Category: Africa

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Savo Heleta, Researcher, Nelson Mandela University

Higher education institutions are frequent casualties in violent conflicts. In Palestine, Ukraine and Sudan, to mention only a few recent examples, university campuses have been bombed. Academics, staff and students have been killed, injured or displaced. Teaching, learning and research have been undermined or come to a halt.

Higher education plays a critical role in knowledge production, research, education and skills development in any society. In conflict-affected countries, the sector is also expected to support broader societal recovery, development and peacebuilding in the post-conflict period.

In the aftermath of violent conflicts, higher education systems require support to recover and rebuild. But that has not been a priority for foreign donors and development organisations. Over the past decade, scholars and policy documents have highlighted that conflict settings have been neglected in providing foreign aid to higher education.

As researchers we’re involved in a project supported by the Education Above All Foundation from Qatar. The project studies educational systems, processes and initiatives in fragile and conflict settings around the globe. It aims to provide scientific evidence for improved decision-making by governments, educational institutions and organisations.

In a recent paper, published in the journal Globalisation, Societies and Education as part of a special issue on universities in times of conflict, we analyse aid flows to higher education in conflict-affected countries during the 2013-2022 period.

Our analysis shows that most aid to higher education never reaches countries and institutions in need, but is spent on international scholarships to study in donor countries. It’s also skewed towards certain recipient countries. These aid patterns don’t help countries and higher education institutions to rebuild after conflict.

The evidence of neglect

In our research, we relied on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) aid flows data. We explored where the aid to higher education went, and what types of aid were provided by donors. Our focus was on 23 countries that were either in the midst of violent conflict or in a fragile post-conflict phase during 2013-2022.

Our findings indicate that most donors prefer to give international scholarship aid. They neglect local higher education in conflict settings. Overall, scholarship aid made up more than 80% of aid to higher education provided to the countries in our sample. From 2013 to 2022, scholarship aid saw strong growth, while the aid to local systems and institutions stagnated.

The main problem with scholarship aid is that it does not reach recipient countries. It is spent in donor countries on individual recipients’ tuition, living expenses and other costs. This type of aid supports only a small number of recipients, and is often used by donors as a soft power tool.

Our research further highlights that a few countries have received most of the aid, while other countries with similar needs have been neglected. Despite what donors say about the importance of supporting the countries with greatest needs, our analysis shows that this does not happen with higher education in conflict settings. Many countries in need of assistance have been neglected by donors over the past decade.

Decisions about the recipients of either type of aid to higher education are often political. The provision of funding does not necessarily align with the recipients’ needs but largely follows donors’ strategic interests and priorities.

Rethinking higher education aid

Conflict analysis scholars Sansom Milton and Sultan Barakat wrote in 2016 that the neglect of higher education represents a “major missed opportunity to invest in critical national capacities that are capable of catalysing an effective reconstruction and recovery process” in the aftermath of violent conflict.

This neglect should not come as a surprise. In most developed countries, which are some of the top aid donors, higher education has been organised around neoliberal principles. This had led to underfunding and neglect of the sector by governments. Their provision of aid to higher education in conflict settings is based on the same principles, with the same results.

Our findings present a bleak picture of neglect of higher education in countries affected by violent conflict. The indications for the future are even bleaker due to ongoing aid cuts by many donor countries.

Importantly, our research also provides a starting point for critical engagement with donors and organisations working on education in conflict settings. More critical research, advocacy, activism, engagement and practical work is needed to challenge and reverse the neglect.

Rethinking and reforming foreign aid practices requires moving beyond donors’ strategic interests and dismantling the neoliberal agenda which has shaped much of the thinking about aid, higher education and development in general for decades. This, however, will be a challenge as the politicisation of foreign aid is unlikely to go away in the foreseeable future.

Still, changes are possible. For example:

• Donors can redirect some scholarship funds to education systems, institutions and locally driven initiatives in conflict settings.

• Donors can shift some international scholarship aid to domestic scholarships. This would make funding available for more students and would support local institutions.

Supporting and rebuilding higher education after violent conflict is crucial to enable systems and institutions to conduct research, develop relevant knowledge, provide quality education and contribute to societal recovery and peacebuilding.

– Countries need higher education to rebuild after conflict – study finds foreign aid isn’t going where it’s needed
– https://theconversation.com/countries-need-higher-education-to-rebuild-after-conflict-study-finds-foreign-aid-isnt-going-where-its-needed-274995

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Keiichi Ohnaka, Associate professor, Universidad Andrés Bello (Chile)

For decades, astronomers have been watching WOH G64, an enormous heavyweight star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy visible with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere. This star is more than 1,500 times larger than the Sun and emitting over 100,000 times more energy. For a long time, red supergiant WOH G64 looked like a star steadily reaching the end of its life, shedding material and swelling in size as it began to run out of fuel.

