Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Blessing Kavhu, Research Fellow, Remote Sensing & GIS Data Scientist I Conservationist I Transboundary Water Modeler I Technical Advisory Board Member I UCSC Climate Justice Fellow I UCSC Coastal Climate Resilience Fellow, University of California, Santa Cruz

In the fishing villages along Lake Kariba in northern Zimbabwe, near the border with Zambia, everyday routines that should be ordinary – like collecting water, walking to the fields or casting a fishing net – now carry a quiet, ever-present fear. A new national analysis shows that human-wildlife conflict in rural Zimbabwe has intensified to the point where it has become a public safety crisis, rather than simply an environmental challenge.

Between 2016 and 2022, 322 people died in wildlife encounters. Annual fatalities climbed from 17 to 67: a fourfold increase in just seven years. These fatal encounters are concentrated in communities that live closest to protected areas and water bodies. Here, people and wildlife compete for space and survival.

Protected areas and rivers provide water, forage and shelter for wildlife. Rural households rely on the same landscapes for farming, fishing and domestic water. The study shows that this overlap between human activity and wildlife movement sharply increases the risk of fatal encounters.

Historically, human-wildlife conflict research and policy in southern Africa focused on economic losses such as destroyed crops, livestock predation and damaged infrastructure. Fatal attacks on people were often treated as rare or incidental. This study shifts that perspective by showing that human deaths are not isolated events, but a growing and measurable pattern that demands urgent attention.

I am a US-based Zimbabwean scientist working with Zimbabwean conservationists. We analysed national wildlife-related fatality records from the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority. The central questions were: how many people are dying from wildlife encounters, where are these deaths occurring and which species are responsible?

The findings were stark. Fatal encounters are rising rapidly, are geographically clustered in the north and western districts, and are driven primarily by two species: crocodiles and elephants (not lions, as people might expect). The implications extend beyond conservation to include trauma, fear, retaliatory killings of wildlife and the need for targeted, locally specific interventions.

Patterns in the data

The study reveals that more than 80% of recorded deaths involved only two species, elephants and crocodiles. Crocodiles alone were responsible for slightly more than half of all fatalities. Many of these incidents happened during activities people cannot avoid: fishing, crossing rivers, bathing, or washing clothes in rivers and lakes. These encounters are sudden and often impossible to anticipate, especially in places where visibility is poor and safe water access is limited.

Elephants were responsible for nearly a third of the deaths. These happened mainly during crop-raiding incidents or when communities attempted to chase elephants from fields and homesteads, or when people were walking to school and work. These confrontations often occur at night or in the early morning when visibility is low. Lions, hyenas, hippos and buffalo contributed only 17% of fatal incidents during the study period.

The rise in lethal encounters appears to be driven by several overlapping forces. Zimbabwe still holds one of Africa’s largest elephant populations, estimated at over 80,000 animals. This is second only to Botswana. In dry years elephants move over long distances in search of water and forage, increasing their presence in communal lands. Shrinking natural habitats and growing rural populations mean that human populations are expanding into wildlife corridors. Climate change, particularly recurring droughts, intensifies the competition for water and space.

The geography of the fatalities reveals a clear pattern. Most deaths occurred in Kariba, Binga and Hwange. These are districts along the country’s northern and western frontier, with a combined population of about 343,264 people. They have large water bodies that support abundant crocodile populations; they are close to protected areas with high elephant numbers; and people there depend heavily on farming, fishing and natural resource use.

How people feel

These encounters leave people with fear. Parents become anxious about children walking to school, farmers worry about tending crops at dawn and communities may avoid crossing rivers.

But people aren’t getting mental health support. So grief and fear can turn into anger, often resulting in killings of wildlife. A destructive cycle undermines conservation and damages trust between communities and authorities.

What to do about it

Different places face different dangers, and solutions should reflect that.

