Hasil untuk "African languages and literature"

Simon Peter Katui

Makala hii inachanganua ubanaji wa maana za maneno katika jukwaa la Facebook. Suala la ubanaji wa maana za maneno katika mawasiliano limewavutia wasomi kadhaa. Hata hivyo, hakuna utafiti ambao umefanyika kuhusu ubanaji wa maana za maneno katika jukwaa la Facebook. Makala hii imejikita katika kuchanganua ubanaji wa maana za maneno pamoja na kiini cha matumizi ya ubanaji huo katika jukwaa la Facebook. Makala hii iliongozwa na Nadharia ya Semantiki Leksika ya Blutner (1998). Mkabala wa makala hii ni wa kimaelezo. Sampuli ya utafiti huu ilikuwa ya kimakusudi, ambapo tuliteua vikundi vitatu vya mawasiliano katika jukwaa la Facebook kwa hiari. Data iliyotumika katika makala hii ilikusanywa kati ya mwezi Aprili na Oktoba mwaka wa 2020.Vikundi vya mawasiliano kwenye jukwaa la Facebook vilitumika. Data hii ilikusanywa kwa ajili ya tasnifu ya uzamili iliyoshughulikia suala la Uchanganuzi wa Kipragmatiki wa Maana ya Mawasiliano katika Jukwaa la Facebook. Tulipitia kurasa za makundi ya mawasiliano katika jukwaa la Facebook na kunakili data husika. Tulichanganua data tuliyoinakili ili kupata lengo la ubanaji wa maana za maneno kwenye jukwaa la Facebook. Data iliyokusanywa kuhusu mada hii inaonesha kwamba mawasiliano katika jukwaa la Facebook husheheni matumizi ya ubanaji wa maana za maneno.  Kwa kuzingatia Mkabala wa Pragmatiki, makala hii inaonesha kwamba watu hutumia ubanaji wa maana za maneno. Watu hubana maana za maneno kwa ajili ya kusetiri ujumbe na kuhifadhi heshima na taadhima kwa wanakikundi. Maana za maneno hubanwa kulingana na mazingira ya usemi husika kwa nia ya kuleta umoja.

Mwaka Lucky, Njayou Youssouf, Hasan Mahmud et al.

Sign language is a non-verbal discourse system used by people who are hard of hearing. It also carries cultural context and regional constructs, enabling meaningful communication and often preserving unique traditions. In the Central African region, local sign languages have distinct linguistic constructs but remain underrepresented in the literature, creating a significant gap in regional word-level datasets for machine learning practitioners. In this research, we present a dataset (CASL-W60) comprising 60 word-level Central African sign language (CASL), collected from 19 volunteers. Each word contains 10–12 video samples per signer, captured following standard African sign language video references. The dataset comprises MP4 video files that are systematically organized and made available through an online repository. We demonstrate its applicability through word-level classification of the 60 sign words. This dataset serves as a valuable resource for developing various applications, including sign language translation, sentence recognition or generation from word-level signs, and sign gloss detection.

Adam Laroussi, Mamoudou Gazibo

This article explores the national reception of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), comparing the cases of Egypt and Morocco. The aim is to find out whether the BRI promotes development in the target countries and, secondarily, whether it actually succeeds in enabling China to establish the BRI as a hegemonic standard in these countries by making them more dependent. To this end, we will explore in particular the impact of national institutional contexts in modulating its effects, and show two different trajectories. For example, Morocco, which has better institutional capacities, modulates the BRI to its advantage better than Egypt, which is on a trajectory of dependence.

Alexis de Colnet, Kuldeep S. Meel, Umang Mathur

In this work, we study the problems of counting and sampling Mazurkiewicz traces that a regular language touches. Fix an alphabet $Σ$ and an independence relation $\mathbb{I} \subseteq Σ\times Σ$. The input consists of a regular language $L \subseteq Σ^*$, given by a finite automaton with $m$ states, and a natural number $n$ (in unary). For the counting problem, the goal is to compute the number of Mazurkiewicz traces (induced by $\mathbb{I}$) that intersect the $n^\text{th}$ slice $L_n = L \cap Σ^n$, i.e., traces that admit at least one linearization in $L_n$. For the sampling problem, the goal is to output a trace drawn from a distribution that is approximately uniform over all such traces. These tasks are motivated by bounded model checking with partial-order reduction, where an \emph{a priori} estimate of the reduced state space is valuable, and by testing methods for concurrent programs that use partial-order-aware random exploration. We first show that the counting problem is #P-hard even when $L$ is accepted by a deterministic automaton, in sharp contrast to counting words of a DFA, which is polynomial-time solvable. We then prove that the problem lies in #P for both NFAs and DFAs, irrespective of whether $L$ is trace-closed. Our main algorithmic contributions are a \emph{fully polynomial-time randomized approximation scheme} (FPRAS) that, with high probability, approximates the desired count within a prescribed accuracy, and a \emph{fully polynomial-time almost uniform sampler} (FPAUS) that generates traces whose distribution is provably close to uniform.

