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La mission de l’Eglise face aux défis sociopolitiques en RD Congo
No full textL’Eglise a une mission plurielle pour la transformation holistique de l’homme et de sa société. Cependant en RD Congo, un pays en multicrise, les églises ne s’impliquent pas dans la mission sociopolitique, cela notamment suite à une compréhension limitée de cette notion qui est holistique par nature. Quelles sont les différentes dimensions de la missio Dei ? Quels sont les différents types d’églises en RD Congo en rapport avec l’engagement social ? Comment l’Eglise peut être impliquée sur le plan sociopolitique en RD Congo ? Telles sont les points qui forment l’ossature de cet article qui a bout objectif de pousser l’Eglise en action et d’apporter la transformation holistique car telle est sa vocation
Impacts of COVID-19 Regime on Labor Within Food Systems: Whither BRICS Now and Beyond?
No full textThe advent of COVID-19 has reconfigured foodscape across the globe, BRICS inclusive. Some of the familiar sites where people in BRICS found food in pre-pandemic period has become increasingly threatened while many have completely disappeared, leaving behind dark food deserts. Information on the extent of the devastation caused by the pandemic is still emerging. Such information is pivotal to the articulation of affirmative programs and policies. This article, therefore, explores the impact of the pandemic on food systems of BRICS to indicate how the alliance may positively influence the repositioning of each country member’s foodscape to achieve food security both now and beyond this pandemic. This article uses content analysis of relevant documents and draws from functionalist’s perspective to outline various impacts of the pandemic on food systems. It argues that creating enabling environment for labor, making food security a common goal of BRICS as a body as well as putting in place mechanisms supporting local food systems will invariably ensure food security across various levels in BRICS
Visualising Multi-Sensor Predictions from a Rice Disease Classifier
No full textThe Microsoft Rice Disease Classification Challenge introduced a dataset comprising RGB and RGNiR (RG-Near-infra-Red) images. This second image type increased the difficulty of the challenge such that all of the winning models worked with RGB only. In this challenge we applied a res2next50 encoder that was first pre-trained with self-supervised learning through the SwAV algorithm, to represent each RGB and their corresponding RGNIR images with the same weights. The encoder was then fine-tuned and self-distilled to classify the images which produced a public test set score of 0.228678639, and a private score of 0.183386940. K-fold cross-validation was not used for this challenge result. To better understand the impact of self-supervised pre-training on the problem of classifying each image type, we apply t-distributed Stochastic Neighbour Embedding (t-SNE) on the logits (predictions before applying softmax). We show how this method graphically provides some of the value of a confusion matrix, by locating some incorrect predictions. We then render the visualisation by overlaying the raw images in each data point, and note that to this model, the RGNIR images do not appear to be inherently more difficult to categorise. We make no comparisons through sweeps, RGB-only models or RGNIR-only models. This is left to future work
An Application of the Hardy-Ramanujan Theorem
No full textSupplemental Materials: https://osf.io/g8946/This paper attempts to answer the riddle of why Ω(m), the sum of the exponents of the prime decomposition of m = (2x-2)(2x-3)(2x-5) …(2x-qb) [where qb is the bth prime and b = π(x), the number of primes not exceeding x], always appears to lie in the region of 2π(x), where π(x) is the number of primes not exceeding x. It turns out that an application of the Hardy Ramanujan Theorem shows Ω(m) is almost always exceeded by 2π(x), which has the logical implication the Goldbach’s Conjecture is “almost always true”
Mapping the New Generation of Academics Programme (nGAP) to the C.O.S.T.A. Postgraduate Research Supervision and Coaching Model: A Value Proposition for New Researchers in South Africa
No full textThe Department of Higher Education and Training's (the Department) New Generation of Academics Programme (nGAP) is a prestigious program that involves the recruitment of highly capable scholars as new academics. These academics are recruited based on carefully designed and balanced equity considerations, as well as the most critical disciplinary areas in the higher education system. The nGAP is currently the largest program within the Staffing South Africa's Universities Framework (SSAUF), a component of the University Capacity Development Programme that focuses on university staff development (UCDP). The C.O.S.T.A. Postgraduate Research Supervision and Coaching Model is a tool that has been developed to capacitate both researchers and supervisors with a specific intent to lighten the journey of research for postgraduate students in South Africa. For students who have never been exposed to research methods, postgraduate research is a huge obstacle. Students' lack of exposure to research language was one of the challenges revealed in a recent study of postgraduate supervision (Costa, 2018). Whereas difficulties students face with methods within the positivist and realist philosophical dimensions are not insurmountable, a variety of approaches, including rigor determination in qualitative research results in complexities, which present a plethora of challenges to novice researchers. This document introduces the C.O.S.T.A. model as a tool for academics and students, with a systematic guide to understanding foundational concepts and the language of research, as well as making informed decisions about research methods and design strategy options available to the prospective researcher. Furthermore, the tool is also powerful instrument for monitoring and measuring development and performance of researchers. With five nodes that fundamentally inform application (Concepts, Objective, Situation, Tact and Assessment), the C.O.S.T.A provides a framework and a standard against which researchers should benchmark their development
Lessons From The Field: An Insight Into The Documentation Of Gurenɛ Oral Genres
