Examining the impact and responses of covid-19 directed to women and business

In emerging economies, small businesses, especially those owned or led by women are critical to growth, employment and development. These businesses do face financial and operational difficulties due to various limitations in good economic times, as the COVID-19 crisis has only amplified the challenges which were already existing and must contend with on a daily basis Access to finance being one of the examples which is generally the lifeblood to any growing business has constantly been a significant challenge for many before the global crisis. Today, pandemic focused restrictions on the financing space pose even greater hurdles to the operations and sustainability of finances directed to small and female owned businesses and in many cases are a definite threat to their very existence. A potential of extensive widening of existing gender inequalities has also been produced by the pandemic. The barriers and constraints that women entrepreneurs face including but not limited to access to finance are being highly accelerated by Covid-19 pandemic. The support of businesses and more specifically those owned and led by women has to be morerelevant and needed during this global crisis. The complete impact of the crisis was not felt evenly by all, with women especially those in businessbearing the brunt of economic fallout. The story needs to change.Papers presented virtually at the 39th International Southern African Transport Conference on 05 -07 July 202

Integrating African Traditional Health Knowledge and Practices into Health Sciences Curricula in Higher Education: An Imbizo

Traditional health knowledge and practices remain the primary source of health services for most African communities. Despite this, the training of health professionals in South African higher education institutions remains underpinned on paradigms based on Western medicine, adversely perpetuating health disparities and widening the gap between health professionals and African health service users. This research describes the views of African traditional knowledge holders, traditional health practitioners, health sciences academics, and nursing students on how African traditional health knowledge and practices can be integrated into health sciences curricula. In this qualitative study, we purposively selected a panel of experts as participants and collected data via a discussion forum. Ideas that stood out from the discussions include the nature of transformation as starting from within, barriers to the co-existence of African and biomedical health systems, and strategies to facilitate integration. This venture has revealed that the successful integration of African traditional health knowledge and practices into existing nursing curricula will require a concerted effort from all stakeholders in order to transform and recognise the value of African traditional medicine. Lessons learnt from adopting an imbizo approach for discussions include improved collaboration and the levelling of power differentials. We recommend that more studies on decolonisation within the African context adopt this methodology to ascertain and strengthen its viability.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rars202021-05-18hj2020Nursing Scienc