Sebastian mateos Nicolajsen

I here conduct an exploration of programming language extensibility, making an argument for an often overlooked component of conventional language design. Now, this is not a technical detailing of these components, rather, I attempt to provide an overview as I myself have lacked during my time investigating programming languages. Thus, read this as an introduction to the magical world of extensibility. Through a literature review, I identify key extensibility themes - Macros, Modules, Types, and Reflection - highlighting diverse strategies for fostering extensibility. The analysis extends to cross-theme properties such as Parametricism and First-class citizen behaviour, introducing layers of complexity by highlighting the importance of customizability and flexibility in programming language constructs. By outlining these facets of existing programming languages and research, I aim to inspire future language designers to assess and consider the extensibility of their creations critically.

Ilyes Boumahdi, Nouzha Zaoujal

The purpose of this article is to explore the opportunity of recent and detailed unconventional data from the tourism sector collected from « Booking.com » to make a finer and more up-to-date analysis than that established by conventional data, particularly, at the territorial level of North Africa. We extracted and geolocalised about 40 variables of different types covering 1852 accommodations on Booking.com to analyze the characteristics of territorial tourist offer of the six North African countries (10 of 12 Moroccan regions, 3 of 13 Mauritanian Wilayas, 26 of 48 Algerian Wilayas, 13 of 24 Tunisian Governorates, 1 region of Libya, 15 of 27 Egyptian Mohafazats). Then, we used a random sample of 10% of the most recent appreciations of nearly 606000 tourists of the three most dynamic destinations (Marrakech-Safi, Tunis, Cairo) by analyzing the feelings of their comments with a differentiation according origin of tourists. We concluded that the accommodation offer of the territories of North Africa is very diversified and unclassified offers are slightly better appreciated compared to those classified. The coastal regions have higher prices compared to the interior of the countries and quality-price appreciation of North African regions is below their overall ratings.

Atharva Mutsaddi, Aditya Choudhary

Plagiarism involves using another person's work or concepts without proper attribution, presenting them as original creations. With the growing amount of data communicated in regional languages such as Marathi -- one of India's regional languages -- it is crucial to design robust plagiarism detection systems tailored for low-resource languages. Language models like Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) have demonstrated exceptional capability in text representation and feature extraction, making them essential tools for semantic analysis and plagiarism detection. However, the application of BERT for low-resource languages remains under-explored, particularly in the context of plagiarism detection. This paper presents a method to enhance the accuracy of plagiarism detection for Marathi texts using BERT sentence embeddings in conjunction with Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) feature representation. This approach effectively captures statistical, semantic, and syntactic aspects of text features through a weighted voting ensemble of machine learning models.

