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This essay is a follow-up to a 2015 philosophy conference constituted largely by lecturers and doctoral students of philosophy from various universities in Rome. The faculty of philosophy of the Lateran Pontifical University organized the conference and entitled it, La filosofia come formazione dell’uomo (lit., Philosophy as a Formation of the Man)...

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The aim of the research was to focus on the degree to which a social psychology student’s self-concept is either positive or negative. A distinction was made between the self-affirmations that a person might tend to make about himself or herself independently of his/her relationships with other people – we conformed to the literature and called this a self-concept – and the self-affirmations that a person might make about himself or herself by means of social comparisons – for these self-affirmations we used the term self-image. In the spirit of Michael Polanyi, the researcher and her co-author approached the research with a professional commitment to let their religious beliefs set parameters for their approach to the data and hence maintained their conviction that any person who defies or ignores the Will of Allah cannot truthfully develop a positive self-concept or a positive self-image.

Out of 40 social psychology students, the responses of all 40 matched a positive self-concept without any direct social comparison; 38 of the 40 students reflected a positive self-image when comparing oneself with others. Only two of the 40 students betrayed a negative self-image; this was indeed in the realm of social comparisons. Even these two students manifest a positive self-concept when not directly comparing oneself with others.

Given the content of the research questionnaire, the results of the present study reveal that a person’s concept of the self may modify his or her beliefs and attitudes towards others and towards God, and may even be determinative in the person’s manner of choice-making and consequent effort to act. The great propensity for persons to develop a positive self-concept is consistent with studies that have been conducted throughout the world. This study likewise explained the factors that influence social comparison and the formation of a self-image and ways to change both the selfconcept and the self-image. In the final analysis, this essay anchored itself in the premise that neither self-concept nor selfimage can stabilize self-confidence in the vicissitudes of the present moment or buttress the hopes for a desirable eternal destiny if the Will of Allah is not instrumental in the formation of both the self-concept and the self-image.

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The aim of this paper is to determine the relevance of Levinas’ notion of ethical intersubjectivity to certain patterns of ethical behaviour currently in vogue in Africa. In particular, the paper examines behaviours that one could classify as: stony silence when a greeting seems in place, the reluctance to converse with others, the failure to be honest, the tendency to be inhospitable, the unwillingness to share, the unbridled drive to possess, the refusal to be available to others, the habitual misuse of language, and inattentiveness to the needs of others… these are unseemly behaviours that are unsettling...

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Everything is endlessly repeated and everything happens only once (Samuel Beckett).

These words of the Irish Nobel Laureate Samuel Beckett reflect the nature of human history in a nutshell. From the macrocosmic social or species-specific perspective, it is the permanent transmission of the ever-repeating struggles, passions, ambitions, conventions, intentions, failures and successes, intrusions of evil and flashes of holiness from the past to the future. At the same time they are unique and unrepeatable from the microcosmic perspective of individual experience. In the dialectic entanglement of what is repeatable and of what is new, the wisdom of the ancient maxim becomes visible which reads: Historia magistra vitae est (history is the teacher of life).

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Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) are among the emerging business models of delivering non-core public goods and services. The key issue in a PPP business model involves the use of a purely profit-motivated private sector to deliver public goods and services. This is the case for governments of national scope as well as for local government authorities (LGAs) across the world. Indeed it is the case, too, for Tanzania. Given the nature of PPPs and the conditions of both the public and the private sector, the public private partnership paradigm can be a very valuable business model for delivering public goods and services both core and non-core. In this paper the author presents practical applications of the PPP business model in Tanzania. Drawing from his research for the Association of Local Authorities in Tanzania (ALAT) on public private partnerships1 in local government authorities and in a 2018 experience with a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) PPP business model for a United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) assignment in the Same District Council (SDC), the author provides some practical application of the PPP business model to selected local government authorities in Tanzania.

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According to his Letters and to the Acts of the Apostles, prior to his encounter with the Risen Lord, Paul was a very zealous Jewish person who observed the Torah with fervour. Out of his zeal, he persecuted the members of the fledgling Christian community, even to the point of trying to destroy it (cf. Gal 1:13; 1 Cor 15:9; Phil 3:6)...

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Jesus Christ is the source, fountain, and summit of all missions (LG 3). If one were to view history through the prism of the past 150 years of evangelization in Tanzania, one would have to admit that the events that transpired during this time frame resonate admirably with Jesus’ declaration that the Kingdom of God is like the grain of a mustard seed. Without doubt, it is truly “the smallest of all the seeds, but once it falls into the ground, it grows into a big tree to such an extent that the birds of the air find shelter in it” (Matt 13:31-32; Mark 4:31-32; Luke 13:19)...