<p> Nigeria is a country blessed with human and natural resources; but, due to the miss-management of her resources, Nigeria is crippled with massive unemployment an issue that continues to exact a considerable toll on its socio-economic prospects. The population that is mostly affected with the situation is the youth, who are unable to secure decent employment and progress in life. The immediate symptoms of the socio-economic situation in the country are evident in the palpable rise in organized crime, armed insurgency, vandalism, terrorism, kidnapping and drug trafficking. Given the abundant natural and human resources that Nigeria possesses, she can attain her full potential and bring development to the citizens by overcoming the following challenges: poor utilization of oil money, bridging the widening gap between the urban rich and the rural poor, and encouraging talented Nigerians to stay in the country. To respond adequately to the challenges, the present leadership style has to change, and a new form of learning and engaging people in leadership is required. The proposed group presented in this</p>

<p> Poverty remains the scourge of the modern world. Millions of people live in poverty despite the best efforts of the most powerful governments in the world. Due to a myriad of political and historical reasons, the most vulnerable of these are in Africa, and the sub-Saharan region of Africa remains the poorest region in the world. Over the last two decades, the world's two largest economies, the United States and China, have emerged as the preeminent aid donors to the African continent. The purpose of this research is to analyze the competition between both development models, discern which model is responsible for the alleviation of the most poverty and assess the human values questions that arise from both approaches. </p><p> The analysis used data from 2004&ndash;2008 because the timeframe is considered the golden age of American Aid to the continent, is free of data skewed from the 2008 economic downturn and represents a mature Chinese foreign aid mechanism. Chinese and United States aid allocations to Angola, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, often the poster childs of negative connotations of Chinese foreign aid, were analyzed and compared from this timeframe. </p><p> Despite various problems with the quality of data and considering the long-term viability of the poverty alleviation, the data showed a positive correlation to both the United States' and Chinese models of aid and poverty alleviation. The data also showed a clear indication that the Chinese model affected poverty levels at a greater measure than the United States' model. </p><p> Based on the data and research concerning the two development aid models, the American development aid system was found to be characterized by a bureaucratic process, insistency on aid conditionality, and a focus on good governance that collectively neglected poverty reduction. The Chinese model was found to be more conducive to poverty reduction due to a minimal development aid structure, nominal aid conditionality and a consistent focus on infrastructure projects, despite the system's opacity which presented some trouble in data collection. </p><p> Three primary human values concepts also arose from the dichotomy of the two development aid problems. The impoverished were found to be better served by a focus of development aid on infrastructure rather than good governance. The United States' focus on good governance was found to essentially punish those in poverty for their government's ineffectiveness. Finally, the ascension of the Chinese development aid model changed both the Chinese and United States' development aid model positively.</p>

<p> How do social media contribute to groups engaged in contentious politics within a domestic environment? While many have examined the influence of social media on the Arab revolutions of 2010-2011 from an international perspective, there are fewer studies examining the impact of social media within a national environment after these events. Through interviews with a group of 40 Tunisians, many of them active in contentious politics from 2010-2013, this research identifies what sources initially informed the group members of a movement as well as the sources that ultimately pushed them to become active. While information gleaned via social media certainly played a role in the decisions of many interviewees to join the movements examined in this research - unsurprising, given the high rates of internet use within the group - social media were often cited as less trustworthy than other sources and were more likely to inform the respondents of a movement's existence than to push them to act. While these findings are not unexpected, they do require that future efforts examining the role of social media in contentious politics within a country's borders differentiate how different types of sources are viewed by potential supporters and how they might contribute to mobilization in different ways. </p>

<p> Faith and culture enjoy a harmonious relationship. In the past centuries of Catholicism, evangelization did not take into cognizance the culture of a people. The translation and adaptation approaches were the dominant models missionaries often used in the context of evangelization. Sadly, these approaches failed to create adequate contact with the local cultures where the faith was transplanted. The distance between faith and culture has caused the Catholic faith to be foreign in many cultures across the globe including, North African countries and Japan. In Tiv society of central Nigeria too, Catholicism is yet to take concrete root. </p><p> Building on the worship experiences of educated emerging adult Catholics in institutions of higher education in Tivland, this dissertation uses the circle method and other related contextual approaches to contextualize Catholicism in Tiv culture. The data gathered from participant observation, one-on-one interviews, and focus groups discussions was narrowed to what most connects emerging adults with Catholic worship, and what the Catholic Church needs to know about them. The data revealed a constantly recurring notion of unappealing worship and inadequate catechesis on core doctrines. One way to connect their experiences of worship is by synthesizing cultural symbols with Catholic worship symbols. </p><p> Community formations, intensive catechesis, and service to the church are the three practical strategies that can synthesize faith and culture and ground the Catholic Church in Tiv culture. Pious organizations that bring emerging adults together as community will serve as forum to adequately catechize them by synthesizing Catholic symbols with cultural texts that are already familiar to them. This leads to a mutual enrichment of both Tiv cultural practices and Catholic worship symbols ultimately making emerging adults community theologians who can effectively articulating the faith to others including, those in rural communities.</p>

