Researchers conducted interviews in 2025 with 217 women who reported experiencing IPV and 183 women who reported no experience of IPV, described in the abstract as non-reporters. The known-groups design was used to develop and test the new scale. Psychometric analyses assessed its structure and internal consistency, while Spearman’s rank correlations examined hypothesized relationships with established IPV stigma scales, IPV severity, psychological maltreatment, community gender norms and beliefs, survivor-blaming attitudes, mental-health symptoms and perceived social support. The abstract reports correlations as associations when they were statistically significant at p < 0.05; it does not establish causal effects.

Among women who reported experiencing IPV, higher BCSI-IPVSS endorsement was statistically significantly associated with greater abuse severity (ρ = 0.16), psychological maltreatment (ρ = 0.26), harmful community gender norms and beliefs (ρ = 0.52), and survivor-blaming attitudes (ρ = 0.41). Greater perceived stigma was also associated with more generalized anxiety (ρ = 0.23), social anxiety (ρ = 0.26), depression (ρ = 0.36), and post-traumatic stress symptoms (ρ = 0.23).

Among non-reporters, scale endorsement was associated with harmful community gender norms and beliefs (ρ = 0.45), survivor-blaming attitudes (ρ = 0.30), generalized anxiety (ρ = 0.22), and lower perceived social support (ρ = −0.25). No statistically significant associations were reported for social anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress in that group. Across the full analysis, scale scores correlated positively with other IPV stigma scales, with ρ values from 0.24 to 0.40 and p ≤ 0.001. The internal consistency coefficient was ω = 0.859, while the fit indices were RMSEA = 0.055 and TLI = 0.984. The abstract concludes that the scale has acceptable overall psychometric properties for assessing IPV stigma among both groups in Botswana. It also states that further investigation is needed to examine relationships among experienced IPV stigma, stigmatizing beliefs and poor mental health. Because the available evidence is limited to the abstract, the article does not independently assess the full study or establish how the findings apply beyond the sampled urban and peri-urban women.

Subject of Research: Psychometric evaluation of an intersectional intimate partner violence stigma scale among women in Botswana

Article Title: Psychometric analysis of an intersectional stigma scale for women who have experienced intimate partner violence in Botswana

Article References: Ho-Foster, A., Machisa, M. T., Moalusi, L. R., Yang, L. H., & Christofides, N. (2026). Psychometric analysis of an intersectional stigma scale for women who have experienced intimate partner violence in Botswana. BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-29809-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-026-29809-5

Keywords: intimate partner violence, intersectional stigma, Botswana, psychometric analysis, women’s health, mental health, scale validation, gender norms, survivor blaming, Psychometric, analysis, intersectional

The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and coded using NVivo, with the researchers then identifying emergent themes. The participants supported diagnostic screening during pregnancy for Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae . One expressed the view that “if there are new technologies, let’s move forward.” Their responses indicate that the proposed screening was viewed as a potentially acceptable way to identify infections that might otherwise be missed, but acceptance was conditional on the health system having the resources needed to deliver it reliably.

One provider said the system “sometimes it collapses—the supplies run off,” while another referred to times when even treatment was unavailable. These accounts suggest that adding diagnostic screening would occur within a service already managing shortages of essential supplies, rather than in an otherwise fully resourced system. Participants said they were already overwhelmed by their workloads, raising questions about whether existing personnel could absorb additional screening responsibilities.

Others described equipment that stopped working after it had been installed, indicating that maintenance was not consistently available. The providers also identified staff training, health education for patients and faster tests as factors that could facilitate implementation. Overall, the findings show strong professional support for antenatal diagnostic STI screening in Botswana, alongside clear warnings that electricity, physical space, stock levels, staffing and equipment maintenance would shape whether the approach could be delivered.

Because the research was limited to interviews with 15 providers in one city, it does not establish the feasibility of screening across Botswana or demonstrate effects on treatment uptake, maternal health or infant health. It instead offers a qualitative assessment of potential implementers’ views ahead of roll-out, identifying the health-system conditions that those providers considered essential.

Subject of Research: Healthcare providers’ perspectives on implementing antenatal diagnostic STI screening in Botswana

Article Title: “Provided power is there, it will be a good initiative”: healthcare provider perspectives on diagnostic screening for curable STIs during pregnancy in Botswana

Article References: Mussa, A., Russell, J. C., Hansman, E., Babalola, C. M., Bame, B., Ndlovu, N., Tamuthiba, L., Klausner, J. D., Morroni, C., & Wynn, A. (2026). “Provided power is there, it will be a good initiative”: healthcare provider perspectives on diagnostic screening for curable STIs during pregnancy in Botswana. BMC Health Services Research. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-026-15608-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12913-026-15608-6

Keywords: Botswana, antenatal care, chlamydia, gonorrhoea, diagnostic screening, sexually transmitted infections, healthcare providers, health systems, qualitative research, Provided, power, there

The Aphanisticus genus contains about 360 species distributed across warm-temperate and tropical parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, with 147 species previously known from the Afrotropical Region. Most are small, compact beetles with convex, nearly cylindrical bodies, but the genus also includes broader, oval or triangular forms. A few species groups possess conspicuously flattened elytra, the hardened forewings that cover and protect the flying wings. The new South African species, A. fencli, belongs to a newly proposed group that also includes A. gebhardti, A. lineolatus and A. planatus.

Researchers established the new A. gebhardti species group around a combination of characters unusual within Aphanisticus. Members have relatively large, elongated and flattened bodies, with the length typically exceeding the width by more than three times. Their heads are small and narrower than the front edge of the pronotum, while the frontovertex forms a shallow depression. The pronotum is moderately transverse and somewhat shield-shaped, and the elytra carry recognizable longitudinal striations. The group is currently known only from the Republic of South Africa, where all four recognized species have been recorded.

A. fencli is the most immediately conspicuous member of the group because its dorsal surface is bicolored: the head and pronotum are black with an indistinct bluish sheen, while the elytra are blue. Its body is strongly flattened and measures 3.95 to 5.95 millimeters long, with the holotype 4.5 millimeters long and 1.4 millimeters wide. The elytra are roughly 2.2 to 2.4 times as long as they are wide, and each bears a raised sutural ridge and another elevated interval. Fine longitudinal striae cover parts of the surface, becoming interrupted or tangled into short irregular marks farther from the midline.

