26 research outputs found
The effect of Nyanja as a Language of initial literacy in a predominantly Tumbuka-speaking area : The case of Lumezi area in Lundazi Distict
No full textThe main aim of the research was to find out the effects of using Nyanja as a language of initial literacy in a predominantly Tumbuka-speaking area, namely, in Lundazi rural schools. The general public in Lundazi rural areas claimed that although Nyanja was used as a medium for teaching initial literacy skills in Grade One, it was not spoken by pupils and the majority of them understood very little of it. They said that children learnt these skills with great difficulties when Nyanja was used to teach them.
Despite the above complaints, the Zambian Government still maintains that the official regional language, Nyanja, is a familiar language in the whole Eastern Province. Consequently, the Government minks that Nyanja quickens or eases the learning of initial literacy skills. The Government feels Nyanja improves the acquisition of skills where English had very poor results. In reaction to the Government's insistence on using Nyanja during literacy lessons in Lundazi District, many people interviewed said that since 2002 when Nyanja was introduced as a medium for teaching literacy lessons, it had not brought any recognisable improvements in the way Grade One pupils learnt them. Subsequently, they wondered why it should continue to be promoted in the rural areas. Due to these opposing views between the Government and the local people on the language of instruction in literacy lessons, it was necessary to carry out a study to investigate whether it is true mat Nyanja quickens and eases the learning of initial literacy skills in Lundazi rural schools since it was introduced to Grade One classes.
The data was collected using questionnaires, guided interviews, checking pupils' books, lesson observations and assessment results in bom districts. Other methods which were used to collect data were introspection and reading books. Lundazi, where pupils speak Tumbuka, was the experiment while Katete, a predominantly Chewa-speaking district, was the control. Chewa was chosen because it is a dialect of Nyanja and that the Chewa people speak and understand Nyanja very well. On the other hand, Tumbuka is not a dialect of Nyanja for Tumbuka-speaking pupils to know it.
The findings from respondents in Lundazi rural schools indicated that many Tumbuka-speaking pupils faced problems in understanding Nyanja. The pupils made a lot of errors whenever they tried to read, speak or write it. Meanwhile, pupils in Katete, including Tumbuka-speakers, got generally good results in initial literacy exercises.
Therefore, it was concluded that the difficulties that pupils faced in Lundazi contributed to the poor results they got in initial literacy lessons. In order to counter thse negative effects, it was recommended that for learning initial literacy skills in Grade One, pupils in Lundazi rural schools should use Tumbuka. This agrees with Benjamin Lee Whorf s theory of linguistic relativity which says that thought and language depend on each other. Consequently, teaching must be conducted in known languages (Tauris and Wade, 1993)
Chifundo chamanga (I long for my mother)
No full textSung by a lad of about 12 years old who sang this song in a quiet voice and was much applauded by everyone, whether for the singing or the sentiment, was not clear. Self delectative song with board zither
Kaphika (Kaphika left his mother crying)
No full textWhat Kaphika the child of Masiye had done to make his mother cry is not certain. Some said he had gone away from home for a long time. "Kaphika the child of Masiye has left his mother crying." The tuning of his Zither was:- 432, 408, 368, 340, 308, 276, 244. The intervals used by stopping alternate strings would be 278, 315, 306, 360, 403 cents. Self delectative song with board zither
Evaporation of the miombo woodland of southern Africa: A phenophase-based comparison of field observations to satellite-based evaporation estimates
No full textThrough precipitation retention and evaporation (by both interception and transpiration), woodlands play a significant role in the global moisture cycle. Evaporation is the largest, but at the same time, the most difficult flux to observe in a woodland. Accounting for woodland evaporation is important for hydrological modelling for the efficient development and management of water resources. Assessing evaporation is a challenging undertaking that involves the use of a wide range of equipment and requires skilled personnel. Much work has been conducted on assessing evaporation in agricultural crops. Even satellite data-based models are largely structured to assess evaporation in agricultural crops to the exclusion of understanding evaporation dynamics in natural woodlands, especially in African ecosystems. However, evaporation in woodland surfaces accounts for a significant portion of the water cycle over the terrestrial land mass. Understanding the characteristics of woodland ecosystem evaporation like interception and transpiration, is key to monitoring climate impact on woodland ecosystems, which is important for hydrological modelling and the management of water resources at