University of Dar es Salaam Library Repository

This Repository contains abstracts of theses and dissertations, and special rare collections materials available in the Library.

 

Recent Submissions

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Assessment of school boards’ capacity in managing secondary schools’ financial expenditure in the context of fee free education in Tanzania: a case of Mbarali district
(University of Dar es Salaam, 2021-10) Chuma, Herman
The study assessed the capacity of school boards in managing secondary schools’ financial expenditure in the context of Fee Free Education (FFE) in Tanzania, using a case study of Mbarali district. The study sought to attain three specific objectives, namely: examining the financial expenditure supervision capacity of the School Boards; assessed how the School boards were involved by the school management in managing the schools’ financial expenditure and finally determine the measures that could be instituted to improve the School Board performance in managing schools’ financial expenditure. The study was informed by the systems theory of management advanced by Bertalanffy (1950). This is basically a qualitative research approach study that employed a case study research design. It was conducted in four secondary schools sampled from Mbarali district. The sample size composed 45 participants who were obtained through purposive and convenient sampling techniques. These included a District Secondary Education Officer (DSEO), four heads of schools, four School Board Chairpersons, 12 School Board Members and 24 teachers. The data were collected through interviews, focus group discussion and documentary reviews. The collected data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings indicated that the School Boards had the capacity for managing the school fund expenditure in their localities. Although school Boards were facing inadequate budget allocated in the schools, they demonstrated the capacity to generate extra school income through contributions from educational stakeholders, fund raising and school income generating projects. Moreover, the findings showed that the School Boards were actively being involved by the School management in managing financial expenditures. The modalities of participation ranged from involvement in the budget preparation, tendering procedures, financial report preparations, supervision of school development activities, and signatories of financial expenditures. The study recommends that the government has to review the capitation grants sent to schools in order to meet the planned school budgets. Moreover, the School Boards have to be given the mandate to reallocate capitation grants according to the needs and priority of the schools.
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Adaptive anisotropic diffusion-driven model for denoising iris images
(University of Dar es Salaam, 2021-04) Kyando, Daniel Michael
Biometric recognition is the automatic recognition of individuals based on their physiological or behavioral characteristics. A variety of systems require reliable personal recognition schemes to confirm or determine the identity of an person requesting access or service. IRIS recognition refers to biometric systems used to recognize individuals based on their IRIS patterns. In the absence of robust denoising method, these systems are vulnerable to the inaccurate interpretation of the patterns and granting access or service to illegitimate users. The classical Perona-Malik model has attracted wide attention of scholars for its ability to restore corrupted images while preserving useful details (edges and contours). Despite its notable achievements, this model requires manual tuning of the shape-defining diffusion coefficient to generate optimal results. Consequently, the tuning process, which suffers from inconvenience and time-ineffectiveness limits the model in time sensitive application like interpreting the IRIS patterns. Therefore, this work presents a method to adaptively update the value of the shape-defining diffusion coefficient in relation to the noise statistics in the IRIS image. Through a series of experiments, it was observed that the coefficient strongly correlates with the noise statistics in the IRIS image. Therefore, a relationship to describe the correlation was established and encapsulated into the evolutionary polynomial of order two. The polynomial was fitted from running 39 million iterations to generate two-dimensional space R^(K×σ) that contains K and σ variables. Least Absolute Residuals (LAR) is used to approximate the constants. The constants were α=0.00473,β=2.134,and γ=-0.3696 with 95% confidence boundary. The proposed diffusion function was further tested in removing noise in the IRIS images. It generated visually appealing denoized images with higher information content. It sharpens the edges and distinguishes them clearly from homogeneous image a region which is crucial in identification of texture patterns in IRIS images.
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Assessing personal information management practices among library staff at the university of Dar es salaam, Tanzania
(University of Dar es Salaam, 2021-05) Rashid, Nakivona Hashim
