Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Dileepa Ediriweera, Health Data Scientist, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Not every snakebite injects venom. When venom enters the body, however, it can cause snake envenoming. This is a potentially fatal condition and it mostly affects poor rural communities across tropical and subtropical regions who don’t have easy access to medical care.

As researchers with decades of combined experience in snakebite and tropical disease epidemiology, we came to realise that snake envenoming faces a data crisis. Over half of the countries where venomous snakes pose a threat don’t keep count of how many people are bitten or envenomed.

In rural sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, many victims live hours away from the nearest clinic, lack transport, or seek care from traditional healers. As a result, their cases are never captured in national health statistics.

To bridge this massive gap, we conducted a study to map the global burden of snake envenoming and related deaths.

We looked at data from 79 countries by reviewing studies published up to 31 March 2025. This allowed us to update the findings from our milestone 2008 global burden study. To fill the remaining data gaps, we built a geostatistical model that combines real-world data with local environmental and socioeconomic factors. This allowed us to estimate envenoming and fatality rates.

We conclude from our findings that snake envenoming is a public health crisis on a far greater scale than official statistics have shown. Our results show that sub-Saharan Africa bears the heaviest toll.

The World Health Organization has set an ambitious target to halve snakebite mortality and disability by 2030. Mapping the problem at the country level is the first crucial step.

Uncovering the hidden burden

To overcome the lack of reliable data, we turned to a model-based geostatistics framework.

To understand how this modelling works, think of it as predicting invisible patterns by combining known data points with environmental signals. Instead of assuming data for every region, this modelling uses statistical probability to calculate a range of likely outcomes based on environmental signals.

We fed our model with data including climate, snake species richness and socioeconomic indicators. The model then calculated the probability of snakebites occurring in specific locations, even where official health records were completely blank.

By comparing different data sources (including hospital-reported data and regional statistics) against ground level community-survey data, our framework allowed us to account for unreported snake envenomings. It produced both a baseline floor and a potential upper ceiling for snake envenomings and fatalities.

Based on this, we estimate that at least 2.1 million people experience snake envenoming each year globally. The true number could be high as 7 million. Using our model, which adjusts for substantial under-reporting, annual deaths may range from 274,000 to 513,000.

The geographic distribution of this burden is uneven. Our research shows that sub-Saharan Africa alone accounts for 45% of all global envenomings and fatalities. That burden has likely been underestimated for decades. People in sub-Saharan Africa experience snake envenoming and death at nearly three times the rate seen in south Asia.

Countries like Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia face a high burden, driven by dense rural populations and high exposure in agricultural fields.

Why sub-Saharan Africa is hit hardest

The reasons sub-Saharan Africa suffers such disproportionate harm are structural rather than accidental.

Firstly, the continent hosts a rich diversity of medically important venomous species. These include saw-scaled vipers (Echis spp.), puff adders (Bitis arietans), African cobras (Naja spp.) and mambas (Dendroaspis spp.). They are responsible for substantial morbidity and mortality across the continent.

Secondly, millions of rural agricultural workers labour in open fields without protective boots and walk on unlit footpaths at night. When a bite occurs, fragile health systems, long travel distances to regional facilities and the high cost or total absence of effective antivenom mean a treatable medical emergency can quickly become fatal. Similar conditions exist in parts of Asia.

We estimate that over 800,000 survivors are left with long-term physical disabilities each year, including amputations and other permanent impairments. These disabilities can reduce household income, increase healthcare costs and push already vulnerable farming families deeper into poverty.

Going forward

Meeting the World Health Organization’s goal requires moving away from guesswork and using spatial risk data to guide real-world policy.

By identifying high-risk hotspots, governments and global health partners can strategically stockpile antivenom where it is needed most, train primary healthcare workers in high-burden rural zones and improve rapid transport infrastructure.

Snake envenoming has remained hidden for too long. Better data cannot solve the problem, but can help ensure that antivenom, healthcare services and prevention efforts reach the communities that need them most.

– Snakebites are a far bigger problem than we knew: new study maps the hidden dangers
– https://theconversation.com/snakebites-are-a-far-bigger-problem-than-we-knew-new-study-maps-the-hidden-dangers-292524

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Lydia Namatende-Sakwa, Associate Research Scientist, African Population and Health Research Center

“Me who is a poor person, do I have the luxury to have depression? No, it is only you who is rich that has the luxury to have depression.”

This statement, shared by a research participant in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, captures a persistent misconception: that depression belongs to wealthy people or those whose lives are comfortable enough to permit emotional vulnerability.

It is an example of how socio-cultural beliefs can become a barrier to recognising mental health problems and seeking support.

In 2025, Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports issued a set of mental health and psychosocial support policy guidelines and resources for schools. These included a training manual, teachers’ handbook and wellbeing guide. They provide practical information on recognising distress, psychosocial support, referral and wellbeing in education settings.

The next challenge is to put the guidelines into practice.

Our team of researchers at the African Health and Population Research Center did a study to provide evidence that would help schools in Uganda follow the guidelines. We looked at what people understand by mental health, what learners and staff need, school capacity and what needs to happen first to put the guidelines into action.

The study engaged 200 learners, teachers, parents, community representatives, policy actors and development partners across four districts: Kampala, Jinja, Gulu and Mbarara. Kampala is the capital city; Jinja is a mixed rural-urban context. Gulu is an area affected by conflict and displacement. Mbarara is an education and economic hub with urban and rural schools.

We found socio-cultural and gender norms strongly influenced whose distress was recognised, how it was explained and whether seeking help was considered acceptable. Mental health at school was linked to issues like literacy, spirituality, poverty, family instability, displacement, disability and trauma.

Learner distress reflected overlapping academic, family, economic, social and institutional pressures. The responses at school must take all these into account. School mental health programmes must address both emotional wellbeing and structural pressures such as poverty, stigma and exclusion.

Listening to Ugandans

Our four study sites were chosen to reflect a range of environments, with different resources and socio-cultural influences.

We held dialogues at each site with learners aged 13-18, parents, teachers, government representatives, youth-led organisations, religious and community leaders, NGOs and researchers. Special interest groups (including refugees, LGBTQ organisations and people with disabilities) were also included.

The dialogues explored understandings of mental health, learner and staff needs, school capacity and future priorities.

What’s influencing mental health

The study participants described student mental health as a growing concern. They mentioned depression, anxiety, stress, low self-esteem, fear, social withdrawal, substance use, bullying-related distress, trauma, anger, academic pressure and poor emotional regulation.

Participants described these as interconnected problems.

The drivers of distress among students were identified as:

• academic pressure

• family and home background, including absent parents, domestic violence and neglect

• poverty that resulted in lower self-esteem and greater exclusion from peer groups

• bullying, teasing, humiliation and harsh discipline

• substance use and addiction, especially among boys and urban learners.

Boys and girls were seen as vulnerable to different pressures.