various scales. One of the key aspects to enable this understanding is the knowledge of woodland phenological interaction with climate variables and the seasonal environmental regimes. “Vegetation phenology” refers to the periodic biological life cycle events of plants, such as leaf flushing and senescence, and corresponding temporal changes in vegetation canopy cover. Solar radiation, temperature and water availability (i.e., rainfall and soil moisture) are some of the key environmental variables that influence plant phenology. The attributes of woodland phenology, solar radiation, temperature and water availability differ across the diverse ecosystems globally, therefore, requires better understanding at a more local or regional level. Yet, evaporation of natural woodlands, especially in African ecosystems, with respect to phenological phases, are poorly characterised. This is largely because phenological studies have mainly focused on northern mid-latitude regions to the exclusion of other regions like the miombo of southern Africa. For increasing the predictive power of hydrological models, it is important to account for the interaction of woodland phenology with climate variables over the seasons and to characterise evaporation. This thesis aims at understanding the miombo woodland evaporation as a consequence of the vegetation phenological interaction with environmental and hydrological variables across seasons. Based on information in public domain, this study is the first independent field observation data-based characterisation of actual evaporation of the miombo woodland. The miombo is a heterogeneous woodland of the genus Brachystegia with the dominant species in the study location being Bauhinia petersenia, Brachystegia longifolia, Brachystegia boehmii, Brachystegia speciformis, Jubenerdia paninculata, Pericopsis angolensis, Uapaca kirkiana and Uapaca sansibarica. Unique phenological attributes are the simultaneous leaf fall, leaf flush and leaf colour changes that normally occur in the dry season between May and October. Most miombo woodland species are broad leaved and have developed dry season coping mechanisms such as deep rooting (capacity to access deep soil moisture and ground water) and vegetation water storage. The canopy closure is varied across the miombo woodland strata and is influenced by several factors including rainfall, soil type, soil moisture and nutrients, species diversity and temperature. These phenological attributes are species dependent, with varied response to phenological stimuli. This study sought to answer the question on the role of the phenology of the miombo woodland in the evaporation dynamics. The thesis also endeavoured to show how phenology, potentially, affects satellite-based evaporation estimates of the miombo woodland. The Luangwa Basin in southern Africa, a largely miombo woodland covered basin, was used as the study area. This basin was chosen because it is located in both the dry miombo woodland and wet miombo woodland in the Zambezian miombo woodland which is the largest strata of the miombo woodland. Furthermore, the Luangwa Basin is located in Zambia which is described as the country possibly with the highest diversity of trees and is said to be the centre of endemism for Brachystegia, with 17 species. To answer the questions on the importance of the phenology of the miombo woodland on the evaporation dynamics, the study used a coupled approach by applying both satellite data and field observations. Phenological changes of the miombo woodland across seasons were assessed using satellite-based data, the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) and leaf area index (LAI). Satellite-based data, land surface temperature (LST) and normalised difference infrared index (NDII), were used as proxies for climate variables canopy temperature and canopy vegetation water content. Point scale field estimates of evaporation across three different phenophases of the miombo woodland were obtained using the Bowen ratio distributed temperature sensing (BR-DTS) system. By measuring profiles of air temperature and wet bulb temperature, the evaporation could be estimated via the Bowen ratio method (BR-DTS). Six satellite-based evaporation estimates were compared across different phenophases of the miombo woodland. This was meant to observe the phenophases in which significant diferences in the trend and magnitude of satellite-based evaporation estimates occured. The general water balance approach was used to assess annual actual evaporation at basin scale. Consequently, satellite-based evaporation estimates were compared to the BR-DTS-based evaporation estimates at point scale and the water balance-based evaporation at basin scale. Results, based on satellite data, show that the phenology of the miombo woodland, i.e., changes in woodland canopy cover and photosynthetic activities, have a season-dependent correlation with climate variables. Woodland canopy cover, across phenophases and seasons, appear to be more influenced rather by water than temperature. This may explain the particular species-dependent buffering mechanisms during water limited conditions i.e., leaf shedding, deep rooting systems with access to ground water, and the vegetation water