Category: English

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Wanjiku Chebet Kanjumba, Ph.D. Candidate in Aerospace Engineering, University of Florida

A patrol boat off the coast of Gabon intercepted three trawlers in July 2026, inside the Grand Sud Reserve. This is one of west and central Africa’s largest marine reserves, where industrial trawling is banned. None of the trawlers held a valid licence. The patrol found them because analysts at the non-profit Global Fishing Watch had studied satellite data and worked out where to look.

Most illegal fishing is not caught at all. In 2024, researchers at Global Fishing Watch found that between 72% and 76% of the world’s industrial fishing vessels never appear in public tracking. Most of that activity is concentrated around south and south-east Asia and Africa.

Africa has about 30,500km of coastline shared among 38 coastal states, and illegal fishing costs African economies an estimated US$11 billion to US$13 billion a year.

The reason illegal fishing continues is not complicated. Public tracking depends on vessels reporting their own positions through the automatic identification system, a transponder designed to stop ships colliding. A crew that does not want to be seen switches it off.

But African governments are still leaning on the system of self-reporting. In June 2026, at the Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, 15 governments signed a declaration promising to open up information about who owns fishing vessels and where they operate. Seven were African, Somalia among them.

There is another way to track illegal fishing, however: from satellites that look for vessels directly.

I am a PhD candidate in aerospace engineering at the University of Florida, where I design spacecraft systems and the software that coordinates them. My supervisor, Norman Fitz-Coy, and I designed a tracking system for the Somali Basin, the stretch of the western Indian Ocean off the Horn of Africa between Somalia and Kenya. It is one of the richest tuna grounds in the world and among the least patrolled.

We concluded that the watching is the easy part. A system that could keep these waters under near-constant observation is affordable and can be built with technology that exists today. But it has to be designed for the Equator instead of borrowed from designs built for other latitudes. Also, even a perfect version runs into a limit that has nothing to do with satellites.

That limit is enforcement. A satellite can show you a vessel. It cannot board one, and it cannot bring a case to court. Overcoming that takes the things no spacecraft supplies: neighbouring states willing to share the cost and the patrols, and the political will to act on what they are shown.

Key design elements

Orbit

Almost every Earth observation satellite flies an orbit that passes close to the poles and crosses the Equator at the same local time each day. It spends much of each circuit above the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the near-empty latitudes between. For a country sitting on the Equator, such as Kenya, Somalia or Gabon, most of those laps are wasted.

We modelled a shell of 24 satellites tilted at just 20 degrees to the Equator. Over the Somali Basin it returns roughly every 1.1 hours, against 3.4 hours for the same 24 satellites flown over the poles. Put plainly, satellites hugging the Equator see the basin about three times more often. Commercial radar operators have begun flying tilted orbits at 40 and 45 degrees for this reason, but none fly low enough to concentrate on these waters.

Sensors

Finding a boat and identifying it are two different jobs. Radar picks out a vessel as a bright dot across a wide strip of ocean. Telling whether that dot is a licensed trawler or a 7 metre skiff needs an image sharp enough to resolve detail well under a metre, and no single sensor does both. A wide sensor finds candidates and a sharp one is pointed at them afterwards, so the system must decide in orbit, within seconds, which dots deserve a second look.

Power and data

Radar is power hungry. A 100kg radar satellite carries enough stored energy to image for about 4.5 minutes per orbit and spends the remaining 90 or so minutes charging. Those few minutes still generate roughly 690GB a day, while the ground stations serving the region can pull down between 120GB and 360GB. There are not many of them. The main ones are the Italian-run Broglio Space Centre at Malindi on the Kenyan coast, and the South African National Space Agency’s antennas at Hartebeesthoek, some 4,000km to the south.

So, the satellite must sort its own pictures before sending them, keeping what might be a vessel and discarding the rest. That changes what it has to be. Not a camera shipping pictures home for people to examine, but something that recognises a boat by itself, in orbit, with nobody watching.

Cost

The system we costed has all of those constraints designed into it, the tilted orbit, the two kinds of sensor, the onboard sorting and the thin downlink. It comes to about US$347 million over five years, or roughly US$25 for every confirmed detection. Against US$11 billion in annual losses from illegal fishing, cost is not the obstacle.

The harder part is getting it used

A constellation is only worth building if governments act on what it shows, and some countries have already shown what that commitment looks like using the self-reporting data they have now. Indonesia, Peru, Chile, and Costa Rica publish their national vessel tracking data, turning an enforcement feed that was private into something anyone can check. East Africa has its own version.