Astronomers didn’t think its final demise would happen anytime soon, because no-one has ever seen a known red supergiant die. But in recent years astronomers – including our team working with the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) – discovered that this star has started to change, growing dimmer than before and seemingly warmer. This has surprised scientists and suggests the star’s final stages of life may be more complicated, and perhaps unfold faster, than once thought.

Massive stars, more than about eight times the mass of the Sun, produce so much energy, which we see as light, that they run out of fuel within millions of years, instead of the billions of years of the Sun’s lifespan.

Most massive stars become gigantic, cool stars in the final million years or so of their life – so-called red supergiants. All red supergiants blow gaseous winds, losing weight as they do so. Some do this so strongly that the star becomes enveloped in a shroud of the ejected material containing gas and solid particles like tiny sand grains – called dust in astronomy. This makes them look dim in visual light, but very bright in the infrared where the dust shines.

In the 1960s Swedish astronomers Westerlund, Olander and Hedin discovered number 64 in their catalogue of red stars. They thought nothing of it, as it looked like an unremarkable red giant star, something the Sun and most other stars will become later in life. But when in the 1980s Nasa, the UK and The Netherlands launched the InfraRed Astronomical Satellite into space, astronomers Elias, Frogel and Schwering discovered that WOH G64 is the most luminous, coolest and dustiest red supergiant in the entire Large Magellanic Cloud, which harbours over a thousand red supergiants. More observations over the following decades showed the strong, steady modulations of the brightness expected of a pulsating star of that kind.

Then, in 2024, our team (both authors of this article and our collaborators in Germany and the US) succeeded in taking a close-up image of WOH G64 using the European Southern Observatory’s telescopes and revealed a fresh cloud of dust close to the star. It was the sharpest picture of a star in another galaxy ever taken (comparable to being able to spot an astronaut walk on the Moon from Earth). We discovered that in the last decade, unexpectedly, the star had started to eject much more dust than before. At that time, we did not have an idea about why and how.

It turns out, WOH G64 had also become dimmer, possibly because of the dust cloud it had ejected, and started to pulsate less and a little more quickly, suggesting it had shrunk. At the same time, the star seemed to look a lot warmer, leading some to believe it might have entered a new stage of its life – a so-called yellow hypergiant on its final path to doom.

All these phenomena are happening on a human time scale, which is usually not the case when we observe stars. This makes WOH G64 even more special. Is this star offering us an opportunity not to be missed to witness the final death throes of massive stars?

Now, as we start 2026, we have announced that observations we have obtained using the Southern African Large Telescope give us some clues about what is going on with WOH G64. The SALT observations show the overwhelming presence of ions in the vicinity of the star, which means that the gas is heated up to high temperatures by what must be a much hotter star. This should not have surprised anyone as the hot gas had been spotted in the 1980s and ever since. But we also found the imprint of molecules, implying cool gas (because molecules break up at high temperatures) likely in the atmosphere of the red supergiant. It did not appear to have changed into a yellow hypergiant, at least not yet.

For a long time, astronomers have suspected that the red supergiant has a smaller, hotter twin living alongside it, but they have somehow been reluctant to claim this in publications. And now it looks to be the elephant in the room. One way of making sense of our observations is that this hotter star, looking blue in contrast to its bigger, cooler, red sibling, heats gas it might have captured from the red supergiant’s wind. Now that the red supergiant has faded, the presence of the heated gas has just become more conspicuous.

If the orbit of the blue star is not a circle but quite elongated (Earth’s orbit around the Sun only slightly deviates from a circle), the distance between the blue star and the red supergiant varies. It may have got closer in recent years, and its gravity might have caused the atmosphere of the red supergiant to stretch out. This would make it more transparent overall, allowing us to see the warmer interior, but with cool, dark molecular patches left in places. That would also have made it easier for dust to form further out in its wind.

If that is true, then once the blue star starts to recede again on its orbit, WOH G64 might regain its former red supergiant glory. On the other hand, if it did throw off its coat entirely, then the molecules would disappear, and with it, the dust, and we would gain a clean view of the star. Then again, WOH G64 might do something else unexpected. It certainly teaches astronomers to be humble.

– A giant star is changing before our eyes and astronomers are watching in real time
– https://theconversation.com/a-giant-star-is-changing-before-our-eyes-and-astronomers-are-watching-in-real-time-274562

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Sharief Hendricks, Senior Lecturer Department of Human Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences , University of Cape Town

Children in South Africa are back at school after their summer holidays. My son, aged five, has just started school at Wynberg Boys Junior, a school based in Cape Town’s southern suburbs with a strong record of playing rugby.

