The purpose of this article is to ask why scholarship on state-led humanitarian diplomacy attends closely to states that fund humanitarian action and barely at all to those shaping outcomes by other means. Humanitarian diplomacy is treated here as deliberate conduct, in which a government uses positional, political or normative leverage to alter what relief reaches whom, rather than the incidental effect of policy adopted for other ends. In design, the article is a critical narrative review of literature published between 2000 and 2026 in Scopus, Web of Science, JSTOR and publisher platforms, read through Global International Relations, postcolonial IR, practice theory and critical humanitarian studies. Items were retained where a sovereign state was the acting subject, non-governmental practice was treated as context, and the search ran in English. The findings establish that the organising assumption of the field, that humanitarian influence follows financial capacity, was inherited from OECD-DAC measurement rather than argued for. A three-tier typology follows, sorting states by structural position and mode of engagement: established Western donors, emerging non-Western donors, and positional actors, whose humanitarian diplomacy runs through hosting, mediation, peacekeeping, access facilitation and advocacy. The third tier is thinly represented in the corpus, the pattern pointing to measurement conventions rather than insignificance. The limitations are that a narrative design yields an analytical frame rather than systematic evidence, that case selection is disputable, and that an English-language search understates relevant regional outlets. The practical implication is that burden-sharing recognising only financial transfers misstates who carries the system.
University students are in a critical stage of sexual identity exploration and seek to conform to their peers for social acceptance. Peer influence becomes a significant factor that shapes young people’s perception of sexual behaviour. This study examines the undergraduate students' perceptions of peer influence on homosexual behaviours in selected Kenyan Public Universities. Social Cognitive Theory of Albert Bandura guided the study. Using a convergent parallel mixed-method research design, data was collected through questionnaire, an interview schedule and a focus group discussion guide from 225 undergraduate students, 40 peer counsellors and 4 university counsellors. Collected data was analysed with the aid of SPSS software using both descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviation while inferential statistics such as Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used. The study revealed that there is no significant difference in undergraduate students’ perceptions of peer influence on homosexual behaviours across the selected universities (F = .410, p = .746). Both quantitative and qualitative findings revealed that students strongly perceived that peer influence contributes to the practice of homosexual behaviours among youth at Kenyan universities. 83.7 % of undergraduate students perceived that students engage in homosexual behaviours because of peer influence. The university counsellors indicated that financial gains and the need to fit in a group contribute to homosexual behaviours. The peer counsellors stated that the need to belong and recommendation by their friends contributes to homosexual behaviours. The study recommends that assertiveness training should be strengthened and emphasised in university curricula to help students confidently say no to any unwanted peer influence. The study also recommends that university counsellors should continue to provide non-judgemental guidance to students who are navigating social pressure.
Music streaming platforms and short video services have become dominant intermediaries in the global circulation of African music, yet mounting evidence suggests they simultaneously reproduce structural disadvantages for African artists, genres, and audiences. This scoping review synthesises the interdisciplinary literature on how algorithmic systems, revenue models, and data governance regimes produce what we conceptualise as platformed invisibility: the systematic, opaque, and technologically mediated marginalisation of non-Western cultural expression on ostensibly universal digital infrastructures. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) and Joanna Briggs Institute methodology, we searched seven bibliographic databases, targeted grey literature, and hand searched six leading journals for records published between January 2015 and June 2026. A total of 1,033 records were screened; 41 met inclusion criteria and were charted using an a priori extraction form. Narrative synthesis identifies four interlocking mechanisms, namely construct, method and item bias, algorithmic opacity, popularity feedback loops, and demographic and geographic skew, that operate within a political economy of data extractivism and infrastructural dependency. Countervailing interventions cluster around trustworthy artificial intelligence, data sovereignty, intellectual property reform, culturally grounded datasets, decolonial pedagogy, and Afrofuturist design imaginaries. The review advances three contributions: a conceptual definition of platformed invisibility that distinguishes it from adjacent constructs; a mapping of the mechanisms to interventions terrain; and a research agenda for empirical audits of African music on major streaming platforms. Findings underscore that algorithmic fairness for African music cannot be achieved through platform tweaks alone but requires structural decolonisation of technology, economy, and epistemology.
Teaching English in Soweto’s multilingual secondary schools presents significant challenges for novice teachers transitioning from university preparation to classroom practice. While previous studies have explored teacher induction and classroom challenges, limited research has examined how school climate shapes the professional self-efficacy of novice English teachers in township schools, located in historically under-resourced Black urban communities established during apartheid in South Africa. Grounded in an interpretivist paradigm, this qualitative study adopted narrative inquiry to explore the experiences of six novice English teachers in Soweto secondary schools. Data were generated through life history interviews and were analysed thematically using Social Capital Theory alongside narrative inquiry. The findings revealed that supportive leadership, collegial mentoring, and positive staff relationships strengthened novice teachers’ classroom management, professional self-efficacy in teaching English, and ability to navigate multilingual classrooms. Conversely, overcrowded classrooms, limited resources, heavy workloads, and language barriers among learners weakened their professional self-efficacy. The study further found that professional self-efficacy developed primarily through classroom interactions and peer support rather than through pre-service teacher education alone. The study recommends mentoring-focused induction programmes and context-responsive teacher preparation. Further research should examine novice teacher self-efficacy across diverse township school contexts.
This study explored the core competencies evidenced by pre-service teachers as they engaged with Indigenous Knowledge Practices (IKPs) and considered their integration into science teaching during Supported Teaching in Schools (STS) in Ghana. The study focused on pito brewing and akpeteshie distillation as culturally situated contexts through which pre-service teachers examined scientific ideas associated with separation of mixtures and explored connections between indigenous knowledge and formal science education. A qualitative exploratory design was employed. Fifteen purposively selected third-year pre-service teachers undertaking STS in 15 Basic 4 classrooms participated in the study. The interview transcripts and observation notes were analysed thematically. NVivo 2020 was used to organise the qualitative dataset, manage codes and retrieve coded excerpts. The software supported data-management and coding. The findings provided evidence of opportunities for pre-service teachers to demonstrate communication and collaboration, cultural identity and global citizenship, personal development and leadership, and digital literacy. However, evidence of critical thinking and problem-solving and creativity and innovation was limited. The findings suggest that culturally situated IKPs can provide relevant contexts for demonstrating selected core competencies, but their integration alone does not guarantee the development or manifestation of higher-order competencies. The study highlights the importance of deliberately structuring IKP-based science activities to create opportunities for inquiry, analysis, problem-solving and creative thinking. Implications for teacher education and the integration of culturally relevant knowledge into science teaching are discussed.
