Search Results (198)

The purpose of this study was to detect from the literature the roles of the Government, investors, and regulators in ESG implementation in South Africa from 2002 to 2022. ESG implementation in South Africa ensures sustainable business practices are adopted by firms operating within the country. The study used a scoping review methodology, with only articles in the English language being considered. A pilot search was carried out to identify key search phrases to be included in the search strategy. A total of 208 articles were identified and only 34 articles were eligible for the study. The results show an increase in ESG implementation by institutional investors, although investor activism is still low in South Africa. The South African Government actively enacted laws and regulations that supported ESG implementation after the global financial crisis of 2007–8. However, in recent years, there has been a lack of hard laws to support the non-legislative ESG rules that dominate ESG reporting. The study shows that the South African Government should improve its ESG laws for effective ESG adoption and avoid relying on the JSE, which enforces the King Code as a mandatory listing requirement to monitor ESG implementation. Training, capacity building, and active Government participation are critical for effective ESG implementation in South Africa. Full article

Despite the rapid improvement in the availability and resolution of real-time electricity data, budget development processes in mining have remained relatively unchanged. Currently, there is no standard for the evaluation of mine electricity cost budgets. This study aims to determine whether forecasting processes used by mines produce budgets of sufficient quality and resolution to be used as a tool for daily energy- and cost management. A literature review was conducted to determine a set of best practices for electricity budgeting on mines. These findings were used to develop a survey to evaluate the current state of budgeting processes on South African mines. Surveys were conducted at 41 mine business units. Survey results were processed and analyzed and found that there are significant shortcomings in complying with the identified best practices. The majority of mines produced forecasts in lower resolutions than actual available data, thereby reducing their usefulness as energy management tools. The methods currently employed by mining sites are not scalable and are vulnerable to human error. Only 7% of participating business units’ budgets passed the identified best practices. Adherence to best practices, identified in this paper, will assist mines in improving electricity cost forecasts for more proactive- and sustainable energy management. This will also assist the industry in aligning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of Affordable and Clean Energy (SDG 7), Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure (SDG 9), and Responsible Consumption and Production (SDG 12). Full article

South Africa continues to experience a high HIV prevalence, necessitating innovative prevention strategies aligned with the UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets. Long-acting injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), such as cabotegravir (CAB-LA), offers a promising alternative to daily oral regimens. However, the perspectives of primary healthcare workers (PHCWs)—key implementers of this intervention—remain underexplored. This scoping review aims to systematically map existing literature on PHCWs’ knowledge, awareness, perceptions, barriers, facilitators, and implementation experiences related to injectable PrEP within the South African healthcare context. The review will follow the Arksey and O’Malley framework, enhanced by Levac et al., and will be reported following PRISMA-ScR guidelines. A comprehensive search will be conducted across PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL (EBSCOhost), Web of Science, and Google Scholar, without language or date restrictions. The search strategy will employ both controlled vocabulary (e.g., MeSH and CINAHL Subject Headings) and free-text terms. Studies meeting the inclusion criteria will be managed using EndNote X20 and appraised using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) 2018 version. Data will be synthesized thematically and presented narratively and in tabular form. By consolidating PHCWs’ perspectives, this review will identify implementation challenges, training needs, and systemic barriers, informing the development of context-specific strategies for PrEP rollout. The findings are expected to support the design of effective, culturally relevant educational interventions and guide policymakers in strengthening HIV prevention efforts in high-burden settings. Full article

While tariff liberalization under regional trade agreements has progressed, non-tariff measures (NTMs) have emerged as a significant impediment to the realization of full trade potential, particularly in the agriculture sector where NTMs are especially prevalent and in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) where intra-regional trade is low. Despite the extensive available literature on this subject, the impact of NTMs on trade efficiency in the SADC has hardly been explored. Against this background, this study estimates the impact of NTMs on the efficiency of South Africa’s bilateral agricultural trade with 11 SADC member states using data from 2011 to 2022 and a stochastic frontier gravity model. The average efficiency is found to be 45.6 percent, implying that more than half of South Africa’s agricultural trade potential remains unrealized in the region due to inefficiencies. NTMs are found to be a source of inefficiency, the effect of which is larger than that of tariffs by a factor of 6. This result emphasizes an urgent need for harmonizing NTMs across SADC member states to reduce compliance costs which are associated with trade inefficiency. The study contributes to the literature by treating NTMs as man-made trade resistances that affect trade efficiency rather than trade volumes. Full article

