Lessons learnt from the IWRM demonstration projects: innovations in local-level integrated water resource development in Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zambia

Water resource management / Guidelines / Project planning / Financing / Multiple use / Irrigation water / Domestic water / Participatory management / Community involvement / Empowerment / Local government / Poverty / Public health / Malawi / Mozambique / Swaziland / Zambia

IWRM and Rural Livelihood Project in Dzimphutsi: process documentation

Water resource management / Multiple use / Project planning / Project management / Participatory management / Community involvement / Dams / Irrigation schemes / Irrigated farming / Fish ponds / Livestock / Domestic water / Villages / Water scarcity / Institution building / Water users / Impact assessment / Malawi / Dzimphutsi Village / Mtendere Irrigation Scheme / Nkudzi River

OFFSITE MANUFACTURING: THE WAY FORWARD FOR NIGERIA’S HOUSING INDUSTRY

Nigeria is one of the most developed countries in Africa, with construction contributing to approximately 9 of its Gross Domestic Product. From a housing perspective, new initiatives are now being explored, one of which is Offsite Manufacturing (OSM). Globally, the OSM market uses several terms interchangeably, the most prevalent of which include: prefabrication, offsite production, industrialised building systems, dry construction, modern methods of construction etc. These collective approaches have been successfully used in many countries as means of improving housing delivery, particularly in countries like the UK, USA, Australia, Sweden, Japan and Malaysia. Despite the myriad of benefits associated with OSM (e.g. speed of construction, improved quality, reduced risk etc.), there are various barriers identified in the course of adopting OSM; some of these barriers include: client resistance, lack of established codes and standards, negative perception etc. Given these opportunities and barriers, this study investigates the feasibility of adopting OSM and ways of overcoming the barriers hindering its uptake in Nigeria based on the experiences of developed countries. The first part of this paper presents a synthesised literature review which explores the benefits and challenges of using OSM in different countries (including Nigeria as a comparator). Research findings highlight core OSM uptake barriers, including issues such as: reluctance to innovate, paucity of codes and standards, lack of guidance and information, high capital cost, supply chain integrations, skill requirements etc. Whilst many of these countries have now established strategies to offset these uncertainties, it was also observed that governmental support was pivotal in helping to establish OSM as a viable alternative to traditional approaches. From a Nigerian context, similar parallels are observed, most notably the need to encourage OSM through greater awareness, better government policies, and through skilled supply chain partners in order to help improve the problem of housing shortage

Housing Stakeholders Perspective on offsite manufactiring in Nigeria

Despite several mitigation attempts, Nigeria is still facing a deficit of 17 million houses. Seminal literature argues that this problem is predominantly due to a myriad of issues, including high construction costs, skills shortages, slow pace of construction, lack of infrastructure and logistics, poor quality of available housing stock etc. Offsite manufacturing has been proffered as an innovative method for addressing such issues. This paper reports on the findings of a feasibility study, which investigated the Nigerian stakeholders’ perceptions on the needs, promises and barriers of adopting offsite manufacturing in Nigeria. To achieve this, in-depth interviews were conducted with experts directly involved in housing delivery. Data gathered from the experts were analysed using exploratory thematic analysis. Nvivo software was used to transcribe and analyse research data. Findings from the in-depth interviews showed that the housing deficit in Nigeria is on the increase and nothing significant is being done at the moment. Stakeholders also posited that although OSM could improve housing delivery efforts in Nigeria, it is still considerably low; and this is as a result of a myriad of issues, such as negative local perception about OSM, client’s resistance, lack of infrastructure and skills shortage. This study concludes that for OSM to be adopted in Nigeria, there is a need for proper sensitisation, collaboration and encouragement from government. This study presents additional understanding of OSM in Nigeria based on expert opinion, the results of which will become a stepping-stone for the development of a roadmap for the adoption of OSM in Nigeria. It is proffered that adopting OSM can help support housing delivery efforts in Nigeria, and may also leverage wider benefits to the construction industry and associated supply chain

Towards a preferred housing environment: examining satisfaction elements outside a dwelling unit among Ahmadu Bello University (Kongo Campus) staff, Nigeria

In this paper, we built upon findings from a housing satisfaction study (considering largely those elements which are external to the dwelling unit) among two categories of university staff (academic and non-academic). Responses are gathered from university owned housing developments at four (4) different locations as well as private accommodations. 224 households (that is 20% of the entire staff population as at July 2011) were studied by selecting one out of five houses in each of the identified clusters. The study found that, the macro environmental effects of safety and security positively affects occupants’ overall satisfaction. However, although soft exterior landscaping is found to be generally poor in all the studied housing developments, it has no effect on the overall satisfaction. The scenario reflects the contextual level of socio-economic development; hence the study highlights the need to emphasize basic elements, particularly in response to the growing interest in fostering sustainable development through reduced material consumption

Is collaboration during videoconferencing encounters a meaningful experience- An ‘embodied’ affordance approach to explore challenges and opportunities

As videoconferencing encounters have become ‘business as usual’, team members are forced to increasingly actualize technological affordances to be able to interact and collaborate to reach goals. Affordance research on virtual collaboration has neglected one fundamental dimension of the experienced relationship between humans and technology, the materiality of the ‘space between’, through which the situated practices become inherently meaningful. Thereby, this study endeavored to enquire the emerging experience of the human (body)-technology relationship, and its implications for relational aspects of collaboration. Empirical results indicate that due to lack of resonance of bodily movements to the things to which it attends, members are experiencing weakened intrinsic temporal dimensions of conversation in the virtual space, conducive of frustration and lack of trust in the technology. The higher level of distraction and disengagement that follows is suppressing ‘triggered attendance’ and spontaneous initiation of social interaction, two main antecedents of sharing and collaboration. Findings enrich knowledge on the body-emotions-technology relations in the novel context, while disentangling implications for aspects of work

Sam del Rosario Interview

2010 interview with writer and the former ED of the Asian American Artists Collective- Chicago Sam del Rosario by Nancy Shaba

No gold, no gain: Women and Value Negotiation on the margins of Artisanal Gold Mining, in Mazowe, Zimbabwe, c. 1990-2019

Based on ethnographic vignettes, oral interviews, mining reports, newspaper archives, and secondary literature, this paper explores the complex relationship between women, money, and survival in Artisanal Gold Mining in Zimbabwe’s Mazowe district between 1990 and 2019. By doing so, the paper pays particular attention to the varying ways in which women in Mazowe negotiated the value of their commodities (gold, sex, labour). In addition, it traces how diverse groups of women understood daily monetary exchanges, negotiated value, and accumulated capital in mining frontiers, given the volatile currency shifts and speculation at different intervals in postcolonial Zimbabwe. In highlighting this plurality, the paper shows the social and gendered value of gold in the Mazowe district and the everyday sense of value of gold across multiple forms of value exchanges. Departing from scholarship that emphasises the role of politics, patronage and the formalisation of artisanal gold mining, this paper makes a historiographical turn by focusing on the everyday lives of women and value exchanges in artisanal gold mining spaces. The study explores the materiality of gold and its affordances to women in mining, and the new meaning gold assumed in the post-colonial milieu; at the same time, it alsohighlights the shifting roles of women within the sector as well as within its margins