Cultivating Third Party Development in Platform-centric Software Ecosystems: Extended Boundary Resources Model

Software ecosystems provide an effective way through which software solutions can be constructed by composing software components, typically applications, developed by internal and external developers on top of a software platform. Third party development increases the potential of a software ecosystem to effectively and quickly respond to context-specific software requirements. The boundary resources model gives a theoretical account for cultivation of third party development premised on the role of platform boundary resources such as application programming interfaces (API). However, from a longitudinal case study of the DHIS2 software ecosystem, this paper observes that no matter how good the boundary resources a software ecosystem provides, third party development remains a mere possibility until there exists adequate external generative capacity. Taking into consideration this observation, this paper makes a contribution by extending the boundary resources model to foreground external generative capacity alongside boundary resources as factors that influence third party development

Rate of psychiatric readmissions and associated factors at Saint John of God Psychiatric Hospital in Mzuzu, Malawi

Background: Globally, studies have established that 40-50% of psychiatric patients with SMDs are readmitted within one year of discharge from the acute hospital admission. Lowand middle-income countries (LMICs) such as Malawi have also reported high rates of psychiatric readmissions. This poses challenges when providing psychiatric care to patients. Most of Malawi`s health institutions, including Saint John of God Psychiatric Hospital (SJOG), rely primarily on donor funding. In order to maximise the available donor funding, there is a need to reduce readmissions resulting from modifiable or controlled factors. There are no studies in Malawi which have investigated these risk factors. The study aimed to establish the frequency of readmissions and the associated factors among patients at SJOG Psychiatric Hospital in Mzuzu, Malawi. The specific areas examined were sociodemographic and clinical-related factors associated with readmission. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort case record review study. Two hundred and seventy five clinical files of patients admitted for the first time at SJOG Psychiatric Hospital Mzuzu, Malawi between 1 January, 2014 and 31 December, 2015 were extracted. Data on socio-demographics and clinical information were collected using an extraction sheet at 3, 6 and 12 months post-discharge from the acute (first) hospital admission. Logistic regression models were developed to investigate the associations between socio-demographics, clinicalrelated factors and readmissions. Ethical approval for this study was granted by the Faculty of Health Sciences Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Cape Town. Approval to conduct this research in Malawi was obtained from the National Health Sciences Research Ethics Committee. Results: Readmission rates of 1.5%, 4.4%, and 11.3% were found within the 3, 6 and 12 months of discharge from the acute hospital admission respectively. None of the independent variables predicted readmission within the 3 month of discharge from the acute hospital admission. In the unadjusted logistic regression model, having children (OR=0.26, 95% C.I 0.07-0.96) protected against readmissions within the 6 month of follow-up period. In the unadjusted logistic regression model, having children (OR= 0.40, 95% C.I 0.18-0.88), staying outside the hospital catchment area (OR=0.44, 95% C.I 0.20-0.96), and having insight (OR=0.22, 95% C.I 0.10-0.49) into their illness were protective factors to readmission, while taking SGAs (OR=4.67, 95% C.I 1.33-16.39) predicted readmission within the 12 month follow-up period. After adjusting for age and gender in the multivariable analysis, staying outside catchment area (OR=0.33, 95% C.I 0.14-0.79) and having insight (OR=0.19, 95% C.I 0.08-0.46) to their illness were protective factors, while taking SGAs (OR=5.29, 95% C.I 1.43-19.51) remained a predictor of readmission within 12 months of discharge from the acute admission. Conclusion: The findings of this study demonstrated that readmissions are associated with socio-demographic and clinical factors such as catchment area, patient insight into their condition and type of antipsychotics. The study identifies the need to develop interventions targeting the groups at risk of being readmitted

Rethinking the future of Humanities in Africa and the question of epistemological agency

