Magister Philosophiae (Land and Agrarian Studies) - MPhil(LAS) / As a means to assuage historical land inequities, resultant socio-economic disparities and poverty alleviation, the Namibian Government undertook to reform the land sector. Guided by the Constitution and the Resolutions of the 1991 Land Conference policy and legal framework, a fractured consensus is built on the rationale to redistribute land to a targeted group. Parallel to the reform agenda, systemic challenges to the resettlement process are growing amid questions on Government’s ability to respond to sustainable programme objectives embedded within land reforms. Literature coalesces on the issues of land-reform programmes having lost direction, being skewed in favour of a few, being biased towards commercial agriculture, and requiring review and re-configuration to be inclusive and to satisfy equity and povertyalleviation concerns. This study seeks to understand who has been benefitting from land reform by analysing the processes and procedures of identifying beneficiaries prioritised for land allocation, and institutional structures for implementation, while analysing how they produce and reproduce class differentiation and the attendent livelihood trajectories. Using qualitative research conducted in one case study site (Okarukambe constituency) the views of the smallscale farmers who benefitted were solicited. Additionally, the experiences and views of institutions and officials involved in land allocation at regional and national levels are taken into account. Theoretically the study draws from the livelihoods approach to find out the different categories of the small-scale farmers who have benefitted.

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.

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<p> This thesis describes the construction and testing of small-scale shear wall buildings with rigidly connected floor slabs, but without wall openings. A micro-concrete material was used in the casting of both the basic small-scale shear wall buildings and the floor slabs. The vertically cantilevered buildings were tested by applying a transverse static load at the top of the buildings.</p> <p> The behaviour of buildings with only floor slabs was compared with that of buildings containing only wall openings. The results of static loading of the buildings were compared with those results predicted analytically using Vlasov's thin-walled elastic beam theory.</p> / Thesis / Master of Engineering (MEngr)

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第24866号 / 経博第673号 / 新制||経||304(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 久野 秀二, 准教授 IVINGS Steven, 講師 岩島 史 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DFAM

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Women's contributions to fisheries have often been made invisible. Their leadership in general and in fisheries has also not always been recognised, especially if it is informal or more "behind-the-scenes". The aim of this study is to contribute to the gap in the women and fisheries literature on what leadership roles women play in the South African fisheries value chain. While it is more widely known that women play diverse roles within the fisheries value chain, the leadership roles they play (at various scales) are currently less well-known. This research involved finding women to interview from the various "patches" in the value chain. Without the generation of new relationships/leads occurring in the background, it would not have been possible to find particular patches. When the research was pivoted to digital research due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the "patches" seemed more adrift, and possibly more "siloed", than ever. However, three common threads emerged that showed how these patches are not so isolated after all. The threads were: Networks and relationships; lineage, blood and sustainability; and acts of pioneering, innovating and self-empowerment. Interviews were semi-formal, with most in-person, one done via the messaging service WhatsApp, and one done via email. Digital research consisted of collecting Instagram posts, finding relevant news articles, looking at newsletters, and industry body-related media. Women in fisheries are situated within various networks and "patches" of knowledge. This dissertation has drawn on the notion of "patches" as a central concept. Underlying this were the sub-themes of gender and market access (in this case, markets for marine resources). It is clear that while different women in different patches may not necessarily know each other or interact with each other, the patches themselves still have an effect on each other. This is especially true in the case of how the Covid-19 pandemic affected small-scale fisheries. Effects higher up the value chain meant that small-scale fishers were negatively affected. Thus, fishing industry patches do not seem to exist in silos. Specifically, women in the fisheries value chain are not in silos either. Both print and online media can still allow women to find out where women are working in the value chain, and for which companies or organisations. Such media can also allow women in fisheries to develop knowledge about each other. Firstly, technology, including digital newsletters, allows for women to extend themselves and enrich themselves with relationships with or knowledges of, other people. With the proliferation of both online media and cell phone access in South Africa, parasocial relationships may be formed. These parasocial relationships may help women in fishing to know "who's who" and also for consumers desiring a more transparent buying experience to form a type of relationship with each other, through learning about people's stories. Fishers encountered both in real life and online tended to come from a long history of working in fisheries themselves, as well as coming from multi-generational fishing families. While not all of the women interviewed are leaders in formal positions and/or formal organisations, their knowledge of species, fish processing and other areas was something that seemed to be valued within fisheries-related spaces. This is one factor that indicates the importance of keeping the fishing lineage going into the future for fishers. Fishers were also concerned about the effects on them which were caused by changes at the commercial level, such as a decline in market access due to Covid-19. Keeping a fishing livelihood going, both for this generation and the next, is something very important to the fishers encountered throughout this research. The diversity of jobs women held, both those personally interviewed and those interviewed in digital publications, was significant throughout this research. Some women are in supportive spaces that allow them to pioneer new paths for women in the fishing engineer, such as being a boat skipper or engineer. Women are gradually making their way up through middle management and to executive management levels. However, it is also important to consider the intersections of women's identities, e.g. socioeconomic status, geographic location, and education obtained. Different approaches to empower different groups of women can help the process of women's empowerment in fisheries to be inclusive.