Background: In many African areas, herbal products still represent a significant source of healthcare. However, a major gender bias is evident in the literature, as most of the work is carried out by male researchers, collecting data from male traditional practitioners, and thus often neglecting women’s specific health issues. This warrants a detailed review of the current knowledge about the major medicinal plants historically and still used for women’s health. Objective: This study aims to compile and critically analyze published data on the use of traditional herbal remedies by African women in addressing specific health conditions, in order to evaluate the potential of traditional medicine as a viable alternative or complementary approach to modern healthcare for women globally. Methods: Data were retrieved from databases by combining the following relevant keywords: “abortion, adverse, Africa, attendant, birth, botanical, delivery, developing, drug, ethnomedicine, ethnopharmacology, folk, gynecological, healing, infertility, herb, indigenous, lactation, medicine, native, obstetric, phytomedicine, plant, pregnancy, remedy, side, sub-Saharan, traditional, treatment, women”. Results: More than 125 studies, carried out across 12 African nations, revealed that up to 80% of African women resort to herbal medicines. An estimated 200 medicinally important plant species are reported to be utilized by women in different African countries, including Benin, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. These herbs have many applications, mostly focused on infertility, pregnancy, painful menstruation, breast feeding, breast cancer, and contraception. Interestingly, according to their occurrence of usage, the plants most commonly reported for these conditions that are important to women are ambivalent plants (i.e., used both as foods and medicines) that include Zingiber officinale Roscoe, Allium sativum L., Cucurbita pepo L., and Ricinus communis L. Conclusions: Even though most women, in most African countries, do use traditional medicine, the amount of work published remains quite limited and no data are available in many countries. Therefore, it is desirable to expand African studies in this direction. Full article

Given that there is a huge gap between environmental concerns, recycling awareness, and township consumers’ actual recycling behavior, it is important to determine their actual recycling behavior in order to develop sustainable recycling campaigns in townships. Studies have pointed out the significance of consumer, that is, user engagement in driving actual recycling behavior as part of addressing the negative effects of environmental challenges linked to not recycling on climate change. Studies on recycling behavior in South African townships are limited. The collection of waste in South African townships is less effective than in urban areas. This has resulted in consumers disposing of their waste informally in the spaces between their houses and shacks. An online survey was conducted among 411 township consumers in South Africa, which showed that a positive attitude towards recycling and perceived behavioral control positively and significantly affect consumers’ intention to engage in recycling, whereas subjective norms had no effect. Recycling attitude, personal norms, subjective norms, facilitating conditions, and environmental concerns were found to influence consumers’ actual recycling behavior. Furthermore, users’ intention to engage in recycling was found to mediate the relationship between recycling attitude, perceived behavioral control, facilitating conditions, personal norms, and actual recycling behavior. This paper contributes to the literature on recycling behavior and is useful for municipalities, policy makers, organizations, governments, and other relevant stakeholders on the drivers of actual recycling behavior among township consumers. Full article

Calf weaning plays a fundamental role in the sustainability of cow-calf production systems. In South Africa, conventional weaning at six to nine months is widely practiced, but increasing climatic variability has highlighted early weaning as an adaptive strategy. To support producers in determining the optimal weaning age, we developed a Calf Weaning Decision-Support Framework through an extensive literature review. To ensure its practicality, we validated the framework using the Delphi technique, incorporating real-world insights from livestock experts. A two-round Delphi study was conducted with ten experts in livestock production and research, evaluating key factors influencing weaning age decisions. The study also used the Relative Importance Index (RII) to rank these factors based on expert consensus. The main findings showed strong agreement on productive factors, including weaning weight, conception rate, and dam body condition score alongside financial aspects that influence profitability, such as calf health and feeding expenses, as well as income generated at weaning. Experts identified three additional factors—cattle breed, enterprise cash flow needs, and veld type, emphasizing the need for flexible weaning strategies tailored to specific conditions. This study concludes that the expert-validated framework is a practical and adaptable tool, empowering South African beef producers to make informed, context-specific weaning decisions. Full article

Despite the emphasis on consumption and production patterns in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), plastic pollution remains inadequately addressed. This research contributes to the limited literature on sustainable consumption and disposal of plastic in developing contexts and demonstrates how universities can effectively integrate sustainability competencies into a subject-specific curriculum. This study examined how teacher training programs can address plastic pollution through curriculum innovation and experiential challenge-based learning. Focusing on technology student teachers (TSTs) at a South African institution, the research explored their experiences with community-based problem-solving activities related to plastic consumption and disposal. The polymer module was restructured to combine theoretical knowledge with practical sustainability actions, engaging students in real-world environmental challenges. Data were generated via focus group interview, reflective journal, and photovoice. Working in teams across four communities, TSTs conducted plastic audits in households, shared findings with community members, and collaboratively developed sustainable solutions. This approach bridged the gap between academic learning and environmental action, addressing the critical global plastic crisis that contributes to fossil fuel depletion, ecosystem damage, and greenhouse gas emissions. The findings highlight the potential of teacher education to cultivate environmentally conscious educators who can inspire sustainable thinking and action across educational settings. The practical implications of this research extend beyond the classroom, offering a replicable model for teacher education programs to empower future educators as change agents who can facilitate sustainable community action through knowledge co-creation and context-specific environmental problem-solving. Full article