Areas near crocodile-prone rivers need safe water access and crossing points and redesigned community washing areas. Districts where elephants are responsible for most fatalities require better early-warning systems, community-based monitoring networks and low-cost methods to deter elephants from crop fields. These measures must be paired with community education and consistent follow-up support.

The findings highlight that coexistence will not be possible without recognising the emotional and psychological dimensions of living alongside wildlife. The responsibility lies with government agencies working with communities. These must be supported by conservation organisations and health services. Counselling, community healing processes and long-term engagement can help break the retaliatory cycle.

Research from other African settings shows that targeted solutions grounded in community involvement and local risk patterns are key to reducing conflicts. In northern Kenya, community-based early warning systems that alert villagers to elephant movements have significantly reduced fatal encounters. Beehive fences and chili-based barriers have helped protect crops without harming wildlife.

In Uganda’s Murchison Falls area, surveys found that local people preferred physical exclusion measures and the relocation of specific crocodiles as ways to lower the risk of attacks. In South Sudan’s Sudd wetlands, communities identified crocodile sanctuaries as one way to reduce dangerous interactions. In Zambia’s lower Zambezi valley, villagers highlighted the need for more alternative water access points (such as boreholes).

These examples show that fatal encounters are not inevitable. When interventions are matched to the species involved and the daily realities of local communities, both human deaths and retaliatory killings of wildlife can be reduced.

Zimbabwe’s wildlife remains a source of national pride and a cornerstone of tourism. But conservation cannot succeed if the people who live closest to wildlife feel unprotected or unheard. A future where people and wildlife thrive together depends on acknowledging that human wellbeing is inseparable from the wellbeing of the ecosystems they share.

– Human-wildlife conflict in Zimbabwe is a crisis: who is in danger, where and why?
– https://theconversation.com/human-wildlife-conflict-in-zimbabwe-is-a-crisis-who-is-in-danger-where-and-why-271117

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University

In his latest book, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State, anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani explains the factors and characters – Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni – that shaped post-independence Uganda.

As he explains to The Conversation Africa, there are striking differences between the two men.

Museveni has been in office for almost four decades. Amin lasted eight years. What explains Museveni’s endurance?

I try to explain in the book some of the most important reasons Museveni has lasted for more than four decades. I think these reasons are both internal and external.

The internal reason is that he has tried to perfect what the British introduced as “divide and rule”, which is to undermine the basis of a unified citizenship in the country. Not just as the British did, taking existing ethnic groups and politicising them into political structures we call tribes. But more than that, taking some sub-ethnic groups and turning them into tribes. So from fewer than 20 tribes, he has created more than 100. It’s an endless process.

And then there is the external. Unlike Amin, who was the sworn enemy of big powers in the west, Museveni is the sworn protégé and the sworn friend of the big powers in the west.

Some analysts seem to suggest that it’s only now, particularly after his son has started making sort of political pronouncements, that Ugandan politics is being militarised. But a theme that comes out clearly in your book is that under both Amin and Museveni, the army has always been a substitute for political organisation in Uganda.

I think that’s a correct reading of the book. Now, within that very broad comparison, there are some important differences in the route taken by Amin.

Amin was recruited as a child soldier by the British at the age of 14 or so. He was trained in what they call the arts of counter insurgency, which is really a polite term for state terrorism. He used to publicly demonstrate, particularly to African heads of state, for example, at their meeting in Morocco, how he could suffocate with a handkerchief.

And Amin went through some kind of a transformation in the first year after he had gained power.

He gained power through the direct assistance of the British and the Israelis. The Israelis, in particular, advised Amin that he could not just overthrow Uganda’s first post-independence president Milton Obote and think that that was the end of the story. He would have to deal with his cohorts, the people he had brought to key positions, and the reckoning would be around the corner.

So the only way he could avoid the reckoning was to annihilate them. And his first year in power was brutal. I mean, he killed hundreds of people in different army barracks. These were massacres. There’s no other word to describe it.

