Category: English

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Federico Donelli, Associate Professor of International Relations, University of Trieste

The death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, in March 2026 marks the end of a political era in the Middle Eastern country. Khamenei was killed in US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s capital, Tehran. This has triggered a war drawing in numerous countries across the Middle East.

The Horn of Africa and Red Sea regions, which link Africa and the Middle East, share a dense web of military, political and economic interactions that enable crises on one shore to quickly affect the other. Here, Somalia, Eritrea, Yemen, Sudan, Ethiopia and Djibouti sit along one of the world’s most important trade and geopolitical corridors.

But the consequences of Khamenei’s death may be less dramatic than many expect. This is because power in Iran is dispersed across entrenched institutions and security elites who are capable of preserving regime continuity.

The Horn of Africa and the Red Sea

Iran is no stranger to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. During the 1990s and 2000s, Tehran established security and economic ties with several countries, notably Sudan, to gain a foothold along the Red Sea.

Iran’s influence waned, however, during the 2010s as Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, increased their diplomatic, financial and military presence.

As a political scientist studying Middle Eastern and African security, I have followed Iran’s regional engagement for years. From my perspective, events in Iran and the Gulf matter to African countries because conflicts, arms flows and rivalries can easily spill across shores in a single strategic region.

Three intertwined dynamics shape how Khamenei’s death affects the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.

Firstly, Tehran’s influence here has declined over the past decade. This is with the exception of Yemen, where Iran supports the Houthi movement, which has previously attacked Israeli-linked vessels.

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Secondly, the way this latest conflict was triggered and has escalated may be more important than a change in Iranian leadership. It could contribute to a broader erosion of moderation.

Thirdly, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – Iran’s powerful military force – is set to play a pivotal role in the post-Khamenei transition.

This is significant for the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea. Iran’s engagement here has largely relied on unconventional methods. Naval manoeuvres are an example, such as the long-term deployment in the Red Sea of the Iranian vessel Saviz, which has served as a logistical and intelligence platform. The country has also deployed military advisers and established arms networks to transport Iranian weapons.

Any future leadership closely aligned with the IRGC is likely to keep using these low-cost tools.

In this sense, continuity will likely prevail over rupture. Iran’s ambitions are filtered through a sober assessment of constraints that the ongoing war may entrench.

Iran’s shifting priorities

Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has considered itself a middle power with legitimate claims to regional pre-eminence. The Red Sea and the Horn of Africa gradually became part of Iran’s expanded strategic geography.

Following the consolidation of the regime promoted by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Khamenei – who took over in 1989 after his predecessor’s death – progressively translated Iran’s ambition into strategic depth.

This aimed to extend Iran’s security perimeter beyond its borders through alliances, proxies and low-cost commitments.

In the 2000s, Iran cultivated close ties with Sudan and Eritrea.

It established naval access points in the two countries and used soft power tools, such as development aid and religious networks. It considered the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which is between Yemen and Djibouti, vital for countering Saudi and Israeli influence and maintaining alternative trade routes.

The limitations of this expansion became apparent, however.

Iran’s ambitions soon came up against reality. The country’s economy was weakened by sanctions linked to its nuclear programme and US withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal.

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Read more: Iran will respond to US-Israeli strikes as existential threats to the regime – because they are

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Meanwhile, political power remained fragmented across competing institutions. Domestic pressures, including economic hardship and periodic protest movements, were mounting. Instability in neighbouring states such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen made long-term regional power projection costly and uncertain.

After 2015, Saudi Arabia increased its engagement in the Horn of Africa through financial aid, diplomatic pressure and military cooperation linked to the war in Yemen.

