A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Development Studies in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Zululand, 2019. / The South African government’s target was to ensure a significant growth in rural economies through appropriate prioritisation of the agricultural sector. This study analyses the sustainability of agricultural projects in enhancing rural economic development in Msinga Local Municipality. This study employed mixed methods approach with a convergent parallel design to analyse the sustainability of agricultural projects toward enhancing rural economic development. The participants of this study consisted of households (n=180), key informants (n=6) and focus groups (n=5). Data were collected through the use of document analysis, questionnaires, focus group discussion and semi-structured interviews. Content analysis and SPSS with descriptive statistics and cross tabulation were used to analyse and categorise the data in order to obtain the objectives of the study. The study found that there is high level of community participation in subsistence agricultural sector within the study area. However, subsistence agriculture has shown to be unsustainable due to low productivity caused by adverse climate change conditions. Some aspects of the results specified that MLM is mostly dominated by subsistence farming. Subsistence farming is facing challenges that puts its sustainability in jeopardy. While on the one hand subsistence farming sector does not allow farmers to sell their produce to the market. On the other hand, it usually serves as a source of ensuring food availability at a household level. The issue of climate change have a negative impact on the productivity of agricultural projects due to the inadequate rainfall and water scarcity for irrigation. The deficiency in infrastructural services has turned to be a constraint to small scale farmers in their quest to access the market. There is poor availability of transport facilities and market place where farmers can sell their produce. The results also showed that lack of skills, knowledge and information amongst farmers is a problem that destructively impacts on the ability of agriculture to contribute in improving rural economic development. It is recommended that the Department of Agriculture provides adequate training to assist rural small scale farmers in order to maintain the sustainability of agricultural projects. The study also recommends that both local municipality and Department of vii Agriculture should motivate subsistence farmers to engage in agricultural activities as corporations, so that these farmers cannot struggle in scouting financial resources. Lastly, further research should analyse challenges that constrain the transformation of rural subsistence farming sector to reach the level of small scale farming sector.

El presente trabajo ha sido elaborado bajo la identificación de una problemática que enfrentan en su día a día muchas personas, a quienes en adelante se llamará público objetivo. La propuesta de este trabajo es ofrecer al mercado un sitio web donde ellos puedan encontrar paquetes de regalos, los cuales contengan un mix de productos que se adapte a los gustos y preferencias de la persona a quien piensan dirigir el regalo. Se considero los paquetes de regalos pues en la actualidad en el mercado de regalos y/o obsequios los usuarios suelen buscar un mix de productos en un solo lugar pues esto reduce el tiempo de búsqueda de un regalo en tiendas independientes y lo más importante, produce un ahorro en sus bolsillos. Ese fue el motivo por el cual se consideró un mercado atractivo que aún puede mejorar ofreciendo alternativas de compra llamativas que se adapten a los gustos de los interesados. Es por ello que nació Kamari, una tienda de regalos online en la cual se puede elegir entre una serie de distintos paquetes a regalar dependiendo de la ocasión e incluso cambiar ciertos productos del paquete seleccionado, haciéndolo personalizable para el cliente. Cabe mencionar que para corroborar la viabilidad de este proyecto el equipo de trabajo ha elaborado experimentos para la validación del proyecto a pesar de la situación actual que se vive a nivel mundial, logrando como resultado un proyecto viable. / This work has been prepared under the identification of a problem that many people face in their day-to-day life, who from now on will be called the target audience. The proposal of this work is to offer the market a website where they can find gift packages, which contain a mix of products that adapts to the tastes and preferences of the person to whom they plan to direct the gift. Gift packages were considered as currently in the market for gifts and / or gifts, users often look for a mix of products in one place as this reduces the time of searching for a gift in independent stores and most importantly, produces a savings in customer´s pockets. That was the reason why it was considered an attractive market that can still improve by offering eye-catching purchasing alternatives that suit the tastes of those interested. That is why Kamari was born, an online gift store where you can choose between a series of different packages to give away depending on the occasion and even change certain products from the selected package, making it customizable for the client. It is worth mentioning that to corroborate the viability of this project, the work team has carried out experiments for the validation of the project despite the current situation worldwide, achieving as a result a viable project. / Trabajo de investigación