And then, after that, he went to Israel and to Britain with sort of a list of what he wanted. He thought he had gone forward for the Israelis and the British, and now it was time for them to do him a favour. And they were amused, and he was humiliated. He looked for an alternative, and that is how he, through the then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, met Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and that is how, through Gaddafi, he met Sudanese leader Gaafar Muhammad Nimeiry. Amin, along with Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, played a key role in the Addis Ababa agreement of 1972 which brought the first civil war in Sudan to an end.

After the second year of his coming to power, I don’t know of any massacres. He still killed opponents, but he did not generalise the killing to either family or friends or clans or just groups that the person was identified with or associated with. His killing was much more that of a dictator who uses violence to deal with his opposition.

It’s very different in Museveni’s case. Museveni came to power with the sense that violence is critical to politics, and especially critical to liberation politics. Museveni is an avid devotee of Frantz Fanon, particularly The Wretched of the Earth. And the key lesson he takes from Fanon is the essentiality of violence in any emancipatory politics.

And so I try to trace the path whereby Museveni begins by thinking of violence as central to dismantling an oppressive state and ends up with the notion that violence is central to building a state. He arrives at exactly the opposite conclusion. And this is long before his son comes into the picture.

There’s a whole chapter I have in the book on the first few decades after 1986 when Museveni comes to power in his operations in the north and in successive massacres and killings, claiming that what he was fighting in the north was a continuation of the war on terror, which had begun after the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US.

And these claims were just accepted at face value by the international community, which is the name we give to western powers.

So would you say the war on terror was a godsend for Museveni in helping him advance his agenda?

Definitely. Ever since the structural adjustment programme of the late 1980s, he understood that if he was going to stifle opposition at home, he would need support overseas, and this support would come to him if he claimed to be central to waging the war on terror.

Museveni was smart enough to realise that American foreign policy, American military involvement, had political limitations. And those limitations were: how many Americans could be killed? And when these killings took place in Somalia, the Black Hawk Down incident, Museveni offered his services.

He took his soldiers to Somalia. You remember that slogan, African solutions for African problems. Museveni offered that African solution in South Sudan, in Rwanda, in eastern Congo. The African solution was just a fancy name for Africans massacring Africans in the service of imperial powers. And that’s what happened at the end.

You recommend a federation as the most likely to succeed in post Museveni Uganda. Is there a political base for it at the moment? Or would something need to happen for the proposed federation to succeed?

Those of us who are militant nationalists and independents understood federation as a British project. We understood that it was the right wing, it was those who were interested in creating tribal fiefdoms, who used federation as a fig leaf to describe their agenda. We understood that this was their way of undercutting any attempt to build a strong nationalist state.

But since then, with a strong state having been built, we have understood the conditions have changed and the times have changed. Local organisation, local autonomy, has come to have a very different significance.

It is a way of resisting a development of autocracy in the centre and I think people are beginning to draw lessons from this.

Now, the thing is what kind of federation, because Museveni has also promoted something resembling a federation. But he has, as in Ethiopia, promoted what you can call an ethnic federalism. So in each single unit, he has divided the majority from the minority, the majority belonging to the ethnic group living in the country, and the minority having descended from other ethnic groups, even though living in the country, even though born in that place, still deprived of rights.

This is what’s happened in Ethiopia. If you look at Ethiopia, if you look at Sudan, you will see that the British politicised ethnic groups and turned them into tribes. And then after colonialism, what we have done is to militarise these tribes. So we have created tribal militias. That’s what they have done in Ethiopia. That’s the fighting between different tribal militias. That’s what they did in Sudan. They created tribal militias, starting in Darfur and then in other places. It is the state military which led the systems in creating these tribal militias. Then it is the tribal militias which have begun to swallow the state.

So this current civil war we have going on is between the state army and the tribal militias. It’s the same process you see in Uganda. We have not gone to the point of creating tribal militias, but we have been manufacturing tribe after tribe after tribe in order to fragment the country.

Some of these trends that you describe about Uganda can be found in most African countries. What are the lessons about the way forward for the rest of the African continent?

