Tanzania has witnessed an increased use of social media in political party campaigning over the last decade. Use of social media was nonetheless curtailed by a changing techno-political framework regulated by acts relating to cybersecurity and statistics. This study was guided by two hypotheses: firstly, that despite restrictive cybersecurity laws, social media in recent years has been effectively institutionalised as a new civic cyberspace for political party campaigns during elections. Secondly, increasing use of social media in elections has had a transformative effect on the way party structure was organised to conduct political mobilisation, promote party ideology and both inter- and intra-party interaction, and for fundraising. The study interviewed party members and leaders from five political parties which participated in the 2015 and 2020 general elections and concluded that social media had a transformative effect on core political party campaign activities.

Intra-African migration in sub-Saharan Africa is increasingly characterized by migration further and further south of the equator. The study focuses on the relationship between pastoralist migration and climate change, followed by loss of control of epidemics, which can lead to losses of large numbers of livestock. While increasing changes in the natural environment have been widely cited in the empirical literature, less attention has been paid to the social context and sociological factors influencing modern-day climate-induced intra-African pastoralist migration. Using Blumer's structural symbolic interaction as an analytic framework, this study examines how social and cultural perceptions influence subjective interpretations that lead to decision points that trigger intra-African pastoralist migration. Using structural symbolic interaction as an analytic framework to study interrelationships between climate-induced stimulus, symbolic interpretation, and migration response, the study identifies that decisions to migrate to other ecosystems were mediated through symbolic signs with assigned meaning and significance communicated through language, signs, symbols, ritual, and religion, which makes up the overall pastoralist cosmology of migration. That these signs and meanings, which are given symbolic meaning, form the basis of African pastoralist sociology of migration. These are the key factors that explain why some pastoralist households decide to migrate to other ecological zones while others remain in traditional pastoralist lands. This study was guided by two hypotheses. The first is that intra-African pastoralist migration is socially defined based on the social and cultural perceptions and meanings attached to interactions with their increasingly changing natural and social circumstances (H1). The second (H2) is that this meaning is defined and modified through an interpretative process in response to changing social and natural circumstances. The sample examined in the study covered seven districts with a high proportion of pastoralists across four eco-climatic zones. A total of 544 pastoralist households were interviewed. In-depth qualitative interviews and observation studies were conducted in three case-study villages. The study concludes that decisions to migrate to other ecosystems are mediated through symbolic signs with assigned meanings and significances communicated through language, signs, symbols, rituals, and religion. Together, these findings contribute to our further understanding of the sociology of recent intra-African migration.

No abstract

Today, digital transformation in higher education reshapes traditional educational systems toward technology-based learning. In the wake of the global pandemic COVID-19, digital transformation has even accelerated at many universities worldwide due to the pressure put on policymakers and university management to adopt educational technology at their institutions to allow education to continue. Using the case of the Open University of Tanzania (OUT), this article discusses critical factors needed for the successful implementation of technology-based learning and other technological innovations like adaptive learning, for example, in higher education in an African context. We applied a Delphi design, a rigorous research method used for structuring a group communication process to allow a group of experts, as a whole, to deal with a complex problem effectively. In total, 24 experts (e.g., instructors, staff, and students) from different regional OUT centres participated in the Delphi study. The paper presents the results of the first round of the Delphi study on the challenges of technology-based learning identified at OUT providing the first insights into the perceived role, probability, and estimated realisation time of adaptive learning at OUT in the future. We argue that not only technological challenges linked to the internet, network, or technological equipment affect the adoption of technology-based learning in higher education, but also that pedagogical, organisational, and global challenges are indispensable for the successful transformation of higher education.