L. C. Gilbert

This bachelor's thesis examines the capabilities of ChatGPT 4 in code generation across 19 programming languages. The study analyzed solution rates across three difficulty levels, types of errors encountered, and code quality in terms of runtime and memory efficiency through a quantitative experiment. A total of 188 programming problems were selected from the LeetCode platform, and ChatGPT 4 was given three attempts to produce a correct solution with feedback. ChatGPT 4 successfully solved 39.67% of all tasks, with success rates decreasing significantly as problem complexity increased. Notably, the model faced considerable challenges with hard problems across all languages. ChatGPT 4 demonstrated higher competence in widely used languages, likely due to a larger volume and higher quality of training data. The solution rates also revealed a preference for languages with low abstraction levels and static typing. For popular languages, the most frequent error was "Wrong Answer," whereas for less popular languages, compiler and runtime errors prevailed, suggesting frequent misunderstandings and confusion regarding the structural characteristics of these languages. The model exhibited above-average runtime efficiency in all programming languages, showing a tendency toward statically typed and low-abstraction languages. Memory efficiency results varied significantly, with above-average performance in 14 languages and below-average performance in five languages. A slight preference for low-abstraction languages and a leaning toward dynamically typed languages in terms of memory efficiency were observed. Future research should include a larger number of tasks, iterations, and less popular languages. Additionally, ChatGPT 4's abilities in code interpretation and summarization, debugging, and the development of complex, practical code could be analyzed further. ---- Diese Bachelorarbeit untersucht die Fähigkeiten von ChatGPT 4 zur Code-Generierung in 19 Programmiersprachen. Betrachtet wurden die Lösungsraten zwischen drei Schwierigkeitsgraden, die aufgetretenen Fehlerarten und die Qualität des Codes hinsichtlich der Laufzeit- und Speichereffizienz in einem quantitativen Experiment. Dabei wurden 188 Programmierprobleme der Plattform LeetCode entnommen, wobei ChatGPT 4 jeweils drei Versuche hatte, mittels Feedback eine korrekte Lösung zu generieren. ChatGPT 4 löste 39,67 % aller Aufgaben erfolgreich, wobei die Erfolgsrate mit zunehmendem Schwierigkeitsgrad deutlich abnahm und bei komplexen Problemen in allen Sprachen signifikante Schwierigkeiten auftraten. Das Modell zeigte eine höhere Kompetenz in weit verbreiteten Sprachen, was wahrscheinlich auf eine größere Menge und höhere Qualität der Trainingsdaten zurückzuführen ist. Bezüglich der Lösungsraten zeigte das Modell zudem eine Präferenz für Sprachen mit niedrigem Abstraktionsniveau und statischer Typisierung. Bei Sprachen hoher Popularität trat der Fehler Wrong Answer am häufigsten auf, während bei weniger populären Sprachen Compiler- und Laufzeitfehler überwogen, was auf häufige Missverständnisse und Verwechslungen bezüglich der spezifischen strukturellen Eigenschaften dieser Sprachen zurückzuführen ist. ChatGPT 4 demonstrierte in allen Programmiersprachen eine überdurchschnittliche Laufzeiteffizienz und tendierte diesbezüglich erneut zu statisch typisierten und niedrig abstrahierten Sprachen. Die Werte zur Speichereffizienz variierten erheblich, wobei in 14 Sprachen überdurchschnittliche und in fünf Sprachen unterdurchschnittliche Werte erzielt wurden. Es zeigte sich diesbezüglich eine leichte Tendenz zugunsten von niedrig abstrahierten sowie eine Präferenz zu dynamisch typisierten Sprachen. Zukünftige Forschung sollte eine höhere Anzahl an Aufgaben, Iterationen und unpopulären Sprachen einbeziehen. Darüber hinaus könnten die Fähigkeiten von ChatGPT 4 in der Code-Interpretation und -Zusammenfassung, im Debugging und in der Entwicklung komplexer, praxisbezogener Codes analysiert werden.

Anastasia Mavridou, Marie Farrell, Gricel Vázquez et al.

Integrating autonomous and adaptive behavior into software-intensive systems presents significant challenges for software development, as uncertainties in the environment or decision-making processes must be explicitly captured. These challenges are amplified in safety- and mission-critical systems, which must undergo rigorous scrutiny during design and development. Key among these challenges is the difficulty of specifying requirements that use probabilistic constructs to capture the uncertainty affecting these systems. To enable formal analysis, such requirements must be expressed in precise mathematical notations such as probabilistic logics. However, expecting developers to write requirements directly in complex formalisms is unrealistic and highly error-prone. We extend the structured natural language used by NASA's Formal Requirement Elicitation Tool (FRET) with support for the specification of unambiguous and correct probabilistic requirements, and develop an automated approach for translating these requirements into logical formulas. We propose and develop a formal, compositional, and automated approach for translating structured natural-language requirements into formulas in probabilistic temporal logic. To increase trust in our formalizations, we provide assurance that the generated formulas are well-formed and conform to the intended semantics through an automated validation framework and a formal proof. The extended FRET tool enables developers to specify probabilistic requirements in structured natural language, and to automatically translate them into probabilistic temporal logic, making the formal analysis of autonomous and adaptive systems more practical and less error-prone.

