Category: Africa

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Clive Jimmy William Brown, Teaching Practice Coordinator, Lecturer & Faculty of Education Transformation Chairperson , Cape Peninsula University of Technology

South Africa’s schools still carry the imprint of apartheid, where resources, language and geography were deliberately divided according to “race”. Many communities today remain deeply unequal in terms of school infrastructure and resources.

For student teachers, this means that placement for practical experience in one school can feel worlds apart from a placement just a few kilometres away.

One school may offer smaller classes and well-resourced classrooms with access to textbooks and digital tools. Another contends with overcrowded classes, limited teaching materials and little to no digital infrastructure.

These disparities are not abstract. They shape daily teaching decisions, classroom management strategies and professional confidence. This makes one placement feel like a supported apprenticeship, and another an exercise in endurance and improvisation.

My doctoral research in education studies shows that many final-year student teachers actively avoid schools that differ from their own schooling backgrounds. Instead, they select placements that feel comfortable and familiar, even if this limits their professional growth and reinforces historical divides in education.

My research, drawing on in-depth interviews and institutional documents, reveals why this happens, and why it matters for equity, learning and justice in education.

Understanding student teachers’ choices matters for any country grappling with inequality and diversity in teacher preparation. Countries need teachers who can work confidently across different school contexts.

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Read more: Elite schools in South Africa: how quiet gatekeeping keeps racial patterns in place

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The quiet pull of comfort

In the programmes I oversee as a teacher educator, student teachers are placed in schools twice a year for teaching practice blocks of four weeks at a time. This amounts to about 32 weeks over a four-year degree. Placements are formally coordinated by universities. However, operational pressures and the growing number of student teachers mean that, in practice, many students find the placements themselves. The options are often shaped, too, by whether schools are willing to host students from particular universities.

A policy framework that took effect in 2016 sought to standardise teacher qualifications nationally and provide learning across diverse schooling contexts. But when student teachers select schools for their compulsory teaching practice, they are able to fine-tune the placement programme to suit their own needs rather than its broader transformative purpose.

Their choice appears simple: go where you feel you will “fit in”, be supported and pass.

The students I followed over several years consistently chose schools that:

• resembled their former schools

• matched their language and cultural norms

• felt socially “safe”, meaning that these environments aligned closely with their own ethnic, class and racial backgrounds, and offered predictability, familiarity and reduced emotional risk during an already demanding practicum period

• promised minimum disruption to completing the four-year degree quickly.

Many framed their decisions in terms of pragmatism:

I just want to finish and qualify.

Others spoke honestly about their fears, including fear of failing, not belonging or being judged in communities unlike their own. As one student confessed,

Teaching is already stressful. Why add discomfort?

A sense of comfort reduced anxiety and helped them “get through” their degrees. But it also meant that many avoided the kinds of classrooms where they might have learned how to work across differences, the very classrooms they might encounter later in their careers.

My future research aims to examine how early teaching practice placements shape graduates’ later career choices.

Expedience over authenticity

Many students themselves came from historically marginalised and economically impoverished communities. But they still worried that more challenging placements might expose them to failure, conflict or unsupportive mentors. Some feared that schools with limited resources would make it harder for them to demonstrate their teaching competence, manage classrooms effectively and access the kinds of support needed to learn how to teach well.

Only two chose placements in unfamiliar contexts. For most others, the comfort of familiarity mattered more than challenge.

In effect, the practicum became a credential-seeking exercise rather than a transformative professional learning experience.

This is not a moral failing on the part of the students. It reflects:

• pressure to complete degrees quickly

• fears about employability

• uneven support systems across schools

• deeply embedded memories of their own unequal schooling experiences.

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Read more: Why do South African teachers still threaten children with a beating? A psychologist explains

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Why this matters beyond the university

If teaching practice reinforces comfort rather than courage, it might narrow, rather than widen, what education can do.

My research and that of others suggests there could be three consequences.

1. Persistent inequity in teacher confidence: in “unfamiliar” kinds of schools, teachers may feel unprepared, anxious and sometimes resistant.

2. Reproduction of historical divides: placements could signal that some teachers “belong” in certain communities and not in others.