Nigeria is among the countries highly vulnerable to climate change impact. Thus, there has been growing emphasis on the pursuit of decarbonization and net-zero (net-zero transition) strategies. The aim of this work is to review major concepts in research publications associated with climate change mitigation in Nigeria. The literature search was conducted on the Scopus database using relevant keyword operators. Mixed methods were adopted to conduct bibliometric, text mining and content analysis. Bibliometric software (VOSviewer) was used. The research objectives were to identify how net-zero transition research has evolved in Nigeria; their important research themes and trends in Nigeria, and potential directions for future research on achieving them in Nigeria. The results show that the number of publications in the field has been increasing, with 87% of the articles included in the dataset published between 2016 and 2024. Through data clustering, eight clusters of articles were identified, namely (i) the renewable energy, economic growth and emission reduction nexus (ii) energy transition in the Nigerian power system, (iii) policy drivers (socio-technical and economic) for a cleaner energy system, (iv) energy transition governance, (v) hybrid renewable energy systems, (vi) low-carbon transition, (vii) energy efficiency and low-carbon growth and others. By checking through the keywords used by authors, it appears that the most popular keywords are carbon neutrality, hydrogen, biomass, circular economy, and electric vehicles. These keywords further highlight areas of research interests. Some of the potential future directions identified include the need for effective research communication and strong cooperation between academia and relevant CC policy-making bodies to translate scientific research into evidence-based policies and actionable frameworks; tiered subsidies or tax rebates to low-income households to promote CC mitigating technologies and align CC objectives with social equity; and others. Although this work focuses solely on Nigeria, the country shares similar characteristics with many sub-Saharan African countries, and some others in the global South. Accordingly, the findings will be relevant to those areas, with some unique adaptations. Full article

In linguistically diverse and multilingual South African communities, it is common to use non-standard language varieties (NSLVs), often called mixed languages, as lingua franca. These NSLVs are primarily spoken in black townships throughout South Africa. Previous studies show that the discursive production of oral narratives impacts the development and use of higher-order language processing, as they require the knowledge, language skills and abilities to produce coherent discourse. The main focus of the existing literature in oral narrative is mostly on standard languages. In this study, we explore how speakers of Sepitori, a non-standard language variety (NSLV), produce an oral narrative compared to Sesotho, a standard language. The current study investigates the oral narrative production of a total number of 20 participants who are adult speakers of Sesotho and Sepitori (ten from each language). The Sesotho speakers were bilingual speakers of English and Sesotho. The Sepitori speakers were multilingual speakers of English, Sesotho, Zulu and other languages spoken in the Mamelodi township. This study used a mixed methodology of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Narratives were annotated for language complexity in the macro- and microstructure elements: the length and type of clause, pragmatic acts, referential lexical choices and code-switched words. Sepitori speakers produced narratives characterised by interactive clauses unrelated to the narrative level and with a greater range of lexical referents, showcasing more individual linguistic variation. Sesotho speakers produced a more sequential oral narrative in line with story schema with fewer interjections to the researcher. In an increasingly linguistically heterogeneous South Africa, more research is required to gain insights into how multilingual individuals develop and refine their narrative skills, emphasising the much-needed focus on NSLV from a psycholinguistic perspective, which may ultimately inform tools of assessment for multilingual children and adults in social, clinical and academic contexts. Full article

This research investigates youth participation in climate change politics and policymaking in South Africa, responding to a notable lack of Global South-facing studies in the literature on youth climate activism. Guided by our lead author’s substantial engagement in South Africa’s youth climate movement from 2014–2024 and drawing upon semi-structured interviews with 12 young climate activists, we offer rich insights into young South Africans’ motivations to participate in climate politics and policymaking. We then draw upon these insights to offer a series of provocations for climate change education. On investigating why youth participate, we find that although they report similar intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for participation to their Global North counterparts, South African youth climate activists place far greater emphasis on situated awareness and lived experience. We further improve the understanding of how young people perceive meaningful participation and climate (in)justices and how this shapes and is shaped by their activism. We therefore emphasise the value of incorporating both local case studies and affective elements in climate change pedagogies to encourage participation in collective climate action. Ultimately, we call for an enhanced recognition and inclusion of youth as active contributors to, and educators within, climate change governance and for the reconceptualization of youth climate activism, and policy engagement as key sites of transformative learning. Full article