No full textThe paper discusses my eight months fieldwork experience of documenting endangered Gurenɛ (Mabia, Niger-Congo) oral genres which include riddles and folktales, sung folktales, songs and ritual performances between 2010 and 2012 in Bolga and Bongo in northern Ghana. It presents the documentary corpus of close to 100 hours of both audio and video recordings and discusses the strategies and challenges of documenting these genres. It is argued in this paper that though Gurenɛ with a speaker population of over 600,000 is not endangered, its oral genres such as riddles and folktales are vanishing and deserves attention to be documented. The paper draws attention of linguistic field workers and language documenters to pay attention to such languages and not to focus only on endangered or moribund languages. The documentation corpus from this project has been archived at the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at SOAS, London. The lessons in this project can be used to document these genres in other Ghanaian or African languages for revitalization and preservation of these linguistic and cultural resources of language communities
Open Peer Reviewers in Africa Workshop Module I Template Slides
No full textThis template slide deck, available both in .pdf and .pptx format, was developed in the context of a Wellcome Trust funded project to pilot a three-part workshop series called Open Peer Reviewers in Africa. This deck is the first of two—Module II template slide deck available here. Details about the workshop and information about how to run your own version of the workshop can be found in the Trainer Guide
Risk and resilience factors for primary school dropout in Côte d’Ivoire
No full textSupplemental Materials: https://osf.io/5yubf/We examined child-, family-, and school-level risk and resilience factors associated with dropout using longitudinal data of fifth-grade students in rural Côte d’Ivoire (N=1195, Mage=10.75, SDage=1.42). Children who dropped out were older, involved in more child labour, had poorer literacy, owned fewer books, and attended schools with poorer learning environments. Cumulative risk (CR) indices revealed that child-level CR most strongly predicted dropout (b=-0.86, OR=0.42); further, children with low child-level CR were more likely to drop out when family-level CR was high (b=0.23, OR=1.25). Better school infrastructure and teachers were protective for children who were at high risk of dropout yet remained enrolled. Although child- and family-level factors contribute to risk of dropout, school-level factors may mitigate risks and promote academic resilience amongst students in West Africa
Politique de préservation du patrimoine numérique scientifique dans les universités publiques
No full textCet article a été rédigé dans le cadre de la deuxième édition du Colloque "Science ouverte au Sud". Co-organisée par l’IRD, le Cirad et l’Académie Nationale des Sciences, Arts et Lettres du Bénin (ANSALB), l’édition 2022 qui a eu lieu à Cotonou du 25 au 27 octobre 2022 a été l'occasion de dresser un panorama des approches en matière de gestion et d’ouverture des données de la recherche en Afrique, particulièrement en Afrique francophone, de partager et de promouvoir les bonnes pratiques.La préservation du patrimoine numérique scientifique dans les universités publiques au Bénin est un impératif pour les gouvernants de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche scientifique, des universités et des professionnels de l’information scientifique et technique (IST) eu égard aux diverses alertes et recommandations qui fusent de par le monde pour faire de la science ouverte et de l’accès ouvert un levier de partage et d’accès facilité à la documentation scientifique et aux données de recherche sans aucune barrière technologique et financière. L’étude entreprise dans ce cadre vise à faire un état des lieux des politiques et programmes mis en œuvre dans cette perspective, poser des diagnostics des pesanteurs institutionnelles afin de capitaliser dans un dépôt institutionnel numérique, l’ensemble des productions scientifiques issues des académies et des laboratoires des institutions publiques et universitaires au Bénin. Mais il est ahurissant de constater que malgré les tapages et agitations qui se font autour de la science ouverte et de l’accès ouvert qui d’ailleurs constituent une solution pour se soustraire du joug des éditeurs scientifiques, monopolistiques et prédateurs, rien de techniquement normatif et bibliothéconomique n’est encore entrepris si ce n’est que quelques amorces d’acte de volonté visant la création d’outils de gestion numérique de ce patrimoine qui, quand bien même aboutis, ne sont que des œuvres isolées qui ne couvrent qu’une infirme partie du patrimoine avec des moyens très limités et étriqués. Pour une prise de conscience des acteurs (gouvernants, universitaires et spécialistes) afin de profiter des avantages de la science ouverte et d’accès ouvert dont la visibilité scientifique des chercheurs, des universités et de l’éclosion d’un développement économique et social pour le Bénin, l’analyse conduite a exploré des perspectives, formulées sous forme de recommandations et plan de mise en œuvre.Institut de recherche pour le Développemen
Advocating for practical solutions to challenges of Nigerian Party politics
No full textThe major challenges connected to Nigeria’s political party politics includes ideology, corruption, money politics, ethno religious fragmentations, violence and a dominant ruling party with some opposition parties challenging each other. Studies on Nigerian political parties are narrow in advocating for practical solutions to the challenges of party politics in Nigeria, particularly considering the emerging shift in the voting choices of the citizens during the 2007 and 2019 general elections in Bauchi State. This indicates that the influence of political parties on voters appears to be in decline, or at the very least experiencing significant change. Thus, the nature of this evidence of decline and what it means for the future of parties and representative democracy needs to be investigated with realistic way out, which this study aims at through a qualitative method of data collection and analysis. The study concludes that, while political parties are reasonably and normatively important to the process of representative democracy, party politics in Nigeria should embrace a collective viewpoint and common ideology of serving and developing the welfare of the electorates as well as to aggregate, articulate, and stimulate the electorates interests in the form of policy alternatives. In addition, Nigerian political party system must be is a system of connections consequential from inter-party competition. This imply that each party as a component affects and is influenced in turn by the performance of the other parties within Nigeria’s political system