A thesis submitted to the Faculty Arts in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters in Community Work in the Department of Social Work at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2014 / Rural economic development is a priority for every government in the world, whether the country is developed, developing or Third World. In South Africa, 45.8% of the population lives in rural areas and are regarded as lower social class. Here unemployment is high and the educational level is low. As a result people rely heavily on government grants for their household income. Many factors contribute to this dependency, mostly the legacy of apartheid policies. The effect of the apartheid ideology tended to put economic development beyond the reach of black people through stripping them of resources and blocking advancement in their knowledge and capacities. Hence, the developmental efforts in the new democratic era has a focus on economic empowerment of women and people with disabilities, improvement of health standards in rural areas, bettering education using agriculture as the tool to achieve the proposed development. Many policies that are based on agriculture have been implemented to better people’s situation in South Africa. They include Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), Growth, Employment and Redistribution Strategy (GEAR), Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP), Integrated Development Plans (IDP) and Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Strategy (ISRDS), to mention but a few. The study aimed at assessing the impacts of government agricultural projects in rural economic development while identifying proper strategies for effective agricultural project implementation in the rural areas. The results revealed that there has been creation of additional employment opportunities in agriculture which have also contributed to improvement of household food security, infrastructural development, informal and formal education. Measures promoting smallholder agricultural growth can be an effective strategy to reduce rural poverty, income inequality and can contribute significantly to poverty alleviation by raising rural incomes through agricultural productivity. Investing in agricultural development benefits the communities through better roads, storage, transport and other marketing infrastructures which generate farm and non-farm employment thus benefiting not only the project participants but also the community as a whole. However, the study concludes that local regional agricultural policies are needed for land access and use by women and youth especially, in order to enhance land market development and agriculture investment. These policies should include bettering financial credits available for project participants through simplifying the application processes and low interest payments.

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Community Work in the Department of Social Work at the University of Zululand, 2010. / Culturally determined gender roles restricted women’s freedom, choice and rights and as such, it is not surprising that women have long been neglected in development. It is only recently that attention was given to women and particularly rural women who are actively engaged in productive labor. At the Beijing plan of action conference in 1995, it was highlighted that though poverty affects men and women, but because of gender role and responsibility women bear a greater burden and it was recommended that: • Polices and programs for women be developed in order to alleviate poverty, with their full participation and respect for cultural diversity. • Mobilization to improve the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs directed at disadvantaged people. Several programs have been developed by the government in order to empower women. This study therefore is aimed at assessing the impact of social development programs on participating women at Amajuba district Municipality in KwaZulu Natal. These programs are developed by women and required their full participation. They are funded by the government for sustainability. The researcher’s respondents were selected from members who are participating. An evaluative research method was utilized as it assesses the implementation and usefulness of social interventions. Higson –Smith (1995:47) stated that evaluation research is aimed at testing interventions, to see how effective they are, and therefore, represents an important means of linking action and research in a constructive manner. Evaluation research can furnish evidence of the usefulness of a program. Findings revealed that women benefited through participation in these programs, as they were also capacitated on activities they were engaged in. They were not successful to generate enough income to sustain their families. Implementation of recommendations made on chapter 6 will develop projects to small businesses so that participants can maintain their families and, contribute to the economy of the country.

Three Bureau of Reclamation projects, which represent a broad cross-section of the eleven total in Utah, are studied in order to shed light on the value of the invested resources to U.S. taxpayers, the people of Utah, and the local farmers. The bureau's nonmultiple-purpose projects in Utah are termed "supplemental" as opposed to "full-service" because some amount of irrigation was already in place. Recent findings from field trials of yield vs. evapotranspiration for major crops grown in the Western states were employed to assess the annual productive value of existing river water rights had the three projects not been built. Annual estimates of crop values or revenues for each project were obtained from Bureau of Reclamation publications. However, an allowance for annual crop production costs is needed in order to arrive at annual project net incomes (net benefit streams). Cost per acre data were obtained from published intermittent farm studies and reports of farm budgets beginning as early as 1910. This information was then converted to a series of trends in annual production costs by linking to reported indices of farm prices paid as reported by the USDA for the past 80 years. Projects are arbitrarily judged to be "economically efficient" if the estimated internal rate of return at least exceeds borrowing cost to the U.S. Treasury at the time that each project was built, e.g., from 3.5 to 4.5 percent. Only the Strawberry project results suggest that the borrowing rate was exceeded. The Newton project has realized a slight positive return of less than 1 percent, and the Hyrum project has realized negative returns. Thus, the economic results of the bureau's irrigation program in the state have been mixed. Claims of great benefits from water development are not substantiated by the study results. The only unambiguous beneficiaries are farmers whose included lands had very poor or no water rights prior to project construction.