3. Lost opportunities for professional growth: discomfort can encourage reflective learning.

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Read more: What student teachers learn when putting theory into classroom practice

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But discomfort must not become harm

My findings also caution against romanticising discomfort.

A small minority of students chose unfamiliar placements in poorer, more diverse or conflict-affected school contexts. This was driven by personal convictions and a desire to challenge themselves. In interviews, reflective journals and post-placement discussions, they reported feeling more confident and adaptable as teachers and classroom managers. They had a deeper sense of professional purpose.

These positive outcomes were closely tied to strong mentoring and consistent university support. Without that, they reported feelings of panic, isolation and emotional exhaustion.

Exposure to diversity must be intentional, scaffolded and humane. When unsupported student teachers are faced with large class sizes, multilingual classrooms, limited resources, long and costly commutes, or concerns about personal safety, it could be a risk rather than a growth opportunity.

What universities and policymakers can change

The research suggests several levers for re-designing teaching practice.

1. Structured placement pathways: ensure that every student rotates through at least one context that differs meaningfully from their own, with a clear rationale and adequate preparation.

2. Mentor development: invest in mentor-teachers who understand how to support novices across cultural and socioeconomic divides.

3. Shared responsibility for placements: universities, schools and education departments must collaborate to distribute opportunities equitably.

4. Reflective supervision: create guided reflective spaces where students make sense of discomfort rather than flee from it.

5. Transparent expectations: frame teaching practice not as a hurdle to clear, but as an ethical apprenticeship into public-serving professionalism.

South Africa’s education system still reflects deep structural inequality. If future teachers primarily work in schools that resemble their own histories, those divides could be cemented into the next generation.

– Student teachers in South Africa choose comfort over challenge in practical placements: but there’s a hidden cost
– https://theconversation.com/student-teachers-in-south-africa-choose-comfort-over-challenge-in-practical-placements-but-theres-a-hidden-cost-272938

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Alemayehu Weldemariam, Ph.D. Fellow, Center for Constitutional Democracy, Indiana University

Israel’s decision to recognise Somaliland as an independent nation has been described as historic by Somaliland’s president, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi. He framed the December 2025 declaration as the first decisive breach in the wall of diplomatic isolation that has surrounded Somaliland for more than three decades.

Somaliland has operated as a fully functional de facto state with defined territory, population and government since declaring independence from Somalia in 1991. But it lacks international recognition. This would allow it full participation in the global community, such as membership in the United Nations, as well as boosting its economic opportunities.

I am a scholar of peace and conflict resolution, constitutional design and constitutional law, with a regional focus on the Horn of Africa. My work includes examining regional peace and security.

Based on this deep knowledge of the region, I would argue that Tel Aviv’s decision is indeed consequential. But not because it resolves anything.

Its significance lies in the fact that it has elevated a question of legal status into a strategic contest unfolding within the world’s most volatile geopolitical corridor.

Over the last decade the Red Sea – which links the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean – has become the frontline of a new multipolar order. The region has been transformed into a dense arena of overlapping crises. These include state collapses in Sudan, Yemen and Somalia, and Ethiopia’s destabilising quest for maritime access. There is also the intensification of Gulf rivalry and great power competition, which includes China’s consolidation of a coastal arc of influence.

The Red Sea region now hosts the highest concentration of foreign military bases on earth. It also sits astride critical global trade routes.

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Read more: Ethiopia’s deal with Somaliland upends regional dynamics, risking strife across the Horn of Africa

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Against this backdrop, Israel’s recognition unsettles an already fragile equilibrium. While the decision alters the board, it doesn’t end the game. It increases Somaliland’s strategic value while increasing its geopolitical toxicity in a region already under strain.

The African Union and the fear of precedent

The African Union viewed the Somaliland question as a dangerous exception that must not be entertained. Its position rests on a single overriding fear: that recognition would weaken the postcolonial settlement built on inherited borders.

Somaliland’s claim is that it merely reasserts the boundaries of the former British protectorate. But the AU’s doctrine is rigid by design. It does not distinguish between border revisionism and constitutional secession within colonial lines. For the AU, the precedent is intolerable.

If African politics were governed by doctrine alone, the matter would end there. But it doesn’t.

