From Nollywood to New Nollywood: the story of Nigeria’s runaway success

From stories about cult and witchcraft to heartbreak and sorrow, Nigeria's Nollywood has developed into Africa's giant in filmmaking

South African Grain Farmers in Dire Straits: Scenarios for Sustainable Farming

Traditionally, the South African farmer has always been an entrepreneur, running his/her farming activities as a business to support lifestyle, provide a future for the children (as successors to the family farm or by providing education for a career) and to provide for comfortable retirement one day. However, a number of climatic- and economic environmental issues has resulted in severe constraints to farmers as entrepreneurs, creating a situation where farming are on the brink of collapse and maize farmers are struggling to survive. The production years 2005/6 and 2006/7 are critical. This paper focuses specifically on the summer grain production areas in South Africa where, in addition to the main crop maize, they also plant crops such as sunflower, peanuts, dry beans, sorghum and grazing for livestock). The objective of this paper is to report on the viability of possible scenarios that could assist the farming entrepreneur to sustain his/her farming activities beyond the following two years. A number of specific constraints impact on the grain farmer, namely the overproduction of almost all grain types, the free market system of pricing grain internationally, the Rand/Dollar exchange rate, the capital investment trap and the current government assistance policy, to name but a few. All of these constraints have resulted in a situation where it is no longer viable for farmers to produce the main crop (in excess of 80% of farming activities) namely maize. This situation calls for drastic intervention in entrepreneurial decision-making, and farmers must consider other viable options to service debt and to maintain a positive cash-flow. The analyses show that, ultimately (and most unfortunately), no favourable solution is at hand. From the possible scenarios evaluated in the paper, it is evident that maize farmers should discontinue production of maize on a large scale for the immediate future until the market environment improves. The farming community is faced with a situation of minimising losses and not with any real positive solution pertaining to the scenarios evaluated. The final conclusion is that current economic situations for maize production are unfavourable and the resulting recommendation is that farmers should not plant maize in the 2005/6 production year, that they should ride out the market and then revisit the production decision for the production year 2006/7.Crop Production/Industries,

Customer service factors of a Telematic Learning BBA degree

Traditional educational boundaries at tertiary institutions in South Africa are fast becoming more flexible and as a result, quality distance learning is becoming more accessible to the market. The challenges of the distance education market reside not only within the traditional academic system in South Africa, but also with the accessibility of quality tertiary education via distance learning programmes of foreign institutions. In order to supply the ultimate learning experience to students, the concept of client relations is becoming increasingly important. Client relations should not be regarded as a surrogate for academic excellence but it certainly enhances the value gained through distance learning on a tertiary level. In view of this exciting transformation process a vital Department of Telematic Learning Systems was established at the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (PU for CHE). This department delivers and administrates all the degree and diploma programmes constructed by the academic departments at the PU for CHE. This department adopts a strong customer aligned approach as a strategic thrust and students are treated as valued clients of the university. Continuous client satisfaction research is conducted and this article reports on the results of one such a research project. Apart from supplying the demographic profile of students, the article reports on the service levels that undergraduate Bachelor in Business Administration (BBA) students experienced during their 1997 year of study. The statistical technique, factor analysis, was employed to determine underlying communalities of these specific services. Eight factors were identified from the varimax rotated factor matrix. As a result of the reliability statistical procedure: Cronbach's Alpha coefficient (value of 0.928), a favourable cumulative variance of almost 60% is explained. The results obtained could be of significant value, firstly, to the PU for CHE which attempts to improve the service that is rendered to students. If they understand the client relationship and its service levels, they should be able to concentrate more energy in these areas. This reasoning also applies to other universities who wish to enter distance and/or open-learning educational systems. Secondly, students should profit from efficiently trained front-line staff who are educated in client's expectations of service levels. Thirdly, other researchers in service quality could use the results as a basis for future research since they provide a comparative foundation. (South African Journal of Education: 2001 21(4): 228-232

Women in African Cinema : An aesthetic and thematic analysis of filmmaking by women in Francophone West Africa and Lusophone and Anglophone Southern Africa