Broadly, we can see these trends in many African countries. The British model of colonialism became the general colonial model. Even the French, known for their assimilationist preferences, adopted indirect rule when they moved from assimilation to what they called association in the 1930s. And the Portuguese followed the French.

South Africans were the last ones in – they called it apartheid. But it was the same thing, the creation of homelands, the tribalisation of local differences. So that’s one trend in much of the thinking on the continent.

The alternative to that trend has been described as centralisation, so we’ve been moving between beefing up autocratic, centralised power and then opposing with fragmented, tribal powers.

I’m proposing a third way. I’m proposing a federation which is more ethnic. I’m proposing a federation which is more based on territory, more based on where you live. So it doesn’t matter where you’re from, but just the fact that you live there means that you have cast your lot with the rest of the people there in creating a common future.

And what matters in politics, more than where you came from, is the decision to make a common future. Migration is characteristic of human society. Human society has not come into being through homelands. So homeland is a colonial fiction.

The idea that Africans did not move, that they were tied to a particular piece of territory, is absurd, because Africans moved more than anybody else. We know that humanity began in Africa and spread to the rest of the world. So where is the homeland? You can have a homeland for this generation, for the previous few generations, but all African people have a story of migration. This is, I think, central.

So the way forward: one is a federation which consolidates democracy rather than eroding it.

The second way forward is to critically think through the whole neoliberal economic model and the empowering of elites, whether they are racial or ethnic or whatever.

I think we have to find a different economic model. But as you say, the book is not dedicated to looking for solutions. The book is dedicated to the proposition that we need to understand the problem before rushing to solutions.

And each country will have its own nuances. Different to Uganda.

– The making and breaking of Uganda: an interview with scholar Mahmood Mamdani
– https://theconversation.com/the-making-and-breaking-of-uganda-an-interview-with-scholar-mahmood-mamdani-272181

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Chinomnso Onwubiko, Consultant, University of Cape Coast

Rivers State on Nigeria’s coastline has some of Africa’s largest mangrove ecosystems. The Niger Delta itself contains the third-largest mangrove forest in the world. These trees support fisheries, biodiversity and the livelihoods of thousands of people.

The Niger Delta region is also the heart of the country’s oil and gas industry. Decades of oil exploration and production have altered its landscape. Pipeline construction, dredging (when sand is dug out of the ground), oil spills and gas flaring (burning) have degraded mangrove habitats. In addition, local communities use mangrove wood for fuel, construction and income generation.

The resulting damage to the environment – including mangrove forests – has weakened the natural coastal defences that once protected communities from flooding, erosion and storms.

Mangroves grow in shallow water. They act as biophysical barriers that dissipate wave energy, trap sediments and reduce the intensity of storm surges.

I am an environmental scientist working in coastal zone management, flood risk assessment and nature-based solutions for climate adaptation. My research focuses on how ecosystems help reduce coastal flood risk. In particular, I have looked at how natural ecosystems, particularly mangroves, contribute to coastal resilience and community protection in vulnerable coastal regions.

In my research I used ecosystem modelling tools to evaluate how changes in habitat condition influence exposure to flooding and erosion in coastal communities. The model scored and compared areas of healthy, continuous mangrove cover with areas where mangroves were degraded or cleared.

It showed that mangrove ecosystems provide a significant natural defence against flooding in the coastal communities of Rivers State. Areas with good mangrove cover scored lower for vulnerability.

This comparison confirms what local residents have long observed: that the loss of mangrove forests has led to more frequent and severe flooding events.

The study underscores the urgency of integrating nature-based solutions into local and national flood management policies.

Mangroves provide significant cover

The Niger Delta has recorded varying amounts of oil spill incidents since the 1970s. These have affected land, water and mangrove forests.

My study applied the InVEST Coastal Vulnerability model developed by the Natural Capital Project. The model uses information about a range of variables to generate exposure scores for places along the shoreline. The variables include shoreline type, wind and wave exposure, and the distribution of populations and infrastructure along the coast.

