This study examines the effects of board structure on information disclosure in annual reports of the listed firms in Sub-Saharan Africa countries' stock exchanges. Findings indicate that board size is positive and significantly related to information disclosure. However, findings indicate that the percentage of outside directors is not significantly related to information disclosure. This study contributes to corporate governance literature, especially in regard to the association between attributes of board structure and information disclosure. Findings of this study provide some practical benefits to regulators and policymakers in understanding the nexus between board structure and information disclosure in Sub-Saharan Africa. This would help policymakers and regulators to formulate policies and regulations with regards to board structure and good corporate governance practices, specifically those related to information disclosure.

This study examines the factors affecting audit fees in firms listed primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa countries by focusing on the relationship between ownership structure and audit fees. The study uses an unbalanced panel dataset of 531 observations of non-financial firms collected from annual reports for the years 2005 to 2009. The findings show that audit fees vary with ownership structure. Particularly, the study shows managerial ownership and concentrated ownership are negatively related to audit fees, whereas foreign ownership is related positively to audit fees. This study provides valuable insights on effects of ownership structure on audit fees pricing. Specifically, the study emphasizes that decisions of pricing of audit fees should consider characteristics of the ownership structure of a firm. The study makes contributions to the literature that focuses on the nexus between corporate governance and audit fees. Particularly, the findings provide empirical evidence of impacts of ownership structure on audit fees in Sub-Saharan African context, which is characterized by less developed financial markets and a weak institutional environment relative to developed countries where most studies are conducted.

The success of building construction projects in developing countries heavily relies on the specialized skills of artisans who are responsible for executing physical construction activities. However, the performance of these artisans depends on various influencing factors (IFs) that significantly affect their productivity and workmanship. This study aims to assess the impact of disregarding IFs on the performance of artisans in building construction projects in Tanzania. Using the individual performance theory, the study identifies the core IFs that influence artisans' performance and develops a structural equation modelling (SEM) to understand the inter-relationship between these IFs. The study collects data from 289 building construction projects through a non-probability technique and analyses it using SPSS-25 and AMOS-20. The study finds that the enforcement of IFs at construction sites by stakeholders in the construction industry is weak, which undermines the performance of artisans. Therefore, the study recommends that employers and supervisors should consider IFs during the construction process to achieve better results in terms of time, cost, and quality. The findings of this study can guide employers and supervisors in the construction industry to enhance the overall performance of building construction projects by improving the performance of artisans through ensuring that IFs are taken into consideration during the recruitment and construction process.

Climate change creates considerable issues for watershed management, especially in areas prone to erosion and sediment production. The purpose of this study was to examine and map the sediment yield response to future climatic scenarios in the Songwe Watershed. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), which is integrated with Regional Climate Models (RCM) under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 8.5, was used to evaluate the possible consequences on sediment transport dynamics within the watershed. The simulated results from the four Regional Climate Models (CCLM4, HIRAM5, RACMO22T, and RCA4 RCMs) showed that sediment yields increased for future estimates from 2011 to 2100 under RCP 8.5, owing mostly to increased rainfall and altered hydrological cycles. The results reveal that the average annual sediment yield could increase by 30-50% under RCP 8.5. scenario. Sediment yield mapping highlights crucial hotspots, notably in steep terrain and places with minimal vegetation cover, that are extremely susceptible to erosion, providing useful insights for focused intervention measures. The study emphasized the need for adaptive watershed management methods to counteract the negative effects of climate change on soil erosion and sediment crusade.

This paper demonstrates the importance of incorporating and solving the machining optimisation problem jointly with part selection and machine loading problems in order to avoid unbalanced workload in the FMS. Unbalanced workload renders to ineffective FMS such that some machines on the manufacturing shop floor become more occupied than others. Since CNC machine tools employed in the FMS are rather expensive, it is mostly important to balance the workload so that all machines can be effectively utilised. Therefore, in this study, two mathematical models are presented and solved in efforts to balance the workload and improve the performance of the FMS. A two-stage sequential approach is adopted whereby the first stage deals with the maximum throughput objective while the second stage deals with the minimum production cost objective. The results show that when part selection, machine loading and machining optimisation problems are jointly solved, more practical decisions can be made and a wide range of balanced workload in the FMS can be realised with minimum production cost objective. The results also show that the available machine time and tooling budget have enormous effects on throughput and production cost.