Abstract: This study examined the role of entrepreneurship in curbing unemployment in rural communities of South Africa. The study employed qualitative methods in data collection as data were collected from eight randomly selected students by using semi-structured interview. The participants were final year students from four faculties in a selected university. The collected data were analyzed qualitatively as per the themes that emerged from research objectives. The study used qualitative methods; the researcher used an interview schedule as a tool. The findings of the study revealed that curriculum of the university, lack of work integrated learning system, shortage of infrastructure, government and university policies, orientation of the students towards entrepreneurship modules among other things that limit the role of entrepreneurship in curbing unemployment in rural communities. It was recommended that entrepreneurship should be introduced as a core module in the curriculum of universities so that it helps in curbing unemployment. Also, partnership between the university and businesses within the community should be encouraged to enhance work integrated learning . Furthermore, policies of the government and university that can enhance entrepreneurship should be made and implemented at institutions of high learning.

Received December 2, 2019; Revised July 20, 2020; Accepted July 22, 2020

Abstract: A substantial body of literature exists on learning and how it is related to learners’ backgrounds and the type and quality of teaching they experience. Most studies compare the learners’ test results before and after an intervention or a period of teaching (Aungamuthu & Christiansen, 2013). Yet, differences in scores cannot be understood without also considering what Aungamuthu and Christiansen refer to as the ‘stability’ of their answers. The data used in this paper were collected in 2009 and 2013 in South Africa and Rwanda respectively, and has been analyzed using the Excel and SPSS software packages. In the Rwandan context, 638 grade six learners participated on both pre- and post-tests at the beginning and at end of the school year, whereas 1211 South Africa learners participated on the same Tests. The results show that Rwandan learners did better at the beginning of grade 6 than the South African learners, in the more basic numeracy questions which fall into the second and third SACMEQ numeracy levels. The Rwandan learners improved their scores substantially more than the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) learners with 9.2. and 2.9 percentage points improvement respectively, which implies that the Rwandan learners learnt more in their grade six studies compared to their South African counterparts. It could be feasible to interrogate teaching in both countries in our coming papers to understand more about these differences in learning improvements.

Received November 16, 2018; Revised January 27, 2019; Accepted February 25, 2019

Abstract: While South Africa and Botswana have participated in several international or regional studies on learners’ mathematical competencies, no such studies have been conducted in, or have included, Rwanda. This study reports on Grade 6 learner mathematics test results from 20 Rwandan schools, selected using stratified sampling, and compares these to the results from similar studies conducted in Botswana and two provinces of South Africa. The results indicate that the learners across the four sets of data are performing similarly on many topics, but that the Rwandan learners perform much better on numeracy questions using the four basic operations as was hypothetically suggested. Some reasons for these differences are considered and discussed in the light of current curriculum movements in Rwanda.