The identification key developed in the study separates A. fencli from the three established members of its group by its blue elytra, black pronotum, rounded oculofrontal borders and less elongated body. A. lineolatus has a more regular pattern of elytral striae, deeper and smaller pronotal punctures and a body length of about 5.2 to 5.4 millimeters. The larger A. gebhardti and A. planatus are distinguished from one another by their proportions, coloration and the degree of projection along the inner margins of the eyes. The new species is known only from its type locality in Bulwer, KwaZulu-Natal, where the series was collected on November 11, 2001.

The study also clarified a long-standing naming problem within the group. A lectotype was designated for A. gebhardti from a specimen collected in Cape Town, and another lectotype was selected for A. lineolatus. Comparisons showed that A. semicoeruleus, described by Théry in 1930, and A. lineolatus, described by Obenberger in 1928, represent the same species. The name A. lineolatus is therefore retained, and A. semicoeruleus is recorded as its junior synonym. The researchers concluded that the specimen used by Théry had probably been drawn from Obenberger’s original type series.

A. franki represents a different form within the genus, with a convex, subcylindrical body rather than the flattened profile characteristic of the A. gebhardti group. Described from the West Okawango South Delta in Botswana, it measures 4.7 to 5.5 millimeters long and has an olivaceous-green surface with occasional, indistinct bronzy reflections. Its head is broad, the eyes are large and convex, and the pronotum is nearly regularly rounded, with two shallow transverse elevations across its disc. Each elytron ends in a distinct lateral tooth, one of the traits used to distinguish it from the superficially similar A. mitratus of Madagascar.

A. snizeki, the third new species, is known from a single female specimen collected near Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia’s Central Province. It is 5.05 millimeters long and 1.4 millimeters wide, with a bluish-green back carrying an indistinct violet reflection and a black underside with a faint bronzy sheen. Its body is convex and subcylindrical, and the pronotum is broadly heart-shaped. The elytra are about 2.55 times as long as they are wide, are depressed along the raised suture toward the rear and terminate in sharp triangular teeth. Unlike A. franki, A. snizeki has a deeply concave frontovertex and more sharply angled posterior corners on the pronotum.

The authors placed A. snizeki in comparison with A. coeruleipennis, another Southern African species with a metallic appearance. A. coeruleipennis is smaller and more robust, with a body only about 3.15 millimeters long, and it has a dark reddish-violet pronotum paired with blue-violet elytra. The identification traits of A. snizeki therefore depend on the combination of its larger, more convex body, bluish-green coloration, more pronounced surface reticulation and distinct elytral teeth. Because the new species is known from a female holotype, its male anatomy remains unknown, limiting direct comparison with the illustrated aedeagi of the newly described A. fencli and A. franki.

All three species remain known only from their type localities: Bulwer in South Africa, the West Okawango South Delta in Botswana and the vicinity of Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia. The research relied mainly on extensive material collected in recent years by Czech entomologists, supplemented by specimens held in major natural-history and research collections across Europe, Asia and South Africa. Microscopic examination, ocular measurements and focus-stacked macro photography were used to assess the fine punctures, ridges, grooves and surface textures that distinguish closely related species. The resulting additions show that even a comparatively well-studied jewel-beetle genus retains hidden diversity, particularly in Africa’s undercollected landscapes.

Subject of Research: Taxonomic discovery of three new Aphanisticus jewel-beetle species in Southern Africa

Article Title: Three new species of buprestid genus Aphanisticus Latreille, 1810 from Southern African countries ( Coleoptera , Buprestidae ), with nomenclatural and taxonomic notes

Article References: Kalashian, M. Y., & Kubáň, V. (2026). Three new species of buprestid genus Aphanisticus Latreille, 1810 from Southern African countries (Coleoptera, Buprestidae), with nomenclatural and taxonomic notes. ZooKeys, 1287, 201-211. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1287.200030

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.1287.200030

Keywords: Aphanisticus, jewel beetles, Buprestidae, new species, Southern Africa, taxonomy, entomology, species discovery, Botswana, Zambia, South Africa, Three

The study matters far beyond Botswana. Governments across Sub-Saharan Africa, from Rwanda to Kenya to South Africa, have poured resources into digital education initiatives in pursuit of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4, which calls for inclusive, equitable, quality education for all. The Botswana findings add to a growing body of evidence that handing out hardware is the easiest part of educational transformation and, by itself, among the least effective. What determines success, the researchers argue, is a far messier combination of infrastructure, competence, pedagogy, and governance.

To capture that complexity, the team adopted a pragmatic, mixed-methods design rooted in two complementary theoretical traditions: the Technology Acceptance Model, which explains why people embrace or reject technology, and Social Constructivist Theory, which frames learning as a collaborative, socially mediated process. Quantitative data came from 252 final-year students selected through stratified random sampling, while qualitative insights were drawn from 86 participants, including students, teachers, school managers, information technology officers, and a Ministry of Education and Skills Development representative. The researchers triangulated surveys, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, open-ended questionnaires, and direct classroom observations across five schools in four districts chosen to span different levels of urbanization and connectivity.

The infrastructure findings were blunt. Among surveyed students, 69 percent rated internet connectivity as poor or very poor, and only 22 percent reported having operational projectors in their classrooms. Computer laboratories were frequently booked for formal ICT lessons, leaving other classes locked out. One student captured the frustration in a quote that has become emblematic of the study: we have laptops, but without reliable internet they are like typewriters; we can only type assignments, not really learn online. Through the lens of the Technology Acceptance Model, such conditions directly erode what researchers call perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, the two perceptions that Davis’s classic model identifies as the primary drivers of technology adoption.

Digital competence told a similarly nuanced story. Roughly 60 percent of students expressed confidence using digital applications, but 44 percent said they had received inadequate digital training, and many of their skills were informal ones geared toward entertainment rather than academic work. Among teachers, the study found a generational divide: younger educators adapted quickly to new applications, while some older colleagues reported anxiety and struggled with basic functions. Yet the regression analyses were striking. Application competence was only a weak positive predictor of mLearning integration, with a standardized coefficient of 0.12 and a p-value of 0.085, and perceived training sufficiency showed no significant relationship at all. Together, training and competence explained a mere 2.4 percent of the variance in how thoroughly mobile learning was integrated into classrooms.