Barriers to getting help

Participants in all sites said mental illness carried a stigma. It was seen as morally wrong, caused by supernatural forces, or “a disease for the rich”.

Another perception was that boys and men couldn’t seek help for fear of looking weak.

Learners also felt they could not trust adults with their problems. They feared that teachers might judge them or reveal their personal stories publicly. Learners experiencing anxiety or distress thought they might be labelled lazy or badly behaved, or accused of “faking it” or “seeking attention”.

The danger is that withdrawal, poor concentration, anger or declining performance might then be treated as deliberate disobedience.

Mental health difficulties were sometimes attributed to witchcraft, curses or demonic possession. Religious and cultural systems can offer hope, belonging and support, but problems arise when they become the only explanation for distress. As one Kampala teacher warned,

Some people will pray until somebody dies.

Learners reported being told, “You have to be strong … a guy who does not cry.” Such expectations encourage boys to hide stress and may lead to withdrawal, anger or risky behaviour rather than seeking support.

Girls face pressures linked to harassment, poverty, reproductive-health stigma and social judgment, often while being expected to remain silent. Female educators also face gendered scrutiny, including questions such as, “Where are their husbands and why are they not interested in staying with them?”

Counselling can itself carry stigma. People reported fear and shame associated with getting professional help.

Changing systems to change norms

Teachers should recognise that a child’s behaviour may arise from bullying, poverty, bereavement or family conflict. Schools should ask not only “What is wrong?” but also “What may have happened?”

School mental health programmes should respect cultural beliefs without delaying appropriate help.

Girls should be protected from harassment and enabled to report problems confidentially. Schools should promote a broader understanding of masculinity in which recognising emotions and seeking help are seen as responsible behaviours.

Schools need private support spaces, clear confidentiality procedures and counselling that is normalised. Learners must be able to seek help before problems escalate.

Socio-cultural and gender norms are reinforced through everyday practices and cannot be changed through awareness messages alone. Uganda’s response must combine norm change with system change. Schools need culturally grounded mental health literacy, safe environments, respectful discipline, confidential support, gender-transformative programming, trained staff and links to health and community services.

The key question is whether schools can recognise distress without judgment and respond with dignity, protection and appropriate care.

– ‘Lazy, weak, bewitched’ – how stigma stops Uganda’s children from getting help, and what schools can do about it
– https://theconversation.com/lazy-weak-bewitched-how-stigma-stops-ugandas-children-from-getting-help-and-what-schools-can-do-about-it-292539

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Lyal White, Director of the Porter Institute Africa Hub, Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria

Economic reform is usually judged by its numbers: inflation, deficits, growth. Less attention goes to the beliefs and habits that decide whether people will accept those numbers, and for how long.

Based on my research on comparative political economy and strategy in Africa, Asia and Latin America, there’s an argument to be made that Argentina under President Javier Milei offers an unusually clear view of that psychology at work as well as useful insights into South Africa’s economic path.

Javier Milei took office in December 2023, promising a set of libertarian policies. Libertarian doctrine holds that individual freedom and free markets work best when government is kept to a minimal role, largely limited to protecting property, contracts, personal safety and free market forces.

Milei was true to his promise. His policies included spending cuts, removing a raft of business rules and restrictions, making the peso officially worth less against the dollar, and stopping the central bank from printing new money to cover the government’s budget gaps.

Together, these steps were meant to end the habit of overspending and money-printing that fuelled runaway inflation, even though they caused short-term hardship for many households.

Milei delivered Argentina’s first fiscal surplus in over a decade and brought monthly inflation down, though at the cost of recession, higher poverty in the early period, and falling real wages and pensions. Later gains included a partial economic rebound and easing of currency controls.

A closer look into Milei’s programme reads less as a test of libertarian doctrine than an experiment shaped by Argentina’s long history of inflation, default and dependence on the state. That history helped make radical reform possible. Yet by August 2026, more Argentines disapproved of the Milei government than approved. So why might support weaken even as headline indicators improve? Inflation has fallen sharply and the budget is back in surplus.

Central to the Argentine story, and to the role of the state, is how citizens come to rely on – but fail to trust – those at the helm. The concept of “state dependency” captures it. This is a society in which large numbers of people organise their lives around income, jobs and support from the state. Their dependence creates powerful resistance to cuts. Argentina built this over decades.

South Africa and Argentina make a revealing pair. Both are middle-income democracies under fiscal pressure, where frustration with corruption and failing public services sits alongside heavy reliance on the state. But the roots differ.

Libertarianism with Argentine characteristics

In 1943 Colonel Juan Perón introduced social measures to help the country’s growing class of urban industrial workers. His set of policies became known as Peronism. It fused union power, protectionism and redistribution.

In 2001 the country suffered an economic collapse. More than half the population was pushed into poverty. Subsidies, price controls and welfare became central to everyday survival. By the end of 2023, roughly 40% of households received a state transfer, and inflation exceeded 200%.

Yet Argentines also learned to distrust the state. The country has defaulted on or restructured its debts at least nine times, and repeated currency collapses wiped out savings. People came to feel losses sharply, to favour spending today over trusting tomorrow, and to meet every stabilisation plan with suspicion. Hoarding dollars and working informally were rational responses.

Decades of crisis produced these defensive habits among citizens. Milei, as a political actor, set out to redirect them.

A society that experiences the status quo as a guaranteed loss is more willing to gamble on radical change. Milei’s campaign against la casta, the political class he cast as living off “productive Argentines”, changed the yardstick by which people judged reform.

Milei presented cuts as a moral clean-up targeting insiders and middlemen, even as retrenchment imposed costs on vulnerable households. This helps explain why his libertarianism took the form of a crusade rather than technocratic market reform. This is designed and implemented by technocrats.

The reforms came in phases. A front-loaded fiscal shock, while his mandate was new, turned a deficit into a small primary surplus within a year and cut ministries from 18 to eight. A dedicated deregulation ministry scrapped rent controls and hundreds of rules. Ending central bank financing of the Treasury worked as a shock to expectations. In a front-loaded fiscal shock, government makes its biggest and most painful budget cuts and tax or spending changes at the very start of a reform, rather than spreading them out over time.

Annual inflation has since dropped from a peak of nearly 300% when Milei was voted in to around 33% in 2025.

Greater predictability reduces panic buying and dollar hoarding, making longer-term planning and formal saving more attractive.

It was never pure libertarianism. Free marketeering has not been implemented in local and international trade practices. Universal child allowances and basic pensions survived. Welfare was restructured, with payments made directly to recipients rather than through political brokers. Rule by decree gave way to deals with Congress.

The result is libertarianism with Argentine characteristics.

Real, but provisional, gains

The gains are real but provisional. A post-drought harvest helped, unusually high earlier inflation flattered annual comparisons, and the social costs were substantial. Real public spending fell by roughly 30%, energy and transport subsidies were slashed, and tens of thousands of public jobs were eliminated.

