Community-Centred Infrastructure Design Process for Resilience Building in South African Informal Settlements: The “Genius of Space” Solid Waste and Greywater Infrastructure Project

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Lauren Hermanus ◽  
Sean Andrew

Due to a lack of adequate water and sanitation infrastructure, growing, unplanned urban settlements in South Africa and elsewhere have been linked to pollution of critical river systems. The same dynamics undermine local resilience, understood as the capacity to adapt and develop in response to changes, persistent social and ecological risks, and disasters. Water and sanitation challenges undermine resilience by causing and compounding risks to individuals, and to household and community health and livelihoods, in a complex context in which communities and local governments have limited capacity and resources to respond appropriately. Household and community resilience in informal settlements is drawing increasing policy focus, given the persistence of these kinds of neighbourhoods in cities and towns in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa, in particular. This case considers whether bottom-up responses that combine public and private sector resources, including community participation, and use an interdisciplinary approach can support the production of novel resilience-fostering solutions. This article presents an analysis of the case of Genius of Space waste and wastewater management infrastructure in the Western Cape, South Africa. While the process has been imperfect and slow to show results, this analysis reflects on the gains, lessons and potential for replication that this work has produced. The Genius of Space approach adds to a growing area of practice-based experimentation focussed on incrementalism and adaptive development practices in urban environments, particularly in developing countries.

Indoor Air ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toyib Olaniyan ◽  
Mohamed Aqiel Dalvie ◽  
Martin Röösli ◽  
Rajen Naidoo ◽  
Nino Künzli ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
T. Kemper ◽  
N. Mudau ◽  
P. Mangara ◽  
M. Pesaresi

Urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa are growing at an unprecedented pace. Much of this growth is taking place in informal settlements. In South Africa more than 10% of the population live in urban informal settlements. South Africa has established a National Informal Settlement Development Programme (NUSP) to respond to these challenges. This programme is designed to support the National Department of Human Settlement (NDHS) in its implementation of the Upgrading Informal Settlements Programme (UISP) with the objective of eventually upgrading all informal settlements in the country. Currently, the NDHS does not have access to an updated national dataset captured at the same scale using source data that can be used to understand the status of informal settlements in the country. <br><br> This pilot study is developing a fully automated workflow for the wall-to-wall processing of SPOT-5 satellite imagery of South Africa. The workflow includes an automatic image information extraction based on multiscale textural and morphological image features extraction. The advanced image feature compression and optimization together with innovative learning and classification techniques allow a processing of the SPOT-5 images using the Landsat-based National Land Cover (NLC) of South Africa from the year 2000 as low-resolution thematic reference layers as. The workflow was tested on 42 SPOT scenes based on a stratified sampling. The derived building information was validated against a visually interpreted building point data set and produced an accuracy of 97 per cent. Given this positive result, is planned to process the most recent wall-to-wall coverage as well as the archived imagery available since 2007 in the near future.


Genome ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 183-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chante Powell ◽  
Virgilio Caleca ◽  
Martina Sinno ◽  
Michaela van Staden ◽  
Simon van Noort ◽  
...  

Wild and cultivated olives harbor and share a diversity of insects, some of which are considered agricultural pests, such as the olive fruit fly. The assemblage of olive-associated parasitoids and seed wasps is rich and specialized in sub-Saharan Africa, with native species possibly coevolving with their hosts. Although historical entomological surveys reported on the diversity of olive wasp species in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, no comprehensive study has been performed in the region in the molecular era. In this study, a dual approach combining morphological and DNA-based methods was used for the identification of adult specimens reared from olive fruits. Four species of Braconidae and six species of Chalcidoidea were identified, and DNA barcoding methodologies were used to investigate conspecificity among individuals, based on randomly selected representative specimens. Morphological identifications were congruent with DNA data, as NJ and ML trees correctly placed the sequences for each species either at the genus or species level, depending on the available taxa coverage, and genetic distances strongly supported conspecificity. No clear evidence of cryptic diversity was found. Overall seed infestation and parasitism rates were higher in wild olives compared to cultivated olives, and highest for Eupelmus spermophilus and Utetes africanus. These results can be used for early DNA-based detection of wasp larvae in olives and to further investigate the biology and ecology of these species.


2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-103
Author(s):  
Michael Barry ◽  
David Mayson

Research in informal settlements in South Africa has shown that conflict is inherent between groups within a settlement and between the broader community and the land administration authorities. In general, groups and sub-groups continually form, reform and dissolve within informal settlements. Moreover, the internal rules that a community creates relating to land tenure tend to be manipulated by sub-groups as they compete for land, resources and power. Internal rules are not static but are subject to continual change. Similar characteristics were observed in Elandskloof, a rural land restitution case in the Western Cape province of South Africa.


BMJ Open ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. e016232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erick Wekesa Bunyasi ◽  
David John Coetzee

BackgroundStudies have shown a mixed association between socioeconomic status (SES) and prevalent HIV infection across and within settings in sub-Saharan Africa. In general, the relationship between years of formal education and HIV infection changed from a positive to a negative association with maturity of the HIV epidemic. Our objective was to determine the association between SES and HIV in women of reproductive age in the Free State (FSP) and Western Cape Provinces (WCP) of South Africa (SA).Study designCross-sectional.SettingSA.MethodsWe conducted secondary analysis on 1906 women of reproductive age from a 2007 to 2008 survey that evaluated effectiveness of Prevention of Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission Programmes. SES was measured by household wealth quintiles, years of formal education and employment status. Our analysis principally used logistic regression for survey data.ResultsThere was a significant negative trend between prevalent HIV infection and wealth quintile in WCP (P<0.001) and FSP (P=0.025). In adjusted analysis, every additional year of formal education was associated with a 10% (adjusted OR (aOR) 0.90 (95% CI 0.85 to 0.96)) significant reduction in risk of prevalent HIV infection in WCP but no significant association was observed in FSP (aOR 0.99; 95% CI 0.89 to 1.11). There was no significant association between employment and prevalent HIV in each province: (aOR 1.54; 95% CI 0.84 to 2.84) in WCP and (aOR 0.96; 95% CI 0.71 to 1.30) in FSP.ConclusionThe association between HIV infection and SES differed by province and by measure of SES and underscores the disproportionately higher burden of prevalent HIV infection among poorer and lowly educated women. Our findings suggest the need for re-evaluation of whether current HIV prevention efforts meet needs of the least educated (in WCP) and the poorest women (both WCP and FSP), and point to the need to investigate additional or tailored strategies for these women.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 512-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regis Musavengane ◽  
Henry Bikwibili Tantoh ◽  
Danny Simatele

In Africa, rural communities thrive on social capital and tend to have a number of commonalities that force them to share natural, physical and social resources. It has been a trend in sub-Saharan Africa to have either formal or informal collaborative management agreements to manage common pool resources (CPRs) to accommodate different actors and interests. This paper draws lessons from past and contemporary collaborative schemes in Cameroon and South Africa to enhance the practice and governance processes of natural resources in sub-Saharan Africa in order to promote sustainable development. Using research methods inspired by the tradition of participatory research to collect field-based data and complemented by reflections on previous and existing studies, the paper highlights the importance and benefits of participatory democracy as opposed to representational democracy in co-management of natural resources in rural spaces. It further discusses the need to redefine the roles of national and local governments, the youths and women in ensuring effective participation and the essence of unifying the judicial and culture. To guarantee sustainability of collaborative community-based natural resources, the paper emphasises the role and importance of youth and women empowerment. These issues have been discussed within the broader sustainability discourse.


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