That statistical result cuts against a common assumption, namely that better-trained users automatically integrate technology more deeply. The researchers interpret it as evidence that training has focused on operating devices rather than transforming teaching. Classroom observations confirmed that instruction remained overwhelmingly teacher-centred, with laptop use largely confined to dedicated ICT lessons. Students reported using their laptops more at home than at school because lessons still relied, in one student’s words, on chalk and talk. The study situates this pattern within what the literature calls a digital facade: technology is present, but pedagogy has not changed, so devices serve as expensive substitutes for notes and presentations rather than as tools for the collaborative knowledge construction that social constructivism prizes.

The weakest dimension of all was policy awareness. A remarkable 93.7 percent of students held neutral views about whether mLearning policies even existed, and only 6.7 percent agreed or disagreed that such policies were in place. Teachers and school managers were barely better informed. We were briefed on the laptop initiative, but no policy was shared with us, one teacher reported. A school manager explained that ministry circulars addressed distribution, maintenance, and reporting of laptops, but offered no guidance on how the devices should actually be used in daily instruction. Inferential tests found no significant differences in policy awareness across gender, age, or school, indicating the gap is system-wide rather than localized.

From these findings the researchers built their central contribution: the Strategic mLearning Implementation Framework, or SmLIF. Unlike the Technology Acceptance Model, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, or the FRAME model, which each emphasize single slices of the problem, SmLIF layers technological, pedagogical, institutional, and governance dimensions into one iterative design. Its foundation layer covers policy, governance, and infrastructure readiness. An operational layer addresses teacher and student preparation, digital pedagogy, and technical support. A strategic enabler layer institutionalizes monitoring and evaluation, feeding a continuous Plan, Act, Review, Improve cycle that treats implementation as an ongoing process rather than a one-time rollout.

The implications for policymakers are pointed. National digital education programs, the authors conclude, must be accompanied by reliable internet access, adequate physical infrastructure, clear school-level policies, and continuous evaluation systems. Teacher training needs to move beyond basic device skills toward pedagogical methods, collaboration, and differentiated support that meets educators at varying skill levels. Without those complements, the study warns, even the most ambitious laptop programs risk producing symbolic rather than substantive change, leaving devices idle in bags while instruction proceeds exactly as it did before.

The researchers call for follow-up work to validate and refine SmLIF in other educational settings, including longitudinal studies tracking how technology use and teaching practices evolve over time and comparative investigations across countries. They also flag emerging frontiers such as the impact of mobile learning on digital equity and safety, learning analytics, and sustainable digital pedagogies integrated with artificial intelligence. For now, the message from Botswana’s classrooms is clear and increasingly resonant across the developing world: the digital transformation of education begins, but does not end, with a laptop on every desk.

Subject of Research: Mobile learning implementation in Botswana's public senior secondary schools following a national laptop initiative

Article Title: Investigation of mobile learning implementation in Botswana secondary schools for improved academic and digital literacy outcomes

Article References: Mabalane, D. K., & Batane, T. (2026). Investigation of mobile learning implementation in Botswana secondary schools for improved academic and digital literacy outcomes. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 802. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02010-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02010-x

Keywords: mobile learning, Botswana, digital literacy, secondary education, Technology Acceptance Model, social constructivism, educational technology, laptop initiative, education policy, digital divide, teacher training, Sub-Saharan Africa

The demographic backdrop makes the stakes clear. Botswana’s 1991 census recorded 475,443 young people aged 12 to 29 years, representing 36 percent of the total population, with roughly 60 percent of the population below age 30. Census data from 2022 indicate the trend has remained stable, with approximately 70 percent of the population under 35 years of age. This youthful structure presents what economists call a potential demographic dividend, but only if supported by appropriate policies and institutional frameworks. Without such support, a large youth cohort intensifies competition for limited labour market opportunities. Persistent youth unemployment, inequality and social exclusion have therefore become defining policy concerns, prompting the Government of Botswana to introduce the National Youth Policy in 1996, review it in 2010, and establish a Ministry of Youth that increasingly draws on social work expertise.

Study author Kabo Diraditsile of Botswana Open University conducted the research in 2019 in Gaborone, using a sampling frame obtained from the Ministry to systematically select twenty professionally qualified social workers, eight males and twelve females. Most participants, fifteen of twenty, were aged between 30 and 39 years, and all held at least a bachelor’s degree in social work, with eighteen holding bachelor’s degrees and two holding master’s degrees. Data were collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews lasting approximately 40 to 60 minutes, audio recorded with consent and transcribed verbatim. The interviews were conducted and coded in English, with no translation undertaken, thereby avoiding inconsistencies that can arise through translation and back-translation. Thematic analysis was performed by the author and a trained research assistant who independently coded the transcripts, compared interpretations and resolved differences through consensus.

The central finding is that these social workers perceive their roles as distinct from the conventional welfare functions traditionally associated with their counterparts in the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development. Rather than providing direct remedial services, participants described work that is largely programme and project oriented, with a strong emphasis on youth empowerment and economic development. One participant, who completed a Bachelor of Social Work at the University of Botswana before being employed as a Programme Officer, explained the reality plainly: although the social work methods and principles were learned at school, Programme Officers function more like project officers. They finance youth projects, most commonly through the Youth Development Fund, explain the guidelines, screen application documents, finance those who qualify and then monitor the funded projects.

What is technically striking is how the classic social work methods persist but have been reoriented. Group work, one of the profession’s foundational techniques, is applied not for therapeutic or psychosocial intervention but as a mechanism for information dissemination, mobilisation and youth engagement. Participants described conducting programme orientations where young people are grouped and informed about Ministry programmes, typically in community halls or kgotla meetings, the traditional forums used across Botswana’s districts. Casework, likewise, takes place in the office when young people come as individuals, but participants noted it bears little resemblance to conventional casework, which would involve understanding personal challenges, assessing needs and developing individualised intervention strategies aimed at improving social functioning. Instead, most interactions centre on programme requirements and application procedures. Community organisation has similarly been redirected toward mobilising young people around common interests, connecting groups to programmes such as arts and culture competitions, sports and recreation competitions and the entrepreneurship-focused Youth Development Fund.

