The Socioeconomic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Africa

This study is motivated by the conviction that pandemic diseases entail huge human and economic costs. It is in this light that this study was designed to explore the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 in Africa in order to provide sound policy recommendations which can aid in abating the spread of the disease which is crucial for achieving desirable sustainable economic development. We found that besides the loss of human lives, the COVID-19 pandemic can have enormous short and long-run negative impacts on economic growth through various channels including, education, employment, industrial production, as well as the tourism and agricultural sectors. Also, the study revealed that although Africa has recorded the least number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, the continent remains the worst affected with a fatality rate of over 23%. Consequently, in the short-run, African governments should step-up their community screening/testing capacities and ensure the respect of basic hygiene rules.  Equally, African governments should rethink their health, educational and industrial policies in order to incorporate modern methods which make great use of digital technologies. Thus, they should increase investments in the health, educational and industrial sectors in order to render their economies more resilient to potential shocks in the long-run

Is mother nature responsible for Africa's predicaments? Pathways to breaking the chains of the resource curse through the lens of good governance, digitalisation and energy transition

As regards the question whether natural resource affluence is a benediction or curse to sustainable development, the jury's verdict is still awaited. While we impatiently await the jury's verdict, this study provides empirical evidence that Mother Nature is responsible for Africa's predicaments with regard to economic development and environmental sustainability. Specifically, the system GMM estimates from 37 African economies reveal that: (i) natural resource affluence inhibits economic development, (ii) resource rents exacerbates carbon emissions thereby impeding environmental sustainability (iii) natural resource rents interacts with governance to produce negative synergy effects on economic growth and environmental pollution, (iv) resource rents interacts with ICT to produce respective positive net effects and negative synergy effects on economic growth and pollution emissions, (v) while non-renewable energy consumption inhibits economic growth and exacerbates pollution emissions, renewable energy consumption promotes environmental protection, (vi) we provide evidence of the U-shaped and inverted N-shaped EKC for natural resources, while also validating the inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis relating to the nexus between per capita GDP and pollution emissions. Contingent on these findings, African countries can break the chains of the resource curse by designing sound and complementary policies upon attainment of the established thresholds by the policy modulating variables. Equally, various governments should strengthen governance quality and encourage digitalisation of the resource sector. Furthermore, African governments should propel the energy transition process by increasing investments in alternative clean energy sources in order to catalyse the attainment of the continent's Agenda 2063

Influence of Marble Powder and Polypropylene Fibers on the Strength and Durability Properties of Self-Compacting Concrete (SCC)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of polypropylene fiber reinforced self-compacting concrete (SCC) at both the fresh and hardened stages, as well as their durability behavior. Properties of marble powder-based fiber reinforced SCC at fresh state were studied by means of slump flow diameter and flow time, V-funnel, and L-box test. The concrete properties at the hardened state were examined regarding compressive strength, split tensile strength, and flexural strength. Cement was replaced with marble powder with a substituting ratio of 4%, 8%, 12%, and 16% while polypropylene fibers were added as 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.3%, and 0.4%. The durability properties were analysed in the form of water permeability and chloride migration. In accordance with the outcomes of the tests, the workability of SCC deteriorated with an increase in fiber content, although it performed effectively at higher marble dosages. There was little impact of fibers on compressive strength and water permeability property of SCC. However, by adding the fibers in SCC improved both the split tensile strength and flexural strength by 16.92% and 11.36%, respectively. The addition of marble powder showed a synergetic effect with polypropylene fibers, which showed its applicability in SCC. The chloride resistance was improved at lower content of polypropylene fiber addition. For optimizing polypropylene fibers (pp) and marble powder substitution, the polynomial work expectation justifies the response surface technique (RSM). When a p value of 0.05 is used to analyse the variation in the (Linear-ANOVA), the model is considered statistically significant. Performance of concrete was greatly enhanced by substituting 12% marble powder with cement and adding 3% polypropylene fiber