Industrial policy was largely abandoned, and deep cuts to science, education and social protection raise questions around the institutional capacity needed for lasting development.

The central question is whether an early shock can become lasting credibility. Reforms endure only if households, businesses and investors believe they will not be reversed.

As the memory of crisis fades, people judge the government against their wages, jobs and the prosperity they were promised, not against 2023 when Milei was elected. Argentine surveys increasingly point to concern about wages and employment. And because his appeal rested on a moral break with a corrupt elite, corruption allegations reaching the Milei government strike at the story that made hardship bearable.

Falling approval does not mean the experiment has failed. It underlines how hard it is to turn a mandate for disruption into lasting support.

Is Milei’s shock therapy transferable?

South Africa’s defining trauma is not inflation, which its Reserve Bank has kept in check, but mass unemployment and deeply racialised inequality. More than 26.5 million South Africans receive social grants, which are widely understood as a pillar of post-apartheid redress.

South Africans expect the state to tackle these problems, not retreat from them. Coalition politics, strong unions, active courts, powerful big business and constitutionally protected socio-economic rights make shock therapy far harder. Cuts to social protection would be read through the lens of racial injustice.

Where Milei treats the state as the constraint to be cut back, Operation Vulindlela, run by the South African Presidency and National Treasury since 2020, treats weak coordination in basic infrastructure as a problem to fix.

Credibility can be earned by demonstrating state capability, not only by shrinking the state.

Argentina offers lessons, not a blueprint. Credibility and expectations matter as much as policy design. Confronting patronage works when reform separates the intermediaries who exploit support from the vulnerable people who depend on it. Business and investors can sustain momentum when politics is fragile. And reform needs a story that citizens recognise.

For South Africa, a libertarian route risks eroding the institutions that inclusive growth depends on. The more promising path is a hybrid: a capable developmental state that borrows Argentina’s lessons on credibility and patronage while strengthening the state.

Whether Milei’s experiment proves a turning point or a temporary rupture remains open. What it already shows is that reform depends less on ideological purity than on institutions, credibility and behavioural context.

This article draws on Argentina’s experiment in libertarianism and behavioural political economy: Lessons for South Africa, South Afican Journal of International Affairs (2026), available open access.

Annabel Dennison contributed to this article. She is a Master’s candidate in Economics and Psychology at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and an intern with the Porter Institute’s Africa Hub at the Gordon Institute of Business Science in South Africa.

– Radical economic policies in Argentina offer lessons – but not a blueprint – for South Africa
– https://theconversation.com/radical-economic-policies-in-argentina-offer-lessons-but-not-a-blueprint-for-south-africa-292915

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Mohamed Zahir Alimohamed, Lecturer in Human Genetics, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences

Much of what scientists know about how genetic differences affect health comes from studying populations outside Africa. This matters because genetic information is increasingly being used to understand disease, interpret genetic tests and, in some cases, guide treatment.

Africa has the greatest human genetic diversity in the world, yet African populations remain poorly represented in global genomic research. A genome is the complete set of DNA carried by a person. Only about 0.15% of participants in genome-wide association studies, which look for links between genetic differences and disease, are from Africa. When most of the evidence comes from populations elsewhere, some findings can be harder to interpret for African patients.

For example, researchers found that some genetic changes previously reported as causing an inherited heart condition in people of African ancestry were actually harmless. Those errors were easier to detect once more genetic information from people of African ancestry became available.

A genetic test is not useful simply because it can read a person’s DNA. Doctors also need reliable information to understand what a genetic change means. Better information from African populations could, over time, help provide clearer diagnoses for some inherited conditions, give families better information about diseases that run through generations and improve our understanding of why people respond differently to some medicines.

In a recent paper, my colleagues and I examined national genome projects across Africa and how they could help address this gap.

I approach this question as a molecular geneticist at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Tanzania. My co-authors bring expertise in genetics, genomics and population health from Egypt, Tunisia, Senegal, Kenya and South Africa. In the paper, we show how national projects differ in scale and focus, and argue that no single approach will suit every country. We also make the case that sequencing must be accompanied by local expertise, responsible data governance and sustained investment if it is to improve healthcare.

What are national genome projects trying to do?

National genome projects study many genomes to build a better picture of genetic differences within a population and how some of those differences relate to health and disease.

Several African countries are moving in this direction. Tunisia, Egypt and Senegal have national initiatives, while government-led projects in Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa are at earlier stages. Other countries have genomic studies that could provide a foundation for broader national programmes.

The projects offer different lessons. Tunisia plans to study both people without known disease and patients with clinical conditions. That could help distinguish harmless genetic differences from those relevant to a patient’s illness. Egypt aims to study a much larger number of people and investigate common and rare diseases; its challenge will be to turn that scale into useful knowledge and healthcare capacity. Senegal aims to include people from 31 ethnolinguistic groups across all 14 regions, addressing the risk that a “national” dataset overlooks parts of the population.

In Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa, national genome project efforts are at different stages of development. Our paper does not assess their implementation. As these projects develop, the same questions will matter: who is represented, how the data are governed, whether local expertise is strengthened and how findings could eventually improve healthcare.

Initiatives such as Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) have already helped develop laboratories, research skills and collaborations across the continent. National projects should build on this experience, but be designed around each country’s health priorities and resources, because no single model will suit every country.

How could this affect patients and families?

The aim is not to offer every person a genetic test. The value lies in building knowledge that is currently missing and developing the people and systems needed to use it.

For a family affected by an inherited disease, better local information may make it easier to determine whether a genetic change is linked to disease. Research may also help doctors understand why some medicines work differently between people.

For health systems, locally generated evidence can help researchers study diseases that matter to their own populations. These benefits are not automatic. Sequencing thousands of genomes will achieve little if countries cannot analyse the data, interpret the findings or translate useful discoveries into healthcare.

Sequencing DNA is only the start

National genome projects need laboratories, computing systems, trained scientists and health professionals who can interpret genomic information. They also need clear rules on consent, privacy, storage and who can use genetic data. Governments and project leaders can begin by agreeing on the health questions the project should answer, involving communities in its design and setting rules for consent and data access before collecting samples. Budgets should cover training, secure data systems and the people needed to interpret results, as well as sequencing itself.

People are contributing information that is deeply personal. They should know why their data are being collected, how they will be protected, who may use them and how the knowledge generated may benefit their communities. International collaboration will remain important, but countries should also have meaningful control over genomic data generated from their populations.

Can African countries afford this?

Many African health systems are already dealing with infectious diseases, shortages of health workers and rising numbers of people with cancer and cardiovascular disease. Genomics should not be presented as competing with these priorities.

Countries do not all need very large genome projects. They can start at a scale they can sustain, focus on health problems that matter locally and expand as capacity grows. Regional cooperation can also help by sharing sequencing, data analysis and training capacity. Long-term funding matters too. Projects that rely only on short research grants may generate useful data but struggle to maintain staff and equipment once funding ends.

What should success look like?

