This paper examines whether urbanisation moderates the effect of carbon emissions on infectious diseases in Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) in Africa. The study is motivated by the public health risks created when rapid urban growth occurs alongside environmental degradation, weak sanitation systems, inadequate housing and limited health infrastructure. The analysis focuses on 28 HIPCs in Africa over the period 1990-2023 and uses three measures of infectious diseases: prevalence of HIV among the population aged 15-49, incidence of tuberculosis per 100,000 people and incidence of malaria per 1,000 population at risk. Carbon emissions are measured in metric tons per capita, while urbanisation is captured by urban population as a percentage of total population. The model incorporates gross domestic product per capita, current health expenditure and access to basic sanitation as control variables. Anchored on the Epidemiological Transition Theory and the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis, the study estimates a fixed-effects panel regression model with an interaction term between urbanisation and carbon emissions. The results show that carbon emissions exert a significant positive effect on HIV prevalence, tuberculosis incidence and malaria incidence. Urbanisation also increases disease prevalence, although its direct effect on malaria is statistically weak. The study concludes that infectious-disease reduction in African HIPCs requires an integrated policy framework linking clean energy transition, sanitation investment, public health financing and urban disease surveillance. The paper contributes to the literature by showing that urbanisation is not only an independent determinant of infectious diseases but also a transmission channel through which environmental pollution worsens public health outcomes in fiscally constrained African economies.

This study examined the relationship between women's empowerment interventions and poverty alleviation outcomes in Abim Town Council, Abim District-one of Uganda's historically marginalized northern communities characterized by high poverty rates, gender inequality, limited economic infrastructure, and the lingering socio-economic consequences of prolonged conflict. Drawing on a survey of 326 women across five parishes in the town council, supplemented by key informant interviews with programme implementers and local government officials, the study employed descriptive statistics, bivariate analysis, and multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression to examine the determinants of successful poverty exit among women who had participated in empowerment programmes including microfinance, savings and credit cooperative organisations (SACCOs), vocational skills training, and agricultural extension services. The findings showed that women who participated in multiple empowerment intervention types (OR = 5.82, p < .001), had access to mobile money financial services (OR = 4.31, p < .001), and were members of functional women's groups (OR = 3.74, p < .001) were significantly more likely to have exited poverty during the study period, while structural barriers including distance to service delivery points, limited spousal support, and weak local government implementation capacity significantly moderated programme outcomes. The study benchmarks its approach against Asiimwe et al. (2026), whose comparative structural modelling demonstrated that institutional support mechanisms mediate the relationship between infrastructure provision and implementation outcomes, arguing that the same principle applies to women's empowerment programming: interventions that combined resource provision with institutional support structures consistently outperformed those that provided resources without corresponding governance and social support.

This study examined the relationship between working capital management and the financial performance of savings and credit cooperative organisations (SACCOs) in Namungoona, a peri-urban trading and residential zone within Kampala City. Namungoona's SACCO landscape comprising seven registered SACCOs serving predominantly informal sector traders, market vendors, and boda-boda operators presented a particularly instructive context for examining working capital management given the high income volatility and irregular cash flow patterns of the member base, which created acute short-term liquidity management challenges for participating institutions. Drawing on a cross-sectional survey of 164 respondents including SACCO managers, credit officers, board members, and active members, the study assessed how cash management, receivables management, and payables management influenced return on assets (ROA), portfolio at risk (PAR30), and operational self-sufficiency (OSS). Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with path analysis was employed alongside descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and multiple linear regression to examine both direct and mediated relationships among working capital management dimensions and financial performance. The structural model revealed that cash management exerted the strongest total effect on financial performance (total path coefficient = 0.487), with receivables management partially mediating the relationship between cash management and financial performance (indirect path β = 0.134). The regression model confirmed that the three working capital dimensions collectively explained 61.3% of the variance in financial performance (R² = 0.613, F = 34.82, p < .001). Recommendations emphasise cash flow forecasting, formalised credit management protocols, and ERP system adoption as priority interventions.