FISH-i Africa, a task force of eight western Indian Ocean states including Somalia and Kenya, has since 2012 pooled intelligence on suspect vessels across borders. It has worked over 35 investigations, caught vessels sailing under forged licences and false identities, and had illegal operators fined and brought to court, largely by sharing information its members already held.

So, what would it take for African governments to buy into a constellation? Mostly, not paying for it alone. The US$347 million works out at about US$69 million a year. Split eight ways across the FISH-i Africa states, that is roughly US$9 million a country per year for continuous coverage of waters they already share. The expensive way to buy this capability is one nation at a time.

What needs to happen next

Our study set out six strategies for using space and airborne systems to support African maritime security. Five are ordinary engineering, covering the constellation itself, fusing radar with other sensors, the ground computing to handle what comes down, smaller and better sensors, and aircraft or drones to fill the gaps between satellite passes.

We rejected the sixth ourselves. It was a concept for microsatellites carrying high-powered lasers to disable a pirate vessel’s engine or communications from orbit, and it failed on the physics before anyone reached the legal objections.

The finding that surprised us most was where the system finally breaks. It is not the cameras. It is the courts. A vessel that has been seen, identified and reported still has to be intercepted, boarded, charged and tried. Where that does not happen, the detection produces a cost and no security.

In Gabon, the patrol was only half the story. The trawlers’ owner later settled with the authorities, and getting there took inspectors, prosecutors, courts and the legal authority to board a foreign vessel. Those are people, institutions, and laws.

Africa can build the eyes. The orbit is understood, the sensors exist and the price is modest next to the losses. The Mombasa declaration is a reasonable place to begin, but it rests on a system three quarters of the fleet has already stepped outside. Seeing the outsiders is an engineering problem with an answer. What happens next is the harder one.

– Illegal fishing is thriving in African waters – a satellite system could help change that
– https://theconversation.com/illegal-fishing-is-thriving-in-african-waters-a-satellite-system-could-help-change-that-292685

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Nhlanhla Mpofu, Researcher in TESOL & Language Literacy Education, University of Notre Dame Australia

South Africa’s education system is often described as the key to overcoming the legacy of apartheid.

The country remains one of the most unequal societies in the world. Schools reflect those inequalities every day. Some learners attend well-resourced schools with modern technology and strong parental support. Others learn in schools with severe resource shortages and challenging social conditions.

Teachers can contribute to social justice by considering why certain learners struggle, how policies affect learners’ lives and what role education should play in creating a more just society.

My work as an education researcher has focused on how to give all children a fair chance to learn.

My recent study raises an uncomfortable question, though: are university teacher training programmes in South Africa preparing teachers to challenge inequality, or training them to accept it?

I explored this question by studying the experiences of 24 final-year student teachers during their teaching practicum, also known as work-integrated learning. This is the period when student teachers in South Africa leave the university and spend time teaching in real schools, guided by mentor teachers. They are expected to spend time reflecting on this experience. The practicum is supposed to help pre-service teachers connect theory with practice and develop into thoughtful professionals.

What I found was both encouraging and worrying.

The student teachers did reflect on their teaching skills, but not about deeper questions like how social inequality affected their learners. And, for the most part, their mentors were not doing much to encourage that deeper reflection.

If future teachers are not encouraged to critically examine social realities, they may simply adapt to those realities rather than challenge them. If mentor teachers mainly reward compliance with technical requirements, student teachers may learn how to function within the system. They may not learn about how poverty, language policy and inadequate infrastructure influence teaching and learning.

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Read more: Learning to read in another language is tough: how Namibian teachers can help kids

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Three levels of reflection

Reflective practice simply means thinking carefully about your teaching and learning from your experiences. It’s important because teaching is not simply about delivering content. Every classroom is different. Teachers must make decisions about learners, learning, language, culture, assessment and fairness every day. Without reflection, teachers can easily fall into routines without questioning whether those routines are helping learners.

The student teachers in my research had to complete a total of 10 weeks of in-school experience as part of their postgraduate certificate in education. I chose participants who would provide a diversity of school experiences, which they shared via group interviews and the reflective journals they had kept that year (2024). The selection of participants aimed for a variety of specialisations, gender, age and school placements (some with fewer resources than others).

My study found that student teachers reflected at different levels, which emerged as themes from their discussions and journals.

The first level is technical reflection. This focuses on practical matters such as lesson planning, classroom management and whether learners understood the content. For example, one student teacher asked questions such as: Did I finish the lesson?

The second level is practical reflection. This goes deeper. Teachers start asking why some teaching methods work better than others and how different learners respond to different approaches.