The purpose of this project is to identify sources of funding for sustainable building projects and create a catalog of the findings. This study targeted the nonprofit, humanitarian, and private organization sectors with the goal to encourage subsequent projects that may positively impact the quality of life for people in need. It has been predicted that in the next 25 years 75% of America's built environment will be either new or renovated. The downside is that new buildings cause substantial ecological damage due to the extraction of materials and account for as much as 40% of all greenhouse gases. As a result, trends in the industry of design show growth in the green-building market. How do organizations without financial means maintain environmental responsibility as they build to meet needs? Besides identifying financing sources for above-mentioned types of organizations, this thesis also offers a model for the grant-finding process geared toward first-time searchers/applicants. Applicable sources of funding from this catalog will be recommended to the Teton Valley Community School (TVCS), winner of the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge, in Victor, Idaho, and the case study for this project. At the time of this study, between September, 2009 and February, 2010, the Teton Valley Community School was in the process of seeking out grant opportunities for their innovative, sustainable classroom project. At this writing, the total figure to be raised has not yet been determined, though it is expected to be in the $5-10 million range. The TVCS master plan is to eventually build five additional classrooms with design objectives to create flexible spatial configurations, reduce the school's ecological footprint, and build a strong connection to the outdoors in response to the mountain climate where they are located.

Large engineering processes need to be monitored in detail regarding when what was done in order to prove compliance with rules and regulations. A typical problem of these processes is the lack of con- trol that a central process engine provides, such that it is difficult to track the actual course of work even if data is stored in version control systems (VCS). In this paper, we address this problem by defining a mining technique that helps to generate models that visualize the work history as GANTT charts. To this end, we formally define the notion of a project-oriented business process and a corresponding mining algorithm. Our evaluation based on a prototypical implementation demonstrates the benefits in comparison to existing process mining approaches for this specific class of processes.

Companies working on safety-critical projects must adhere to strict rules imposed by the domain, especially when human safety is involved. These projects need to be compliant to standard norms and regulations. Thus, all the process steps must be clearly documented in order to be verifiable for compliance in a later stage by an auditor. Nevertheless, documentation often comes in the form of manually written textual documents in different formats. Moreover, the project members use diverse proprietary tools. This makes it difficult for auditors to understand how the actual project was conducted. My research addresses the project mining problem by exploiting logs from project-generated artifacts, which come from software repositories used by the project team.

In South Africa, the levels of unemployment and poverty are extremely high and these are two of South Africa’s most pressing problems. Over the past 28 years several major programmes have been initiated in South Africa to counter unemployment and poverty. Between 1980 and 1994, the former government spent billions of Rands on large-scale development programmes with the stated objective of using labour-intensive methods during the provision of physical infrastructure, to create employment and alleviate poverty. However, this did not solve the unemployment problem. Since 1994 the African National Congress (ANC) government has implemented large-scale programmes with similar objectives to those before 1994. After an analysis of the theoretical premises and implementation of labour-intensive public works programmes in Africa, the thesis critically evaluated several pre - and post - 1994 large-scale development programmes in South Africa. Major conclusions are that very little sustainable employment was created and there was no long-term programme approach to address poverty alleviation. Furthermore, lessons that could have been learnt from pre – 1994 have not been applied in the post 1994 period. Shortcomings in programme planning and implementation of large-scale development programmes in South Africa still exist. Another major conclusion is that the pre-1994 lessons were not taken into considerations in the post-1994 programme planning and implementation. Based on the research, the author has derived a six phase Programme Management Framework for Development Programmes. This framework embodies a long-term programme management approach to the planning and implementation of large-scale, labour-intensive development programmes.

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial donde ha sido publicado. / Currently, businesses implementing electrical projects lack the theoretical knowledge of ways to correctly develop the projects given that they are based on empirical knowledge. Consequently, a need has developed to implement lean philosophy and project management as distinctive and renowned pillars to ensure high competitiveness in the market of the sector under study. Through case studies, the literature on the subject demonstrated the importance of proper planning based on cost and time pillars. These pillars were analyzed using Ishikawa tools and a problem tree. The following lean tools were chosen: 5S, visual management, and quality circles. These tools and the project management guidelines, specifically the 47 processes published in the 5th edition of the Project Management Body of Knowledge, were applied as a model proposal at a pilot company in which the results of how this combination of solutions reduces delivery times for that organization were compared.