Students' learning of and performance in mathematics is affected by a number of factors, including students' attitude towards the subject, teachers instructional practices, and school environment. This study was conducted to investigate students' attitudes towards learning mathematics in Tanzania. It also sought to ascertain reasons for the liking or disliking mathematics and the relationship between attitude and performance. We employed the ABC Model and the Walberg's Theory of Productivity to investigate students' attitudes towards mathematics and associated factors. The quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 419 primary school students, 318 secondary school students, and 132 College students from 17 schools and 6 colleges in mainland Tanzania using a survey. The collected data were analysed using percentages, means, standard deviations, ANOVA, correlation, regression and thematic analysis. The results show that initially students exhibit a positive attitude towards mathematics, but their attitude becomes less positive as the students move forward to higher levels of education. A significant positive weak correlation between students' attitude and performance was established. Mathematics' enjoyment and attitude significantly predicted students' performance in our data. The factors influencing the students' liking or disliking of mathematics constituted student's aptitude attribute, instructional and social psychological environmental factors. Furthermore, the results show that failure in examinations is attributed to teacher didactic strategies, institutional resources, poor learning and examination strategies, and failure to understand instructions. The results provide insights for future research and inciting changes in teaching-learning practices that would promote mathematics enjoyment and subsequent better performance in the subject.

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One of the aims of teaching and learning mathematics is to encourage and enable learners to become confident in using mathematics to analyze and solve practical problems in real-life situations. However, while a few students prosper in learning of mathematics, many students find it difficult and ultimately fail the subject. This study analyses students' mathematics performance data and examines the perception of teachers on the causes of poor academic performance in mathematics among students in Tanzania. The study also probes on teachers' emotions when teaching mathematics. The study utilizes the primary, secondary and tertiary students' performance data during the period 2008 to 2016. The data were obtained from the National Examination Council of Tanzania and the College of Business Education records as well as 28 semistructured interviews with purposively selected teachers and lecturers. Data are analyzed through content analysis and descriptive statistics. Findings reveal higher failure rates in primary and secondary schools particularly lower secondary school. Gender differences exist at all levels of education with girls underperforming in primary, lower secondary, and college examinations due to cultural factors impacting female students' learning. Factors associated with student's poor performance in mathematics are in line with Walberg's productivity model but for Tanzania, policy environment and culture also play an important role. The findings reveal that majority of mathematics teachers and lecturers possess mixed emotions towards student's ability and the teaching-learning environment. Measures to improve the situation suggested include; enhancement in teaching-learning environments, classroom instructions, teaching skills, students learning skills, teacher training programs, attitude of the community, and accountability. The results provide information about the trends of mathematics achievement and associated factors for educators and other stakeholders to consider the implication in curriculum and instructional practices of mathematics at all levels of education.

Women entrepreneurs have significant contributions to the economies of sub-Saharan Africa. However, women in this region are facing a shocking array of challenges in their business environment. This paper examines the challenges facing women entrepreneurs in the food processing industry in Iringa, Tanzania. The study employs interviews and focus group discussions in collecting data and utilizes content analysis for interpreting findings. The findings indicate that these women entrepreneurs face problems of lack of access to markets, unequal social responsibility and lack of enough capital. Our findings also show that women entrepreneurs in the food processing business of the region employ an array of transversal strategies in order tackle and mitigate the socio-cultural challenges, including the creation of economic groups and entrepreneurship clubs. Our work sheds light on the issues that women entrepreneurs in the food processing industry struggle with in Iringa. Furthermore, we present the general and transversal strategies that they use in order to mitigate the problem and finally put forward the use of mobile technology as a transversal tool.

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Learning diaries are instruments through which students can reflect on their learning experience. Students' sentiments, emotions, opinions and attitudes are embedded in their learning diaries as part of the process of understanding their progress during the course and the self-awareness of their goals. Learning diaries are also a very informative feedback source for instructors regarding the students' emotional well-being. However the number of diaries created during a course can become a daunting task to be manually analyzed with care, particularly when the class is large. To tackle this problem, in this paper we present a functional system for analyzing and visualizing student emotions expressed in learning diaries. The system allows instructors to automatically extract emotions and the changes in these emotions throughout students' learning experience as expressed in their diaries. The emotions extracted by the system are based on Plutchik's eight emotion categories, and they are shown over the time period that the diaries were written. The potential impact and usefulness of our system are highlighted during our experiments with promising results for improving the communication between instructors and students and enhancing the learning experience.

Mobile marketing apps have been progressively employed as business gadget innovations in developing economies. Research has acknowledged a number of encounters between women entrepreneurs and innovation opportunities. One identified opportunity is the application of technology to enable women entrepreneurs' access to market information with ease. This paper reports the cocreation process of a mobile application contextualized to Tanzanian women entrepreneurs to facilitate access to market information for improving their business performance and livelihood. Our study employs design science research (DSR) strategy for the cocreation and codesign of the mobile application artifact. After evaluating in the wild the mobile application, the women entrepreneurs participating in the study reported that through the codesigned mobile phone app access to market information is facilitated, and their business and the networks could be expanded. The contribution of our paper highlights the benefits of employing codesign and cocreation in combination with DSR to achieve a meaningful and contextualized virtual platform for accessing market information and for business networks expansion through direct contact with target consumers.