storage mechanisms. In agreement with available literature in public domain it appears there is little variation in canopy cover/closure (i.e., proxied by LAI) in wet miombo woodland in the dry season. At the wet miombo woodland site in Mpika, Zambia, the BR-DTS observations showed that, across the different phenophases, the actual evaporation trend and magnitude appeared to be more associated with the available energy than the changes in the woodland canopy cover. Further analysis showed that the net radiation has a greater influence on actual evaporation as it accounted for more variations in the actual evaporation compared to the changes in the woodland canopy cover (i.e., NDVI). The energy partitioning showed that available energy expenditure varied with phenological season. In the green down phenophase during the cool dry season the available energy was largely partitioned as sensible heat flux. As the temperature and net radiation begun to increase in the early dormant phenophase during the late cool dry season (July August) the available energy appeared to be equally partitioned between sensible and latent heat flux. In the late dormant phenophase during the early warm pre-rainy season (i.e., September) available energy was largely partitioned as latent heat flux. In the green-up phenophase during the late pre-warm rainy season (i.e., October) and early rainy season (i.e., November to December) the avialable energy was largely partitioned as latent heat flux. During the rain days the available energy appeard to be equally partition between latent and sensible heat flux. It appears that as the net radiation and canopy cover increased the available energy was largely partitioned as latent heat flux during the dry season. A remarkable observation was the continued rising trend of actual evaporation even during the lowest woodland canopy cover period in August and September. The rising trend in actual evaporation during the dry season may be due to the developed dry season water stress buffering mechanism such as deep rooting with access to moisture in deep soils and possibly access to ground water. The trend of the BR-DTS-based actual evaporation of the miombo woodland in the dry season points to the interaction between hydro-climate variables (i.e., precipitation linked soil moisture and net radiation) and the plant phenology. When compared to field observations, at point scale, all satellite-based evaporation estimates underestimated actual evaporation of a wet miombo woodland in the dry season and part of the early rainy season. Substantial underestimations were in the dormant and the green-up phenophases. Additionally, except for the WaPOR, the trends of all other satellite-based evaporation estimates differed from that of field observations. Plausible explanations for the behaviour (trend and magnitude) of satellite-based evaporation estimates in the dry season include the non-integration of soil moisture directly into the modelling of transpiration and the optimisation of the rooting depth. For instance, the use of proxies such as the NDVI and LST for soil moisture in surface energy balance models, such as SSEBop, results in uncertainities as the proxies are unable to take into account other factors that influence the sensible heat flux. In MOD16 the use of relative humidity and vapour pressure difference as proxies for soil moisture may be a source of uncertainty in estimating transpiration. On the other hand it has been observed that direct integration of soil moisture in the MOD16 algorithm appeared to improve the accuracy of actual evaporation estimates. This may explain why the WaPOR which integrate soil moisture stress in the algorithm appeared to have a smilar trend to field observations and also had higher estimates of actual evaporation compared to the other satellite-based evaporation estimates. It has also been shown that optimising the rooting depth improves the accuracy of transpiration estimates in vegetation with a dry season. Most miombo woodland species are deep rooting with access to deep soil moisture and potentially groundwater. Therefore, direct integration of soil moisture into the algorithms for the satellite-based evaporation estimates and optimising the rooting depth is likely to improve the accuracy of actual evaporation estimates for the miombo woodland.The phenophase-based comparison at pixel scale in dry miombo woodland and wet miombo woodland and at the Luangwa Basin miombo woodland scale showed similar results. In all three scenarios substantially high coefficients of variation in actual evaporation estimates among satellite-based evaporation estimates were observed in the water limited, high temperature and low woodland canopy cover conditions in the dormant phenophase. The coefficients of variation in actual evaporation estimates were also substantially high in the green-up phenophase at the boundary between the dry season and the rainy season. The lowest coefficients of variation in actual evaporation estimates were observed in water abundant, high temperature, high leaf chlorophyll content and high woodland canopy cover during the maturity/peak phenophase. The high coefficients of variation in actual evaporation estimates, among satellite-based evaporation