<p> The purpose of writing <i>Implementing A Contextual Discipleship Curriculum to Impact Biblical Knowledge and Application for Women in a Large Church in Ghana</i> was to add to the body of knowledge concerning discipleship curricula for women in developing countries. Christianity is growing most rapidly in developing countries, and women play a pivotal role largely due to their influence on the children, the future generations. Yet there is a dearth of information on how to disciple the women in these areas. This project tested a 16-week contextual discipleship curriculum at Rhema Outreach Church in Ashaiman, Ghana, West Africa. The students were members of the Women's Ministry, and most of them were market women. The average class size was 50 women. The program was geared towards oral learners because some of the women were illiterate. The project centered around lessons in biblical knowledge, biblical leadership, and biblical financial awareness/stewardship. This project used mixed research methods, relying heavily on qualitative analyses with an embedded quantitative analysis. The data strongly suggested that a contextual curriculum can be effective in enhancing the discipleship knowledge and practices of women in developing countries. The results also demonstrated that discipleship among women in developing countries is a critical area that the global church needs to address. </p><p> Chapter 1 states the thesis and hypothesis as well as the rationale for the project, and the community and church context. The biblical, systematic, and ecclesiological/historical foundations of the project are also discussed. </p><p> Chapter 2 discusses literature related to the topic in the broad categories of discipleship, <i>lessons learned</i> from practitioners in the field, contextual theologians, and the voices of selected African female theologians. </p><p> Chapter 3 presents the research methodology used, the rationale for the methodology, and how it was applied at the Rhema Outreach Church in Ghana. </p><p> Chapter 4 presents the findings from the research instruments, including the voice of the women at Rhema Outreach Church. Some of their opinions differed from that of the researcher and peer reviewers. </p><p> Chapter 5 offers reasons for the disparities between the Rhema women's opinions and the findings of the qualitative and quantitative analyses. It also offers suggestions for future research in this area and implications of the project's findings for the larger Christian community.</p>

<p> Rwanda experienced genocide from April to July 1994 during which over 800,000 people were murdered. Among the far-reaching changes that followed this event among individuals and in society overall, the Rwandan Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) showed that contraceptive prevalence declined from 13% in 1992 to 4% in 2000 among married women of reproductive age. </p><p> This dissertation has two hypotheses concerning Rwandan women's fertility preferences and behavior following the genocide. It is hypothesized that, first, high levels of conflict reduced women's desire for a child or for additional children and second, that women who experienced relatively high levels of conflict were more likely to act on their wish to not have a child or another child by using modern contraceptives than were women who experienced relatively low levels of conflict. </p><p> The study's logistic regression dependent (outcome) variables were desire for a or another child and the use of modern contraceptives; the source for these data was the 2000 DHS. Three groups of independent variables were included: socio-demographic variables, also from the 2000 DHS, included age, number of living children, education level, urban/rural residence and socio-economic status; availability of family planning services, assessed using women's perception of distance as a barrier to obtaining health care for themselves, from the 2000 DHS, and quality of health services, assessed with data from the 2001 Service Provision Assessment; and experience of conflict, measured as the percentage of the 1994 commune populations that resided in refugee camps in 1995. Communes were considered `high migration' if 10 percent or more of their populations migrated to camps and `low migration' if less than 10 percent of their populations migrated to camps. Women who lived in high migration communes were considered to have relatively high experience of conflict and those who lived in low migration communes were consider dot have relatively low experience of conflict. </p><p> Analysis showed that residents of high migration communes were significantly less likely to want a or another child as compared to residents of low migration communes (OR = .74); it appeared that the social environment of high migration had a dampening effect on desire for children. The analysis also showed that residents of high migration communes were significantly less likely to use a modern contraceptive method than were those of low migration communes (OR = .57), even though they were less likely to want a or another child and even when family planning services were reasonably available. </p><p> The reasons for these results are unclear, and many factors may contribute. The generalized trauma experienced by the population may have had a numbing effect, in which taking action in any domain was difficult. Women may have felt pressured by society to have children as the society emerged from war, despite their own preferences. The population may also have distrusted government health facilities&mdash;the only source of services for most&mdash;in light of the interactions with officials during and after the genocide. However, another set of reasons specific to women and women's health may also have influenced the findings. There is a pervasive social stigma around reproductive health; these services have generally lagged behind other primary health care components. Moreover, rape was used as a weapon of war in the genocide; these experiences may have reduced women's willingness to seek reproductive health services specifically. Finally, the Rwandan genocide and its preparation were decidedly misogynistic; this pervasive dehumanization may have made it particularly difficult for women to seek care for their sexual and reproductive health needs and desires. This complex personal, social, physical and political context may explain why Rwandan women who may not have wanted a child or additional children nonetheless did not consistently act on their desires in the years following the 1994 genocide. </p><p> The dissertation includes a series of essays providing the author's personal perspective on working in Rwanda in the 1980s and 1990s and being present in the country at the start of the genocide in April 1994.</p>