This reorientation generates a measurable professional role tension. Sixteen of the twenty participants, 80 percent, identified challenges associated with practising social work within the youth development environment, while four participants, 20 percent, did not perceive these differences as challenges but rather as a reflection of the distinct scope and mandate of youth development work. Those who identified challenges consistently highlighted the mismatch between professional orientation and institutional performance expectations. Social work emphasises wellbeing, prevention and empowerment, but participants indicated their performance was assessed through programme outputs, particularly how many projects were funded and how many of those were still existing and doing well. Counselling was hardly performed; participants instead referred young people to social workers employed elsewhere who could provide it. The study suggests the challenge is not that social workers lack the knowledge or willingness to apply professional principles, but that the institutional environment determines which aspects of their training can actually be exercised.

The findings also challenge an assumption at the heart of the profession’s identity: that social work is primarily concerned with people experiencing poverty or vulnerability. Within the youth development context, the clientele is socio-economically diverse. One participant explained that a young person can come from a well-off family with the intention to start a business, and that individual is not necessarily vulnerable or poor; some have existing businesses and want to grow them. If they fall within the youth bracket and are not currently in school, the Ministry assists them. Some young people require social protection and psychosocial support, while others require access to finance, entrepreneurship support, skills development or business expansion opportunities. This diversity, the study argues, reinforces the need for a broader conceptualisation of social work practice in youth development, one that combines social protection with empowerment, capability development and economic participation.

Training emerges as a critical gap. Seventeen of the twenty participants, 85 percent, reported having attended training organised or facilitated by the Ministry, particularly in entrepreneurship and youth enterprise development, with trainers including external consultants and, in one well-remembered case, personnel from the International Labour Organization delivering a Gender Entrepreneurship Together Ahead of Youth Enterprises programme. However, most of this training was relatively short, generally lasting about one week, and did not always result in formal certification. Participants also recalled an earlier period when the government supported officers through diploma courses on Youth Development via the Commonwealth of Learning, apparently because the majority of officers lacked any qualification in youth development work. Indeed, one participant could identify only a single colleague holding a qualification in Youth. The three participants who had not received training were relatively new employees with fewer than four years of service, suggesting the absence of training reflected shorter tenure rather than rejection of professional development.

The study situates these findings within Botswana’s expanding social work education landscape. The University of Botswana now offers qualifications from diploma and bachelor’s degrees to master’s and PhD programmes, while other institutions provide training at certificate, diploma and degree levels, a considerable expansion compared with the 1980s and 1990s when the University of Botswana was the principal provider of professional social work education. Employment has diversified beyond traditional welfare services into health facilities, schools, the Botswana Defence Force, the Botswana Police Service, non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations, faith-based organisations and private-sector institutions. Botswana has also been pursuing the establishment of a Social Work Profession Council to strengthen regulation and safeguard professional standards, a development the study links to existing concerns that weak regulation contributes to ambiguity concerning professional roles, competencies and the boundaries of practice.

The study’s implications point toward a developmental approach to social work that integrates the profession’s traditional commitment to social protection and wellbeing with empowerment, participation, prevention, capacity building and socio-economic inclusion. From a policy perspective, the author recommends that youth policies and programmes explicitly incorporate social work competencies in areas such as youth participation, psychosocial support, entrepreneurship, community development and economic empowerment, alongside clearer professional roles and continuous capacity development. For social work education, the findings support integrating entrepreneurship, programme management, youth participation, digital skills and economic empowerment into curricula and continuing professional development, equipping practitioners to work collaboratively with government, communities, private-sector organisations and other professionals. The author acknowledges the study’s limitations: the qualitative design and relatively small sample mean the findings reflect participants’ perspectives and should not be interpreted as statistically representative of all social workers or youth development practitioners in Botswana. Nevertheless, the argument carries weight well beyond Botswana’s borders, offering a template for repositioning social work across Africa and other youthful, developing contexts where young people are not merely recipients of services but active agents of their own socio-economic advancement.

Subject of Research: Social work for youth development in Botswana: a case for a developmental approach

Article Title: Social work for youth development in Botswana: a case for a developmental approach

Article References: Diraditsile, K. (2026). Social work for youth development in Botswana: a case for a developmental approach. SN Social Sciences, 6(11), Article 556. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01853-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01853-3

Keywords: Social, work, youth, development, Botswana, case, developmental, approach, scientific research

The study employed a qualitative descriptive phenomenological design, a methodology specifically built to uncover the essence of lived experience. Using purposive sampling combined with maximum variation sampling, the researchers recruited 21 participants, physicians and nurses from a range of specialties who had served on Chinese medical aid teams in Botswana. Between March and May 2026, each participant took part in semi-structured, in-depth interviews. The transcripts were then analyzed using Colaizzi’s seven-step method, a rigorous analytic procedure that moves from identifying significant statements to formulating meanings, clustering themes, and distilling an essential structure that captures the phenomenon as a whole. The study received ethics approval from Fujian Children’s Hospital and adhered to the principles of the Helsinki Declaration, with all participants providing written informed consent.

The essential structure that emerged from the analysis was defined by a persistent struggle between professional obligations and emotional distress. Within that overarching structure, four key themes organized the participants’ experiences: the landscape of scarcity and cultural dislocation; the anatomy of moral dilemmas; the price of professionalism, expressed as emotional labor; and a transformative arc of identity reconstruction. Together, these themes describe a trajectory that begins with shock at materially different working conditions, passes through repeated confrontations with ethically untenable situations, and ends, for many, in a fundamentally reconfigured understanding of what it means to be a clinician.

The first theme, the landscape of scarcity and cultural dislocation, reflects the jarring gap between the resource environments these professionals knew at home and the realities of healthcare delivery in Botswana. Healthcare workers in Chinese medical aid teams routinely confront complex clinical settings and constraints that differ significantly from their home context, the authors note. Equipment, supplies, staffing levels, and referral pathways that Chinese clinicians might take for granted cannot be assumed in an aid setting. Layered on top of material scarcity is cultural dislocation: differences in language, health beliefs, patient expectations, and institutional norms that complicate every clinical encounter. For clinicians trained in high-resource tertiary hospitals, this combination creates a constant background strain that shapes everything that follows.