estimates, in the dormant and green-up phenophases, points to the challenge of estimating the actual evaporation of the miombo woodland in the dry season and early rainy season. The same scenario emerged as was observed at point scale, with reference to field observations, in which satellite-based evaporation estimates which directly integrate soil moisture in their algorithm appeared to have higher estimates of actual evaporation in the dormant phenophase in the dry season. For instance, the FLEX-Topo and WaPOR integrate soil moisture in their algorithms. Compared to each other the FLEX-Topo and WaPOR appeared to have no statistically significant (p-value > 0.5) differences in their trends and mean estimates of actual evaporation in the dormant phenophase in the dry season. Compared to the FLEX-Topo and WaPOR the other four satellite-based evaporation estimates, GLEAM, MOD16, SSEBop and TerraClimate showed statisticantly significant (p-value < 0.05) differences in the trend and mean estimates of actual evaporation in the dormant phenophase in the dry season. Considering the canopy phenology and the associated physiological adaptation of the miombo woodland plants in the dry season, it appears that the direct integration of the soil moisture in the algorithms and optimising the rooting depth is likely to improve the accuracy of the satellite-based evaporation estimates. In the maturity/peak phenophase(s) during the mid-rainy season, compared to other satellite-based evaporation estimates, the MOD16 appeared to have significantly (p-value < 0.05) higher estimates of actual evaporation. The plausible explanation for this observation could be that the interception module of MOD16 is more responsive to the miombo woodland phenology. The wet miombo woodland intercepts between 17-20 percent of rainfall annually. Compared to the general annual water balance-based actual evaporation all six satellite-based evaporation estimates underestimated actual evaporation of the Luangwa Basin. The implication of this observation is that satellite-based evaporation estimates likely underestimates evaporation even in non-miombo woodland such as the mopane woodland that are also part of the larger Luangwa Basin vegetation landscape. However, for a comprehensive overview of the performance of the satellite-based evaporation estimates there is need for vegetation type and land-cover type based assessments of actual evaporation for the Luangwa Basin. At both point and basin scale-based assessments, there was a negative linear relationship between the spatial resolution of satellite-based evaporation estimates and the estimated actual evaporation. Satellite-based evaporation estimates with fine spatial resolutions showed lower underestimates compared to those with coarser resolutions. The implication is that the finer the spatial resolution the lower the underestimation. However, at both assessment scales, the linear relationships between the spatial resolutions and the evaporation estimates were statistically insignificant (i.e., p-value > 0.05). The reason for this outcome is exhibited in that some satellite-based evaporation estimates with relatively coarser spatial resolutions, i.e., SSEBop at both point and basin scale and TerraClimate at basin scale, underestimated less compared to MOD16 which had a finer spatial resolution. Furthermore, at basin scale a coarser spatial resolution estimate FLEX-Topo and a finer spatial resolution estimate WaPOR showed similar magnitude of actual evaporation in the dormant phenophase in the dry season. The implication of this observation is that other factors (i.e., heterogeneity in the landscape, model structure, processes and inputs) influence more the estimated actual evaporation rather than the spatial resolutions of the satellite-based evaporation estimates. Consequently, it appears that satellite-based estimates at finer spatial resolution with the structure, processes and inputs that couple canopy transpiration with the root zone storage, taking into account the vertical upward (beyond 2.5 m) and horizontal moisture flux as well as the canopy phenological changes, are likely to provide actual evaporation estimates that reflect actual conditions of the miombo woodland. This is demonstrated by the WaPOR estimates which appears to include these aspects in simulating actual evaporation. The field-based actual evaporation assessments were conducted in the wet miombo woodland. It is possible that the phenological response to changes in hydrological and climate regimes in the drier miombo woodland are different from the observations at the Mpika site. Therefore, there is need for similar observations to be performed in the drier miombo woodland and to compare the results. However, this thesis has demonstrated the importance of understanding and incorporating the canopy phenology and dry season physiological adaptation (i.e., deep rooting) of the miombo woodland in modelling actual evaporation. Additionally, for basins with heterogenous woodland types like the Luangwa, it is important to conduct actual evaporation assessments in the different vegetation types. This is likely to give a more representative understanding of basin scale evaporation dynamics. Nevertheless, this study has provided a foundation on which other studies can build towards a more comprehensive understanding of the actual evaporation dynamics in this unique woodland. <br/
