This paper briefly reviews studies of thermospheric neutral wind dynamics over the African region. The literature includes a review of the observations of neutral winds over five African locations using the Fabry–Perot Interferometer (FPI), and the comparison between the FPI observations and predictions of the horizontal wind model (HWM-14). So far, there are reports of FPI thermospheric wind measurements in South Africa and Morocco representing the mid-latitude regions in the southern and northern hemispheres, respectively. Within the low latitudes, FPI instruments are installed in the Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, and Nigeria. For the literature reviewed, the years covered in the FPI data are 2018–2019 (South Africa), 2016–2017 (Nigeria), 2015–2016 (Ethiopia), 2013–2016 (Morocco), and 1994–1995 (Ivory Coast). Overall, the HWM-14 reproduces the climatological behavior of the meridional and zonal winds, with varying levels of fidelity for the different regions. The HWM-14 is more accurate in the stations located in the northern hemisphere of the African region; a result attributed to the presence of data during the development of this empirical model.

Knowledge on clear-air effects is of paramount importance to proper link budgeting for optimum communication systems design performances. In this paper, one-year (January - December 2013) tropospheric scintillation data are extracted from the EUTELSAT-36B Ku-band satellite measurements installed at Akure (Lat: 7.17 oN, Long: 5.18 oE, Alt: 358 m) for statistical analysis and the result compared with some established troposphere scintillation models in order to obtain the best prediction model performance for this region. The result shows that even in the absence of rain, tropospheric scintillation shows a strong seasonal effect in this region up to amplitude above 0.92 dB. The scintillation intensity fits better to gamma distribution at a high scintillation level taken into consideration the local meteorological parameters. Models comparison with experimental data also shows that the Karasawa model with the lowest percentage error of about 7% was found to be best fit for predicting propagation impairment relating to be fading at a Ku band frequency in this region. The overall results will provide information on scintillation margin needed for sizing antennas and amplifiers for reliable performance and the average bit-error probability on a scintillation-degraded digital satellite link in this region.

The spate of health challenges via the ingestion of radionuclides is still of concern especially in regions that have no clear documentation of background of radioactive sources. The present study evaluated the activity concentrations of naturally occurring radioactive nuclides in plants and their corresponding soil collected at Ibeshe and Covenant University community areas of Ogun State, Nigeria. The activity concentrations and other radiological risks from consuming the leafy vegetables were also estimated. The results show that the mean concentration of 226Ra, 232Th, 40K in the agricultural soil were found to be 24.18±2.31, 20.93±2.27, 20.95±1.9 for Ibeshe and 58.76±4.84, 26.06±1.93, 33.87±2.23, respectively for Covenant University. Whereas, for the leafy vegetables, the mean concentration of 226Ra, 232Th, 40K were found to be 5.02±0.9, 7.98±1.70, 427.82±29.75 for Ibeshe and 17.57±2.35, 22.19±3.0, and 424.17±25.15 for Covenant University Community. In comparison, all these values are within the recommended limits of 32.00 and 45.00, 420.00, Bqkg-1for 226Ra, 232Th, 40K according to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effect of Atomic Radiation (UNCEAR) except the mean value for Covenant University soil for 232Th which is slightly higher. The values obtained were comparable to the internationally recommended values. The mean value for excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR) for Ibeshe North is 31.08, while that of Canaanland (CU) is 239.03, respectively is lower than the recommended limits of other published papers 1.72 x 104 according to International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). These lower radiological risks indicate apparently that the chemical carcinogenic pollutants in the samples may be the major risk, inducing chemical parameters in the study area. This study will serve as a baseline data for any radiologically induced diseases. Significantly, it will serve as a baseline data for any radiologically induced diseases from vegetables in Nigeria and suggests further research on chemical toxicity risks on the same samples.