Against that backdrop, the second theme, the anatomy of moral dilemmas, describes the specific ethical fault lines that participants encountered. Moral dilemmas arise when a clinician recognizes what good care requires but is prevented from delivering it by circumstances beyond their control, forcing a choice between competing obligations. In aid settings, such dilemmas are not occasional crises but recurring features of daily practice. A clinician may know the optimal intervention for a patient yet face shortages, systemic barriers, or cultural constraints that make it unattainable, leaving them to choose among imperfect options. Each such decision leaves a residue, and the accumulation of these residues constitutes what the research literature calls moral distress, the psychological cost of acting against one’s professional conscience.

The third theme, the price of professionalism, names the mechanism by which that cost is paid: emotional labor. Emotional labor is the work of managing one’s own displayed emotions to meet the demands of a professional role, suppressing frustration, grief, or despair in front of patients and colleagues while projecting calm and competence. The study’s findings indicate that Chinese medical aid workers in Botswana invested substantial emotional labor to maintain professional composure amid morally distressing circumstances. This invisible work carries a price. Sustained surface acting and unprocessed moral strain are recognized risk factors for burnout, depersonalization, and attrition, and the study’s authors argue that these burdens have remained underexplored despite the critical contributions aid workers make to healthcare services in Botswana.

What distinguishes this study from much of the literature on clinician distress is its fourth theme: the transformative arc of identity reconstruction. The participants’ experiences precipitated a paradigmatic shift in professional identity, characterized by a move away from the curative model towards a relational role of companionship and witnessing. In other words, clinicians who had been trained to see their value in terms of cures delivered and procedures performed came to redefine their purpose in terms of presence, accompaniment, and bearing witness to patients’ suffering even when cure was impossible. This is not a consolation prize; it is a genuine reorganization of professional self-understanding, one that the authors suggest can catalyze growth when it is adequately supported rather than left to occur in isolation.

The practical implications of the findings are direct. The authors conclude that pre-departure psychological training for medical aid personnel should be improved, and that comprehensive institutional support systems should be established during service. Current preparation, the study implies, focuses heavily on clinical and technical readiness while leaving clinicians psychologically unprepared for the moral terrain of aid work. Structured training before departure could inoculate workers against some of the shock of scarcity and cultural difference, while in-country support, including access to peer support, supervision, and channels for processing moral distress, could prevent the accumulation of unmanaged emotional strain. The authors also call for future research using longitudinal measures to mitigate emotional labor and promote the sustained well-being of international medical aid personnel, recognizing that a single cross-sectional snapshot cannot capture how distress and growth evolve over a deployment and after return home.

The significance of the study extends beyond the specific China-Botswana corridor. Medical aid deployments are a growing component of global health diplomacy, and the clinicians who staff them are exposed to a distinctive compound of stressors: resource limitations, ethical dilemmas, cultural distance, professional isolation, and separation from their own families and support networks. By documenting these experiences through the voices of the workers themselves, the study provides an evidence base for designing support systems that address the actual texture of aid work rather than its administrative outline. It also contributes to a broader conceptual shift in occupational health research, treating moral distress not simply as an individual pathology to be screened for, but as a structural feature of certain working environments that demands organizational responses.

For the 21 clinicians who shared their experiences, the study’s central message is one of recognition. The struggle between duty and distress is not a personal failing but a predictable consequence of practicing conscience-bound medicine under constrained conditions. And the identity transformation that many underwent, from cure-oriented technicians to companions and witnesses, suggests that with the right scaffolding, the same experiences that threaten to break clinicians down can also build them into something more resilient and more humane. The challenge now, the authors argue, is for the institutions that send medical aid teams to build that scaffolding deliberately, before the next deployment begins.

Subject of Research: Moral dilemmas and emotional labor experienced by Chinese medical aid workers in Botswana

Article Title: Between duty and distress: a phenomenological study of moral dilemmas and emotional labor among Chinese medical aid workers in Botswana

Article References: Zheng, J., Liu, F., Xia, S., Luo, J., & Liu, G. (2026). Between duty and distress: a phenomenological study of moral dilemmas and emotional labor among Chinese medical aid workers in Botswana. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-026-05323-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12912-026-05323-2

Keywords: medical aid workers, Botswana, moral dilemmas, emotional labor, moral distress, phenomenological study, qualitative research, professional identity, nursing, global health, China, occupational well-being

The research team, led by Gaositwe Lillian Modutlwe of the University of Botswana together with colleagues at Jagannath University in Bangladesh and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, chose Gaborone for good reason. The city sits between the Kgale and Oodi Hills in southeastern Botswana, west of the Notwane River, and covers approximately 190 square kilometers at an altitude of about 1,000 meters. With a mean annual rainfall of just 500 millimeters, it is a quintessentially semi-arid urban environment, which makes the loss of vegetated land particularly consequential. According to Botswana’s 2021 Central Statistical Report, the city is home to 246,325 people, more than 10 percent of the country’s entire population, packed into 58,476 households. Much of that population arrived through migration from the rest of the country, drawn by Gaborone’s role as the national economic engine, with industries ranging from diamond cutting and polishing to textiles, brewing, and printing.

To capture how this growth reshaped the land, the team turned to the Landsat archive, the longest continuous record of Earth’s surface collected by the US Geological Survey since 1972. They downloaded imagery for 1991, 2001, 2011, and 2021, deliberately aligning each snapshot with a national census year so that land change could later be compared against demographic data. Cloud and shadow masking was applied across the different Landsat sensors, from the Thematic Mapper of the early 1990s to the Operational Land Imager of today, and the study area was clipped to Gaborone’s administrative boundary. All of the data acquisition, preprocessing, and initial classification ran inside Google Earth Engine, a cloud-computing platform that has become a workhorse for large-scale environmental monitoring because it avoids the overfitting pitfalls that often plague local machine learning setups.

The classification itself relied on random forest, an ensemble algorithm that builds hundreds of decision trees and lets them vote on what each pixel represents. The researchers trained the model on six land cover classes: water, built-up, agriculture, urban forest, vegetation, and bare ground. Crucially, they fed the classifier not just raw spectral bands but six derived spectral indices, each designed to highlight a specific surface property. The Enhanced Vegetation Index captured vegetation vigor while accounting for topographic effects, the Normalized Burn Ratio flagged burnt areas, the Normalized Difference Moisture Index identified agricultural zones under moisture stress, the Normalized Difference Water Index isolated open water, the Normalized Difference Built-up Index delineated urban surfaces, and the Normalized Difference Bareness Index improved detection of exposed soil. A 30-meter digital elevation model from the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission added terrain information to the mix.

