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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other humanitarian organisations now categorize the provision of education in emergencies as a humanitarian response to disaster. However, the very nature of an emergency situation makes the provision of education a daunting task. When entire populations are displaced and forced to live in camps as refugees in a host country, they are unlikely to have access to the physical infrastructure and other resources required for education, especially higher education. An innovative way of availing higher education opportunities to refugee populations is through distance education programmes, particularly those delivered through online e-learning platforms. As universities continue to embrace the role of humanitarian actors, they are increasingly recognizing that distance education programmes, more so e-learning ones, have the potential of reaching a wider population of refugees, enabling them access to education without requiring institutions to have a physical presence in a refugee camp. The actualization of this potential in a refugee camp setting, however, is not without challenges. Drawing on experiences from facilitating and managing a joint online certificate course targeted at refugees living in the Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya, this paper seeks to show that the challenges, ranging from physical distance to lack of computer skills, are doubly pronounced in refugee settings. Further, the paper highlights the innovative solutions that were used to mitigate the said challenges and shows how they can be adopted when designing distance e-learning programmes for both emergency and non-emergency situations in Africa.

Typically, spontaneous language comprises sequences of logically joined clauses. Studies have revealed that such structures contribute to fluency in speech or writing as they reduce the use of simple structures. Simple structures have been found to make texts more disjointed. The combined clauses, which Systemic Functional linguistics calls clause complexes, are fundamentally held together by two forms of logico-semantic relations: expansion and projection. These relations are achieved through different strategies, among them conjunctive resources. An individual’s knowledge of conjunctive patterns of a language, and logico-semantic relations by extension, influences one’s selection of conjunctive resources. This article aims at exploring the logico-semantic relation of elaboration, a mode of expansion, in Gĩkũyũ clause complexes. Its data, Gĩkũyũ clause complexes, were purposively sampled majorly from spoken and written sources. The findings reveal different categories of paratactic and hypotactic elaboration in Gĩkũyũ. The different categories were found to employ varied elaboration strategies such as overt conjunctive expressions that mark certain relations, acting as linkers and binders in the clause complexes. The strategies are significant in promoting communicative competence as they have previously been noted to contribute to cohesion in Gĩkũyũ texts.

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Witchcraft is defined as the use of magical powers for healing, seeing into the future, causing harm or for religion.  The belief in the powers of witchcraft is widespread in Africa. Due to these perceived magical powers people from different walks of life seek for various forms of treatments from witchdoctors.  As such, witchcraft in Africa is a trade complete with a marked use of language that sustains in in modern society. This article reports on an analysis of language used by witchdoctors in Machakos County in Kenya, and respondents’ views about witchcraft. The objectives of the study were twofold. One was to identify and describe the language strategies that mark witchcraft as trade. The second objective was to explore the socio-psychological factors governing the use of the language by witchdoctors. Two witchdoctors were purposively sampled: one male and one female. The primary data were collected through recorded interviews of the witchdoctors. It was found that the witchdoctors use various language strategies to attract and retain clientele and that these strategies are a factor of the socio-psychological environment in which the witchdoctors operate.   Moreover, the study established that witchdoctor still find relevance in the modern Kenyan society because of prevalent beliefs about social and medical problems.  This paper thus argues that language is an important tool in the witchcraft trade that serves to purposely obscure meaning in order to shroud the trade in secrecy, enhance social exclusion and consequently sustain the belief in the magical powers of the witchdoctors.