Background: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic brought unprecedented changes leading to ‘business unusual’ in all facets of life and livelihood on a global scale. The restrictions on gathering, social distancing and lockdown measures necessitated by the need to curtail its spread, had, and still have an enormous impact on the educational sector as indeed all spheres of life. These measures implied a change in the traditional modus operandi of curriculum and delivery options for educational institutions in South Africa in the bid to continue academic sessions. Hence, a transition of educational institutions from physical interactions to virtual meetings and the need to evolve curriculum contents and delivery.Aim: With the peculiarity of the South African socioeconomic and political space, this article assessed the viability of curriculum change and delivery options (e-teaching and learning) for both students and instructors in the higher institution and the varied implications. It drew from discourses around the theory of localisation within educative context to create a more student-centred approach especially with the situation of less physical contact.Setting: The discourse is set within the South African educational space.Method: Considering the novelty of Covid-19 research and the challenge of contact, the study adopted a participatory action desktop research method to collect and analyse secondary data. The article vividly discussed how institutions transitioned to a localisation of frameworks and policies to ensure successful academic sessions.Results: The educational landscape in South Africa is still plagued with historical antecedents of social injustice, funding, and resource allocation as well as the ever-present pressure of making education affordable to majority of local students. Also, the weakness of the online teaching methods to the physical contact method for learners and practitioners could be summed up into the issues of connectivity, technical knowledge, and attention span.Conclusion: The conclusion enumerated the need for the implementation of policies and frameworks on proper utilisation of online systems to adjust to the demands of less contact-based approaches in favour of virtual approaches. The study called for adequate consideration to issues around the localisation of teaching and learning techniques considering the peculiarities of South Africa with focus on the opportunities, feasibility, and challenges of online measures especially for those in economically disadvantaged spaces.

Environmental degradation has become a serious source of concern for contemporary society, giving rise to efforts in the way of advocacies, conferences and awareness campaigns at different levels. While information professionals in developing economies are positioned to contribute to environmental sustainability; they need to apply creativity and innovation to overcome issues like low literacy levels, poor infrastructures, political apathy of environmental information to achieve the intended goal of environmental literacy. New roles are evolving beyond mere provision of information; these include information professionals as change agents, educators, electronic experts and partners to other change agents. The paper argues that information professionals could be more relevant to the needs of sustainable environment by repositioning themselves in terms of their roles in their various communities. Some recommendations made in the paper include revitalizing public libraries, training in Information and Communication Technology skills and collaboration with interest groups.

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The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and its crippling effects exacerbate many people’s vulnerability to food security across the world, including Africa. This article offers an explorative discourse on the implication of COVID-19 pandemic for South Africa’s food and livelihood security in the face of climate change. Using a scoping desktop review method, the article aims to provoke research and policy action and discourse on the subject matter. The article explores pre-and post-COVID-19 vulnerabilities in South Africa. It acknowledges the impact of climate change on food security and the situation of food security in South Africa pre-and post-COVID-19 pandemic. It then provides policy recommendations and expected outcomes to reconfigure the agricultural sector in the new sociopolitical and economic order necessitated by the pandemic. The article argues that reducing the stress posed by COVID-19 will require collaborative efforts and systemic thinking by stakeholders across all quarters. This will proffer workable solutions to mitigate the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food and livelihood options of rural dwellers in South Africa and their interconnectedness with the impact of climate change.

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