The easiest way to describe a national genome project is by the number of people whose complete DNA it reads. But that should not be the main measure of success.

For the public, the more important question is what changes because the project exists. Does it improve the interpretation of genetic tests? Does it help families affected by inherited disease get clearer answers? Does it generate evidence that can help improve treatment for African patients? And does it build local expertise and services that remain after the sequencing is finished?

National genome projects will not transform healthcare overnight. Their value will depend on whether the data are translated into better knowledge, stronger health systems and services that people can actually use. African genomic data are valuable to global science, but the countries and communities contributing those data should also benefit.

If these projects are built around local health needs, public trust, strong institutions and sustained investment, they can help close an important gap in the evidence used to understand health and disease. For ordinary people, that is what should matter most: not simply that more African genomes are sequenced, but that the knowledge generated ultimately helps improve healthcare for African populations.

– African genomics research is growing: what countries are doing to connect genetic data and healthcare
– https://theconversation.com/african-genomics-research-is-growing-what-countries-are-doing-to-connect-genetic-data-and-healthcare-292717

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Anthony Michael Butler, Professor of Political Studies, University of Cape Town

Evaluating national leaders is a difficult task. Citizens often judge presidents and prime ministers by simple measures like economic growth during their term, or personal character. However, these metrics are misleading and ignore the actual mechanics of political power.

I am a researcher in public policy and politics. My recent analysis offers a fresh four-dimensional framework to evaluate presidential leadership.

This model examines how leaders handle tensions between:

• symbolic authority and executive decision-making

• heading a party and running a state

• foreign policy and domestic pressures

• formal authority and informal power networks.

In each dimension there are opportunities for a skilled president to promote synergies. But there is also a risk of conflict and contradiction. I have previously used this framework to explore Nelson Mandela’s presidency.

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Read more: Nelson Mandela was a towering global symbol – but how effective was he as a president?

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Applying this framework to Thabo Mbeki, who governed South Africa as president from 1999 to 2008, reveals a complex legacy. Mbeki was the country’s second post-apartheid president after Mandela. He was succeeded by Kgalema Motlanthe, who served briefly before Jacob Zuma became president in 2009.

I found that Mbeki was a skilled and policy-focused president who introduced reforms that strengthened South African governance. However, his leadership contributed to institutional weaknesses that emerged more fully after he left office.

He concentrated power and blurred the line between the ruling party and the state. Systems of political appointments and influence expanded during his presidency. These systems later made state capture easier – private financial interests could corrupt public institutions to steal public resources.

Running government vs uniting the nation

South Africa has a hybrid parliamentary system with some presidential features. The national assembly elects a president rather than a prime minister. This figure combines two roles: acting as head of government – managing cabinet leaders of national executive departments – and as a head of state charged with uniting the nation.

Mbeki managed the head of government role with great technical skill.

He centralised strategic planning within the presidency and personally drove the creation of a modern national treasury. Working with finance minister Trevor Manuel, Mbeki stabilised the economy (blessed with favourable global conditions). Economic growth averaged over 4% annually, up from less than 3% under Mandela. His administration reduced public debt, expanded infrastructure and extended welfare grants to millions of poor citizens.

However, Mbeki failed as a unifying head of state during the health crisis of HIV and Aids. Rather than bringing people together to fight the epidemic, he rejected scientific consensus on the cause of the disease. He questioned the safety of life-saving antiretroviral medication and delayed public distribution. One study estimated that earlier access to antiretroviral treatment would have saved over 300,000 lives.

Mbeki held his position despite intense public protest and global condemnation. His stance demonstrated a failure to provide national leadership when it was most needed.

Serving the party vs strengthening the state

The second structural tension involves the divide between the ruling party and state administration.

Mbeki rose through the exiled ranks of the African National Congress (ANC). After taking power in 1994, the party struggled to turn a political organisation into a party of government. At its 1997 national conference, the party adopted a policy document on its “strategy and tactics”. The document described constitutional democracy as an interim step towards a broader national democratic revolution.

To secure control, the party started using a “cadre deployment” policy that bore Mbeki’s intellectual imprint. Cadre deployment meant placing loyal party members into top positions across government departments, municipalities and state companies. It severely damaged state capacity. Civil servants became answerable to party bosses rather than professional standards.

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Read more: South Africans who blow the whistle face retaliation and murder: their stories over five decades

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A study on party dominance notes that long-ruling party tenure erodes public accountability. Mbeki centralised policy inside his personal office and suppressed party dissent. When he tried to retain party control in 2007, the party base rejected his ambition for an additional term and voted him out of office.

Leading abroad vs domestic interests

The third tension pits international diplomacy against domestic priorities. Mbeki reshaped foreign policy around pan-Africanism, a political idea promoting African economic unity and self-reliance.

Mbeki centralised foreign relations within the presidency. He helped create the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), a plan to integrate African economies fully into the global economy. He also led the transformation of the Organisation of African Unity into the African Union.

He built strong diplomatic ties with developing nations across the global south, most strikingly through the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum. These efforts expanded international trade and secured South Africa a non-permanent seat on the United Nations security council.

Yet Mbeki’s foreign policy created severe problems at home through his response to neighbouring Zimbabwe. As Zimbabwe suffered political repression and economic collapse, Mbeki adopted quiet diplomacy. This relied on private persuasion rather than public criticism.

Mbeki protected President Robert Mugabe and endorsed flawed Zimbabwean elections. This policy shielded a repressive regime. The later collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy forced millions of desperate citizens into South Africa, fuelling violent xenophobia after Mbeki had left office.

Formal vs informal influence

The final tension lies between formal legal powers and informal networks of influence.

The South African constitution grants the president expansive appointment powers over cabinet ministers, judges, police chiefs and tax officials. Mbeki used these powers to place loyalists across critical state agencies.

At the same time, rising campaign costs forced the ruling party to seek private funding. Under Mbeki, fundraising events sold corporate access to government ministers in exchange for party donations. This helped the party fund effective participation in national elections but compromised the integrity of government decisions.

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Read more: South Africa’s police serve the ANC insiders, not the people: here’s how it happened

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Mbeki also expanded a variant of Black Economic Empowerment, a state policy that gave Black citizens ownership stakes in businesses to redress apartheid inequality. Established corporations used the policy to grant shares to politically connected individuals in exchange for influence in government.

One study on economic transformation regimes found that empowerment policies can turn into patronage networks for ruling elites. The African National Congress even established its own investment firm, Chancellor House, which won multibillion-rand state contracts.

While Mbeki personally faced no corruption charges, his administration built a system of informal patronage and money politics. This system created an architecture of dysfunction that enabled widespread state capture under his successor, Zuma.

Mbeki’s mixed legacy

Evaluating presidential leadership requires looking beyond personal character or short-term economic prosperity.

Mbeki proved himself a highly capable administrative manager. He maintained fiscal discipline and expanded South African influence across the continent. Yet his centralising leadership style, party deployment policies and informal patronage networks weakened democratic institutions.