For Ethiopia, the Somaliland question is inseparable from the Red Sea itself. Landlocked, populous and strategically exposed, Ethiopia treats maritime access as a condition of state survival. Recognising Somaliland would not automatically grant Ethiopia access to the sea. But it would fundamentally change the bargaining structure through which such access could be secured. Recognition would convert what is currently an informal, reversible commercial arrangement into a sovereignty-linked exchange.

With nearly all its trade flowing through Djibouti at enormous cost, Addis Ababa’s anxiety is real – and destabilising.

Here the wider Red Sea crisis intrudes directly. Ethiopia’s quest for access unfolds amid collapsing neighbours, proliferating militias, drone warfare supplied by Gulf states and external powers, and an increasingly militarised coastline.

It is not yet clear which direction Ethiopia has decided to take in its relations with Somaliland. Last year, prime minister Abiy Ahmed quietly retreated from the memorandum of understanding signed in 2024 with Somaliland. This was after it became clear that the move would provoke severe African Union repercussions.

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Read more: Somaliland-Ethiopia port deal: international opposition flags complex Red Sea politics

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For the present, therefore, any meaningful external support for Somaliland recognition comes only from Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

What is emerging in the region is an increasingly polarised alignment. On one side are Egypt, the Sudanese Armed Forces, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia. On the other are the UAE, the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, Libya, Somaliland, Israel – and Ethiopia, despite its efforts to conceal the extent of its involvement.

Some states continue to hedge. South Sudan, Uganda and Kenya have sought to avoid choosing sides.

Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia

In Israel’s recognition announcement, the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, explicitly situated Somaliland within the logic of the Abraham Accords. Signed in 2020, the accords are a set of US-brokered agreements that normalised relations between Israel and several Arab states. They link diplomatic recognition to security cooperation, economic integration and regional realignment.

By invoking the accords, Netanyahu is seeking to pull Somaliland into the gravitational field of the Gulf. And, above all, to signal the influence of the United Arab Emirates. The UAE’s imprint in the Horn of Africa in recent years is evident in ports, bases, logistics corridors, and paramilitary finance across the region.

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, therefore, is a strategic move that aligns it with the UAE’s economic and security architecture in the Red Sea. It is not that Israel has suddenly developed an interest in Somaliland’s legal merits, nor that it is simply acting at the UAE’s behest. Rather, recognition makes sense because Israel is choosing to embed itself within an Emirati-centred political economy of the Red Sea.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, condemned Israel’s decision on the grounds that it entrenched unilateral secession and violates international law. In doing so, it aligned itself with the African Union’s position while asserting independent leadership in the Red Sea arena.

China

Beijing’s resistance to Somaliland’s recognition is not about Africa alone. It is about precedent in a maritime corridor central to China’s global strategy to develop an unbroken arc of influence from the Horn to the Suez. It already has a military base in Djibouti and is expanding naval diplomacy along the African coast.

Recognition of Somaliland by major powers would validate a dangerous idea from Beijing’s perspective: that durable quasi-states can eventually overcome diplomatic isolation through persistence.

The outcome is ambiguity, but not necessarily failure

Seen whole, the Somaliland question is not a recognition cascade but a coordination failure unfolding in the world’s most dangerous maritime corridor. Multiple enforcers – the African Union, China, Saudi Arabia and others in the Middle East – raise the cost of recognition. Multiple bargainers – Ethiopia above all – demand compensation commensurate with those costs.

As a consequence, recognition has developed into a scarce and risky currency, spent only when the return justifies the danger.

History suggests that unresolved questions of sovereignty rarely disappear. They linger, reshaped by power and circumstance, until either violence settles them or institutions adapt. In the Red Sea today, institutions lag behind reality. What emerges is not resolution, but managed contradiction.

This may disappoint advocates of clarity. It should not surprise students of history. International order has never been sustained by justice alone. It endures through arrangements that most actors find tolerable and none find ideal. In the Red Sea – now the frontline of a new global order – ambiguity is not failure. It is the price paid for avoiding something worse.

In the absence of a power willing to bear the full costs of finality, ambiguity will persist – not as a failure of will, but as the international system’s preferred substitute for resolution.

– Israel’s recognition of Somaliland is about political alliances, not legal principles
– https://theconversation.com/israels-recognition-of-somaliland-is-about-political-alliances-not-legal-principles-273488