Seeking logistical support along the Red Sea and aiming to counter Iran’s influence near the Bab el-Mandeb strait, Saudi Arabia strengthened its ties with regional governments. This prompted Sudan, Djibouti and Eritrea to sever or scale back their relations with Tehran. They effectively aligned themselves with Saudi Arabia and its allies. Iran redirected resources to higher-priority theatres of war, such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

For a decade, therefore, Tehran’s presence in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea has become more selective and opportunistic. Iran has relied on indirect leverage there, such as Houthi operations, rather than direct expansion.

Khamenei’s death is likely to reinforce rather than reverse the trend. In fact, the outcome of the current war and the start of a delicate succession process could prompt an even more cautious approach abroad.

Worsening fragility

Although a change in Iranian leadership may not alter the approach to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, the dynamics that led to the recent conflict may have an impact on the region.

The scale and visibility of the Israeli-US attack – and Iran’s direct retaliation – signal something deeper: the erosion of thresholds in the use of force.

Iran is not buying time and avoiding direct confrontation while limiting the manoeuvre room of its rivals.

This could usher in a period of “anything goes”.

Regional actors, from Gulf states to local governments, are likely to feel increasingly justified in bypassing established security norms. The Red Sea has already become a crowded arena. External powers are projecting their strength. Local states are exploiting competition among them. The reshuffling of forces triggered by the war in Iran will have repercussions throughout the region.

In such a context, characterised by multiple hierarchies, even a reduction of Iranian capabilities could have knock-on effects.

The region’s fragility – as seen in civil war in Sudan, tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea, instability in Somalia and the heavy presence of military bases along maritime routes – amplifies these risks.

In other words, the question is not whether Iran will suddenly expand into east Africa. It is whether the regional climate will shift towards fewer restrictions and greater acceptance of coercive tools.

If escalation becomes normalised in the heart of the Middle East – the region’s most interconnected theatre – the fallout could be felt in places like the Horn of Africa.

Uncertainty in the short term

Khamenei’s death is likely to generate uncertainty in the short term at the regional level, but will lead to continuity in the long term.

Over time, Tehran has adopted what can be termed a “realist defence” doctrine – deterrence through a strong indirect presence, but at reduced cost and risk.

Iran’s view of international politics as a zero-sum game – where one actor’s gain is another’s loss – and its desire to reduce the influence of its rivals are not merely the result of personal legacies. Rather, they are deeply rooted in the country’s identity.

For the Horn of Africa, this means that Tehran is likely to remain a secondary but persistent player: active enough to hinder its rivals’ strategies, yet restrained enough to avoid major commitments.

– Iran war fallout for the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa: political analyst weighs up the risks
– https://theconversation.com/iran-war-fallout-for-the-red-sea-and-the-horn-of-africa-political-analyst-weighs-up-the-risks-277512

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Michael Johan von Maltitz, Associate Professor, Mathematical Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of the Free State

It’s getting tougher to assess how much university students have learnt. In his work as a Mathematical Statistics lecturer, Michael von Maltitz has tried a new way of getting students to learn, and of assessing what they’ve absorbed and retained. Students have to show and discuss how they arrived at their understanding of the subject. They can’t just rely on cramming, because he interviews them as if they were applying for a job.

What prompted you to try something new?

“We understand, but how will it be asked in the test?” This is the question that was posed to me time and again in 2019 when I started lecturing a module in mathematical statistics at second-year university level.

I knew I had to make a change. I already understood that students were stressed, prone to memorising content and cramming before tests and examinations, and using short cuts to attain a good grade, rather than to learn anything.

What did you then do differently?

The module was unfamiliar to me so I decided to allow the students to approach the course content in the same way as I was: gathering information from different sources and combining and collating it digitally, reflecting on how it helped to meet certain objectives or learning outcomes.

These portfolios of learning evidence would contain course and outcome information, content knowledge (including theorems and proofs), examples with solutions, showpiece assignments, links to and discussions on online tutorials or videos, and paragraphs of self-reflection. Readers might see these portfolios as “study notes on steroids”.

Assessing the portfolio would be an exercise in evaluating the learning process, rather than a memorised product.