This study focuses on the role of women in African cinema – in terms of female directors working in the African film industries as well as the representation of women in African film. My research specifically focuses on francophone West African and lusophone and anglophone Southern African cinemas (in particular post-apartheid South African cinema). This research is necessary and significant because African women are underrepresented in theoretical work as well as in the practice of African cinema. The small corpus of existing theoretical and critical studies on the work of female African filmmakers clearly shows that African women succeed in producing films against tremendous odds. The emergence of female directors in Africa is an important but neglected trend which requires more dedicated research. The pioneering research of African-American film scholar Beti Ellerson is exemplary in this regard, as she has, since the early 2000s, initiated a new field of academic study entitled African Women Cinema Studies. My own research is situated within this emerging field and aims to make a contribution to it. The absence of women in public societal spheres is often regarded as an indicator of areas where societies need to change. In the same sense the socio-political and cultural advancements of women are indicators of how societies have progressed towards improved living conditions for all. Because the African woman can be viewed as doubly oppressed, firstly by Black patriarchal culture and secondly by Western colonising forces, it is essential that the liberation of African women includes an opportunity for women to verbalise and demonstrate their own vision of women’s roles for the future. The study analyses a large corpus of films through exploring notions of nationalism and post/neo-colonialism in African societies; issues related to the female body such as health, beauty and sexuality; female identity, emancipation and African feminism in the past and present; the significance of traditional cultural practices versus the consequences and effects of modernity; and the interplay between the individual and the community in urban as well as rural African societies. Female filmmakers in Africa are increasingly claiming the right to represent these issues in their own ways and to tell their own stories. The methods they choose to do this and the products of their labours are the focus of this study. Ultimately, the study attempts to formulate more complex models for the analysis of African women’s filmmaking practices, in tracing the plurality of a female aesthetics and the multiplicity of thematic approaches in African women’s filmmaking

The future is digital: an introduction to African digital arts

No abstract available

Empirical evaluation of a preliminary model to identify low-risk MBA applicants

This article reports on the second stage of the model, namely to empirically evaluate the model\u27s performance and validity across all three of the identified categories. These categories are \u27Low-to-no risk\u27 applicants for the MBAand those applicants who did not complete the degree in 3 years, classified as \u27Medium-to-low risk\u27 applicants who are expected to complete their degree in extended study year, and \u27High-risk\u27 applicants who are not expected to complete their degrees and who drop out of the programme. The final-year MBA students at the PBS in 2004 and 2005 served as the research population. The results were very satisfactory. Concerning the categories Low-to-no risk and Medium-tolow risk applicants, the model can be used as predictive tool, presenting a validity higher than 60% (p = 0.9) and 90% (p= 0.7) respectively. Caution, however, looms at the category of High-risk applicants where the model judges too harshly with an error of 13.7% (p=0.7)

The advocacy of an appraisal system for teachers: a case study

Education systems all over the world, like all other organisations, have certain organisational goals that they set and wish to achieve. It is argued that for increased pupil performance, in the case of education systems, teachers must work harder and smarter. A performance system is regarded as part of the process to achieve this organisational goal. Some prominent researchers, however, forecast a movement away from performance management as we know it. In this paper we use insights from a specific school district in South Africa to highlight the need for effective advocacy of a performance system to ensure a measure of success. One of the major findings is that although advocacy in its narrow sense is a process to make stakeholders aware of a new policy, the data collected reveal two broad themes, namely, the process itself but also the issues about the content of that which should be advocated. Findings on the process itself focus on sufficient funding, effective training, reconsideration of the cascading mode of delivery, clarity on the roles of different structures, official sources of information, anticipated reaction of teachers and effective monitoring of the implementation process. Findings on the content of IQMS focuson the conceptual framework of IQMS, clarity of the content and contextualfactors to be considered

Introduction: Revising the Classics: Opening up the archives of African cinema

First paragraph: The long journey that has led to the present volume began almost a decade ago when we started planning for the inaugural Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival (www.africa-inmotion.org.uk), at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh, which took place in October 2006. The complete programme for the festival consisted of 25 films from all over Africa (shorts, documentaries and feature films from the 1950s to the 2000s), and was designed to give audiences a sense of the aesthetic diversity and richness of filmmaking across the African continent. However, if part of our motivation stemmed from a desire to reveal the geographical range of African cinema, we were also particularly anxious to provide greater historical depth to our audience’s understanding of film in Africa, and it was with this aim that we embarked on a research project—generously funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council—which allowed us to curate a series of ‘Lost African Classics’ as part of the first AiM. The primary aim of the project was to bring little-known films—by both major and neglected African directors—to the attention of theorists and critics, as well as to the general viewing public. At the time, very few African films were screened to the general public in the UK; statistics obtained in 2005 from the now defunct UK Film Council showed that only nine African films were theatrically released in the UK between 1995 and 2005. African films could only be seen in the UK in niche film festivals or occasionally in international film festivals or in special retrospectives in independent art house cinemas. The four ‘lost classics’ screened at Africa in Motion 2006 focused on Francophone West African filmmaking from the 1960s, which a general critical consensus (at that time finally beginning to crack) had long held to be the place and time at which something called ‘African cinema’ was born. The films screened were: Le Retour d’un aventurier/The Return of an Adventurer (Mustapha Alassane, Niger/France, 1966); Concerto pour un exil/Concerto for an Exile (Désiré Ecaré, Ivory Coast/France, 1968), Contras’ City (Djibril Diop Mambety, Senegal/France, 1969) and Badou Boy (Djibril Diop Mambety, Senegal/France, 1970). The two screenings of the Lost Classics package during AiM 2006 were well received by audiences and were, as with the rest of the festival, practically sold ou