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Within the context of public sector accountability, the purpose of this paper is to examine South African state-owned enterprises (SOEs) auditing practices and how they have contributed to mitigating prevalent corporate governance issues in South African SOEs.

This paper utilised a thematic content analysis of archival documents relating to South African SOEs. Firstly, to assess the extent to which the auditing dimension of the corporate governance codes, applicable to South African SOEs, conforms with best practices. Secondly, to determine the extent to which the audit practices of all the 21 South African SOEs listed in Schedule 2 of the Public Finance Management Act, have implemented the identified best audit practices.

The findings suggest that South African SOEs appear to have adopted and implemented best audit practices to enhance the quality of their accountability in relation to their corporate governance practices, as contained in their applicable corporate governance frameworks. However, despite the high levels of conformance, the observation that most South African SOEs continue to fail and require government bailouts, appears to suggest that auditing has no bearing on poor SOE performance, and that other corporate governance factors may be at play.

The discussion and findings in this paper suggest that the auditing practices of South African SOEs are adequate. However, that SOEs in South Africa continue to be loss-making may imply that this has contributed little to mitigating their corporate governance problems. Thus, policymakers and standard setters, including the Institute of Directors South Africa and relevant oversight bodies should pay attention to better developing means by which to curtail fruitless and wasteful expenditures by South African SOEs through improved corporate governance practices.

Most SOEs’ mission statements encourage SOEs to be socially responsible and utilise taxpayers’ monies efficiently and effectively without engaging in fruitless and wasteful expenditure. This study is conceived in this light.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, while acknowledging previous studies, this paper is the first to explore this topic in the context of SOEs and in the context of Africa.

We set out to carry out a case-control evaluation of psychological distress and emotional pain among adult attendees of a Nigerian dental clinic. A total of 201 subjects, made up of 101 dental patients (test group) matched with age and sex with 100 normal subjects (controls), was recruited into the study. All participants completed a designed socio-demographic questionnaire. General Health Question naire and Psyche ache Assessment Schedule were also administered to assess psychological distress based on cut-off scores ?3 and emotional pain based on cut-off scores ?28 respectively. The mean ages of study and control group were 33 (±12) and 36 (±13) years respectively, and both study and control groups were not significantly different in all the assessed socio-demographic parameters. Overall, 21.8% (n=22) of the subjects had psychological distress, while only 7% of the control group had psychological distress. This difference was statistically significant (P=0.003). Similarly, there was significant difference in the experience of psyche ache (unbearable psychological pain) as over a third of the dental patients (37.6%, n=38) had emotional pain, while only 13% of the controls experienced psych ache (P<0.001). In this study, the burden of psychological distress and emotional pain was many-fold in dental patients when compared with the controls.

We developed the Goal Achievement Scale in Colleges of Education (GASCE) to address the lack of context-specific assessment tools for evaluating goal achievement in Nigerian colleges of education. Existing instruments fail to capture the unique challenges of these institutions, making a reliable and valid scale essential for assessing educational success.

Using a descriptive survey research design, we developed and validated the GASCE through expert review, pilot testing, and statistical analyses. Our sample of 450 respondents from Nigerian colleges of education participated in exploratory factor analysis (EFA), graded response modeling (GRM-IRT), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and multiple group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA). We assessed reliability using composite reliability and validated construct and criterion-related validity through correlations with external goal achievement measures.

CFA confirmed a six-factor structure – critical thinking, committed teaching, high motivation, intellectual fitness, professional fitness and social fitness – with strong model fit indices. Reliability testing showed high internal consistency (Omega alpha: 0.845–0.919). MG-CFA confirmed measurement invariance across academic and non-academic staff (Δcomparative fit index < 0.015, Δroot mean square error of approximation < 0.010), while criterion-related validity was supported by significant correlations with external measures.

While the sample size supports validation, it may not fully represent all Nigerian colleges of education. Future research should expand the sample and incorporate objective performance data for further validation.

The GASCE provides policymakers, educators and administrators with a robust tool to assess and improve educational performance, facilitating targeted interventions and efficient resource allocation.