Master of Science / As parts in any device age, something inevitably breaks. When dealing with a broken metallic part, one can either replace it or repair it. Repairing is generally preferred so long as it is not too costly. Unfortunately, repairing a component is often more expensive due to the material being difficult to work with or the geometry being too intricate to fix. Additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D printing, allows precise placement of material to build a part and has allowed the repair of complex parts. However, some materials are severely weakened using traditional additive manufacturing technologies, which melt small amounts of material and force it to cool in place quickly. To combat this, methods that do not require the material to melt could be used. Currently, these methods place a large amount of material at once, causing significant waste if the excess needs to be removed. Therefore, this work aims to create a small-scale device using a traditional milling machine. It was shown to be capable of placing small amounts of material while offering the advantage of not melting the metal. In the future, it could provide an avenue to repair previously unreachable.

Eight roughness configurations in Clemson boundary layer wind tunnel are presented. For these configurations, flow parameters such as turbulent intensities, integral length scales, large- and small- scale turbulence, and spectra of velocity components of the wind are obtained and studied to the simulated turbulence. At the same time, new analyzing tools, orthogonal wavelet techniques, are applied to provide additional information in time domain. This makes it possible to study the intermittency event, one important characteristic associated with pressure peak activities in turbulence. Three parameters, scale energy, intermittency factor and intermittency energy are defined. Variation of these quantities as a result of different configuration is discussed. Finally, the corresponding variations in measured pressure peaks in relation with the variations of configuration as well as with the intermittency parameters are investigated. The work here is of important significance for future wind tunnel and field data comparison, and this could help to find the best simulation among all configurations. / Master of Science

In the promotion of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as an alternative to pesticides, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Office of International Research and Development (OIRD) at Virginia Tech, and the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) supported my research to uncover the socio-economic constraints to IPM adoption and to determine the amount of gendered participation in three rural Jamaica farming communities. The thesis examines the gendered participation in crop production, marketing, and decision making as well as the ability of farmers to identify key pests of three nontraditional agricultural exports: callaloo, "Scotch Bonnet" hot pepper, and sweet potato. While men generally participated to a greater extent in crop production and decision making, women also made a significant contribution. Less female participation is due in part to women owning, renting, or leasing a smaller amount of land. However, decision making about income derived from farming was found to be almost equally split between males and females. Another important finding is that women were able to identify key crop pests. To facilitate the introduction of IPM in the three communities, the small-scale farmers' limited access to irrigation and markets must be addressed. Moreover, the thesis advocates that instead of the singular focus on pest control, the holistic spirit of IPM should be seen as the catalyst for an overall integrated approach to rural farm development. / Master of Science