In Africa, the legacy of mining has not only contributed to economic growth, employment, and prosperity but also brought risks to pollution exposure associated with detrimental health effects, ecological degradation, and social upheaval, such as the rapid Zama-Zamas. Due to this, illegal mining on the African continent has numerous environmental implications. While illegal mining operations have an adverse impact on the environment, government and academic research into the Zama-Zamas in South Africa has focused mainly on the socio-economic aspects of the illegal mining aspect, so environmental factors have been overlooked. Most government reports and academic literature on illegal mining activities in the country typically emphasize the socio-economic impact with little or no environmental consideration. Zama-Zamas have a major socioeconomic impact; however, their adverse impact on the environment cannot be ignored as well. This is especially true with Zama-Zamas’ illegal activities, which result in environmental pollution that may affect the entire ecosystem as a result. Based on this background, the purpose of this paper is to explore the significant environmental implications of Zama-Zama’s illegal mining in the South African context. The current study has discovered that there is little documentation regarding the environmental implications of illegal mining within communities where it occurs within South Africa’s mining sector, despite its infiltration by Zama-Zamas illegal mining activities. This is a cause for concern, especially within countries like South Africa where illegal mining has become a national crisis, yet the environmental impacts of illegal mining from the literature point of view are not well documented. The limited literature on this issue highlights the need for urgent attention to the environmental damage caused by illegal mining. Thus, this appraisal advocates for the inclusion of environmental impact studies alongside the socio-economic impacts widely reported on illegal mining. For a country striving to achieve sustainable development, understanding the holistic potential risks of illegal mining activities by Zama-Zama is essential. Full article

South Africans enjoy increasing access to digital connectivity. But little is known about the roles that mobile phones play in the everyday lives of young South Africans who live in marginalized spaces. Responding to this gap in the literature, we conducted research with a naturally occurring group of sixteen young adults, between the ages of 18 and 34, living in an under-resourced Eastern Cape township. Using the mobile diary method, we asked these young people how they use their mobiles as part of everyday sociality and to support their well-being. The article (1) reflects on the efficacy of the mobile diary method as a means of understanding our respondents’ lives and worlds; and (2) presents four themes emerging from the data generated by this method: “waithood”, “music”, “fakes”, and “wellbeing”. We conclude that the mobile diary method generates rewardingly rich data that reveal the complexity of township digitality and sociality. This texture avoids simplistic binaries and does justice to the experiences of young people in marginalized contexts. Full article

Climate change manifests itself in rising temperatures across the continent and affects the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) by changing sea surface temperatures and atmospheric circulation. This affects precipitation and temperature patterns, with South Africa normally experiencing drier conditions during El Niño events. These weather anomalies influence crop yields and food prices. Spatial price transmission indicates the extent to which prices of agricultural goods are linked across different geographical areas and how quickly price signals from one area are passed on to another. Although numerous studies explore spatial price transmission between various countries, there is a gap in the literature on price transmission between the US and South African maize markets during ENSO events. Therefore, we investigate how ENSO-related events impacted maize price transmission between the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange from 1997 to 2024. The empirical analysis starts with a correlation analysis, followed by tests for cointegration and error correction models. The results confirm the dominating impact of US maize prices on South African prices, but also how this relationship changes based on the nature of the ENSO event. There is some indication of lower levels of integration and higher levels of price diversion during El Niño periods. Full article

Hearing loss remains a significant but underexplored health challenge in individuals with HIV/AIDS, particularly those exposed to occupational noise. The ototoxic effects of antiretroviral therapy (ART) and comorbid conditions like tuberculosis (TB) further compound the risk. This narrative review examines the intersection of HIV/AIDS, ART, and occupational noise-induced hearing loss (ONIHL), emphasizing the South African and broader African contexts. The aim of the study was to map the existing literature on the association between HIV/AIDS, its treatments, and ONIHL, and to identify research gaps to inform policy and clinical practice. A narrative review approach was adopted, systematically searching databases including PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Studies published between 2000 and 2024 were included, focusing on the effects of HIV/AIDS, ART, and occupational noise exposure on hearing health. Data extraction and thematic synthesis were performed to identify key findings and gaps. Twenty studies were included, covering diverse settings such as South Africa, Cameroon, Tanzania, and the USA. Three key themes emerged: (1) dual burden of HIV and occupational noise exposure: HIV-positive individuals in noise-intensive industries, such as mining, face amplified risks of hearing loss due to immunological compromise and ototoxic TB treatments; (2) ototoxicity of ART: older ART regimens, widely used in resource-limited settings, are associated with a higher prevalence of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL); and (3) immunological susceptibility to ONIHL: HIV-related immune suppression exacerbates cochlear damage from noise and ototoxic agents, contributing to both peripheral and central auditory dysfunction. This review highlights the urgent need for integrated hearing health interventions in HIV care and occupational health frameworks, particularly in high-prevalence regions like South Africa. Routine audiological assessments, access to safer ART regimens, and enhanced workplace protections are essential to mitigate the dual burden of HIV/AIDS and ONIHL. Future research should prioritize longitudinal studies and innovative, low-cost solutions for resource-limited settings. Full article