Why liberalization alone has not improved agricultural productivity in Zambia : the role of asset ownership and working capital constraints
No full textThe authors use a large panel data set from Zambia to examine factors that could explain the relatively lackluster performance of the country's agricultural sector after liberalization. Zambia's liberalization significantly opened the economy but failed to alter the structure of productionor help realize efficiency gains. They reach two main conclusions. First, not owning productive assets (in Zambia, draft animals and implements) limits improvements in agricultural productivity and household welfare. Owning oxen increases income directly, allows farmers to till their fields efficiently when rain is delayed, increases the area cultivated, and improves access to credit and fertilizer markets. Second, the authors reject the hypothesis that the application of fertilizer is unprofitable because of high input prices. Rather, fertilizer use appears to have declined because of constraints on supplies, which government intervention exacerbated instead of alleviating. (Extending the use of fertilizer to the many producers not currently using it would be profitable, but increasing the amount applied by the few producers who now have access to it would not be.) Policies to foster accumulation of the assets needed for agricultural production (including draft animals and implements) and to provide complementary public goods (education, credit, and good agricultural extension services) could greatly help reduce poverty and improve productivity.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Agricultural Research
Seasonal Abundance of Plague Vector <i>Xenopsylla brasiliensis</i> from Rodents Captured in Three Habitat Types of Periurban Suburbs of Harare, Zimbabwe
No full textEnglish Language Variation: Creation of Zambian English (ZamEnglish)
No full textIn the present chapter, an attempt has been made to discuss the need to create Zambian English to address English language variations in Zambia. No language in the world can remain the same after interacting with other languages. The present chapter intends to propose and support the idea of using ‘Zambian English’ for both formal and informal business. Such a measure would create the communicative competence that the majority of the Zambians have always longed for. In Zambia, the purpose of using English language office is to deliberate day to day’s business. On the contrary, this has been found to be an obstacle to those who lack principles of command in the language usage, but are able to construct sentences for communicative purposes yet are deprived in international interactions. The views expressed in this chapter are those of the language experts who were engaged in a conver� sation with regard to the possibility of creating what would be known as Zambian English (ZamEnglish)
SOME ASPECTS OF THE CIRCULAR DICHROISM MEASUREMENTS ON FOURIER TRANSFORM INFRARED (FTIR) SPECTROMETERS
No full textAuthor Institution: Department of Chemistry, Vanderbilt University NashvilleVibrational circular dichroism (VCD) measurements using FTIR techniques were reported recently. In these measurements, the VCD spectra are obtained by subtracting the VCD measured for the two enantiomers of a chiral molecule. This is necessary to eliminate the base line artifacts and to determine the zero line of VCD spectra. This procedure however cannot be used when for a given optically active sample, (a). both enantiomers are not resolved (b). the enantiomers are not of same optical purity. Carbohydrates are one series of molecules for which both enantiomers are not available. We present a procedure to determine the zero line in such cases and discuss the experimental results. We also present the first VCD measurements below . E. D Lipp, C. Zimba and L. A. Nafic, Chem. Phys. Lett., 90. 1(1982)
Variations in canopy cover and its relationship with canopy water and temperature in the miombo woodland based on satellite data
No full textUnderstanding the canopy cover relationship with canopy water content and canopy temperature in the Miombo ecosystem is important for studying the consequences of climate change. To better understand these relationships, we studied the satellite data-based land surface temperature (LST) as proxy for canopy temperature, leaf area index (LAI), and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) as proxies for canopy cover. Meanwhile, the normalized difference infrared index (NDII) was used as a proxy for canopy water content. We used several statistical approaches including the correlated component regression linear model (CCR.LM) to understand the relationships. Our results showed that the most determinant factor of variations in the canopy cover was the interaction between canopy water content (i.e., NDII) and canopy temperature (i.e., LST) with coefficients of determination (R2) ranging between 0.67 and 0.96. However, the coefficients of estimates showed the canopy water content (i.e., NDII) to have had the largest percentage of the interactive effect on the variations in canopy cover regardless of the proxy used i.e., LAI or NDVI. From 2009-2018, the NDII (proxy for canopy water content) showed no significant (at alpha level 0.05) trend. However, there was a-n significant upward trend in LST (proxy for canopy temperature) with a magnitude of 0.17 °C/year. Yet, the upward trend in LST did not result in significant (at alpha level 0.05) downward changes in canopy cover (i.e., proxied by LAI and NDVI). This result augments the observed least determinant factor characterization of temperature (i.e., LST) on the variations in canopy cover as compared to the vegetation water content (i.e., NDII).Water Resource
