Harnessing social media for promoting tourism in Africa: an exploratory analysis of tweets

Tourism has the potential to be the engine of a country’s economic development. Some developing countries, especially those in Africa, rely on tourism for their citizens’ employment. Consequently, the rise and fall of their unemployment rates are closely associated with that of tourist numbers. Hence, they need to constantly find ways to promote their cultural heritage in order to attract more tourists. Some of the key promotion tools are social media such as Twitter and an investigation to understand the nature of tweets about cultural heritage institutions is an important undertaking. However, investigations into the nature of tweets about African cultural heritage are non-existent. Our research aims to shed some light on the broad characteristics of tweets about African cultural heritage. We also identify possible implications and suggest potential strategies for tourism organizations, operators, and other stakeholders in their use of Social Media in general and Twitter in particular

Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge in Agriculture: The Case for Africa

Paper discussing the diffusion of scientific knowledge on agriculture for Africa. Using exploratory research method, this paper set out to investigate existing knowledge diffusion models and their limitations, available best practices, and the potential to infuse translational research as a way to augment extension service programs in SSA agricultural practices

Drug use evaluation of ceftriaxone in medical ward of Dessie Referral Hospital, North East Ethiopia

Background: Assessment of antimicrobial use can be performed by evaluating their use. Drug use evaluation is a performance improvement method that focuses on evaluation and improvement of drug use processes to achieve optimal patient outcomes. The objective of this study was to evaluate the rational use of ceftriaxone in Medical ward of Dessie referral Hospital, Dessie-Ethiopia.Methods: Retrospective systematic study was used to assess rational use of ceftriaxone. The study was conducted by reviewing medication records of 316 patients, who received ceftriaxone during hospitalization at Medical ward of Dessie referral Hospital from December 30, 2011 to January, 2013. A systematic sampling method was used to select inpatient prescriptions in this ward with ceftriaxone and patient cards were located based on the medical record number on the prescription papers. Data was collected by using structured format and evaluated against WHO criteria for drug use evaluation as per standard treatment guideline of Ethiopia.Results: Most patients were dosed as 2 g/day (79.4%). The duration of therapy was found to be high in the range 2-7 days (51.69%). Ceftriaxone was mainly used as pneumonia treatment (38.8%). Maintenance fluids were the most commonly co-administered medications with a frequency of 62.16%. The use of ceftriaxone was appropriate only in 170 cases (55.8%) for the justification of use. Most of inappropriate uses were seen in terms of duration during treatment of pneumonia followed by frequency for the treatment of meningitis. Consistency of prescriber to the national standard treatment guideline was found to be low.Conclusions: To improve rational use and prevent the development of resistance; prescribers should adhere to the national standard treatment guideline. Intensification of short term trainings and antibiotic control systems are some of the possible solutions the hospital has to do.ceftriaxone therapy does not meet the current STG of Ethiopia

Partnership for Enhancing Developing Countries' Capacity in Participating in Global Knowledge Production and Use

Poster discussing a partnership for enhancing developing countries' capacity in participating in global knowledge production and use. This poster highlights some of the contributing factors that enhance the capacity of African institutions to play active roles in the current global knowledge economy (in terms of information and knowledge creation, access, use and reuse)

Moodle for Professional Development to Agricultural Extension Professionals in Africa: Workshop

Presentation for the International Association of Agriculture Information Specialists (IAALD) World Congress. The authors discuss the Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (Moodle) software package and its use for professional development to agriculture extension professionals in Africa