– Thabo Mbeki’s legacy in South Africa: stronger government but a blurred line between state and party
– https://theconversation.com/thabo-mbekis-legacy-in-south-africa-stronger-government-but-a-blurred-line-between-state-and-party-292384

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Paul Barrett, Individual Merit Researcher, Natural History Museum

Africa boasts up to 25% of Earth’s animal and plant species. This diversity is driven by diverse habitats: harsh deserts, vast grasslands, dense forests, towering mountains, lush coastlines and teeming seas. It is also due to deep evolutionary roots, as many animal and plant groups originated here in the distant past. Palaeontologists have been excavating this material for nearly two centuries.

Africa is most famous for spectacular hominid fossils that reveal our own ancestry. However, the continent boasts many fabulous fossil finds, including those of the most familiar extinct animals – dinosaurs.

The first African dinosaur fossils to be noted scientifically hailed from the Eastern Cape, South Africa and were described in the 1850s. Since then, the African dinosaur map has expanded, with rich fossil beds in South Africa, Lesotho, Tanzania, Egypt, Niger, Malawi, Madagascar and Morocco.

Zimbabwe is an important part of the African dinosaur puzzle, with dinosaur bones reported since 1916.

As a specialist on early dinosaurs who has worked on similar material from China, the UK and Africa, I’ve been drawn to these Zimbabwean fossils to see what they reveal about the first stages of their evolution.

Our latest addition to the Triassic zoo, Musango matusadonaensis, is a sauropodomorph dinosaur. (That’s the dinosaur subgroup that eventually gave rise to four-legged, long-necked giants like Diplodocus.)

Its incomplete skeleton was found in the bank of the Nyamasango River close to Musango Island, as captured in the animal’s scientific name. Musango’s anatomy shows us that it was bipedal (walking on its hind legs only), reached about 4.5 metres in length, and weighed 220kg. Growth marks in its bones reveal that it was a subadult when it died. Sadly, the skull wasn’t preserved, so its diet is unknown, but its close relatives were largely herbivorous (plant-eating).

Our new work reveals something unexpected about Zimbabwean dinosaurs. They’re not simply an extension of better-known South African faunas but include an array of species unique to the region. We’re now trying to work out why these differences exist. We suspect that environmental conditions might be the key.

The search

Early fossil finds in Zimbabwe were overlooked by many scientists and it was not until the 1970s that they became more generally known. This was thanks to pioneering work by Zimbabwean palaeontologists Geoffrey Bond and Michael Raath, who discovered abundant material in the hinterlands of Bulawayo (south-west Zimbabwe) and the lower Zambezi Valley (forming the border with Zambia). Most of these finds were identified as belonging to known species named from neighbouring South Africa.

Palaeontological work in Zimbabwe stalled for a few decades. However, a band of devoted fossil hunters kept searching. One of them, Steve Edwards, a local safari camp manager, found new, productive sites on the shore of Lake Kariba, the artificial lake which forms most of the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. News of the discoveries eventually reached Jonah Choiniere at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Jonah, an expert on early dinosaurs, immediately recognised the importance of the material. He assembled an international team of South African, Zimbabwean and UK-based collaborators to explore them further.

This was a major task, as the sites on Late Kariba’s shoreline are deep inside Matusadona National Park. Our solution was to use one of the Kariba houseboats as a mobile hotel and laboratory, so that we could prospect the shoreline. We mounted two expeditions, in 2017 and 2018. We have been cleaning and studying this material ever since.

Both trips yielded a trove of material, collected from brick-red mudstones and sandstones that were laid down by ancient rivers around 210 million years ago, during the Late Triassic period (237-201 million years ago). Geological evidence and plant fossils show that the Triassic landscape of Kariba was dry and dotted with stands of large conifer trees, with green corridors of vegetation following permanent watercourses.

What’s unique

Sauropodomorphs are the most common Late Triassic dinosaurs. But what’s interesting about Musango and its relative Musankwa (which we described from the same beds in 2024) is that they are unique to Zimbabwe.

We’d expected to find South African dinosaur species in these beds, given their similar age and geographic proximity, but surprisingly all the material we’ve collected so far has revealed animals that are distinct from those elsewhere.

These Zimbabwean dinosaurs are not even the closest relatives of their South African neighbours. We’ve also found other fossil animals, including lungfish and aquatic reptiles called phytosaurs, which are rare or absent in South African sites.

Following this, we’ve started to reappraise the historical dinosaur collections in Bulawayo. It appears that many of these fossils can’t be referred to South African species either, contrary to earlier assumptions.

Then, as now, Zimbabwe was further north than South Africa and closer to the equator, so climatic differences might be responsible for these varied casts of characters (as climate is known to have a strong effect on the distributions of living animals). To probe this further, we’ll be going back to Kariba in search of more fossils.

We’ll also collect more information on the exact ages and environments of these dinosaur-bearing rocks, to compare them more precisely with sites elsewhere. Although the significance of these dinosaurs is only just coming to light, Zimbabwe is already taking a greater role in shedding much needed light on early dinosaur evolution.

– Zimbabwe’s dinosaurs were different from South Africa’s: new species offers clues
– https://theconversation.com/zimbabwes-dinosaurs-were-different-from-south-africas-new-species-offers-clues-290891

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Adrià San José Plana, Recognised Researcher Earth Sciences – Global Health Resilience, Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS); Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)

Climate does more than shape the weather. It can influence when and where infectious diseases emerge by changing how disease-carrying vectors and animal hosts survive and behave. Scientists use weather data to anticipate some disease risks days or weeks ahead. But forecasting how those risks will change across seasons and years remains difficult. We asked Adrià San José Plana, a researcher in infectious disease modelling, and Xavier Rodó, a research professor and founding director of the Catalan Institute of Climate Sciences in Barcelona, about their recent research.

What’s known about the relationship between climate and diseases?

Research has shown that vector-borne diseases – those transmitted by mosquitoes, ticks, sandflies and other arthropods – are particularly sensitive to climate.

These insects are ectotherms, meaning that they do not regulate their internal temperature in the same way humans do. They are therefore strongly affected by environmental temperature. Temperature influences their survival and longevity, how frequently they bite, and how quickly pathogens develop inside them before they can be transmitted.

Rainfall and humidity also dramatically affect their breeding and influence vector abundance.

Climate also affects the spread of zoonotic diseases, but often through a different mechanism. This can happen when zoonotic host animals are forced to look for scarce food and move closer to human settlements.

What was the focus of your study?

Our research focused on cutaneous leishmaniasis, a vector-borne disease transmitted by infected female sandflies. There are around 1 million cases a year of cutaneous leishmaniasis in the world. It’s rarely life-threatening and often resolves on its own, but it leaves skin lesions and ulcers that can last months or years. In some cases it leaves permanent scars and lasting physical, psychological and social harm, including stigma.