The random forest configuration was tuned through iterative testing, ultimately running 300 decision trees with the square root of the available predictor variables considered at each split. Validation used 600 randomly selected reference points per map, with ground truth drawn from high-resolution imagery in Google Earth Pro going back to 1991. The results were strikingly good: overall accuracy exceeded the widely accepted 80 percent threshold in every year, peaking at 97 percent with a kappa coefficient of 0.96 in 1991, and dipping only to 87 percent with a kappa of 0.84 in 2021. Water was classified perfectly in every epoch, while bare ground proved the hardest class, frequently confused with agriculture and built-up surfaces, a common problem in semi-arid landscapes where bare soil and fallow fields share nearly identical spectral signatures.

With the historical maps in hand, the team then did something most previous Gaborone studies had not: they predicted the future. For this they used a one-dimensional convolutional neural network implemented in TensorFlow Keras on Google Colab. The classified maps from the four census years were exported from Earth Engine and fed into a sequential model consisting of six convolutional layers, each paired with ReLU activation, followed by max pooling to compress dimensionality and extract dominant temporal features. A dropout rate of 0.2 after the second convolutional layer guarded against overfitting, and the flattened outputs passed through two fully connected dense layers before a softmax output layer assigned class probabilities. The choice of a 1D-CNN was deliberate: unlike recurrent architectures, it extracts local temporal dependencies from short time series with far lower computational cost, and it performs well even when training data is limited, which matters when your entire history consists of four observation dates.

The network’s performance held up under scrutiny. Overall accuracy across the modeled years ranged from 0.82 to 0.88, comfortably above the 80 percent benchmark. Water again achieved precision of 1, built-up areas scored consistently above 0.89 on precision, recall, and F1 measures, and vegetation was reliably predicted with scores between 0.82 and 1. The weak spots were bare ground, which managed a precision of only 0.33 in 1991, and agriculture, which dipped to 0.43 in 2011, both largely attributable to limited training samples for those classes. When the researchers compared predicted against observed land areas for 2001, 2011, and 2021, the agreement was close, with the largest discrepancy for built-up land being just 4.35 square kilometers in 2021, and bigger deviations for agriculture and bare ground in 2011, likely stemming from spectral similarity between those classes and uneven sample sizes.

The projections for 2031 tell a clear story. The model expects built-up area to grow from roughly 76.8 square kilometers, or 31 percent of the city, to 99.6 square kilometers, or 41 percent, with expansion continuing the historical pattern of spreading northward from the area above the Gaborone dam. Vegetation is projected to decline further, and bare ground is expected to shrink from about 16.1 to 8.8 square kilometers, presumably as even the empty fringes get absorbed into the urban fabric. The gain and loss analysis shows built-up land increasing by 7.5 percent from 1991 to 2001, 6.3 percent from 2001 to 2011, and 2.4 percent from 2011 to 2021, a decelerating trend that the model expects to reverse with a 9.3 percent gain by 2031. The steepest losses fell on urban forest, down 8.9 percent between 2001 and 2011, and vegetation, down 8.8 percent between 1991 and 2001.

Perhaps the most compelling finding is the statistical link between people and pavement. Linear regression and Pearson correlation analysis revealed an almost perfect positive relationship between population growth and built-up expansion, with a correlation coefficient of 0.98, while vegetation showed a strong negative correlation of -0.95 and agriculture -0.73. The built-up class gained about 0.0003 units of area for every unit of population increase, and vegetation lost area at essentially the same rate. The analysis also uncovered relationships among the land classes themselves: built-up expansion correlated negatively with vegetation at -0.97, confirming that the city is growing directly at the expense of green cover, while bare ground and water showed a negative relationship of -0.83, suggesting that some areas classified as bare ground were formerly water bodies that dried out.

The authors are candid about the limitations. Four observation dates is a thin temporal foundation for any deep learning model, and the population variable served as a proxy for a bundle of interacting socioeconomic processes rather than being explicitly integrated into the prediction itself. Future work, they suggest, should incorporate longer time series, higher-resolution imagery, and ancillary data such as infrastructure networks and socioeconomic indicators, and should embed demographic drivers directly into the modeling pipeline. Still, the implications of the 2031 forecast are hard to ignore. Expanding impervious surfaces in an already hot, dry city threaten to intensify urban heat islands, alter runoff patterns, accelerate land degradation, and fragment the remaining pockets of indigenous vegetation, with knock-on effects for biodiversity, water security, and public health. The study’s value lies in giving Botswana’s land managers a quantified, spatially explicit preview of where those pressures will land, and a demonstrated, transferable machine learning framework for doing the same in other rapidly growing semi-arid cities.

Subject of Research: Machine learning-based modelling of historical and future land use and land cover change in Gaborone, Botswana

Article Title: Modelling historical and future land use and land cover change using random forest and TensorFlow 1D-convolution neural networks in Gaborone, Botswana

Article References: Modutlwe, G. L., Kombani, L., Rahman, M. M., & Rana, M. M. S. P. (2026). Modelling historical and future land use and land cover change using random forest and TensorFlow 1D-convolution neural networks in Gaborone, Botswana. Discover Geoscience, 4(1), Article 296. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44288-026-00662-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44288-026-00662-8

Keywords: land use land cover change, random forest, 1D-CNN, TensorFlow, remote sensing, Gaborone, Botswana, urbanization, Landsat, Google Earth Engine, population growth, semi-arid cities

The study was conducted by Thomamo B. Benjamin, Kelemogile Mmolawa, Gaolathe Tsheboeng, Marks Ditlhogo, and Francis O. Arimoro, who sampled three fixed stations along the river between February and May 2026. The stations were deliberately chosen to represent a gradient of urban influence: an upstream reach near the A1 Highway with relatively low-density development, a midstream reach cutting through the most densely built-up part of the city, and a downstream reach near the Tlokweng Road corridor that integrates the cumulative drainage of the entire urban catchment. Because the Segoditshane flows through residential, commercial, institutional, and industrial zones, it functions as the city’s principal stormwater conduit, collecting runoff, wastewater influence, and diffuse pollutants along its roughly 14-kilometer corridor through the metropolitan area.

