Preparing the Vuk'uzenzele and ZA-gov-multilingual South African multilingual corpora

This paper introduces two multilingual government themed corpora in various South African languages. The corpora were collected by gathering the South African Government newspaper (Vuk'uzenzele), as well as South African government speeches (ZA-gov-multilingual), that are translated into all 11 South African official languages. The corpora can be used for a myriad of downstream NLP tasks. The corpora were created to allow researchers to study the language used in South African government publications, with a focus on understanding how South African government officials communicate with their constituents. In this paper we highlight the process of gathering, cleaning and making available the corpora. We create parallel sentence corpora for Neural Machine Translation (NMT) tasks using Language-Agnostic Sentence Representations (LASER) embeddings. With these aligned sentences we then provide NMT benchmarks for 9 indigenous languages by fine-tuning a massively multilingual pre-trained language model.Comment: Accepted and to appear at Fourth workshop on Resources for African Indigenous Languages (RAIL) at EACL 202

The planning and provision of teacher education in Rhodesia 1923-1953

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D35802/81 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

CHALLENGES OF WASTE MANAGEMENT AT JENA MINE, KWEKWE, ZIMBABWE AND THEIR POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

<p>In Zimbabwe, gold mining dates back to the pre-colonial era and has remained one of the major economic activities in the country. In recent years, the industry is predominantly conducted by small-scale operators and informal gold panners scattered around the country. Recently, the government has recognized the contribution of these people and has advised them to sell their product to Fidelity Printers. Through the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC), the government has encouraged small-scale gold mining in different parts of the country. Jena mine which is located in Silobela 80km from Kwekwe district is a member of the ZMDC and has caused several environmental challenges, which are discussed in this paper. The mine produces waste materials in the form of overburden and tailings which have found their way into the environment surrounding Silobela. In a research conducted during the period between 2016 and 2017 (using both qualitative and quantitative research methods), this paper reviews some of the challenges affecting the mine. Some of the problems, which the company is facing in its waste management programmes include financial constraints, poor infrastructural capacity and environmental pollution. This study notes that Jena mine needs to resuscitate its infrastructure and enhance its security to prevent illegal mining on mine dumps which are contributing greatly to environmental pollution.</p

Trypanocidal effect of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Strychnos spinosa on white mice infected with Trypanosoma brucei brucei

The emergence of trypanocidal resistance has led to a change in the behavior and use of local plants for the treatment of parasites. The trypanocidal activity of Strychnos spinosa aqueous and ethanolic extracts on Trypanosoma brucei brucei was evaluated during ten days of treatment. Thus, the smear was used to monitor the parasitaemia of mice treated with Strychnos spinose aqueous and ethanolic extracts by gavage at doses of 250, 500, 1000 mg/kg (test groups); with 10 ml/kg of distilled water (negative control) and 1mg/kg of isometamidium chloride (positive control). The results of the pharmacological studies on the trypanocidal potential of the plant showed that On day ten (D10)&nbsp; a mortality rates of 32 %, 39 % and 62 % respectively for the doses 250, 500 and 1000 mg/kg with the ethanolic extract while&nbsp; the aqueous extract induced a mortality rates of 32 %, 37 % and 56 % respectively. Isometamidium chloride induced the highest mortality rate of 85 %. The lethal doses were 218.07 and 225.79 mg/kg for the aqueous and ethanolic extracts respectively. All these results justify at least in part the use of this plant in traditional medicine for the treatment of trypanosomiasis. Keywords: Ethanolic extracts - Aqueous extracts - Trypanocidal potential - Trypanosomes - Inhibition of parasitaemia

Behavioral Analysis of experiences of secondary School Development Committees on policies and practices in budgeting in Kwekwe District, Zimbabwe

The study sought to investigate the behavioral experiences of secondary School Development Committees on policies and practices in budgeting in&nbsp; Kwekwe District of Zimbabwe. The study employed a mixed-methods research design and used an open and closed-ended questionnaire to collect&nbsp; data from 61 participants including 8 school heads, 8 school deputy heads, 8 school senior teachers, 8 heads of departments, 8 School Development&nbsp; Committee chairpersons, 8 vice-chairperson and 8 school treasurers, 1 district schools inspector, 1 district accountant, 2 provincial&nbsp; internal auditors, and 1 provincial accounting assistant. The quantitative data were analyzed with SPSS (Version 27) and presented in the form of&nbsp; descriptive tabular summaries. Qualitative data were examined thematically. The study found that not all secondary school heads and School&nbsp; Development Committee members in Zimbabwe's Kwekwe district know how to draw a school budget. Lack of interest to draw a school budget,&nbsp; Covid -19, inflation, and non-payment of fees by parents and guardians and lack of knowledge in policies and practices on budgeting were&nbsp; important factors found to affect policies and practices in budgeting in Kwekwe district secondary schools. The study suggests a need for regular&nbsp; training workshops for school heads and SDC to improve understanding, literacy, and practices in budgeting in schools. And a review of educational&nbsp; policy to include compulsory capacity building for newly appointed school heads and SDC on financial management practices