INTRODUCTION 

ACCOUNTING used to be restricted to financially measurable matters of profit and loss; expenditure and revenue; taxes and subsidies; investment and liabilities. But the mathematical and statistical skills underpinning a solid set of books and filed accounts are today increasingly being used to measure the environmental and social sustainability of a product, input, production process and supply chain.…

Sub-Saharan Africa has natural resources that aids the development of renewable energy, it has lots of sun, plentiful wind, and much potentially sustainable biomass. With the development of small-scale affordable renewable energy technologies, such systems have been promoted by major aid agencies keen to prevent deforestation and excessive reliance on fossil fuels, that – even where they are plentiful, have not usually led to widespread economic development.

THE NEED for a proactive effort to improve the teaching and researching of physics in sub-Saharan Africa, as a foundation for critically important scientific work, has been highlighted in a new report from the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and the UK-based Institute of Physics (IOP).…

Malawi, one the world’s largest producer of burley leaf tobacco, is making significant efforts to reduce child labour within its tobacco left sector, but the problem is still endemic.

A key sensitivity is that Malawi’s economy heavily relies on tobacco leaf, which contributes to 52% of the total export value for the country, according to the Malawi ministry of finance 2020 annual economic report.…

Demand for paints and coatings in Kenya is set to recover this year from the impact of Covid-19 epidemic, being driven by the rebound of building construction and other civil engineering works that require use of paints, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics has predicted.…

Academics at Uganda’s Makerere University appear to have taken advantage of the lull in face-to-face teaching caused by Covid-19 to increase their research output, a self-assessment study has suggested. Research publications from Kampala-based Makerere, one of Africa’s oldest universities, rose from 992 papers in 2019 to 1,301 in 2020. …

Low-quality assurance is to blame for the deteriorating quality of university education in Tanzania, after the country embarked on a fast expansion of higher education, a government audit report has shown.

The 2019/2020 report by the country’s Controller and Auditor General (CAG), presented to Tanzanian president Samia Suluhu in late March, documents that the country’s graduates’ competitiveness has been hampered by poor and outdated assurance mechanism.…

Mozambique’s tobacco leaf and processing sector is facing tough times. Cyclones such as this January’s Eloise, and Idai in 2019 have wreaked significant damage on tobacco plantations. Covid-19 has caused processing disruption and harmed legitimate distribution, encouraging an increase in black market cigarette sales.…

The Islamic insurgency experienced in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique’s northernmost province, since 2017, which has already displaced more than 250,000 people and killed more than 1,500, is damaging operations within the region’s higher education institutions.

While confirmed casualties have yet to include academics and students at the region’s higher education institutions, local higher education leaders are concerned about the risks.…

The Internet has hardly developed a reputation for honesty, but blockchain technologies where different computers log transactions in separate units, connected to a web of entries (blocks), are tough to falsify.

Of course, blockchain’s most high-profile use has been to underpin the reliability of cryptocurrencies, but the principle of this unchangeable and autonomous web of ledgers has so many potential uses – the tobacco sector has been exploring them.…