The physicochemical results reveal a river under measurable strain. Dissolved oxygen fell from a mean of 7.59 milligrams per liter at the upstream station to roughly 4.8 to 5.0 milligrams per liter at the midstream and downstream sites, a decline of about 36 percent that the authors link to rising organic loading. Electrical conductivity climbed from around 734 to 742 microsiemens per centimeter upstream and midstream to 952 microsiemens per centimeter downstream, an increase of nearly 30 percent that reflects the accumulation of dissolved salts, nutrients, metals, and other urban-derived ions. Biochemical oxygen demand rose from 3.28 milligrams per liter upstream to 8.75 midstream, chemical oxygen demand more than doubled from 18.5 to 45 milligrams per liter, and total dissolved solids increased from 455 to 590 milligrams per liter downstream. Nitrate concentrations also rose steadily along the continuum, while phosphate peaked at the midstream station.

These chemical shifts tracked a semi-quantitative urban pressure assessment developed by the team. The upstream site scored 3 on a ten-point pressure scale, with roughly 25 percent impervious surface cover, a surrounding population density of about 1,500 people per square kilometer, and only one or two major stormwater outfalls. The midstream site, embedded in the densest urban fabric, scored 8, with approximately 70 percent impervious cover, 4,500 people per square kilometer, and five to seven outfalls. The downstream site scored highest at 9, combining about 60 percent impervious cover, seven to ten stormwater outfalls, high wastewater influence, and full integration of upstream drainage. The close agreement between these pressure scores and the measured water chemistry suggests that catchment development and drainage connectivity are central to the environmental degradation documented in the river.

Against this backdrop, the biological story is striking. Over four monthly sampling campaigns, the team collected 1,238 macroinvertebrate individuals representing 16 families from five insect orders, identified to family level using South African Scoring System Version 5 taxonomic keys. Abundance collapsed along the urban gradient, from 718 individuals upstream to 436 midstream and just 84 downstream. The upstream station was dominated by pollution-tolerant Diptera, particularly non-biting midges of the family Chironomidae with 250 individuals and mosquitoes of the family Culicidae with 156, alongside moderate numbers of predatory water bugs and damselflies. The midstream station supported a more balanced assemblage including mayflies of the family Baetidae, dragonflies and damselflies, and several families found nowhere else in the study, such as Gomphidae, Micronectidae, Scirtidae, and Gyrinidae. The downstream reach held only six families, with Baetidae, Chironomidae, Libellulidae, and a handful of others accounting for nearly all individuals.

Diversity metrics added an important nuance to this pattern. Although the upstream station recorded the highest raw abundance, its Shannon diversity of 1.844 was the lowest of the three sites, a consequence of dominance by a few opportunistic taxa. The midstream station, by contrast, posted the highest values for nearly every metric: 11 families, a Margalef richness index of 1.645, Shannon diversity of 2.265, Simpson diversity of 0.886, and Pielou’s evenness of 0.945. This midstream diversity maximum is one of the study’s most notable findings, suggesting a non-linear response along the river continuum. Rather than a simple slide from good to bad conditions, the pattern points to intermediate disturbance dynamics, in which moderate environmental stress and greater habitat heterogeneity at the midstream reach widen the range of niches available, allowing sensitive and tolerant taxa to coexist while competitive exclusion is dampened.

A modified application of the South African Scoring System reinforced this interpretation. The midstream station achieved a SASS score of 58, twelve scoring taxa, and an average score per taxon of 4.83, corresponding to a condition of Good under the SASS5 framework. The upstream station scored 35 with an ASPT of 3.89, rated Fair, while the downstream station fell to a score of 23 and an ASPT of 3.83, rated Fair to Poor. The authors caution that because their pooled multi-habitat sampling differed from the standardized SASS5 kick-sampling protocol, these indices should be read as comparative indicators of relative condition rather than formal ecological status classifications. Even so, the convergence of abundance, richness, diversity, and biotic index data on the same spatial pattern lends weight to the overall conclusion.

To connect community structure with environmental conditions, the researchers employed Canonical Correspondence Analysis, a multivariate ordination technique that relates species distributions to measured gradients. Based on twelve station-by-month observations, the analysis showed that the first two canonical axes together explained 97.82 percent of the constrained family-environment variation, with Axis 1 accounting for 65.72 percent and Axis 2 for 32.10 percent, both statistically significant under Monte Carlo permutation tests. Axis 1 loaded most strongly on ammonia, pH, dissolved oxygen, depth, and phosphate, while Axis 2 was associated with electrical conductivity, flow velocity, depth, nitrate, and phosphate. Because several environmental variables were strongly correlated with one another, the authors interpret the ordination as an exploratory description of interacting gradients rather than a test of independent drivers. Upstream assemblages aligned with higher pH and oxygen, midstream communities with flow, depth, and nutrients, and downstream assemblages with elevated conductivity and nitrate.

The findings fit squarely within the theory of environmental filtering, which holds that local abiotic conditions act as a sieve, favoring species whose traits allow survival under prevailing conditions while excluding those that cannot cope. In the Segoditshane River, the filters include oxygen depletion, nutrient enrichment, rising salinity indicated by conductivity, altered flow and depth, and habitat simplification driven by impervious surfaces and channel modification. Tolerant families such as Chironomidae and Culicidae thrived where organic enrichment and standing water created favorable breeding conditions, while moderately sensitive predators like Gomphidae and Aeshnidae were largely confined to the midstream reach, and the relatively sensitive Baetidae and Simuliidae persisted mainly where localized hydraulic refugia offered patches of suitable habitat. Importantly, the authors warn that the higher proportional contribution of sensitive taxa downstream should not be mistaken for recovery; it more likely reflects the loss of other groups from an already depauperate community.

The study carries practical weight for a rapidly urbanizing semi-arid region where conventional chemical monitoring alone can underestimate cumulative ecological degradation. Because macroinvertebrates integrate environmental stress over weeks and months, they provide a biological memory that instantaneous water samples lack. The authors argue that their results establish a baseline for biomonitoring in the Segoditshane River and support integrated catchment management spanning water-quality protection, stormwater management, habitat restoration, and long-term ecological monitoring. They also outline future priorities, including year-round monitoring across the full hydrological cycle, greater spatial replication, habitat-specific sampling, trait-based and species-level approaches, and the incorporation of environmental DNA metabarcoding to sharpen taxonomic resolution. As Gaborone continues to grow, the Segoditshane’s insect communities may prove to be among the most honest witnesses to the city’s environmental trajectory.

