Social Sciences and Humanities

Performance management within the Public Service in Namibia was announced in 2006, but it took almost eight years to be attended with all permanent secretaries signing for it only in 2014 in front of the Prime Minister. Since performance management started with permanent secretaries, the need to find out the preparedness of employees and the perceived effective implementation of performance management prompted the carrying out of this study.

This paper will be looking at The National Youth Employment Strategy 2015 which focuses on the 15-24 age group; a cohort which experienced a number of significant transitions both at the individual and institutional level.  Focusing on the inter-relatedness and inter-dependency of economic and social policies, this Strategy aspires to develop a number of thrusts which address the challenges owing to macro- and micro- constraints. The aim is to design a holistic framework that yields both immediate and long-term returns.

Despite its challenges and volatilities due to number of internal and external factors, Mongolian mining industry remains to be the most important driver for its economic development. Mineral products consistently comprise over 80% of Mongolia's total exports and efforts are being made to switch the raw commodity based exports to more value-added products and the role of foreign investments in the forms of capital, technology and expertise are crucial for this process.

Rural poverty remains a challenge among developing countries including Ghana. Livelihood diversification has been employed as one of the strategies to mitigate the teething poverty in Northern Ghana. Although lauded as a potential source of poverty eradication, limited studies have been conducted to understand the livelihood diversification strategies of poor and vulnerable women in Northern Ghana. This present paper identified and discussed the livelihood diversification strategies of women in Northern Ghana.

Since its foundation in 1949, the Alliance continually is evolving politics of partnership and cooperation with all non-NATO countries. This policy has a special place in the overall policy of the Alliance. Dating back to the last decade of XX century, the Alliance has tried to establish closer formal partnerships relations with states and regional organizations around the world.

This paper highlights some aspects of Kyrgyz social security system in terms of international donor organizations’ policy. First it was analyzed how various international guidelines on national social security are compatible. Then the selected international recommendations were reviewed in detail for defining its applicability to the national social insurance system and adequacy to social security law.

‘Special needs education (SNE) is highly crucial for all those children and adults with disabilities. In this article, we aim to research the awareness levels of SNE in various schools and communities in the city of Hyderabad, India. A qualitative approach was taken for this purpose. Our research also includes a case study of a special needs child along with his family and academic background, in order to know the degree of awareness among parents.

Various microfinance institutions have sprouted at the community levels and continue to operate in the Acholi sub-region during the insurgency and in the aftermath.  Their roles have been to carry out financial intermediation functions of mobilizing savings and deployment of loans. A number of studies have been carried out on the contributions of MFIs on community livelihood with mixed results. Some studies upheld that microfinance interventions have achieved significant improvements in terms of increased business incomes and improved livelihood means.

The significance of information communication technologies (ICT) for development is well recognized, but Africa seems behind the rest of the regions in the world.Through literature review and semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders including African intellectuals, political scientists, development economists, and ICT and education specialists, this paper examines the current state of ICT in Africa andforecasts the forthcoming transformations of the next decades from development perspectives.