Institute for Social Development (ISD)

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    The Relationship Between Climate Change and Food Insecurity In Sub-Saharan Africa
    (University of the Western Cape, 2022) Zizipho, Royi; Sayeed Bayat, Mohamed
    According to the research conducted for this thesis, climate change has a potential to be a hazard to food security in not only South Africa, but also to most of Sub-Saharan Africa. The threat is presented in terms of food distribution and consumption, including agricultural productivity. Food security is impacted by global warming, global warming in turn is a direct result of climate change since it affects the supply of food, its accessibility, how it is utilized, and whether or not people can afford it. The only way to mitigate the dangers is through an integrated policy approach that protects fertile land from global warming. The key point presented here is that Sub-Saharan Africa has all of the resources necessary to adapt to climate change and secure food supplies; nevertheless, it is critical that they first recognize the hazards that various agricultural products face because of global warming. However, a lot of emerging countries face significant challenges as a result of a lack of robust institutions, making policy changes difficult. The influence on food security will be significant, and it may be broken down into three categories: availability, access, and use. Systematic peer-reviewed literature reviews of climate change and food security research were undertaken utilizing the realist review approach as the methodology for this study. In order to alleviate the region's acute food insecurity, adaptation approaches were thoroughly investigated. This is related to development challenges, where adaptation is necessary to mitigate negative effects and improve the population's ability to participate in development processes. Finances are also a concern for poor countries, such as South Africa, because there is a disparity between the cost of adaptation and government subsidies. The remedy could come in the form of technology interventions that help to make food systems less vulnerable to dangers.
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    Telecentre functionality in South Africa: re-enabling the community ICT access environment
    (Journal of Community Informatics, 2013) Attwood, Heidi; Diga, Kathleen; Braathen, Einar; May, Julian
    Despite the availability and capabilities of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in low and middle-income countries, the use of these constantly evolving tools remains limited for the majority of resource-poor citizens. This is especially the case for internet-based tools. In South Africa, an upper middle-income country, the percentage of the population categorised as individual 'internet users' increased from 5.4 percent in 2000 to just 18.0 percent in 2010 (ITU, 2011). In order to overcome these low percentages, government intervention is frequently adopted, especially in rural areas, where it is not profitable for telecommunication operators to build infrastructure as a means to promote the uptake of internet use in poorer communities (USAASA, 2009: 47). In South Africa and elsewhere, government sponsored telecentres are a common non-profit mode of delivery, however there is much evidence of recurring problems (Gomez et al., 2012). Telecentres have many structural components (human, political and technical) which need to support each other in order to create a functional telecentre (Benjamin, 2001a; Heeks, 2002; Proenza, 2002). The failure of one or more of these components, as detailed by Roman & Colle (2002), Hulbert & Snyman (2007), and Parkinson (2005) can render telecentres non-functional. Such failures continue to plague the delivery of Public Access Computing (PAC) services in South Africa and elsewhere; and in the light of the growth of smartphones, it could be argued that telecentres are not a meaningful mode through which internet access can be delivered (Chigona et al., 2011; Gomez et al., 2012). However, ICT4D has lacked a robust theoretical base (Flor, 2012; Urquhart et al., 2008) and the literature has been dominated by a rather 'structuralist' and supply-side approach with less attention to individual agency and the demand-side. By considering how elements of agency and structure combine in relation to ICTs, the Choice Framework (CF) developed by Kleine (2010) is a step forward. This approach facilitates the analyses of people's varied ability to empower themselves and improve their quality of life (QoL). Using this Framework, this article analyses the operational experiences of telecentre provision of computer and internet access, alongside user experiences that reveal how telecentre and other structural issues interact with the characteristics of users and their various sets of resources. Based on this analysis, we suggest that PACs should remain a part of the ICT debate, although we question the business model that has come to dominate their operation.