Environmental degradation concerns are increasing worldwide. Moreover, in sub-Saharan African countries, these concerns are dominant because of an abundance of natural resources and exhaustion of these natural resources that tend to cause carbon emissions. This has created a huge interest among academics in investigating the relationship between natural resources, institutional quality, and environmental degradation. Since the sub-Saharan countries are resource-rich, the current study investigates how the natural resource rents and institutional quality impacted environmental degradation in selected sub-Saharan African countries from 1994 to 2020. Through employing the GMM estimation technique, the findings show that natural rents are positively linked with environmental degradation. This is closely related to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis, which stipulates that environmental degradation worsens at the initial stage of the economic development of developing countries. The study has also found that rules and regulations set by governments have not been implemented in a manner that reduces environmental degradation in the region. Worth noting is that the region should collaborate and design its environmental policies in line with the Sustainable Developmental Goals. This is the first step towards environmental sustainability.

Background: Local governments are considered an essential part of interpreting and integrating laws and policies at the local level. There is a growing realisation that the success of local government is vital to alleviating poverty and delivering services to communities. However, financial mismanagement as per audit reports has affected a number of local authorities and continues to be a hindrance to progress.Aim: This study was set to investigate the level of efficiency in each municipality and how financial mismanagement (unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure) influences that efficiency.Setting: The study considered all local municipalities within the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, using publicly available data on each municipality’s performance and financial management. The data available and utilised are for the financial years 2012–2015.Methods: The study used a non-parametric linear programming-based technique to compute efficiencies, with the local municipality being the decision-making unit. The implications of financial mismanagement on efficiency are determined in a second-stage regression model with the use of panel tobit regression.Results: We found that the mean efficiency ranges between 0.407 (moderate) and 0.724 (high) in general, however, with greater variation across municipalities. Fruitless and wasteful expenditure and unauthorised expenditure negatively affect the total effciency scores. Irregular expenditure has no statistical effect on efficiency, arguably because of the nature of this financial mismanagement being expenditure that may be for a good cause but not approved procedurally.Conclusion: There is room to increase efficiency in studied municipalities, especially by reducing wasteful expenditure and unauthorised expenditure. The Public Finance Management Act provides astute guidelines that will bring efficiencies in municipalities; however, a review may be necessary to be progressive. The South African Local Government Association and Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Department must capacitate municipalities and work with the auditor general to implement audit recommendations.

The mitigation of natural hazard costs such as loss of property, life, crops and medical costs can be achieved through the adoption of insurance. It is, however, not clear whether there is corresponding demand for insurance given the increasing frequency and veracity of natural hazards, especially in South Africa. This study follows the guideline of Preferred Reporting items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) to identify the relevant works on the subject. A total of 645 articles emerged on initial search and after screening, 39 remained which have been reviewed in this study. Reviewing the studies and conflating with the study objectives, the following themes emerged for discussion on demand for natural hazard insurance, is there demand for natural hazard insurance?;psychology of decision-making; risk perception; risk preference and willingness to pay. The study found that studies of demand for insurance have identified that there is low demand for tailor-made insurance products for natural hazards. Further analysis of the demand revealed that normative and descriptive decision-making of buying natural hazard insurance is part of the psychological factors that determine demand. Whilst risk preference and perception have sub-attributes that affect their impact on demand such as experience, age and salience to natural hazards in communities. Whilst willingness to pay is also a broad concept which is analysed using both monetary and non-monetary factors in literature, the results also identified that there is a huge gap in literature in terms of studies that cover risk preference and perception in Africa and in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

Interventions to pandemic outbreaks are often associated with the use of fear-appeal to trigger behavioral change, especially in public health issues. However, no systematic review exists in the literature on the effectiveness of fear appeal strategies in the context of pandemic compliance. This paper aims at providing systematic literature review that answers the following thought-provoking research questions: (1) What is the standard measurement of fear in relation to pandemics in the existing literature? (2) What are the fear appeal strategies used in the empirical literature? (3) How effective are fear appeal strategies in changing behavior toward adopting pandemic preventive measures? A total of 22 studies were selected from 455 potential studies, following a comprehensive literature search and assessment in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. The findings show that nearly all the available studies on fear measurement used the Likert scale (as the standard approach) with different points of degree and fear appeal strategies such as fear triggers in media channels, print advertisements, and verbal descriptions. Furthermore, most studies conclude that fear appeal is effective in making participants adopt pandemic preventive measures; hence, it is effective for positive behavioral change (the degree of effectiveness depends on gender, population group, etc.), especially when combined with self-efficacy and socio-cultural considerations. Very few studies, however, find an insignificant association, arguably due to the kind and intensity of the fear appeal messages and strategies used.

Changing risk dynamics and the demand for more personalized, technology-driven services have spurred innovation in insurance through Insurtech, reshaping how insurance is supplied, purchased, and managed. This paper systematically reviews the impact of Insurtech on insurance inclusion, guided by the PRISMA-P protocol. The review finds strong evidence that Insurtech enhances insurance inclusion by lowering transaction costs, improving accessibility, and broadening market participation. These effects are most visible in short-term insurance, where digital platforms and tailored products reach previously underserved populations. Beyond this primary finding, the review highlights how insurance inclusion is conceptualized and measured in the literature. Quantitative measures typically include penetration rates, density, and the proportion of households with insurance coverage, while broader indices account for availability, usage, and accessibility of insurance services. Qualitative approaches often emphasize mismatches between the products offered and those needed, particularly for vulnerable groups. Similarly, studies of Insurtech adopt both demand-side indicators (such as product uptake and coverage per user) and supply-side measures (including patents, capital inflows, and innovation outputs). These insights suggest that fostering Insurtech development, while addressing regulatory, access, and equity concerns, can significantly improve insurance inclusion and narrow protection gaps.