Pub Date : 2022-05-16DOI: 10.23919/IST-Africa56635.2022.9845613
Odwa Dyantyi, J. Njenga
This qualitative research aimed to explore small-scale farmers’ awareness and perception of Smart Irrigation (SI) and Smart Irrigation Technologies (SITs) in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, where agriculture significantly contributes to economic activities and labour. These farmers learnt from their families when there was little pressure on water resources and technology not as advanced as today. This intergenerational knowledge cannot address emerging water use pressures to achieve the quality and efficiencies required. In-depth interviews were used to establish small-scale farmers’ awareness and perception of smart farming, especially SI. The farmers know the current irrigation practices are wasteful in water use, crop, and labour. Most of the farmers were aware of the benefits of SITs in reducing over-irrigation, soil erosion, water wastage, and associated decrease in crop yields, which prevents the SITs. Training farmers and assisting them in installing SITs in irrigation would help them achieve most of the benefits of SITs.
{"title":"Awareness and Perceptions of Smart Irrigation Technologies by Small Scale Farmers in Rural South Africa","authors":"Odwa Dyantyi, J. Njenga","doi":"10.23919/IST-Africa56635.2022.9845613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23919/IST-Africa56635.2022.9845613","url":null,"abstract":"This qualitative research aimed to explore small-scale farmers’ awareness and perception of Smart Irrigation (SI) and Smart Irrigation Technologies (SITs) in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, where agriculture significantly contributes to economic activities and labour. These farmers learnt from their families when there was little pressure on water resources and technology not as advanced as today. This intergenerational knowledge cannot address emerging water use pressures to achieve the quality and efficiencies required. In-depth interviews were used to establish small-scale farmers’ awareness and perception of smart farming, especially SI. The farmers know the current irrigation practices are wasteful in water use, crop, and labour. Most of the farmers were aware of the benefits of SITs in reducing over-irrigation, soil erosion, water wastage, and associated decrease in crop yields, which prevents the SITs. Training farmers and assisting them in installing SITs in irrigation would help them achieve most of the benefits of SITs.","PeriodicalId":142887,"journal":{"name":"2022 IST-Africa Conference (IST-Africa)","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125281338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-16DOI: 10.23919/IST-Africa56635.2022.9845570
J. Oredo
Evaluation of public sector automation platforms, also known as e-government platforms is complicated due to several incoherent e-government maturity models. Further, these e-government maturity models are not specifically tailored to evaluating e-government platforms from a citizen perspective. A key component of a citizen facing e-government platform is the level to which it enables citizen participation to a level that they feel empowered. This study applied the Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation to evaluate the e-government platforms in Kenya. The results indicate that the e-government platforms in Kenya are still at the levels of non-participation and tokenism. The e-government platforms are yet to reach the highest level of citizen participation known as citizen empowerment. The study enhances our understanding of e-government evaluation from a citizen view and can be useful to policy makers during the design and implementation of e-government platforms
{"title":"Evaluating the Impact of e-Government Initiatives on Citizens: Empowerment or Tokenism?","authors":"J. Oredo","doi":"10.23919/IST-Africa56635.2022.9845570","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23919/IST-Africa56635.2022.9845570","url":null,"abstract":"Evaluation of public sector automation platforms, also known as e-government platforms is complicated due to several incoherent e-government maturity models. Further, these e-government maturity models are not specifically tailored to evaluating e-government platforms from a citizen perspective. A key component of a citizen facing e-government platform is the level to which it enables citizen participation to a level that they feel empowered. This study applied the Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation to evaluate the e-government platforms in Kenya. The results indicate that the e-government platforms in Kenya are still at the levels of non-participation and tokenism. The e-government platforms are yet to reach the highest level of citizen participation known as citizen empowerment. The study enhances our understanding of e-government evaluation from a citizen view and can be useful to policy makers during the design and implementation of e-government platforms","PeriodicalId":142887,"journal":{"name":"2022 IST-Africa Conference (IST-Africa)","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126841182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-16DOI: 10.23919/IST-Africa56635.2022.9845583
Edison Wazoel Lubua
This paper analysed 30 NGOs based in Tanzania so as to establish the Digital Knowledge Management gap that exists to their systems. In addition, the paper used the literature of the African origin to determine challenges facing organisations in the implementation of Digital Knowledge Management Systems; this was followed by highlighting opportunities for enhancing the use of Digital Knowledge Management Systems within the continent. The study was descriptive in nature. Results confirmed that Knowledge Management Systems owned by organisations do not meet minimum technical criteria. In addition, there were challenges associated with how to work with the information, there were challenges on how to manage Knowledge Systems, and challenges on how to deal with the technology. The following are the opportunities for enhancing Digital Knowledge Management - the use of Open Sources, engaging higher learning institutions in knowledge management issues, and researching for contents relevant to NGOs.