Subject of Research: Urban pollution signatures and environmental filtering of benthic macroinvertebrates along abiotic gradients in a semi-arid river in Botswana

Article Title: Urban pollution signatures and environmental filtering of benthic macroinvertebrates along abiotic gradients in a semi-arid river in botswana

Article References: Benjamin, T. B., Mmolawa, K., Tsheboeng, G., Ditlhogo, M., & Arimoro, F. O. (2026). Urban pollution signatures and environmental filtering of benthic macroinvertebrates along abiotic gradients in a semi-arid river in botswana. Environmental Challenges, 25, Article 101661. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envc.2026.101661

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.envc.2026.101661

Keywords: benthic macroinvertebrates, environmental filtering, urban pollution, semi-arid river, water quality, biomonitoring, SASS5, dissolved oxygen, electrical conductivity, Botswana, Gaborone, canonical correspondence analysis

The research, led by Tiro Theodore Monamo together with Mpho Keetile and Gobopamang Letamo of the Department of Statistics, Demography and Population Studies at the University of Botswana, used in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 18 older adults aged 65 and above who live with various forms of disability. Participants were recruited through health service networks in the Serowe/Palapye District, a setting that combines urban infrastructure with deeply rural and underserved communities. The team analysed the transcripts thematically with ATLAS.ti software, anchoring the analysis in Smith’s Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, a method designed to capture the depth of individual lived experience while still identifying patterns shared across narratives.

Two broader theoretical lenses shaped the interpretation. The social model of disability reframes disability not simply as a bodily limitation but as the product of barriers erected by society, from inaccessible buildings to discriminatory attitudes. A life-course perspective, meanwhile, allowed the researchers to trace how personal, social and structural factors accumulate and interact over decades, shaping how a person arrives at old age and how they experience disability within it. Together, these frameworks pushed the study beyond a catalogue of impairments toward an account of how disability is made, endured and negotiated across a lifetime.

What emerged from the interviews is a picture of compounding disadvantage. Participants described declining health and memory loss, but they placed equal or greater weight on social exclusion, inadequate access to healthcare and economic marginalisation. For many, the loss of income-earning capacity in old age collided with the costs of transport, medication and daily necessities, while distance to clinics and the quality of services added further friction. Social isolation compounded these pressures: reduced mobility and shifting family structures left some older adults cut off from the community networks that had once sustained them. The findings suggest that disability in later life cannot be understood as a purely medical phenomenon; it is woven into systems of care, economy and belonging.

Yet the study refuses a narrative of pure deprivation. Alongside the hardships, participants reported genuinely positive dimensions of ageing, including emotional growth, spiritual acceptance and pride in the contributions they had made across their lives. Many framed their later years through faith and a sense of completion rather than solely through loss. This duality, the authors argue, is essential for anyone hoping to design policy for this population: interventions that treat older adults with disabilities only as recipients of need miss the agency, purpose and meaning that participants themselves identified as central to their lives.

That agency took concrete, culturally grounded forms. Coping strategies reported by participants included engaging in light physical activity, making traditional dietary adjustments, and turning to prayer as a source of strength and structure. Equally important were efforts to remain socially and culturally relevant, finding alternative roles and ways of contributing when physical limitations closed off previous ones. Participants drew on indigenous knowledge to self-manage health conditions, and many articulated a deep sense of purpose that persisted despite disability. These are not trivial details; they represent resources, familial, cultural and personal, that any serious policy framework would need to strengthen rather than bypass.

The study’s conclusions point squarely at structural reform. The authors argue that addressing the needs of older adults with disabilities in Botswana requires policy changes that strengthen community-based care, improve physical and service accessibility, and integrate both ageing and disability into national development plans. At present, they note, existing policies often overlook the complex realities faced by this population, particularly in rural and underserved communities where the intersection of age and disability is most acute. The researchers call for rights-based, contextually grounded approaches to healthy ageing, an orientation that treats older adults with disabilities as rights-holders with agency rather than as passive beneficiaries of charity.

The significance of the work extends beyond Botswana’s borders. Sub-Saharan Africa is ageing faster than many public health systems are prepared for, and research on the intersection of ageing and disability in the region remains thin. By documenting lived experience with methodological rigour, the study contributes to a growing body of literature that can inform regional policy, from the design of community care programmes to the inclusion of disability considerations in healthy-ageing strategies. It also demonstrates the value of phenomenological methods in demographic and population health research, where large surveys often flatten the textures of experience that determine whether policies actually work on the ground.

The research was conducted with extensive ethical safeguards. It received clearance from the University of Botswana Institutional Review Board and regulatory approval from the Ministry of Local Government and Traditional Affairs, with additional approval from the Serowe District Health Management Team and Palapye Primary Hospital management. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants, who were informed of their right to withdraw at any stage, and all quotations were anonymised to protect identities. The study received no external funding, and the authors declare no competing interests. The article is published open access under a Creative Commons licence, making the full findings available to researchers, policymakers and communities across the region.

For Botswana, the message of the study is ultimately one of both warning and opportunity. The warning is that systemic, cultural and economic barriers, not just functional decline, shape disability in later life, and that ignoring them will deepen inequality as the population ages. The opportunity lies in the resilience the researchers documented: older adults are already managing their health, sustaining their communities and finding meaning despite constrained circumstances. Policy that builds on those existing strengths, while dismantling the barriers that exhaust them, could transform what it means to grow old with a disability in Botswana, and offer a model for the wider region.

Subject of Research: Lived experiences of ageing and disability among older adults in Botswana

Article Title: Lived experiences of ageing and disability among older adults in Botswana

Article References: Monamo, T. T., Keetile, M., & Letamo, G. (2026). Lived experiences of ageing and disability among older adults in Botswana. Discover Social Science and Health. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44155-026-00478-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44155-026-00478-4

Keywords: ageing, disability, Botswana, older adults, lived experiences, qualitative research, interpretative phenomenological analysis, social model of disability, life-course perspective, sub-Saharan Africa, healthy ageing, community-based care