Protection of property rights versus economic development in emergent states with emphasis on Zambia
No full textThe domain of this study is entitled, "the protection of property rights and the needs of economic development in the emergent African states with special emphasis on Zambia". The central point intended to be pursued is the proposition that economic development is a fundamental aim of any new, emerging state. Throughout Africa the notion that political independence is meaningless unless accompanied by the indigenization of the economy is accepted. In fact the peoples of Africa had been promised (by their respective nationalist leaders) improvement from self government. Dr. Nkrumah assured his listeners that ”if we get self-government we’ll transform the gold coast into a paradise in ten years". His fellow nationalist leaders elsewhere on the continent had made similar promises. And the African people genuinely believed their leaders. Consequently, support for anti-colonialism contained a greater weight of economic and social expectation than simply a desire to gain indigenous rulers. Political independence was eventually achieved by many of the countries. Indeed the 1960s is correctly termed as the decade of African independence. Firstly, it is argued in this paper that African leaders found it difficult to proceed with the implementation of economic development, based on the nationalization of foreign-owned enterprises because the legal order which they inherited was not so conducive to the attainment of these objectives. Going through the bills of rights written in the independence constitutions for most of the Commonwealth African countries, there are provisions which have had the undesirable effect of limiting the power of the nationalist governments to initiate development programmes along socialist lines. Indeed there is evidence in support of the contention that the protection of property rights in the Commonwealth African bills of rights were consciously written in order to entrench, not the economic interests of the ex-colony, but those of the foreign power and its allied profit motivated companies. The adverse effects on economic independence induced by these kind of property provisions perhaps weighed more heavily on Zambia than any other Commonwealth African country, because the backbone of her economy, copper, was owned by a foreign company, the British South Africa Company. The extraordinary extent of the country's dependence upon copper, coupled with the immoral method by which the company acquired its title to the minerals, made its ownership intolerable to the nationalist government which took office in 1963. Yet the independence constitution written for Zambia 'completely’ prohibited confiscation of property by the nationalist government. This obviously entrenched the rights of the company at the expense of the proper development of the country's mineral resources for the benefit of the community as a whole. In this paper, measures which the Zambia government took to revise the colonially-inherited provisions relating to the protection of property rights so as to render them responsive to economic needs of the country are discussed. A similar discussion is undertaken with respect to the position in Uganda and Botswana. The neighbouring Tanzania has no bill of rights so that the situation there is slightly different. But, the discussion on protection of property rights and economic development in this paper is by no means limited to constitutional provisions on property rights; it covers any law, statutory or otherwise, insofar as it has some relation to the individual ownership of property - so that the nationalization legislation in Tanzania is properly in the scope of this inquiry and is discussed in the light of the economic development objectives and political philosophy which characterizes Tanzania's approach to the tackling of modernization problems. It must also be pointed out that the proposition which this work seeks to establish is that every country, whether African or not, is entitled to take measures intended to protect her economy, and that these measures invariably aim at destroying the very legal foundation upon which protection of foreign-owned property rights is based. The paper then demonstrates that the principle of economic self determination is solidly entrenched in inter¬national law. According to the latter, the principle of economic Self determination is bound up with the idea of the sovereignty of the state. As such every state possess a paramount sovereignty over its natural