{"title":"Uses of Knowledge Management Systems in the African Context: Implementation Gap, Challenges and Prospects","authors":"Edison Wazoel Lubua","doi":"10.23919/IST-Africa56635.2022.9845583","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23919/IST-Africa56635.2022.9845583","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analysed 30 NGOs based in Tanzania so as to establish the Digital Knowledge Management gap that exists to their systems. In addition, the paper used the literature of the African origin to determine challenges facing organisations in the implementation of Digital Knowledge Management Systems; this was followed by highlighting opportunities for enhancing the use of Digital Knowledge Management Systems within the continent. The study was descriptive in nature. Results confirmed that Knowledge Management Systems owned by organisations do not meet minimum technical criteria. In addition, there were challenges associated with how to work with the information, there were challenges on how to manage Knowledge Systems, and challenges on how to deal with the technology. The following are the opportunities for enhancing Digital Knowledge Management - the use of Open Sources, engaging higher learning institutions in knowledge management issues, and researching for contents relevant to NGOs.","PeriodicalId":142887,"journal":{"name":"2022 IST-Africa Conference (IST-Africa)","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129573236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-22DOI: 10.23919/IST-Africa56635.2022.9845648
Emmanuel Maithya, L. Nderu, D. Njagi
Deducing meaning from collections of documents has become an increasingly important task for decision makers, both in industry and academia. To address this challenge, topic modelling techniques have been developed to identify and isolate words that most closely summarise the contents of document collections. However, the topics extracted from collections of short texts by these techniques, achieve low coherence scores, thereby defeating the purpose for which these techniques were created. In this paper, we propose the n-gram_cluster model, a model that exploits the semantic closeness between n-grams and word clusters formed from collections of the n-grams at different levels to discover topics. The model is able to discover semantically coherent topics from collections of short texts. We evaluated the performance of our model against those of three other conventional models showing that it is able to form topics that achieve comparatively higher coherence scores.
{"title":"A Multilevel Clustering Model for Coherent Topic Discovery in Short Texts","authors":"Emmanuel Maithya, L. Nderu, D. Njagi","doi":"10.23919/IST-Africa56635.2022.9845648","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23919/IST-Africa56635.2022.9845648","url":null,"abstract":"Deducing meaning from collections of documents has become an increasingly important task for decision makers, both in industry and academia. To address this challenge, topic modelling techniques have been developed to identify and isolate words that most closely summarise the contents of document collections. However, the topics extracted from collections of short texts by these techniques, achieve low coherence scores, thereby defeating the purpose for which these techniques were created. In this paper, we propose the n-gram_cluster model, a model that exploits the semantic closeness between n-grams and word clusters formed from collections of the n-grams at different levels to discover topics. The model is able to discover semantically coherent topics from collections of short texts. We evaluated the performance of our model against those of three other conventional models showing that it is able to form topics that achieve comparatively higher coherence scores.","PeriodicalId":142887,"journal":{"name":"2022 IST-Africa Conference (IST-Africa)","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132770531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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