Content Divide: Africa and the Global Knowledge Footprint Sponsored by: SIG/III

This paper discusses Africa and the global knowledge footprint

Assessment of knowledge, attitude and risk behaviors towards HIV/AIDS and other sexual transmitted infection among preparatory students of Gondar town, north west Ethiopia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The first case of HIV in Ethiopia was reported in 1984. Since then, HIV/AIDS has become a major public health concern in the country, leading the Government of Ethiopia to declare a public health emergency in 2002. Although the epidemic is currently stable, HIV/AIDS remains a major development challenge for Ethiopia. The spread of HIV in any community is in part determined by the knowledge of attitude towards sexuality of its members and by their actual sexual practices. The aim of the study was to assess students' knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding HIV/AIDS and STDs in Gondar, North West Ethiopia.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross sectional study was conducted between February 1 to March 1, 2009 in preparatory high school students. Pre-tested questioner was used to generate the data and analysis was made by SPSS version 15. Chi -square value was calculated and p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>All the students had heard about AIDS before the interview. Knowledge on some aspect of the disease was quite low in the study group. Only half of the students knew that at present, AIDs is incurable and that HIV infection can be acquired through sexual contact with a 'familiar' person. Knowledge about STI was also quite low, 39% knew that pus in the urine is a symptom of STI and 45.4% knew that acquisition of other STIs is increases the chance of HIV transmission following unsafe sex with known cases. 25% of the study group had previous sexual intercourse and exposed at least one risk behavior. About 34% of the respondents had negative attitude towards AIDS and STDs.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Awareness about STDs and methods of prevention of HIV and STDs was low. More risk behavior was observed in male and those with alcohol and drugs of abuse.</p

The magnitude of episiotomy among women who gave birth in Ethiopia: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Episiotomy is one of the most common obstetric procedures done by health providers putting the client at high risk of developing complications and lacerations. These days, episiotomy has been done at an alarming rate in Ethiopia as compared to the slant set by World Health Organization. Be that as it may, there is a need for nationally representative data. This study aimed to determine the pooled prevalence of episiotomy practice among women who gave birth at public health institutions in Ethiopia. We accessed PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, EMBASE, and manual search was used to retrieve articles. The extractions of the data were done by using Microsoft Excel and analyzed by STATA version 11 statistical software. The publication bias was checked by funnel plot visually and Egger's test and Begg’s test, with P &lt; 0.05 considered indicating potential publication bias. I2 was used to check the presence of heterogeneity of the studies. Overall estimated analysis was done. Subgroup analysis was done by region. We carried out a leave-one-out sensitivity analysis. The Joanna Briggs Institute risk of bias assessment tool was used. Out of 254 articles retrieved, 9 studies met the eligibility criteria and are thus included in this study. The overall episiotomy practice in Ethiopia was 45.01% (95% CI: 36.288, 53.741). Based on the sub-group analysis, prevalence of episiotomy practice was 49.32% (95%CI: 12.67, 85.97), 46.92% (95%CI: 29.47, 64.37), 44.23% (95%CI: 37.77, 50.99) and 38.29 (95%CI: 32.38, 44.20) among South region, Addis Ababa, Amhara region and Tigray region respectively. The findings revealed that the prevalence of episiotomy practice in Ethiopia was high (45.01%). Therefore, it is better to have periodic training for birth attendants on the indication of episiotomy and the appropriate use of guidelines to reduce the rate of episiotomy

North-South Scholarly Collaboration: Opportunities and Experiences in Africa

Article from a panel held at the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) 2021 conference held on October 23-November 3, 2021 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The panel was meant to stimulate future north-south collaborations by increasing awareness of both funded opportunities and low budget initiatives for scholarly exchanges and collaborations, benefits for scholars and their institutions in developed and developing countries, and best practices with respect to north-south collaborations and scholarly exchanges. This panel was sponsored by the Africa Chapter and SIG-III

International Conference on Knowledge Management

The 17th International Conference on Knowledge Management was held in the historic city of Potsdam, Germany. Since the conference was among the first post-pandemic face to face conferences, the overall theme of the 17th edition of the ICKM conference rightly focused on “Knowledge, Uncertainty and Risks: From individual to global scale” at different levels of analysis and agency. This document highlighted one of the panels and the panelists argue that open access to scholarly knowledge production should be the modus operandi in the time and age we live in. Open access to knowledge is critical not just to accelerate advances in finding solutions to societal issues, but also to meet the growing expectations around higher education institutions’ social responsibilities in times of uncertainties