Jayanta Sadhu, Maneesha Rani Saha, Rifat Shahriyar

The rapid growth of Large Language Models (LLMs) has put forward the study of biases as a crucial field. It is important to assess the influence of different types of biases embedded in LLMs to ensure fair use in sensitive fields. Although there have been extensive works on bias assessment in English, such efforts are rare and scarce for a major language like Bangla. In this work, we examine two types of social biases in LLM generated outputs for Bangla language. Our main contributions in this work are: (1) bias studies on two different social biases for Bangla, (2) a curated dataset for bias measurement benchmarking and (3) testing two different probing techniques for bias detection in the context of Bangla. This is the first work of such kind involving bias assessment of LLMs for Bangla to the best of our knowledge. All our code and resources are publicly available for the progress of bias related research in Bangla NLP.

Daniel S. Katz, Jeffrey C. Carver

This is a virtual dialog between Jeffrey C. Carver and Daniel S. Katz on how people learn programming languages. It's based on a talk Jeff gave at the first US-RSE Conference (US-RSE'23), which led Dan to think about human languages versus computer languages. Dan discussed this with Jeff at the conference, and this discussion continued asynchronous, with this column being a record of the discussion.

Jakub Bulín, Michael Kompatscher

A first-order formula is called primitive positive (pp) if it only admits the use of existential quantifiers and conjunction. Pp-formulas are a central concept in (fixed-template) constraint satisfaction since CSP($Γ$) can be viewed as the problem of deciding the primitive positive theory of $Γ$, and pp-definability captures gadget reductions between CSPs. An important class of tractable constraint languages $Γ$ is characterized by having few subpowers, that is, the number of $n$-ary relations pp-definable from $Γ$ is bounded by $2^{p(n)}$ for some polynomial $p(n)$. In this paper we study a restriction of this property, stating that every pp-definable relation is definable by a pp-formula of polynomial length. We conjecture that the existence of such short definitions is actually equivalent to $Γ$ having few subpowers, and verify this conjecture for a large subclass that, in particular, includes all constraint languages on three-element domains. We furthermore discuss how our conjecture imposes an upper complexity bound of co-NP on the subpower membership problem of algebras with few subpowers.

Kenneth Cecire, Shane Wood

From November 26 to December 12, 2022, Shane Wood and Kenneth Cecire, QuarkNet staff members under the University of Notre Dame, traveled to South Africa as Lecturers in the African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications (ASP) 2022, held at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) within the same calendar period. ASP is held every other year in a different African country for two or three weeks for African graduate and advanced undergraduate physics students to expose them to cutting-edge physics content and analysis techniques that may not be as available in their home institutions. Since 2016, there has been an outreach component consisting of the High School Teachers and Learners Programs. Cecire and Wood were facilitators of these programs and also acted as lecturers for two regular ASP classes. (We will use the term "student" to refer to these university students and "learners" to refer to high school students, following the practice of ASP.) They played a very active role and were quite busy during their two-week involvement. The mission was successful in terms of reaching teachers, learners, and students with new and exciting ideas and in terms of building strong collaborative relationships.

Ogbonnaya I. Omenka, D. Watson, H. Hendrie

BackgroundAfricans immigrants in the United States are the least-studied immigrant group, despite the research and policy efforts to address health disparities within immigrant communities. Although their healthcare experiences and needs are unique, they are often included in the “black” category, along with other phenotypically-similar groups. This process makes utilizing research data to make critical healthcare decisions specifically targeting African immigrants, difficult. The purpose of this Scoping Review was to examine extant information about African immigrant health in the U.S., in order to develop lines of inquiry using the identified knowledge-gaps.MethodsLiterature published in the English language between 1980 and 2016 were reviewed in five stages: (1) identification of the question and (b) relevant studies, (c) screening, (d) data extraction and synthesis, and (e) results. Databases used included EBSCO, ProQuest, PubMed, and Google Scholar (hand-search). The articles were reviewed according to title and abstract, and studies deemed relevant were reviewed as full-text articles. Data was extracted from the selected articles using the inductive approach, which was based on the comprehensive reading and interpretive analysis of the organically emerging themes. Finally, the results from the selected articles were presented in a narrative format.ResultsCulture, religion, and spirituality were identified as intertwined key contributors to the healthcare experiences of African immigrants. In addition, lack of culturally-competent healthcare, distrust, and complexity, of the U.S. health system, and the exorbitant cost of care, were identified as major healthcare access barriers.ConclusionKnowledge about African immigrant health in the U.S. is scarce, with available literature mainly focusing on databases, which make it difficult to identify African immigrants. To our knowledge, this is the first Scoping Review pertaining to the healthcare experiences and needs of African immigrants in the U.S.