Like most rugby-loving families in South Africa, we hope our child discovers the pleasures of the game. We would like him to enjoy the sport, but we want him to do it in the safest way possible.

As a contact sport, rugby has the potential to result in some serious injuries if players aren’t properly prepared and supervised. Full contact tackle rugby involves repeated dynamic physical-technical contests for the ball and territory, which expose players to injury.

In South Africa, the governing body, SA Rugby, has a new policy that children under the age of nine can only play non-contact rugby. Non-contact rugby incorporates all the core elements of rugby like running, catching, passing and decision-making, but it is done without the repeated physical-technical contests of the tackle. Age categories Under 8 and younger are not allowed to engage in the full contact tackle rugby and should play tag rugby and SA T1 Rugby, a version of World Rugby’s globally endorsed non-contact game.

The non-contact game is designed for all ages, sizes and abilities, including children and first-time players. The new standards apply to all schools, clubs and associated members working in youth rugby. Before playing full-contact tackle rugby though, players will have to build the necessary skills and confidence to contest the tackle.

I am an injury prevention and player welfare researcher at the Health through Physical Activity, Lifestyle and Sport Research Centre at the University of Cape Town and a visiting professor at Leeds Beckett University. I am also a research consultant for sport governing bodies, including SA Rugby and World Rugby. Recently, with my co-author Stephen West from the University of Calgary, I published a paper outlining the current policies in different countries for introducing contact in youth sports.

The article weighed up the potential risks and benefits of an earlier versus later introduction to contact and described what needs to be considered when designing policies for this. We concluded that the introduction to contact should be a gradual, clearly defined process. It should build physiological, psychological and technical competencies to perform contact safely and optimally.

We think the new SA Rugby policies are an evidence-based investment in our children’s long-term rugby participation. The rules are catching up with those of other rugby-playing nations. By giving young players the cognitive, physical and technical foundations they need, we are making the game more sustainable, more enjoyable and safer for the next generation.

What the research says

In the research, we highlight that exposure to a range of movement experiences early on may develop skill capacities that will facilitate the learning of more advanced skills. Research has shown that significant developmental improvements in cognitive processes, such as processing speed (reaction time) and executive function, occur between the ages of five and seven years, and children become more interested in structured, rule-bound play.

We argue that contact skills can be introduced between the ages of 7 and 11 years. We also highlight that before any sport-specific techniques are introduced, players need to condition themselves for contact through skills such as falling, grappling and wrestling. These fundamental movements serve to prepare players for contact, for example, how to break a fall or physically engage (push, pull, drive, let go of) another player.

Players also need to learn how to carry the ball into contact and tackle.

Training environments should be designed to provide adequate skill development which prepares players for the demands of tackle contact rugby sport.

Coaches should understand the game demands for their age group to manipulate training to achieve specific learning objectives. For instance, in junior rugby, children tend to cluster around the ball – what we call the “beehive effect”. Our research shows this creates tackle patterns that are different from those in the adult game, with junior rugby involving more jersey pulls and arm tackles than direct front tackles.

Coaches can use this insight to adjust field size to control contact speed, and introduce rules that encourage evasion over direct confrontation.

Guidance and preparation

With input from leading researchers, practitioners and coaches in rugby, our research group developed a tackle training framework to help coaches and trainers.

For example, it provides a guide for how coaches can progress players from environments that are low-speed, controlled and structured to environments that are more representative of the game situations.

Families can also help prepare children for the joys of tackle rugby:

• give them the opportunity to participate in a range of sports

• expose them to forms of physical contact such as wrestling and grappling in the form of play, and activities that develop their landing, falling and rolling skills

• encourage collision play with padded or cushioned equipment

• explore sports that specifically promote body control and awareness in controlled contact situations, such as karate.

Of course, children develop at different rates, and many factors influence when a child is ready for contact. This is why a standardised, progressive approach benefits everyone.

– New rugby rules for South African kids aim to keep them safe: what does the research say?
– https://theconversation.com/new-rugby-rules-for-south-african-kids-aim-to-keep-them-safe-what-does-the-research-say-274458

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Assistant Professor, Harvard University

Lauretta Ngcobo, who passed away in 2015, left a singular and impactful literary legacy in South Africa. Even in a life of exile and resistance to apartheid and white minority rule in the country. As a novelist, feminist thinker and freedom fighter, her intellectual contributions were foundational.

Ngcobo’s work often deals with the realities of black women facing both political and social oppression. While And They Didn’t Die (1990) is considered to be her masterpiece, her first novel Cross of Gold was published in 1981. Awards and recognition came relatively late in her career.

In a new documentary film And She Didn’t Die, producer and director Kethiwe Ngcobo creates a cinematic tribute that is at once an intimate and politically urgent portrait of her mother Lauretta. But what does it mean for a daughter to film her mother, not as a private act of remembrance but as a contribution to public history?