In north Africa, cutaneous leishmaniasis is mainly caused by the zoonotic parasite Leishmania major, which is maintained in animal reservoirs, particularly rodents in arid environments close to villages.

In these settings, the disease is strongly associated with succulent, salt-tolerant desert shrubs. These plants provide rodents with an important source of food and vegetation cover. The burrows the rodents make beneath or near the vegetation provide shelter and suitable habitats for both rodents and sandflies.

Especially in Morocco, another form of the disease (Leishmania tropica) also circulates with humans as the main reservoir. It was included in our analysis too.

How does climate affect its spread?

Previous research has identified rainfall as an environmental factor influencing zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis transmission in the region. This happens through a cascade of ecological effects: increased rainfall; growth of desert shrubs; more rodents and sandflies; greater transmission.

In the tropics, phenomena like El Niño create climate signals that are predictable months to years in advance. Diseases sensitive to temperature or rainfall can inherit some of that predictability.

Outside the tropics, the atmosphere usually loses its memory much faster. Knowing what the weather is doing today tells us much less about what conditions will be like months from now. That makes it much harder to predict climate conditions months ahead.

But could north Africa be different? We wanted to find out whether this region might have enough long-term climate predictability to allow us to forecast cutaneous leishmaniasis months ahead of time.

How did the north African climate help your research?

Rainfall is normally hard to predict because it depends on many competing processes at once: land-sea interactions, mountains, shifting moisture in the atmosphere. Pin down a signal in one of those processes, and the others tend to drown it out.

North Africa’s arid zones are different. With few other rain-generating processes at play, rainfall there is governed almost entirely by one thing: large-scale westerly winds carrying Atlantic moisture inland. The desert acts as a filter, letting that single Atlantic influence show through clearly in local rainfall.

That makes the region promising to study: if the Atlantic circulation is predictable, and it strongly influences local rainfall, then rainfall – and potentially leishmaniasis transmission – may be predictable too.

What are your main findings?

We found that year-to-year changes in cutaneous leishmaniasis transmission in north Africa can be linked to climate variability originating in the Atlantic Ocean.

The chain is remarkably coherent:

• Slowly varying temperatures in the Atlantic influence large-scale atmospheric circulation and the strength of westerly winds.

• These winds transport moisture towards north Africa and influence rainfall in areas where leishmaniasis is transmitted.

• Rainfall affects vegetation in the region’s arid ecosystems.

• Changes in vegetation affect the rodent populations that act as reservoirs for leishmania major, as well as the conditions in which sandflies thrive.

These ecological changes are then reflected in changes in cutaneous leishmaniasis transmission.

In other words, a climate signal that begins in the Atlantic can be linked to disease transmission in north Africa.

That Atlantic signal can also improve our ability to anticipate changes in leishmaniasis transmission.

What’s significant about what you’ve found?

Scientifically, the findings matter because they show long-range climate predictability isn’t limited to the tropics, where most seasonal forecasting research has focused. A signal originating in the Atlantic can travel through the atmosphere and local ecosystem and surface, months later, in patterns of disease transmission. Deserts may be especially good places to detect this kind of signal, precisely because their aridity strips out the competing processes that would otherwise mask it. Whether the same approach transfers to other diseases and regions depends on how tightly their local ecology is tied to rainfall.

From a public-health standpoint, the findings lay groundwork for forecasting cutaneous leishmaniasis in Morocco and Tunisia. The forecasts could give health authorities advance warning to ramp up surveillance, plan vector control and prepare health services.

– Ocean, desert rainfall and a parasitic disease: researchers connect patterns
– https://theconversation.com/ocean-desert-rainfall-and-a-parasitic-disease-researchers-connect-patterns-291759

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Paola Vesco, Senior Researcher, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)

Estimates of the number of people directly killed in Sudan’s civil war vary widely, in part because counting casualties in active conflict zones is extremely difficult. In 2025, for instance, one conflict monitoring organisation reported around 19,000 direct deaths from political violence across Sudan. Other research teams put the toll at more than 70,000.

Conflict researcher Paola Vesco and her team have developed a model that helps measure the uncertainty around such conflict death estimates. Their approach takes into account the tendency of conflict datasets to underestimate fatalities, and provides a more realistic range of possible death tolls. They explain how their model could improve estimates in conflicts like Sudan’s.

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What do we know about the number of dead in Sudan?

The number of people killed in Sudan’s war since it began in April 2023 remains contested. Deaths in 2025 have been especially hard to establish as communications were cut and humanitarian access was blocked.

In 2025, fighting intensified as the Rapid Support Forces – a paramilitary group which has fought the Sudanese army for control of the state since 2023 – advanced in Darfur and North Kordofan. Civilian deaths and displacement rose.

In February 2026, a UN fact-finding mission concluded that the Rapid Support Forces’ killings in El-Fasher bore the hallmarks of genocide.

The group’s capture of El-Fasher in the Darfur region in October 2025, after an 18-month siege, marked a significant territorial and strategic shift in the war. It consolidated the Rapid Support Forces’ control over much of Darfur and strengthened their position in western Sudan. It was also one of the war’s deadliest episodes.

ACLED, a global conflict monitoring organisation, reported around 19,000 deaths, which it describes as a conservative minimum count of deaths directly caused by political violence in Sudan in 2025.

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program, a research team at Uppsala University that has recorded conflict deaths worldwide for decades, estimated that attacks against civilians killed at least 60,000 people. More than 10,000 died in fighting between the army and armed groups.

Drawing on survivors’ reports, satellite imagery and other evidence, Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab estimates that at least 60,000 people were killed during and after the paramilitary group’s capture of El-Fasher between late October and the end of December 2025.

Even worse, these figures capture only direct deaths from violence in Sudan. Many more have probably died from disease and starvation, as the Rapid Support Forces built earthen walls around El-Fasher in an effort to starve out the population.

Why are the estimates so different?

The true number of war deaths can never be known with certainty, but scholars understand reasonably well why estimates vary.

Much of the difference across reports stems from how organisations select and handle sources.

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program’s estimate of 60,000 killed in El-Fasher draws directly on Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab. It is corroborated by independent reporting from Sudanese media, NGOs and UN agencies.

Beyond this “best” (most likely) figure, Uppsala’s programme also keeps a “high” estimate (75,000), reflecting the upper end of Yale’s assessment, and a markedly lower “low” estimate to flag that the exact number of deaths is uncertain.

ACLED, on the other hand, reports a single fatality number. When sources disagree, it takes the most conservative figure.

The differences in the estimates of deaths also stem from how monitoring organisations process information.

Both the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and ACLED record the exact date and location of violent incidents when these are available. But ACLED only counts deaths that can be linked to a specific incident. Deaths reported only as a broad total, without identifiable incidents, may therefore be left out. Uppsala’s programme instead records them as a “summary” event, which presents the total death toll over a longer period or a wider area, rather than for a single attack.

This apparently simple rule matters enormously when many smaller, undated incidents add up to a large total, as in El-Fasher.

