Explore publications.

This study investigates the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve operational performance in Zimbabwean road haulage enterprises, with a focus on driver training as a moderator. As the logistics industry faces new difficulties, AI technologies have great promise for increasing efficiency and decision making. However, the usefulness of these technologies is determined by the skill levels of the drivers using them. This study demonstrated how extensive driver training improves the capacity to comprehend AI-generated insights, resulting in better route management, lower operating costs, and increased safety. This study examines how AI affects key performance variables such as cost savings, productivity, customer happiness, and environmental sustainability, using real data from road haulage companies. Key findings demonstrate how AI is transforming decision-making, improving operational effectiveness, and optimizing routes. The research highlights several noteworthy obstacles in addition to their obvious advantages, such as budgetary limitations, difficulty in obtaining pertinent data, and the need for more regionalized AI solutions. The findings, which are based on case studies and performance data from diverse enterprises, indicate that (i) organizations that invest in both AI and driver training benefit from a synergistic impact, resulting in higher operational outcomes, (ii) there is need to combine technical improvements with human experience to achieve maximum performance in Zimbabwe's competitive road-haulage market and finally (iii) this study offers helpful recommendations for successfully integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into haulage processes, along with insights into best practices and alternative approaches to overcome current obstacles. This study emphasizes the importance of context-specific solutions in emerging regions, enhancing the expanding corpus of knowledge on AI applications, particularly in logistics.

Social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube continue to provide higher education lecturers with the opportunity to share personal and academic resources. They use these platforms to communicate with colleagues and students for educational purposes. This study was motivated by the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has made online learning a priority for higher education institutions, and lecturers in South Africa have had to rethink the adoption of social media platforms as learning tools. Although social media platforms were used before the COVID-19 pandemic, on a small scale, this study investigated the readiness and challenges of lecturers in adopting social media platforms as a teaching and learning tool during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. This study collected qualitative data from individual lecturers using a purposeful sampling technique. The findings of the study indicate that lecturers are ready to adopt social media as a teaching and learning tool during the covid 19 pandemic. WhatsApp is the most used social media platform for teaching and learning. This study also identified some benefits and challenges in adopting social media platforms for teaching and learning in higher education institutions (HEIs), however, in practicality these challenges should be explored and addressed before rolling out social media usage in HEI’s. Based on the findings, the study provides recommendations on the use of social media platforms in teaching and learning in HEI’s during pandemics, as well as future research on social media use to assist in teaching and learning in HEI’s.