This study assessed personal information management practices among library staff at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Specifically, the study assessed awareness of personal information management practices among UDSM library staff, examined tools used by UDSM library staff to manage personal information, evaluated factors influencing effective management of personal information and identified challenges facing UDSM library staff in managing personal information. The study population was library staff and sample size was 116 respondents selected by using census technique. Data were collected using questionnaire, interview and Focus Group Discussions. Data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively using content analysis and Statistical Product and Service Solution (SPSS) version 23 respectively. Findings revealed that UDSM library staff were aware of personal information management practices. Both physical and electronic tools were used to manage personal information. Furthermore, the information cycle was the most influencing factor for the effective management of personal information. The challenges reported in the management of personal information include; inadequate information management skills, shortage of time, information overload, inability to access multiple sources of information, inflexibility of information file formats in adopting change in technology and the use of inappropriate information management tools. The study concludes that the University of Dar es Salaam library staff were aware of personal information management practices; physical and electronic tools for the management of personal information were used.
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Analysis of climate variability impacts on livelihoods and response of smallholder farmers around Ruaha national park, Tanzania
(University of Dar es Salaam, 2021-07) Lyimo, Stephen Theobald
Monitoring and evaluation(M&E) are very important in attaining targeted goals in education, especially in teaching and learning process that influence student academic performance. Ruangwa district experienced poor students’ academic performance in the Form Four National Examinations in the academic years of 2016 through 2019. It was thus crucial to examine the extent to which monitoring, and evaluation is paramount in enhancing pedagogical activities for improved students’ academic performance. A descriptive research design was applied to gather the views of respondents on the role of monitoring and evaluation in improving teaching and learning. Purposive sampling technique was used to select headmasters, District Education Officer, School Quality assurance and Ward Education Officers who were key respondents. In addition, teachers and students were also selected using purposive sampling technique. In-depth interviews and focus group discussion techniques were used to collect data whereas total of 38 respondents were engaged in the study. The collected data was analysed using thematic data analysis method. The results of the study have shown that the strategies of M&E practice were not applied effectively in monitoring and evaluating teaching and learning process in the selected schools. In addition, it was found out that the effectiveness of M&E practice on improving teaching and learning was hindered by shortage of Education officers, inadequate government support, inadequate physical facilities, inadequate teaching and learning materials and poor implementation of M&E recommendations. Furthermore, it was found that in the study area there was slight implications of M&E practice on improving teaching and learning because students’ academic performance remained poor despite the implementation of M&E in the selected public secondary schools. Generally, to improve the teaching and learning process as well as academic performance, M&E budget and school budget should be increased to eradicate the challenges hindering the effectiveness of M&E on improving teaching and learning process in the selected public secondary schools in Ruangwa district
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Ticks and ticks viral diversity in a wildlife-livestock interface at Mikumi national park, Tanzania
(University of Dar es salaam, 2021-10) Damian,Donath
Areas which lie at the border of Mikumi National Park, Tanzania are considered to be the hotspot for the tick species and possibly tick-borne pathogens, although data on ticks and the diversity of the viruses in ticks are non-existing. Herein, identification of ticks into genus level based on morphological characteristics, the tick burden in cattle and goats based on parasitological parameters, genetic diversity of tick species based on mitochondrion 16S rRNA gene, mean and pairwise genetic variation in ticks based on Kimura 2 parameters model, and the diversity of viruses in ticks using viral metagenomic approach were determined. Using the morphological characteristics, two ticks genera; Hyalomma and Rhipicephalus were identified. Tick burden findings reported the overall proportion of tick-infested animals to be 48.6%; cattle (51.5%) and goats (44.3%) whereas; the overall mean tick intensity and abundance in cattle and goats were 3.9±0.01 and 1.8±0.01 respectively. Based on mitochondrion 16S rRNA gene, six tick species were identified including Rhipicephalus microplus, Rhipicephalus evertsi, Hyalomma rufipes, Hyalomma truncatum, Hyalomma marginatum, and Hyalomma turanicum. The Hyalomma marginatum and Hyalomma turanicum species are reported for the first time from the study area and Tanzania in general. In the genetic variation analysis data it was observed that, Hyalomma marginatum recorded the highest mean (0.04±0.01) and pairwise (0.06) intraspecies distance value whereas, the highest pairwise intragenus value (0.139) was recorded in Hyalomma genus. Notably, high values of 0.11±0.01 and 0.23 mean and pairwise genetic distances respectively in the tick community were recorded. Viral groups related to known viral families; Retroviridae, Flaviviridae, Rhabdoviridae, Chuviridae, Orthomyxoviridae, Phenuiviridae, Totiviridae, Rhabdoviridae, Parvoviridae, Caulimoviridae, Mimiviridae, as well as unknown viral families named as unknown virus 1and 2 were reported. Therefore; intensification of the surveillance of ticks and tick-borne pathogens in Tanzania is highly encouraged to predict future emerging ticks and tick-borne pathogens.