What did you do differently and what numbers did you come up with?

Providing an uncertainty estimate – a plausible range rather than a single number of people who may have died in war – reflects how much confidence an estimate deserves, and invites caution.

Still, most sources report only one number.

In a recently published article, we built an uncertainty estimate. We surveyed Uppsala Conflict Data Program’s expert coders to build a model converting any single number into a range of people that have plausibly died in a given war. This range is known as a “probability distribution”.

We applied this model to Sudan in 2025. The results are provided in the figure below. For each number of deaths on the horizontal axis, the height of the curve shows how plausible that number is according to our model. The higher the curve, the more plausible the number.

The peak of the curve from our model indicates that the most likely death toll in Sudan’s war in 2025 is close to 80,000 deaths. As our model is estimated from the Uppsala programme, it is unsurprising that this estimate is close to what they report.

We find that the true number of people killed in 2025 is very likely (with a 90% probability) to fall between 73,000 and 90,000, and there is a small chance that the actual number is as high as 100,000.

This relatively small range indicates that the uncertainty around Sudan’s deaths is much narrower than assumed – even the lower bound number far exceeds many official estimates.

Our estimates, however, should be read with caution. They are informed by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program’s knowledge and only indirectly reflect other estimates. Crucially, our model results cannot be checked against the true number of deaths, which tends to remain unknown as conflict actors have incentives to conceal it.

Despite these caveats, providing a range of people that plausibly have died in war instead of a single figure gives weight to the estimate, and leaves little room to dismiss inconvenient numbers as unreliable.

Why are these data points important?

Understanding how conflict death estimates vary across sources, and why, increases transparency.

Around the attack on El-Fasher, the uncertainty around death reports became a political issue. We argue that it should be a scientific one. One that can be measured.

The evidence suggests that the El-Fasher massacre could have been prevented. Throughout the siege, NGOs and academic institutions repeatedly warned foreign officials of an impending bloodbath.

Pressure against the United Arab Emirates – the Rapid Support Forces’ main supporter – could have curbed the flow of weapons to the group. Yet, western politicians prioritised economic and political ties with Abu Dhabi over preventing atrocity. Officials looked the other way, ignoring or downplaying the reports of rising deaths as uncertain.

Since fighting broke out between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, Sudan has become one of the world’s worst humanitarian and displacement crises. More than 34 million people – over half the country’s population – need humanitarian assistance, including food aid. An estimated 14 million people have been displaced.

This suffering could have been foreseen and minimised. Even in the most conservative case, our model finds that more than 70,000 people died in 2025, most of them within a few months. Are 70,000 deaths enough to look the other way?

Conflict monitoring organisations such as the Uppsala Conflict Data Program have documented war deaths for decades, drawing on vetted sources and consistent coding rules. Since the uncertainty around their figures can be quantified, as our model shows, this uncertainty is no longer a reason for delay or inaction.

Decision-makers often have the information they need to act early. Used in time, this information can help prevent atrocities and save lives.

– Sudan’s death toll in 2025 could be as high as 100,000: how we did the count
– https://theconversation.com/sudans-death-toll-in-2025-could-be-as-high-as-100-000-how-we-did-the-count-292159

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Murray Leibbrandt, UCT Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Scholar; Director of ARUA’s African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research within SALDRU., University of Cape Town

World leaders have been asked to support a proposed International Panel on Inequality. Brazil, Norway, South Africa and Spain, together with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, made the call on the margins of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in September 2026.

The panel would be modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It would assess the scale of inequality, its drivers and consequences, and the policies that can reduce it. The African Union endorsed the initiative in February, and South Africa intends to present a General Assembly resolution to establish it.

This is a significant step. Inequality could, for the first time, have a permanent scientific body within the multilateral system. But the usefulness of such a panel will depend on whose realities its assessments reflect.

Recent experience shows why this question matters. The Global Justice Report, released in June by the World Inequality Lab, puts forward ambitious proposals. But, as economists working on labour and informality recently argued, many of the proposals are based on how things work in high-income countries. They assume that certain kinds of employment relationships, labour protections and institutions exist.

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Read more: Global justice report offers bold ideas but misses the realities of 2 billion informal workers – economists

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For more than a decade the African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research has produced country inequality diagnostics and analyses with African researchers and national statistical offices. Our work is summarised in our recent book on inequality in sub-Saharan Africa.

We think global initiatives are a great step forward. The problem is that frameworks built mainly on the data and institutions of the global north might not be accurate where inequality is most severe.

To address this problem, we have been closely involved in the development of the African Inequality Review. Its aim is to close the knowledge gap about inequality. It will start new cross-country research on African inequality and build a public resource linking the continent’s inequality datasets.

The review can offer three things:

• African-led assessments of inequality, grounded in the continent’s institutions and labour markets

• linked data infrastructure needed to study rents, assets and fiscal choices alongside household outcomes

• a model of research designed with policymakers rather than delivered to them.

Africa will shape the future of global inequality

According to UN projections, sub-Saharan Africa will account for more than half of world population growth through to the end of this century. Almost all the global growth of the economically active population will come from Africa.

Most Africans are concentrated at the bottom of the global income distribution, so this demographic shift pulls the world’s distribution with it. Between 1990 and 2016, the share of the world’s poorest income decile living in sub-Saharan Africa rose from about one in five to one in three, according to African Development Bank and World Bank estimates.

Inequality within African countries is also among the highest in the world. The continent has seven of the world’s ten most unequal countries. In 2019, the richest 10% of Africans received about 54% of total income, and the poorest half received 9%.

The prospects of Africa’s young and growing population will therefore determine where global inequality goes. An international panel without a strong African evidence base would be assessing the past of global inequality rather than its future.

That evidence base remains thin. The picture of African inequality is based on fewer country observations than other regions. And different databases present markedly different pictures of the levels and changes in inequality on the continent.

Inputs on inequality

The African Inequality Review is modelled on two previous reviews:

• the Deaton Review in the UK, a multi-year, multidisciplinary assessment of inequalities in income, wealth, health and opportunity led by the Institute for Fiscal Studies chaired by Nobel laureate Angus Deaton

• the Latin American and Caribbean Inequality Review, a scholarly effort to explain why inequality in the region is still so high and what can be done about it.

The launch was held immediately after a meeting of the African Union and South Africa African Expert Panel. Having the panel involved ensured that senior African policymakers took part along with African and international practitioners and researchers. Participants were asked two questions.

• Where are important policy choices being made without the evidence decision-makers need?

• Which inequality questions, answered well, would change policy?

Several priorities emerged.

The first was that many of the most pressing evidence gaps lie where fiscal, corporate and asset data meet. Participants pointed to tax breaks that governments grant to individual large firms case by case, through negotiated agreements rather than through rules in tax law that apply to every firm. These incentives are rarely tied to results that can be checked, such as jobs created, purchases from local suppliers, or skills and technology passed on to local workers.