Structured as a conversation between them, the film moves between personal memory and historical reckoning, asking how lives shaped by political struggle are remembered and who gets to do the remembering.

As a scholar of African literature, I am aware of how few historical films exist about African women writers, and how often their voices are absent from audio and visual archives. And She Didn’t Die matters as a rare and powerful act of preservation.

It is a kind of preservation that is necessary. It points to a broader history in which African women writers, often working under conditions of exile, censorship, or displacement, have been made vulnerable to cultural disappearance.

Returning home

The opening scene allows the viewer to witness the historical return of Lauretta Ngcobo to her birthright. Against looming terrain, she reflects from a moving car, asking in her language, isiZulu: iphi inkaba yakho? – where is your umbilical cord?

The question gestures not only to physical return but to longing, for a place that exists both before her and within her. “I always find myself coming here,” she says. Land is a metaphor for what exile takes away and what memory insists on preserving. Ngcobo’s reflections feel insistently present.

Throughout the film, she speaks directly about exile as the most painful condition of her life:

There was no home. I had no home. That was the highest point of my painful exile, my painful experience as a politician.

Exile, as the film makes clear, is not only geographic displacement but a loss of self. Forced underground by the apartheid regime, Ngcobo lived an itinerant life, but always oriented towards return. Survival became a form of suspension, living for a future that was constantly deferred.

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Read more: Travel as activism: 6 stories of Black women who refused to ‘stay put’ in apartheid South Africa

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Besides Ngcobo as the main character, the film’s cast also includes her husband, sister, children, grandchildren, a scholar, and close friends, each offering fragments of her and how she moved through the world. In doing so, it participates in a broader reassessment of South Africa’s literary canon that has long privileged male voices.

The film also pays attention to the costs of political commitment, particularly within family life. Ngcobo’s elder daughter Khosi Mabena reflects:

I missed the mum of small things.

The remark captures the emotional complexity of growing up alongside a mother whose responsibilities as a writer and activist often took precedence. The film does not sentimentalise this absence, nor does it frame it as moral failure. Instead, it allows the ambivalence to stand, acknowledging the real losses produced by lives lived in struggle.

At the same time, And She Didn’t Die insists that Ngcobo’s politics were never separable from care. She wrote from an understanding that resistance does not take place only in prisons, parliaments or at public rallies, but also in homes, spaces historically dismissed as domestic or minor, yet central to women’s survival.

Ngcobo practised a form of political motherhood in which care was expanded beyond the private sphere, even as that expansion came at an intimate cost.

Writing as freedom

And She Didn’t Die also responds to cultural loss. Many writers of Ngcobo’s generation, particularly women, remain absent from public memory, despite the promise of accessibility in the digital age. Their voices and images are missing. This film functions as a corrective. We hear Ngcobo speak. We see her age, laugh, remember. The documentary insists on her presence.

South African scholar and writer Barbara Boswell, author of Lauretta Ngcobo: Writing as the Practice of Freedom, situates Ngcobo in the film within a longer genealogy:

Her story didn’t start with herself. It started with her mother, her grandmother and her great-grandmother.

That lineage continues through her daughter Kethiwe, who uses the camera as a storytelling tool, extending a long line of work.

Ngcobo reflects on discovering feminism in exile:

Feminism is what I found in England. I collided with these forces with great joy.

Yet she is also clear-eyed about the limits placed on women within liberation movements:

In the main struggle mine was a cheering role, in support of the men. I had no voice. I could only assent, never contradict, nor offer alternatives. All decision-making positions were and are still in the hands of men.

Writing, then, becomes a form of freedom. As Ngcobo puts it:

My writing arises from the depths I cannot reach.

In literature, she sets the terms: she creates worlds where women speak, decide, and act. As South African scholar Zinhle ka’Nobuhlaluse notes, Ngcobo was not merely a “struggle wife”. Her marriage to A.B. Ngcobo, a stalwart of the anti-apartheid struggle, did not define her life or limit her agency.

Through her writing, she claims autonomy, forging intellectual and emotional spaces that neither exile, political struggle, nor domestic expectation could fully contain.

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Read more: How a film is fighting the erasure of South African activist Dulcie September

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And She Didn’t Die is ultimately a film about survival of memory, of voice, of lineage. It is a tender and necessary portrait of a woman whose work was never marginal and whose return to public view feels inseparable from the present moment in which South Africa is once again asking what freedom means, and who gets to define it.

The film is not yet available for streaming. It is screening on film festivals around the world

– South African novelist Lauretta Ngcobo is the subject of a tender and urgent new film
– https://theconversation.com/south-african-novelist-lauretta-ngcobo-is-the-subject-of-a-tender-and-urgent-new-film-274432