Urban regeneration and gentrification are complex, interconnected processes that significantly shape cities. However, these phenomena in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are often understudied and typically viewed through a Western lens. This systematic review of literature from 2010 to 2024 addresses this gap by synthesizing a comprehensive framework for understanding urban regeneration-led gentrification in MENA countries. The review delves into key themes: Gentrification contexts, the regeneration process, gentrification accelerators, and the aftermath of gentrification. It explores the diverse motives behind urban regeneration, identifies key stakeholders, and analyzes catalysts of gentrification. Findings reveal that informal areas and deteriorated heritage sites in major cities are most susceptible to gentrification. The study also highlights the critical issue of insufficient community participation and proposes a participation evaluation framework. The unique socioeconomic and political factors driving gentrification in the MENA region underscore the necessity of context-specific approaches, facilitating the identification of regional similarities and differences. Conclusively, the review asserts that gentrification is a cyclic process, necessitating core interventions through enhanced regeneration strategies or displacement plans to mitigate its effects.

Studies show that Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies can enhance compliance with COVID-19 guidelines within the parties in the construction industry in the future and mitigate job loss. It implies that mitigating job loss improves the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG 1) (eliminate poverty). There is a paucity of literature concerning 4IR technologies application and COVID-19 impact on South Africa’s construction industry. Thus, this paper investigates the impacts of the pandemic on the sector and the roles of digital technologies in mitigating job loss in future pandemics. Data were collected via virtual semi-structured interviews. The participants proffered unexplored insights into the impact of the pandemic on the sector and the possible roles that 4IR technology can play in mitigating the spread of the virus within the sector. Findings show that the sector was hit, especially the low-income earners, threatens to achieve Goal 1, despite government institutions’ intervention, such as economic support programmes, health and safety guidelines awareness, and medical facilities. Findings group the emerged impacts into health and safety, environmental, economic, productivity, social, and legal and insurance issues in South Africa. The study shows that technology can be advantageous to improving achieving Goal 1 in a pandemic era due to limited job loss.

The connection between the gendered division of housework and intimate partner violence (IPV) is a complex reality and context-dependent. In this article, I explore the perceptions of gender norms among African men and how these perceptions intersect with their experiences of housework and IPV. Employing a qualitative approach, the article examines the viewpoints of 25 African men who have encountered IPV in Johannesburg, South Africa. The findings reveal a spectrum of attitudes towards gender norms among these men, ranging from more traditional patriarchal views to less patriarchal and egalitarian perspectives. The analysis indicates that men who adhere to both more and less patriarchal expressions of gender norms tend to view being forced to perform housework as a form of abuse within the context of controlling behaviour in intimate partner relationships. Conversely, men who lean towards egalitarianism perceive the expectation of women to solely manage housework as a form of abuse. However, many of the men express resistance towards gender equality discourses in South Africa, perceiving them as disruptors of traditional gender roles and enablers of women’s refusal to solely perform domestic housework. These findings deepen our understanding of the complexities and tensions within intimate relationships amidst evolving gender norms in South Africa.

Using time series data covering the years 1980 to 2020, this study examines the effects of government spending, population growth, and economic expansion on unemployment in the context of South Africa. The study’s variables include government spending, population growth, and economic growth as independent factors, and unemployment as the dependent variable. To ascertain the study’s outcomes, basic descriptive statistics, the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), the Johansen Cointegration Procedures, the Augmented Dicky-Fuller Test (ADF), and diagnostic tests were used. Since all the variables are stationary at the first difference, the ADF results show that there isn’t a unit root issue. According to the Johansen cointegration estimation, there is a long-term relationship amongst the variables. Hence the choice of VECM to estimate the outcomes. Our results suggests that a rise in government spending will result in a rise in South Africa’s unemployment rate. The findings also suggest that there is a negative correlation between unemployment and population growth. This implies that as the overall population grows, unemployment will decline. Additionally, the findings suggest that unemployment and economic growth in South Africa are positively correlated. This contradicts a number of economic theories, including Keynesian and Okuns Law, which hold that unemployment and economic growth are inversely correlated.

This study examines factors associated with an increasingly poor perception of the novel coronavirus in Africa using a designed electronic questionnaire to collect perception-based information from participants across Africa from twenty-one African countries (and from all five regions of Africa) between 1 and 25 February 2022. The study received 66.7% of responses from West Africa, 12.7% from Central Africa, 4.6% from Southern Africa, 15% from East Africa, and 1% from North Africa. The majority of the participants are Nigerians (56%), 14.1% are Cameroonians, 8.7% are Ghanaians, 9.3% are Kenyans, 2% are South Africans, 2.1% are DR-Congolese, 1.6% are Tanzanians, 1.2% are Rwandans, 0.4% are Burundians, and others are Botswana’s, Chadians, Comoros, Congolese, Gambians, Malawians, South Sudanese, Sierra Leoneans, Ugandans, Zambians, and Zimbabweans. All responses were coded on a five-point Likert scale. The study adopts descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, and binary logistic regression analysis for the data analysis. The descriptive analysis of the study shows that the level of ignorance or poor “perception” of COVID-19 in Africa is very high (87% of individuals sampled). It leads to skepticism towards complying with preventive measures as advised by the WHO and directed by the national government across Africa. We adopted logistic regression analysis to identify the factors associated with a poor perception of the virus in Africa. The study finds that religion (belief or faith) and media misinformation are the two leading significant causes of ignorance or poor “perception” of COVID-19 in Africa, with log odd of 0.4775 (resulting in 1.6120 odd ratios) and 1.3155 (resulting in 3.7265 odd ratios), respectively. The study concludes that if the poor attitude or perception towards complying with the preventive measures continues, COVID-19 cases in Africa may increase beyond the current spread.