Using Bergson’s theory of history and Foucault’s concept of knowledge as power, among others, the paper argues that the field of Humanities in Africa should be reconceptualised into African Humanities in order to effect what Deleuze and Guattari have defined as conceptual self-semiotisation. The discipline must undertake, as in the past, a continual critique of the concept of the human subject, but without dethroning it as proposed by some Post-structuralists. It must focus on how globalisation, science and technology impinge on the formation of subjectivity in Africa, including Malawi. Moreover, it must enact a strategic epistemological self-determination by appropriating, adapting and reconstituting received dominant theories and practices, which entails being both counter-hegemonic and consciously, but selectively, part of the dominant formation. It offers other strategies for implementing that shift, such as the deployment of the historical traditions of epistemological resistance as well as cultural and political decolonisation, as those advanced by Achebe, Ngugi, Soyinka, Chimombo, Oruka and Wiredu, among others.Keywords: African, Malawi, Epistemology, Human, Humanities, Subjec

Use of distance education for teacher training and development in Malawi: models, practices, and successes

This article argues that the distance education (DE) delivery model has the potential to offer education and training to a greater majority of Malawians who, for one reason or another, cannot be accommodated in the traditional face-to-face delivery model. Motivated by the need to understand the delivery models employed by DE institutions in the country, the technologies they employ, and the need to gauge major successes of this model of provision, an audit study involving Mzuzu University, the Domasi College of Education, the Malawi College of Distance Education, the Department of Teacher Education and Development, Chancellor College, the Malawi Polytechnic, and Aggrey Memorial School was conducted in 2012. This was necessitated by the need to establish the nature and effi cacy of distance education in Malawi. The major fi nding of the study is that, although this model of delivery has allowed access to education and training for people who otherwise would have been denied the opportunity because of the restrictive nature of the face-to-face delivery mode, DE institutions in Malawi continue to face challenges pertaining to the use of basic, rudimentary and often obsolete technologies, which make the delivery model cumbersome for both tutors and learners. The implication is that the full potential of this delivery model has been attenuated by the use of such instructional technologies. The paper recommends that Malawi must invest in the requisite infrastructure and appropriate technologies to enhance the effi cacy of distance education and e-learning as a means of broadening and increasing access to education and training.Proceedings of the 5th biennial International Conference on Distance Education and Teachers’ Training in Africa (DETA) held at the University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya, 30 July - 1 August 2013

Colonialism, trauma and affect: Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God as Oduche’s Return

The paper examines Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God, which deals with the advent of colonialism in Nigeria, as a trauma narrative. It argues that, though the novel has generally and profitably been read as exemplifying the problem of cultural conflict in Africa, seen through the prism of the writer’s last memoir, its primary aim is clearly to map out a genealogy of a certain “African Post-colonial structure of feeling,” in which the fracture of traditional society in the face of colonialism dramatized in the novel is seen as, to a large extent, a symptom of the foundational trauma of Umuaro’s genesis. Thus, it is argued that Achebe deploys the fiction-genre as a discursive site for mourning the loss of a Pre-colonial cultural and political space. However, the paper does not read trauma in terms of the repetition compulsion complex proposed by Freud and Post-structuralist trauma studies, but instead, it attends to the ways in which the novel rehistoricizes trauma as a way of working through it. It considers the act of writing the novel itself as part of that process of working out the historical trauma of Post-colonial affective dysfunction

Gendered subjectivity : a study of gender ideology in contemporary African popular literature

This is a study of gender ideology in African popular literature published from the seventies onwards. First the thesis argues that, far from being merely the demonised Other of high literature, contemporary African popular literature can be profitably studied as a distinct modality of ideological signification. Secondly, it is argued that there are three dominant modes of representation of gender ideology in contemporary African popular literature. There is the conservative model which merely reproduces dominant gender ideology in a fictive modality. Then there are those texts which operate with a liberal model of ideological representation, within which the principle of pragmatic management of crisis within gender ideology is contained by an ideological ambivalence. The third mode of representation of dominant gender ideology employs a radical reading of gender difference and goes beyond mere analysis to envisioning the possibility of gender egalitarianism. Each mode of representation is illustrated by an in-depth study of select texts. All in all, what is offered is a materialist theory of cultural authenticity and taxonomy

Exploring the clinical learning experience: voices of Malawian undergraduate student nurses.