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The process was challenging but offered a reward for me and my students – that of discovery. Students seemed to be genuinely learning.

Besides checking their portfolios, I needed a way to assess progress that didn’t fall into the old habits of memorisation and “teaching to the test”. I needed to ensure that a student had created their own portfolio and could defend the content in it. And I needed an assessment method that would not take more time and effort than coming up with a unique written test or examination, formulating a typeset memorandum, and marking more than 100 answer scripts, giving feedback that the students might never look at.

I decided to test this form of deep learning using a workplace method – the interview. In a 30-minute online interview with each student, I asked questions about their understanding of the module content, as well as questions concerning their own portfolios. Each student had to defend the information collected and reflected upon.

The interview worked perfectly when paired with the portfolio. I assessed a set of portfolios in an evening, gave typed feedback, and then interviewed those portfolios’ creators the next day. Feedback was immediate, and the interview assessment became a learning experience, for me and the student.

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They were able to defend their portfolios if I made any errors on the portfolio assessment, and I could give the correct answer immediately to any interview question they were stumped by.

Afterwards, the recording of the interview could be given to the student, and if they felt I was being unfair at all, they could compare their interview with another student’s. In doing so, the students themselves could moderate my assessment practice.

What results did you observe?

After a year or two of teaching and assessing like this, I noticed my students seemed to understand more of the content. They retained more into their final year, they were fluent in “statistics” communication and they had better time management and self-reflection skills.

Students told me that they were asked the same questions in their first job interviews as I had asked in my modules, and that they felt much more at ease in those first few job interviews.

How did you confirm these results?

To formally test the developments I had noticed in my students, I conducted research on the class in 2022, which was published in conference proceedings and an article.

This study showed that students experienced significant learning in every facet of an educational framework known as Fink’s taxonomy:

• foundational knowledge

• application and communication

• integration of content into other areas

• self-reflection

• interest

• learning how to learn.

Thus, the method of learning and assessment could formally be called a success within Statistics.

Can this approach be used in other courses?

Yes. One might argue that if this method can be employed for a mathematical module, it can be utilised anywhere. Mathematical modules contain theorems, proofs, definitions, theoretical and practical problem solving – items that might seem difficult to assess through verbal communication. But it is the understanding of the ideas behind the theorems, the stories of and the tricks used within the proofs, the application of the theoretical problems, that are so important in an age where your favourite AI can provide content knowledge.

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Read more: Three South African universities have new approaches to assessing students: why this is a good thing

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Mathematical proofs and worked calculations, both of which take time in practice, can be assessed by looking at a portfolio containing these items with the student’s annotations and reflections. The understandings of these concepts are assessed in the interview.

Likewise, in other subjects, a portfolio could be used for assessing knowledge-based content, while the interview could be used to gauge a student’s understanding of what was put into the portfolio, why they chose that content, why the content is important, and how that content is used in practice.

– Teaching mathematical statistics: one lecturer’s way of testing what students understand
– https://theconversation.com/teaching-mathematical-statistics-one-lecturers-way-of-testing-what-students-understand-275501

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Timothy Clack, Chingiz Gutseriev Fellow, University of Oxford

Colonialism has been a central part of history around the world, differing only in form over time and space. After all, whenever people have moved from one place to another, they have colonised spaces and other people or forms of life.

In Africa, colonialism has mostly been studied as something imposed from outside, for example from Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. A recent special issue of the journal Azania sought to address this. Scholars looked at the topic from an angle that’s so far been neglected – the archaeology and history of colonialism from within Africa.

We introduced the journal issue with an essay revisiting basic ideas, reviewing literature and presenting new case studies.

We note, for example, that colonialism has a deep and complex history. There have been different kinds and degrees of colonialism. These range from expansion, trade, exchange and sharing cultural practices to settlement, domination, exploitation, control and imperialism.