The third and deepest level is critical reflection. Here teachers think about bigger issues such as inequality, poverty, language policies, power and social justice. They ask questions about whose knowledge is valued, who benefits from the education system and whether schools are treating all learners fairly.

In the study, 19 of the 24 participants kept their reflections to a technical level.

They focused mainly on surviving the classroom. They worried about discipline, covering the syllabus, managing large classes and dealing with limited resources. One explained that she thought about how to teach geography without maps or science without enough equipment.

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Read more: How will teachers handle bullying? South African study finds they’re ill-prepared

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The role of mentor teachers

The most important factor shaping reflection was not the school itself but the mentor teacher. This emerged clearly from the student teachers’ reflections: those who were guided by mentors who asked questions, encouraged discussion and provided constructive feedback tended to engage in deeper reflection about their teaching. In contrast, students whose mentors focused mainly on classroom routines or evaluation were less likely to critically examine their practice.

Participants said mentors focused mainly on technical performance. They checked lesson plans, classroom management, pacing and syllabus coverage. Their message was clear: make sure the lesson runs smoothly and covers the required content.

Several participants felt that there was little room to discuss issues such as language politics. Reflection became about following the rules rather than questioning them.

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Read more: What happened when a South African school switched from English to bilingual science tests

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The teachers who asked difficult questions

Just five of the 24 student teachers demonstrated critical reflection. Their accounts suggested that supportive mentor teachers played a key role in this. For example, after a lesson that did not go as planned, a mentor teacher asked a student teacher why some learners were disengaged.

One student teacher did independently reflect on how schools communicate which languages, cultures and identities are valued.

Another questioned what fairness means in a highly unequal society. She realised, for example, that learners who didn’t have electricity at home might be at a disadvantage in an online assignment. She would have to ensure that all learners had a fair opportunity to succeed.

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Read more: Chalk and talk vs. active learning: what’s holding South African teachers back from using proven methods? 

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Some mentors made all the difference

Only five participants worked with mentors who encouraged critical thinking. They asked questions such as:

• What surprised you today?

• Why do you think learners responded this way?

• How does the community affect learning?

• Why is this topic important to these learners?

These conversations encouraged student teachers to think deeply about teaching and society. They became more aware of issues such as poverty, privilege and educational inequality.

Unfortunately, these mentors were the exception rather than the norm.

Why this matters

Schools do not operate in a vacuum. They reflect and often reinforce the inequalities of the societies around them. If future teachers are trained to focus only on delivering the curriculum, without examining the social realities facing their learners, education risks reproducing inequality rather than reducing it.

South Africa cannot achieve quality education for all while ignoring the conditions that prevent many learners from succeeding. Developing reflective teachers is essential if schools are to contribute to a more equitable and just society.

– South Africa’s schools reflect an unequal society: what can teachers do about it?
– https://theconversation.com/south-africas-schools-reflect-an-unequal-society-what-can-teachers-do-about-it-292924

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Christopher Hoy, McKenzie Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Across sub-Saharan Africa, revenue authorities are increasingly changing how they engage with small businesses. The traditional approach involved audits, penalties and inspections. But more recently many are investing in taxpayer education, “door-to-door” visits, and focusing on ways to make it easier to comply.

The logic driving the change is that auditing every small trader is expensive and unpopular, while building trust appears cheaper and more durable.

Our new International Centre for Taxation and Development study in Tanzania suggests the story is more complicated. We worked closely with the revenue authority to carry out a large trial where we increased the presence of tax officials in some randomly selected wards and measured the impact on trust and compliance. This study drew on our experience running trials with revenue authorities in several other lower income countries.

Our research shows that even when tax officials are not there to “check up on you”, their visibility can change how small businesses see the state. And not always in the direction policymakers expect.

In wealthier, more economically integrated regions, our study showed that the presence of tax officials strengthened trust and was associated with higher compliance. In poorer and more marginalised regions, the same presence reduced trust and lowered tax payments.

The implication is uncomfortable but important: light-touch outreach doesn’t automatically build trust. The relationship between the national government and citizens varies, depending on the presence of public services, and this influences how people view tax officials.

What makes our study especially useful is that we connected survey responses to administrative tax records. This enabled us to test whether the shifts in attitudes showed up in what businesses actually did after the visit.

Here we found that trust and compliance moved together. Where exposure to tax officials increased trust, payment behaviour tended to improve. Where trust was reduced, tax payments fell.

This doesn’t mean authorities should abandon outreach. Educating and helping taxpayers, and being present, are important. But these efforts need to be designed to suit each context.