Meg Parsons, Lara B. Taylor, R. Crease

We develop and apply a systematic review methodology to identify and understand how the peer-reviewed literature characterises Indigenous peoples’ involvement in marine governance and management approaches in terms of equity and justice worldwide. We reviewed the peer-reviewed English-language research articles between January 2015 and September 2020 for examples of Indigenous peoples’ involvement in marine governance and management using the analytical lens of environmental justice. The majority of research studies highlighted that Indigenous peoples experienced some form of environmental injustice linked to existing marine governance and management, most notably in the context of inequitable decision-making procedures surrounding the establishment and operation of marine protected areas. However, there are significant gaps in the current literature, including a notable absence of studies exploring Indigenous women and other gender minorities’ involvement in marine planning and management and the limited number of studies about Indigenous peoples living throughout Asia, the Arctic, Russia, and Africa. More studies are needed to explore collaborative and intersectional approaches, including co-governance and co-management and ecosystem-based management, and critically evaluate what constitutes inclusive, equitable, and just marine governance and management processes, practices, and outcomes for different Indigenous peoples occupying diverse social–ecological systems.

C. Siffel, K. Kistler, S. Sarda

Abstract Objectives To conduct a systematic literature review to evaluate the global incidence of intraventricular hemorrhage grade 2–4 among extremely preterm infants. Methods We performed searches in MEDLINE and Embase for intraventricular hemorrhage and prematurity cited in English language observational studies published from May 2006 to October 2017. Included studies analyzed data from infants born at ≤28 weeks’ gestational age and reported on intraventricular hemorrhage epidemiology. Results Ninety-eight eligible studies encompassed 39 articles from Europe, 31 from North America, 25 from Asia, five from Oceania, and none from Africa or South America; both Europe and North America were included in two publications. The reported global incidence range of intraventricular hemorrhage grade 3–4 was 5–52% (Europe: 5–52%; North America: 8–22%; Asia: 5–36%; Oceania: 8–13%). When only population-based studies were included, the incidence range of intraventricular hemorrhage grade 3–4 was 6–22%. The incidence range of intraventricular hemorrhage grade 2 was infrequently documented and ranged from 5–19% (including population-based studies). The incidence of intraventricular hemorrhage was generally inversely related to gestational age. Conclusions Intraventricular hemorrhage is a frequent complication of extremely preterm birth. Intraventricular hemorrhage incidence range varies by region, and the global incidence of intraventricular hemorrhage grade 2 is not well documented.

