of the pre-service teacher trainees that participated in the study was drawn from the nine (9) Provinces of South Africa, and six (6) Geo-political zones of Nigeria. One thousand, two hundred and sixteen (1216) ODL based pre-service teacher trainees in their B.Ed. and PGCE/PGDE programmes responded to the web-based questionnaire from the two countries. In addition, a total of ten (10) academic and support staff members were interviewed from the two Universities. The overall results revealed that the majority of pre-service teacher trainees by distance are young people between 18 and 29 years of age, unemployed or engaged in voluntary works with no stable source of income. Furthermore, flexibility of the programme and desire to work full time while studying were found to be the major factors that motivated majority of the participants to enrol in pre-service teacher training by distance. Electronic mail (E-mail), postal services, Learning Management Systems (LMS), radio programmes, and social media were found to be the major platforms through which the selected ODL based universities reached their pre-service teacher trainees. Moreover, mobile phone and tablet were found to be the major devices that the sampled student teachers used to access learning materials.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Education in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor Of Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instructional Studies at the University Of Zululand, 2018 / Learning challenges seem to persist in different ways in rural based universities. These challenges have led to increase in drop-out rates, as well as several menaces in the society. Hence, this study explored the learning challenges among undergraduate students in two selected rural universities in South Africa and Nigeria. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used in this study. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used respectively for data collection. Systematic sampling technique was used to select the student respondents, while purposive sampling was used to select the academic staff respondents for the study. The questionnaires were administered to student participants, while lecturers were interviewed. Data for the quantitative study were analysed using descriptive statistics and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) (Version 24) while the qualitative data were collected analysed thematically. The study revealed that undergraduates in the two selected rural universities experience common learning challenges which include: cognitive learning challenge, poor academic foundation, academic malpractice amongst academic staff and students, as well as lecturer-students‟ relationship. These are caused by lack of facilities, students‟ family socio-economic background, amongst others. The study therefore recommends that the necessary facilities and structures needed to facilitate teaching and learning practices should be provided. More lecturers should be recruited. Cordial student-lecturer relationships should be encouraged and promoted. In addition, policies that will ensure safety on campus, adoption and use of the most suitable language of instruction among st others should be established. The study suggests the need for addition of quality to university in developing learning in South African and Nigerian universities.