These developments have taken place in a myriad of different settings. From Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Phoenicia, Classical Greece and Rome, and China, to multiple locations in the Americas, including the Inka and the Aztecs, and Europeans, especially after 1492.

Global and local factors shape distinctive patterns of power, subjugation, consumption, extraction, exploitation and cultural exchange through time.

Important questions emerge when this is recognised. Examples include:

• what historical justice looks like

• which episodes get remembered and forgotten

• which victims are ignored or compensated

• which colonisers face consequence.

Colonialism from outside

In the 19th and 20th centuries, during the the so-called “Scramble for Africa”, seven European countries colonised almost the whole of the continent. The signatures left behind by Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain were wide and varied. They included:

• drawing national boundaries

• infrastructure geared towards extraction (like megaports, railways and roads)

• administration (like bicameral governments, courts and churches)

• defence (military structures and installations).

European colonialism even shaped the way most of us perceive the world via the instruments used to map time and space.

Earlier, large parts of Africa were colonised by Ottoman and Arab empires. Oman, for example, colonised the Swahili coast in the 18th and 19th centuries across a territory extending from areas of Somalia through to Madagascar.

Parts of Africa which had previously been under Islamic rule, in turn, experienced European colonialism differently. This had long-term implications for education, health and economic growth.

Taken together, these legacies, over time, developed into global organising principles for imagining Africa.

But this formulation ignores African agency and political processes. It is often forgotten, for example, that the Almoravids, a dynasty which rose to power in southern Morocco during the 11th century, exerted control over European soil. Africans have been colonisers too.

Colonialism from within

Africa has also experienced diverse colonial episodes from within. Examples include empires such as Egypt and Kush in north Africa, and Dahomey and Songhai in west Africa.

Rulers of these empires sought to annex territories, establish settlements, subjugate others, control resources and impose laws and customs. The archaeological indications of these can be seen in a number of ways. They include new settlement types, changes in material culture and the adoption of new languages and religions, particularly Islam and Christianity.

Resistance to colonialism is also visible in the historical record and expressed in many ways. This included insurgencies, protests and propaganda as well as myth, art, music, literature and non-cooperation.

In the 19th century, Shaka, for example, transformed a small Zulu chieftainship in southern Africa into an aggressive and successful state that absorbed neighbouring groups. The aftershock of the Zulu expansion was the Mfecane. This was a process that saw leaders establish their own polities. Soshangane, for instance, was a Ndwandwe general defeated by Shaka who established the Gaza state in contemporary Mozambique. It incorporated in it both Shona and Tsonga people.

Another example comes from the Mursi of south-western Ethiopia. They undertook several large-scale migrations over the past 200-300 years. This movement became part of their group identity. They displaced, assimilated and dominated other populations. The material traces they left have been explored by archaeological research. This has helped to interpret their activities, and also challenges their oral histories.

Cultural exchange and innovation

Colonialism is a generative process, with innovation emerging from cultural contact, relationships between colonisers and colonised, and material exchange.

Colonial processes have multi-directional influence. European colonialism, for example, shaped how Europeans dealt with the rest of the world. And, in turn, it contributed to how the western world was constructed. Ideas and materials flowed into the metropolitan centres of Europe as much as from them. In certain respects, Britain was colonised through contact with, for example, Africa, Australasia and North America, as much as those areas were colonial creations.

Colonialism often creates victims and oppressors. But it is also about consumption, innovation and exchange.

Archaeology offers a useful way to study colonialism because it leaves material and intangible indicators which the discipline has methods to interpret.

There is a need for more work on the processes and character of colonialism within Africa. This will enable comparisons and understanding, and correct a skewed picture of world history. A richer understanding of colonialism, including neocolonialism, may also inform debates about its legacy, and about decolonisation and restitution.

– Colonialism in Africa: archaeology offers a deeper view
– https://theconversation.com/colonialism-in-africa-archaeology-offers-a-deeper-view-275495