They also pointed to difficulties in assessing full economic and social returns to investments in public infrastructure. Impact studies routinely examine who is displaced by a new road and who gains market access. They far less often examine the impacts across the procurement chain and throughout time. In other words who wins contracts and subcontracts and who ultimately captures the rents.

Control over land, mineral resources and credit, and access to legal identity through civil registration, were raised in the same vein.

These patterns of control shape who gains access to opportunity and where productivity stays blocked. Assessments that ask whether a policy or an investment loosens those constraints, rather than only who gains and loses at the point of delivery, give a better account of its longer-term returns.

The second priority was that these questions build on household survey research rather than replace it. Decades of survey and panel data tell us who is poor, how people move in and out of poverty, and how disadvantage passes between generations. The frontier now is to link these microdata with tax records, administrative and firm-level data, and ownership and procurement registers. That would connect the distribution of outcomes to the mechanisms that produce them.

The third concerned the limits of single summary measures. A Gini coefficient, the single number ranging from 0 and 1 as inequality rises, summarises how unequally income is shared across a population. But it cannot tell a government whether its priority should be competition policy and progressive taxation, social protection, or early childhood investment.

Nor is there a known threshold where inequality becomes too high to sustain growth. This depends on what’s causing inequality in that context. For example, in many African contexts even low aggregate inequality masks strong gender biases.

The fourth was that policy design must start from the reality of informal livelihoods, rather than assume they can simply be regulated into formality.

Finally, participants stressed that researchers and policymakers need to work together from the outset if research is to inform decisions.

– The global panel on inequality needs African evidence: here’s how it could work
– https://theconversation.com/the-global-panel-on-inequality-needs-african-evidence-heres-how-it-could-work-292927

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By John Mukum Mbaku, Professor, Weber State University

A military coup d’état is the ouster of an elected president or head of state, usually through the use or threat of force. Putschists (those who participate in a coup) often justify their actions by accusing the government of mismanaging the economy and lowering living standards. Political instability is another reason coup makers give for their actions.

A coup is not necessarily the most effective way to cure economic and political ills, however. Positive change comes instead through institutional reform, structural economic changes and engagement with civil society – including the people who create wealth and economic growth.

Military regimes are usually unable or unwilling to provide the necessary regulatory reforms. They don’t provide the legal and institutional stability needed to fight poverty and improve living standards.

I’m an economist and legal scholar who studies political economy and human rights in Africa. My research includes military coups and how they affect states.

In my studies of military and constitutional takeovers in Egypt, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Sudan, I have identified four major consequences of coups:

• they worsen intergroup conflict and threaten peaceful coexistence

• they undermine entrepreneurship and the creation of wealth needed to confront poverty and inequality

• they encourage the abuse of vulnerable groups, such as women and children, and ethnic or religious minorities

• they destroy efforts to deepen democracy and the rule of law.

1. Coups worsen intergroup conflict

Most African countries are diverse in ethnic and religious terms. Unfortunately, most post-independence governments have failed to provide an institutional environment that helps people to live together in peace.

This failure has enabled the majority faction to tyrannise minorities.

In most African countries, ethnicity influences political mobilisation, patronage and coalition building. Ruling elites use ethnic identity as a tool to build voting blocs and secure power.

Military elites fill top military and security positions with officers from their own ethnic group. This is known as ethnic stacking. It’s happened in Kenya, Ethiopia and Nigeria.

When there is a coup, the concentration of power within a specific military faction can trigger intense security crises. Marginalised minorities may engage in violence to protect themselves, their resources and their political representation.

Coups can dismantle power-sharing arrangements or democratic frameworks that previously allowed people to live in peace and gave them a voice in governance.

2. Coups undermine wealth creation

A military coup tends to destabilise the legal system and make life less predictable. The uncertainty can discourage investment and entrepreneurship.

Investors want to know that tax rules, environmental standards and laws governing operations won’t change overnight. Courts must be reliable, accessible and able to settle disputes. Clear, predictable and reliable legal frameworks mean long-term trade contracts can be enforced.

A 2026 International Monetary Fund report estimates that coups “can reduce GDP growth by around 2.3 percentage points in the same year”. The report says coups in Africa reduce investment by 14.3%. These economic effects can persist in the years that follow.

3. Coups spark human rights abuses

Recognising and protecting human rights is a foundation for economic and human development. Human rights enable peaceful coexistence, long-term economic growth and sustainable development.

Constitutional democracies protect human rights, respect the rule of law and put limits on government power.

A military coup usually creates an environment in which human rights are routinely violated. Leaders no longer account to either the constitution or the people. In 2023, Freedom House, an American non-governmental organisation that advocates for democracy, warned that a surge of coups in Africa was threatening human rights and the rule of law.

Coup leaders often suspend or discard the constitution and its bill of rights. Military regimes are also known for committing serious human rights abuses like arbitrary detentions and torture.

4. Coups weaken the rule of law

One of the first things coup leaders do is destroy constitutional order. They put executive, legislative and judiciary powers in military hands. This deprives the people of the right to choose their leaders through elections.

Coup leaders typically ban peaceful protests, censor media, and jail critics of the regime without trial. Post-coup military elites usually rule by decree and not through an elected legislature or independent judiciary.

Forceful regime changes often invite counter-coups, civil conflict, and more political violence and instability.

This has been seen in Egypt, Sudan and several Sahelian states.

Stopping the coup wave

African states need to develop a democratic culture, which is undergirded by the control of the military by elected civilian authorities. Citizens who believe a government has failed can have their say through regularly scheduled elections.

Armed forces should be professional. Troops should be accountable to the constitution and elected civilian leaders. Military education should include human rights law and the duty to defend the constitution.

Coup leaders should not be allowed to take part in elections held to restore democratic order. Neither should they hold positions of responsibility in the state’s political institutions. The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance provides for this, but the African Union has not made sure it happens.

In Egypt, for instance, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew the democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. A year later, el-Sisi became the country’s president. Similarly, Gen. Brice Oligui Nguema led the 2023 coup in Gabon. He then won the April 2025 presidential election and was then installed as Gabon’s new president.

African states must also ban military coups and make it a crime to change the government unconstitutionally. There must be mechanisms for prosecuting perpetrators. Several African countries have developed strong democratic norms that reject military rule. Afrobarometer surveys, for example, show that respondents in Zambia (90%), Uganda (87%), Eswatini (85%) and Seychelles (85%) are highly opposed to military coups.

Countries that have avoided military coups have generally developed strong constitutions and institutions. They have credible elections and professional armed forces accountable to civilian authority.

In South Africa and Namibia, new governments brought armed forces together under civilian oversight. Botswana and Mauritius have combined good governance with economic development.

When political, military and economic institutions provide effective peaceful ways to resolve grievances, it’s harder to stage a coup.

– Military coups promise change – 4 ways they can leave African countries worse off
– https://theconversation.com/military-coups-promise-change-4-ways-they-can-leave-african-countries-worse-off-292469