P. Meth, T. Goodfellow, A. Todes et al.

Recent years have seen a rising interest in peri-urban spaces, urban frontiers and new suburbanisms, including in African contexts. However, given the scale of urban growth and the extreme diversity of formations emerging on the geographical edges of African city-regions, a deeper understanding is needed of the drivers of peripheral urbanisms and the lived experiences of urban change in these spaces. Based on a comparative research project in South Africa and Ethiopia, this article draws out the epistemologies of researching African urban peripheries and presents a new conceptual framework. It offers a language for interpreting processes of peripheral development and change, highlighting five distinct but overlapping logics which we term speculative, vanguard, auto-constructed, transitioning and inherited. Rather than describing bounded peripheral spaces, we argue that these logics can co-exist, hybridize and bleed into each other in different ways in specific places and at different temporal junctures. Centring our methodological practices of comparative analysis, and privileging the voices of those living in urban peripheries, the article employs critical readings of urban scholarship before exploring how these five logics illuminate the complex processes of urban peripheral evolution and transformation. Formulating these logics helps to fill a lacuna in urban conceptualization with potential relevance beyond African contexts. Introduction Reflecting on a major international research programme on ‘global suburbanisms’, Keil (2018: 41) notes that we live ‘in the age of the urban periphery’. Scholarship on African cities has recently begun to explore this, evidenced by the proliferation of literature on peri-urban spaces (Mbiba and Huchzermeyer, 2002; Kinfu et al., 2019), urban peripheries (Sawyer, 2014), suburbanisms and ‘new centralities’ (Mabin et al., 2013; Güney et al., 2019), by-pass urbanism (Sawyer et al., 2021), urban frontiers (McGregor and Chatiza, 2019) and ‘postcolonial suburbs’ (Mercer, 2017). Collectively, this literature bolsters Keil’s claim that urban peripheries exhibit greater diversity ‘than perhaps anywhere else in the modern history of city-building and re-building’ (Keil, 2018: 13). It is increasingly apparent that the geographical edges of cities are characterized by dynamism as well as stagnation, boredom as well as violence, and luxury alongside destitution. Meanwhile, debates on ‘extended’ urbanization and its ‘planetary’ reach (Brenner, 2013; Brenner and Schmid, 2015) render a focus on urban frontiers, liminal spaces and dispersed urban forms all the more important. Indeed, if it is in the peripheries that twenty-first century urbanization is ultimately taking shape, then despite some recent scholarly attention, the work of researching, analysing and conceptualizing this has only just begun. METH, GOODFELLOW, TODES AND CHARLTON 986 This article discusses our conceptualizations of African urban peripheries following our ESRC/NRF-funded research project, ‘Living the Urban Periphery: Investment, Infrastructure and Economic Change in African City-Regions’ (2016–2019). Our research focused on how transformation is shaped, governed and experienced in the spatial peripheries of three African city-regions: Gauteng and eThekwini in South Africa, and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Comparing these urban formations enables us to explore countries that are vastly different in terms of economic status and urban land tenure systems, but which have important similarities in their developmentalist orientation and the dominance of state-sponsored housing provision. We argue that the distinctiveness of these countries in being at the forefront of peripheral housing and infrastructure provision in Africa makes them especially relevant for thinking about the development of urban peripheries more generally. Meanwhile, our comparison of Gauteng and eThekwini within South Africa enables us to examine the peripheries in areas of former mining and industrial investment, sometimes now in decline, alongside those being reshaped by new state-led and commercial mega-projects. Through these multiple lines of comparison, drawing on Robinson’s (2016) exhortation to engage in comparison beyond the usual conventions of comparability, our wider project generates fresh insights, with broader relevance to urban peripheries globally. The article’s contribution is specifically conceptual, drawing out the epistemologies of researching African urban peripheries and offering a conceptual framework to inform the practice of analysing geographic peripheries. It opens with a critical reading of theoretical and empirical material examining urban peripheries, with an emphasis on work on African cities. Attention is drawn to the insights but also limitations of some of this work, particularly its varied ability to engage with the complexities of urban change as narrated by residents in these spaces. The article then centres our methodological practices, which privilege the voices of those living in the urban peripheries in shaping our conceptualization, and reflects on our ability to generalize through the comparative analysis of these cases. We show how our mixedmethod approach places a particular emphasis on in-depth, multi-method qualitative research with residents, alongside a range of other methods. Based on the extensive body of empirical research underpinning this project, we argue that peripheral spaces are not simply Cartesian spaces identifiable through mapping and boundaries and understood through abstracted trends, but that they reveal their essence through the voices and views of those living there. Thus, we are concerned less with the representation of these spaces than with peripheries as ‘lived space’, although we also explore the economic and political drivers and planning processes that produce these spaces. Because its focus is conceptual, the article does not detail the complex experiences of residents revealed through our project, although it builds on their narratives (alongside those of key informants involved in shaping and governing urban peripheries from the outside) to inform our conceptualizations. Following a discussion of our project’s methodological approach and case selection, the article turns to its core contribution: the conceptualization of five distinct (though often intersecting) logics of urban peripheral development emerging from our research. We became aware during the course of our project that defining the periphery as a singular concept was insufficient; we are also attuned to Schmid et al.’s (2018) call for new vocabularies to describe processes of urbanization, given the limitations of dominant concepts in Urban Studies––particularly in capturing urban formations in the global South. Our main contribution in this article is therefore to unpack the urban periphery concept in new ways, through placing attention on peripheral areas, urban processes and practices evident in peripheral sites, as well as the experiences of a wide variety of residents living in these areas. Drawing on these various epistemologies of the periphery, the five peripheral logics we propose are speculative, vanguard, autoconstructed, transitioning and inherited. The value of this classification lies not in CONCEPTUALIZING AFRICAN URBAN PERIPHERIES 987 describing exclusive bounded instances of the urban periphery; indeed, we reject this approach. Instead, we argue for an approach that recognizes these modes of peripheral development as logics that can co-exist, hybridize and bleed into each other in specific places and at different temporal junctures. Rather than being discrete categories, the five logics privilege the dynamic, interconnected and multi-scalar aspects of urban change occurring in African cities. We conclude the article by considering the significance of these logics for studying other urban peripheries, within Africa and beyond. Existing conceptualizations of urban peripheries Urban peripheries have been conceptualized in a number of ways, which variously highlight their drivers, economic dynamics, spatial characteristics and key actors, with most accounts focusing on one or other dimension. Early conceptions of urban peripheries saw them as places on the urban edge, transitioning from rural to urban, with limited economies, and where land costs, densities and access to economic opportunities were lower than more central areas. This was often conceptualized as a moving edge, as earlier peripheries were absorbed into the city and new ones emerged. Literatures on peri-urbanization have emphasized this rural-urban interface, the processes of urbanization, changing land uses and associated land conflicts, and the influence of tenurial systems, inter alia (Mbiba and Huchzermeyer, 2002). This literature has been important in African contexts such as Ghana, where growth is occurring on customary lands at city edges, with distinct tenurial and management systems (Gough and Yankson, 2000). The peri-urban concept is also relevant for those African cities where urban-rural distinctions are blurred and where the absorption of densifying rural settlements (Potts, 2018), or piecemeal lateral expansion (Sawyer, 2014), are significant parts of urban growth. Such edges might be less regulated spaces, providing easier access for migrants and cheaper housing for the urban poor (Simon, 2004). However, while the earlier literature often saw these as places of poverty, more recent work documents increased middle-class occupation and housing construction (Mbatha and Mchunu, 2016; Bartels, 2020; Mercer, 2020). The equation between geographic peripherality, poverty and marginality has also been challenged by authors such as Peberdy (2017), drawing on Wallerstein’s conception of the periphery as a social and political rather than spatial construct, and Pieterse (2019), who points to deep poverty and social marginality in cent