Very little has been done to define the process of clinical learning in Malawi and yet anecdotal observations reveal that it is more challenging than classroom teaching and learning. This set the impetus for this hermeneutic phenomenological study, the aim being to gain an understanding of the nature of the clinical learning experience for undergraduate students in Malawi and to examine their clinical experiences against some experiential learning models (Kolb 1984; Jarvis et al 1998). The study setting was Kamuzu College of Nursing (KCN) and the sample was selected purposively and consisted of 30 undergraduate students who were recruited through volunteering. Conversational interviews were conducted to obtain students’ accounts of their clinical learning experience and an eclectic framework guided the phenomenological analysis. The study raises issues which relate to nursing education and nursing practice in Malawi. From an experiential learning perspective, the study reveals that clinical learning for KCN students is largely non-reflective. The study primarily reveals that the clinical learning experience is enormously challenging and stressful due to structural problems prevalent in the clinical learning environment (CLE). In some clinical settings the CLE appears hostile and oppressive due to negative attitudes which some of the clinical staff display towards KCN students. Consequently, students’ accounts depict emotionally charged situations which confront them and this illustrates that clinical learning for KCN students is an experience suffused with emotions. In literature issues on emotions are commonly discussed under emotional labour (Hochschild 1983) and I used the concept as a basis for my pre-understandings and interpreted the students’ accounts of their clinical learning experience against such a conceptual framework. What resonated from their narratives was the depth of the emotion work they engage in. This enabled me to arrive at a new and unique conceptualisation of clinical learning redefined in terms of emotional labour within the perspective of nurse learning in Africa. The findings are a unique contribution to the literature on emotions and provide essential feedback which forms the basis for improving clinical learning in Malawi

An in vitro investigation of the effects of camellia sinensis and aspalathus linearis on benign (RPWE 1) and malignant (LNCaP) prostate cell lines

Magister Scientiae (Medical Bioscience) - MSc(MBS)The prostate is prone to three pathological processes that include inflammation, benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) and tumors. According to the center for Disease and Control 1999-2012 report, prostate cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. Scientific evidence suggests that up to 30% of men in the general population aged from 50 years and above, irrespective of geographic origin, have foci of prostate neoplastic growth. Unbalanced ROS production and a dysregulated antioxidant defence system have been implicated in prostate cancer development. The transformation of a normal cell into cancer takes a very long period. This observation provides the advantage of using nutraceuticals to prevent, arrest or reverse the cellular and molecular processes of carcinogenesis. Based on scientifically observed positive health roles of green tea (Cameli sinensis) and rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) on major diseases like atherosclerosis, hepatitis and certain types of cancer, this thesis evaluated the effects of these two teas on benign (RPWE 1) and malignant (LNCaP) prostate cells. This was done through the quantification of reactive oxygen species (ROS) using a fluorescence dye 5,6 CM-H2DCFDA, total prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels using a PSA ELISA kit, cell viability using the MTT assay, apoptosis using Tali annexin V stain and cell imaging studies using a Zeiss axiovert 200M inverted fluorescence microscope. Statistical analysis was done using graphpad prism. The findings of this study show that aqueous extracts of green and black tea, fermented and unfermented rooibos and their active compounds epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and aspalatin, respectively, are cytotoxic in malignant (LNCaP) prostate cells but exert protective effects in benign (RPWE 1) prostate cells. This thesis implicates the pro-oxidant and anti-oxidant properties of the plant extracts, respectively, for the above mentioned effects. In this regard, tea and rooibos promoted ROS production in malignant (LNCaP) prostate cells, which subsequently promoted cell death of the malignant cells through apoptosis and necrosis. Further to this, tea and rooibos used in this thesis, protected normal prostate cells from the adverse effects of ROS. In this regard, fluorescence microscope photographs showed RPWE 1 cells with low DCF fluorescence compared to the malignant prostate cells. Low magnification light microscope photographs showed RPWE 1 cells with flat polygonal shapes and increased adherence both at low and high concentrations of tea and rooibos. On the contrary, high concentrations of tea and rooibos on malignant (LNCaP) prostate cells induced stress, which made the cells attain irregular shapes and as the stress levels increased, cells became detached and appeared dead. Flow cytometry confirmed the presence of apoptotic and necrotic cell in malignant (LNCaP) prostate cells. In this thesis, EGCG and aspalathin were responsible for the high rates of apoptosis observed whereas green tea and unfermented rooibos induced the highest rate of necrosis. Further to this, tea and rooibos and the main active compounds EGCG and aspalathin, respectively, significantly promoted the reduction of total serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) in malignant prostate cells. In normal prostate cells, these plant extracts maintained the total serum PSA at its basal physiological level. In this thesis, to the best of our knowledge, we report for the first time the cell-specific effects of fermented rooibos, unfermented rooibos and their main active component aspalathin, on prostate cancer cells. We showed that rooibos and aspalathin exert pro-oxidant effects on malignant LNCaP cells and anti-oxidant effects on benign RPWE 1 cells. In conclusion, tea (C. sinensis) and rooibos (A. linearis) and their respective main active compounds, epigallocatechin gallate and aspalathin, are cytotoxic to malignant prostate cells whereas in normal prostate cells, they have protective effects against ROS induced stress. The pro-oxidant and anti-oxidant effects are responsible for the aforementioned effects respectively. The decrease in total serum PSA demonstrate the strong therapeutic effects that tea and rooibos have on malignant (LNCaP) prostate cells.Malawi Government: Department of Human Resources Development and Managemen