The design of our novel study

To test what happens when tax officials become more visible, we embedded a randomised control trial within an in-person survey of 1,210 small businesses across mainland Tanzania in December 2022. The work was carried out together with Redefine, a survey firm in the region. The 119 urban and peri-urban wards in the sample were randomly split into two groups.

In the treatment wards, a tax official from the Tanzania Revenue Authority’s Research and Policy Planning Department accompanied the enumerator and remained present as an observer throughout the interview.

In the control wards, the same survey was conducted without any tax official present.

The officials did not ask the survey questions. They did not inspect records or threaten penalties. Respondents were told that the tax officials were only there to observe. The only thing that differed between treatment and control was the visibility of the revenue authority.

We measured three dimensions of taxpayer attitudes:

• perceived enforcement (how likely businesses thought evasion was to be detected)

• perceived facilitation (how easy they thought it was to comply)

• trust (whether they saw tax system as fair and reciprocal).

We then compared these responses with administrative tax records for the same wards, covering roughly 40,000 firms, to see whether perceptions were mirrored in actual payment behaviour after the visit.

Capacity vs legitimacy

The headline result is striking. The simple presence of a tax official reduced trust in the tax system in the treatment group relative to the control group. Perceived enforcement and perceived ease of compliance did not differ between groups substantially on average.

Yet this average masks the most important part of the story. In places where the state is otherwise less visible in daily life, where schools, health facilities, and transport links are further away, the presence of a tax official acted as a signal of state capacity. In these areas, the treatment increased perceived enforcement and perceived ease of compliance relative to firms closer to public services.

For businesses used to a thin state presence, a visit by a government official carried new information about the state’s reach. But capacity is not the same as legitimacy. A visit may tell taxpayers that the state is present without convincing them that the state is fair, reciprocal or responsive.

The same visit had opposite effects

The clearest split appeared across richer and poorer regions.

In some of Tanzania’s wealthier regions – Dar es Salaam, Mwanza and Mbeya – treated firms reported trust levels higher than firms in the control group. In the poorest zones in the south and west of the country, including Mtwara, Lindi, Kigoma and Katavi, treated firms reported trust much lower.

The same intervention, the same observer role, and opposite responses.

Businesses were responding to what the tax official represented in each local context.

In regions where firms already have regular interactions with state institutions, a visit from a tax official can be read as part of a reciprocal relationship. In regions where the state is largely absent except when it wants something, the same visit reads very differently. The official’s presence puts pressure on cracks that are already there.

From perceptions to payments

On average, the intervention had little effect on whether firms paid taxes or on the amounts they paid. But when you look at each region, the same pattern reappears.

In the poorest zones, firms in treated wards were less likely to pay taxes in the first quarter after the intervention, and paid lower amounts overall.

In wealthier areas, compliance moved in the opposite direction, though these effects were weaker.

The broader message is that trust and compliance moved together. Where exposure to tax officials increased trust, payment behaviour tended to improve after the visit. Where trust was reduced, tax payments fell after the visit.

What this means for revenue authorities

Five practical directions follow from the Tanzanian evidence.

First, diagnose trust before scaling outreach. Indicators such as filing persistence, limited access to public services, and prior contact with the tax authority can help identify where trust is weakest and where a standard outreach visit is most likely to backfire.

Second, separate facilitation (helping taxpayers) from enforcement, visibly. If the purpose of a visit is taxpayer education, the script, materials and demeanour should make that clear. In low-trust settings, anything that resembles an audit may be interpreted as one, regardless of intent.

Third, in fragile-trust areas, lead with services, not assessments. A first interaction is more likely to strengthen trust if it helps businesses solve problems, such as obtaining a taxpayer identification number, correcting a registration error, or lodging a complaint.

Fourth, monitor trust and compliance together. Tracking taxpayers’ experience can help reveal when engagement strengthens (or undermines) their relationship with the state.

Finally, connect tax outreach to the broader visible state. Pairing outreach with credible information about public spending, taxpayer rights and complaint channels can show the taxpayer what they get in return for compliance.

The bottom line

Tax administration is rarely a purely technical exercise. For a small trader in a market in Mtwara or Kigoma, the appearance of a tax official is, before anything else, an encounter with the state. Whether that encounter makes them more likely to pay their taxes depends on what the state has been to that trader up to now.

Our experiment suggests that the current enthusiasm for softer tax outreach in Africa is broadly well placed, but its design matters.

Building the tax base is not only about making the state more visible. It is about making the state more credible.

– When tax officials visit: why softer tax outreach can build trust in some places and erode it in others
– https://theconversation.com/when-tax-officials-visit-why-softer-tax-outreach-can-build-trust-in-some-places-and-erode-it-in-others-292805