The GASCE fills a critical gap in educational assessment by offering a reliable, context-specific tool for Nigerian colleges of education. It enables comprehensive evaluation of goal achievement, supporting continuous improvement in teacher education programs across Nigeria.

This paper intends to investigate the empirical link between governance and energy investment in PPP. To succinctly account for biases in the fixed effects (FE) model, the authors adopted different bias-corrected techniques. The majority of these techniques provided evidence that PPP investments in energy are boosted by increasing the desire for accountability, prioritising the voice of the masses and disabusing the rule of laws. This study could not find any positive influence from the control of corruption to PPP investment in energy.

The acute shortage of power supply in SSA has attracted PPP investments in the energy subsector of the economy, leading to the recent debate on governance and public, private investment. The authors contributed to this argument by examining the impact of country governance on PPP investment in energy using a sample of countries in SSA.

Therefore, the authors concluded that low control of corruption is responsible for the inadequate volume of PPP investments. In the light of this, the government should redefine the anti-corruption bill of their sovereignty to accommodate severe sanctions when necessary.

This paper uses the fixed effects (FE) model by introducing batteries of nonlinear panel models to capture the relationship between the impacts of country governance on PPP investment in energy.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model that will demonstrate how the integration of Salam (exclusive agricultural commodity trade) with Takaful (micro-Takaful – a subdivision of Islamic insurance) and value chain can address major challenges facing the agricultural sector in Kano State, Nigeria.

The study conducted a thorough and critical analysis of relevant literature and existing models of financing agriculture in Nigeria to come up with the proposed model.

The findings indicate that measures undertaken to address the major challenges fail. In view of this, this study proposed Bay-Salam with Takaful and value chain model to solve a number of challenges such as poor access to financing, poor marketing and pricing, delay, collateral requirement and risk issues in order to avail farmers with easy access to finance and provide effective security to financial institutions.

The paper is limited to using secondary data. Therefore, empirical investigation can be carried out to strengthen the validation of the model.

The study outcome seeks to improve the productivity of the farmers through enhancing their access to finance. This will increase their level of production and provide more employment opportunities. In addition, it will boost financial inclusion, income generation, poverty alleviation, standard of living, food security and overall economic growth and development.

The novelty of this study lies in the integration of classical Bay-Salam with Takaful and value chain and create a unique model structure which the researchers do not come across in any research that presented it in Nigeria.

The paper aims to understand the young residents’ household waste intentions through place attachment (PA) approach where place dependency (PD) and place identity (PLI) influence recycling intentions (RIs). Furthermore, the effect of norms (both subjective and moral) on residents’ association with PLI was also analyzed.

The conceptual model, including the hypothesized relationship between variables, was established through relevant literature. The study extends the theory of planned behavior (TPB) through a place-based approach in young residents’ household waste RIs. The proposed conceptual model also replaced the position of norms (subjective and moral) as antecedents to PLI in the proposed extended and modified TPB model. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has been used for the statistical analysis of the data. The questionnaires were distributed digitally. The convenience sampling approach was adopted for collecting data.

The results tenably billed the inclusion of placed-based approach in the TPB and norms (subjective and moral) in predicting PLI of young residents. All the alternative hypotheses in the proposed model were accepted. The predictive power of RIs was 41.4%.

The research only considered the educated and financially opulent residents, among whom the waste disposal system was well established and may have led to favorable results. The study only limits to measuring intentions, and its organic nature opens vistas for future research studies where more variables could be agglutinated to achieve pronounced prediction power and also further measure actual recycling behavior and practice.

The study adds to pragmatic implications for local governments and municipalities where the waste collection apparatuses could capitalize on the findings to achieve efficiency in household waste collection and recycling.

With young generation of residents at the helm for forging a cleaner environment, the study motivates environmental enthusiasts and social scientists to better understand household waste RIs. The study will help young generation to become more sensitized towards the environment by making green changes in daily disposal habits.

The study explored two prospects. First, PA (place dependence and place identity) was added as an external variable and precedent to RIs, and second, the norms (both subjective and moral) were taken as antecedents to place identity.