Factors affecting the utilisation of electronic medical records system in Malawian central hospitals

Background In Malawi, paper-based medical record-keeping has been observed to exacerbate challenges related to accessing patient records and patient tracking. Despite the introduction of electronic medical record (EMR) systems in 2001, paper-based records continue to be in use. Some health workers prefer paper-based records to EMRs. This study assessed factors that affect the use of EMRs in Malawi, particularly at Queen Elizabeth and Kamuzu Central Hospitals. It further investigated the reasons why paper-based records are still in use despite the numerous associated disadvantages. The extent to which EMRs contribute to patient care was also analysed.Methods In this cross-sectional study, 111 randomly selected health workers were interviewed, using a semistructured questionnaire, at the 2 largest central hospitals in Malawi, where EMRs were first introduced in the country. Focus group discussions were conducted to gather further information on factors identified during the individual interviews.Results and conclusions Differences in age, gender, and previous computer experience were not associated with differences in EMR usage. However, education and employment levels has a positive association with EMR usage. Hardware and connectivity problems, as well as lack of training and managerial support negatively affected the use of EMRs. EMRs were found to improve data quality and efficiency in patient management

Kujoni: South Africa in Malawi’s national imaginary

This article recovers the literary and political value of Legson Kayira’s novel, Jingala (1969), dismissed as lightweight by earlier critics. I argue instead for the seriousness of its engagement with a significant aspect of Malawian life, namely the country’s historical reliance on the export of migrant labour to its mineral-rich neighbours, especially South Africa. Between 1900 and 1988, the country was the second largest supplier of contracted labour to the South African mines after Mozambique. Kayira’s novel offers significant new insights into the effects of migrant labour on Malawians’ consciousness of South Africa and themselves. In light of South Africa’s current membership of the BRICS (the economic collaboration of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), as well as the BRICS’ claim to provide an alternative to the imperial legacy of Africa’s relationship with the west, a fresh look at Jingala will allow us to reconsider Malawi’s relationship with South Africa, that country’s historically imperialist role in the region and the legacy of ‘kujoni’ -- labour migration to Johannesburg, the city that represented South Africa and its opportunities. Using a broadly cultural materialist approach and Edward Said’s notion of imaginative geography, as well as a world-systems theory approach nuanced by recent work in globalisation theory, the article maps out the imagined geography of South Africa represented in the novel and considers how it intervened in everyday life