<p> It is unclear whether parental autonomy support is related to positive outcomes for adolescents in collectivist and hierarchical societies, where values of deference to authority and putting the community's needs above oneself are encouraged. The current study examined the relations of specific autonomy supportive behaviors to adolescent outcomes in Ghana, a country described as collectivist and hierarchical, and compared findings to the US which has been described as individualist and egalitarian. In addition, it examined whether adolescents' self-construals influenced the relation of specific types of autonomy support with outcomes. A mixed-methods design was used. Participants in the quantitative portion of the study were 401 seventh and eighth graders from Ghana (<i>N</i> = 156) and the US (<i>N</i> = 245). Participants in the qualitative portion were 8 Ghanaian parents. Factor analyses indicated two distinct types of autonomy support: perspective-taking and allowance of decision-making. Perspective-taking was found to be a valid measure of parents' autonomy support in both countries, however allowance of decision-making was valid only in the US and not in Ghana. Additionally, in the US, perspective-taking was a unique predictor (over allowance of decision-making) of positive outcomes. Results also suggested that adolescents' self-construal significantly moderated the relationship between autonomy support and outcomes such that the more independent adolescents' self-construal, the stronger the relation of decision-making to autonomous motivation and other measures of well-being. Results are discussed in terms of how parents can provide autonomy support in ways congruent with the cultural context in which they live.</p>

<p> The relationship between international development and psychological aid is a very complex one. The conversations regarding societal restoration, restorative justice and healing are full of theoretical frameworks aimed at centering on a plan for rehabilitation. The Great Lakes Region of Africa has endured longstanding conflict, famine and poverty and has been the focus of both psychological aid and international relief efforts. While much research focuses on the needs of the communities within the Great Lakes Region, there is a need for the voices of those who are carrying out the restorative work on the ground to be heard. This dissertation focuses on acknowledging the voices of those trauma counselors in Gulu, Uganda and Nakivale Refugee Settlement who have been trained to carry out a specific form of trauma counseling called Scripture Based Trauma Healing. These words reflect their stories.</p>

<p> The first representations of Africa in film can be traced back to the beginning of cinema, and between 1895 and 1900. The Lumi&egrave;re brothers and Georges M&eacute;li&egrave;s had made Africa a site for cinematic representations; however, a close study of both those initial filmic moments and colonial cinema reveals how Africa was a site for European projections. The objective of this dissertation is to understand how Africa has evolved from the colonial cinema to the modern day West Africa's cinema. The author traces the history of Africa in film and its various forms of cinematic expressions and discusses the emergence of new aesthetics in Sub-Saharan Francophone cinema serving the purpose of signification, only by selecting certain properties of real objects. By bridging the fields of film semiotics, narratology, postcolonial theories and cultural studies the author hopes to contribute to a better understanding of Africa as a place and space in cinema.</p>

<p> Although the subject of ethics has been widely studied, no research has addressed the dilemma faced by government procurement professionals in underdeveloped countries, especially Togo. The purpose of this case study was to analyze insiders&rsquo; views concerning ethical dilemmas in public procurement for government contracting professionals in Togo. The study was based on deontological and teleological ethics. Research questions addressed ethical issues that are likely to arise from inappropriate interference by Togo government official in the public procurement process, and perceptions of public acquisition professionals regarding Togo government officials&rsquo; influence on contracting officers&rsquo; decision making. Data collection included interviews, observations, and documents. Findings showed that even though there are regulations in place, most public procurement professionals sometimes make unethical decisions, both because they are pressured to do so and because they are neither well-remunerated nor well-trained. Togo acquisition staff regularly deal with corruption, impunity, deception, and risk of retaliation. Based on results of this study, it is recommended that ethics training be established to improve Togo&rsquo;s public contracting system and that the training be sanctioned by a three-level professional certification similar to the one in the United States. Further research could involve surveying other African nations to determine the extent to which public acquisition staff see interference by government officials.</p>