Jivnesh Sandhan, Ayush Daksh, Om Adideva Paranjay et al.

Nowadays, the interest in code-mixing has become ubiquitous in Natural Language Processing (NLP); however, not much attention has been given to address this phenomenon for Speech Translation (ST) task. This can be solely attributed to the lack of code-mixed ST task labelled data. Thus, we introduce Prabhupadavani, which is a multilingual code-mixed ST dataset for 25 languages. It is multi-domain, covers ten language families, containing 94 hours of speech by 130+ speakers, manually aligned with corresponding text in the target language. The Prabhupadavani is about Vedic culture and heritage from Indic literature, where code-switching in the case of quotation from literature is important in the context of humanities teaching. To the best of our knowledge, Prabhupadvani is the first multi-lingual code-mixed ST dataset available in the ST literature. This data also can be used for a code-mixed machine translation task. All the dataset can be accessed at https://github.com/frozentoad9/CMST.

Elijah Yendaw, A. J. Asitik, Stanley Kojo Dare

While Ghana remains a key destination for West African itinerant immigrant traders, studies examining their retail strategies appear missing in the Ghanaian migration literature. Applying the mixed methods design, quantitative and qualitative data were obtained from 779 immigrant vendors and 9 immigrant key informants. In tandem with this design (mixed methods), interview schedule and in-depth interview guide were employed to collect the data for analysis. The results indicate that most of the respondents exhibited their entrepreneurial prowess by constructing a network of clients around their business. The findings indicate that they sustained their clients by selling their wares at reduced prices with the supplier price being the determinant. Such traders usually prefer cash payments for their products with street vending being their main itinerant retail strategy. Primarily, most of them advertised their wares by shouting to draw attention to what they sell while others increased their sales using flattery and persuasive language. The Chi-square test results revealed a significant nexus between the immigrant vendors’ countries of origin and the various techniques they used to retail their goods. The study unveils the fact that aspiring entrepreneurs and shop retailers could experiment the pricing strategy of these immigrant traders, to increase sale values.

Kétévi A. Assamagan, Bobby Acharya, Temitope Adenuga et al.

The sixth edition of the African School of Fundamental and Applied Physics (ASP) was planned for Morocco in July 2020 and was referred to as ASP2020. Preparations were at an advanced stage when ASP2020 was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The three-week event was restructured into two activities in 2021 -- an online event on July 19-30, 2021 and a hybrid event on December 12-18, 2021 -- and was renamed ASP2021. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, an online lecture series was integrated into the ASP activities. The ASP mentorship program, which consists of online engagements between lecturers and assigned mentees, continued in this way. ASP alumni studied one year of COVID-19 data of ten African countries to offer insights into pandemic containment measures. In this note, we report on ASP activities since the last in-person edition of ASP in 2018 in Namibia.