wealth and resources. In the exercise of this sovereignty, a state government may deem it fit, in the name of public security or national interest to nationalise, expropriate, or requisition any of the property lying within its boundaries. Surely national interest should override purely individual or private interests, both domestic and foreign. But although nationalization of private property of aliens is permitted in international law yet the same imposes conditions under which these can be carried out. The paper discusses these conditions (which also found their way in the national constitutions of Commonwealth Africa) from the background of the exigencies engendered by the needs of economic development. Apart from arguing that economic development in a new nation Must start from the point of restructuring the colonially-inherited legal order to one which would support the economic evolution, the paper also demonstrates that the only one reliable and effective instrument at the disposal of the African socio-economic reformers, is law. Law, and its personification, the state, are the only principal instruments through which the aims of economic development can be implemented. In making this statement, the author views economic development to comprise of other interrelated elements which exist side by side with economic development but which may not be purely economic. Three of these "co operant factors" involved in economic planning which are discussed elsewhere in this paper can easily be identified, viz: social equality, increased national productivity and equal distribution of wealth. In a very big way the work attempts to show that law and legal institutions have an important place in social change in general and in the rate of economic development in particular. Necessarily implicit in the contents of the paper is the assertion that an African legal scholar must abandon the habit of looking at law as merely a mechanism of conflict-resolution or as a regulative mechanism concerned only with reconciling social tensions among citizens. There is no question that this is one of the functions of law. But there are other functions of law aside from these, and in conditions of development, it is not even clear that those aforementioned ones are, in some transcendental sense, better than others. In the areas chosen for this study. Commonwealth Africa, legal education is generally oriented towards training lawyers in their craft, largely by teaching doctrine and technical legal skills. This education is highly deficient in development states as will become clear from the text of the paper. Broadly, then one may say that, in part, the subject matter of this investigation covers a study of the use of the normative system called law to bring about economic development. It Is a study of how law and legal institutions can be used, in the words of professor Lawrence Friedman, "to set off, monitor, or otherwise regulate the fact or pace of social change"• In fact a long time ago Max Weber had already seen and forged connections between law, economy, and society. It will be noticed that the third part of the paper deals with law as an instrument of social equality in emergent states: The subject of social equality has become very topical in socialist states of Africa. It must be stressed that African leaders are in as much search for 'social democracy’ as they are for economic democracy and political democracy. Their commitment to socialism has instinctively led them to believe in the African version of social justice which implies building a social order based OD social equality and egalitarianism. The colonially-inherited social order was naturally intrinsically bound up with the values of capitalism which meant prevalence of social inequalities among the population, and also exploitation of man by man Part three of the dissertation discusses the law which at least two African countries, Tanzania and Zambia, have passed to close up the inequity incidents among the population, and also the laws preventing, or at least making It difficult for, anyone to exploit his fellow man. Two legal institutions which have been set up in Tanzania and Zambia to achieve the above stated social objectives are, (i) the leadership regulations, and (ii) the nationalisation of land. As will be explained, Zambia has not as yet socialized its land tenure system although the legislation to this effect is in the pipeline. But the important point here is that both Tanzania and Zambia have passed legislation whose ultimate purpose is to maximize social justice and to advance the ideals of building their respective societies based on egalitarianism. In the abstract then, it is sufficient to summarize the objective of this dissertation by saying that it is concerned with a review of the activities of the Commonwealth African legislatures insofar as these activities are aimed at introducing a certain legal order considered ideal to economic development, increased national productivity and social equality. This can be ensured, at least in a socialist state, by restricting the individual rights to property, and by giving legal power to the state to intervene in the national economy so as to give the latter a new socialist orientation
