Abstract Book: 1st Annual Virtual Conference

Abstract

PREFACE: The single most important event to affect the entire human race in the first two years of the second decade of the 21st Century was the onset and continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even now that effect continues. As of the time of this writing, according to the World Health Organization, there were over 500 million confirmed cases globally and over six million confirmed deaths due to COVID-19. Elsewhere within the health sector, social-psychological heath has been negatively affected by the pandemic. Beyond the health effects, the pandemic has taken an immense economic toll. Nearly every sector of the global economy has been disrupted: travel, finance, global supply chains, human resource management, just to name a few. As economies closed down, National GDPs slumped while Poverty indices jumped. Governments responded with economic stimulus packages designed to provide some level of cushion to their fragile economies. No less has the global education sector been affected. Schools closed, students were sent home and when some educational institutions migrated online, issues of access and equitability were raised immediately. These are just some of the disruptive effects of the pandemic on our lives! But humans are a resilient lot! They can adapt and adjust. The past two years have seen countless small and large-scale adaptations to the disruption caused by the pandemic, including Zoom meetings, work from home policies, blended or hybrid learning, online exam proctoring systems, accelerated development and approval of vaccines, better and more effective coordination of national and global health agencies. Some jobs were lost, but other jobs were created. The pandemic, with all its hardship, brought new business, health and educational opportunities and has served as a catalyst for change in nearly every sector and every corner of our world. Without question, the pandemic has brought on a paradigm shift and a “new normal” from which humanity will likely never retreat. In all of this, research institutions have an important role to play in helping the society at-large to sort out what has happened, to advise on how society should adapt, and then to monitor and evaluate the positive or negative outcomes of those adaptations. Having the foregoing scenario in mind, Africa Nazarene University (ANU), through the Institute of Research (IOR), organized a virtual conference on 13 – 14 October 2021. The theme of the conference: COVID -19 Response and Resilience: Multi-Sectoral Adaptations, Re-engineering and Innovative Approaches to Recovery. The main objective of the conference was to share the COVID-19 pandemic experiences, lessons learned, research findings, innovations, and presumed solutions to inform policy for the future operations, especially amid the pandemic. The conference drew participants from academia, industry, business, religious sector, science and technology, environment and natural resources, industry, legal society, and a cross-section of professionals across the globe. This book presents the abstracts of the presentations at the conference. Note that some abstracts are not in line with the theme; students were encouraged to share their research work to enhance their research skills and improve conference experiences. Nonetheless, all presentations contributed to the achievement of the main objective of the conference. Prof. Rodney L. Reed, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic, Research, and Student Affairs