The score shows how vulnerable a place is to flooding. This allows direct comparisons between areas with intact mangroves and those that have lost mangroves.

A key insight from the modelling exercise was that the relationship between mangrove extent and flood protection is not simple. Narrow, fragmented mangrove belts offer limited protection. Wider and denser belts of mangroves have a disproportionately powerful effect. They substantially reduce wave energy and flood inundation.

This finding aligns with similar studies from south-east Asia and the Caribbean. These report that wider mangrove zones provide exponentially greater flood mitigation benefits.

The study further highlights the socio-ecological implications of mangrove degradation. The decline of mangrove cover driven by fuelwood harvesting, land conversion, oil infrastructure and pollution has eroded biodiversity and fisheries productivity. It has also reduced the resilience of human communities.

In places where mangroves have been lost, residents rely on infrastructure like sandbags or embankments. But these provide limited and temporary relief. Communities are becoming dependent on costly engineering measures rather than sustainable, ecosystem-based solutions.

What needs to be done

Restoring and protecting mangroves is a cost-effective way of reducing disaster risk. Natural coastal buffers reduce exposure to flooding and erosion. They also support livelihoods through fisheries, fuelwood and ecotourism. Mangroves also store carbon.

All these functions make them a cornerstone of climate adaptation in environments like the Niger Delta.

Urgent action is required to protect and restore mangrove ecosystems.

Rivers State could be a model for other coastal regions facing similar challenges. The model produces scenarios of “with mangroves” and “without mangroves”. This enables:

• consequences of the presence or absence of mangroves to be seen

• the production of maps. These can show areas where mangroves provide the most – and the least – support. So in real time, it shows areas where reforestation or afforestation efforts can be focused on.

These can be replicated in other coastal areas.

Mangrove conservation must be part of formal coastal zone management and spatial planning policies. This means recognising what mangroves can contribute to disaster risk reduction, urban development and climate adaptation strategies at state and national levels.

Large-scale mangrove restoration programmes must begin in degraded areas, especially those that have already experienced severe flooding. Restoration efforts should focus on reestablishing wide belts of trees with dense coverage, using native species and community-led approaches that ensure local participation and ownership.

Government and oil companies operating in the Niger Delta must do more to stop pollution, dredging and land-use practices that destroy mangroves. Aquaculture, eco-tourism and mangrove-friendly fisheries should be promoted to reduce dependence on unsustainable wood harvesting.

Capacity building and public awareness campaigns are essential to empower communities to manage mangrove ecosystems sustainably. By combining local knowledge with scientific evidence, policymakers, researchers and communities can develop effective, nature-based solutions that reduce flood risk while enhancing ecological and socio-economic resilience.

– Mangrove loss is making the Niger Delta more vulnerable: we built a model that can track how the forests are doing
– https://theconversation.com/mangrove-loss-is-making-the-niger-delta-more-vulnerable-we-built-a-model-that-can-track-how-the-forests-are-doing-267384

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Iwa Salami, Professor of Law, University of East London

A notification popped up on my LinkedIn the other day. Africans were doing a traditional celebratory dance at the Africa Stablecoin summit in Johannesburg.

The picture gave me a sinking feeling.

Why? While stablecoins can advance financial inclusion in Africa, could this celebration mark the potential transfer of monetary sovereignty from African economies to the economy issuing the most coveted currency-denominated stablecoin?

Stablecoins are crypto-assets or digital currencies designed to maintain a stable value, typically by being pegged to a reference asset such as a national currency (like US dollars), a commodity (like gold) or a basket of assets.

The use of stablecoins in Africa is on the rise, particularly in Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya. This rise is driven by currency volatility, inflation and limited access to stable foreign currency through traditional banking. Those problems prompt some people to adopt US dollar-denominated stablecoins for saving, hedging and remittances.

Part of their appeal is that they can be moved across borders more quickly, cheaply and efficiently than conventional assets. In South Africa, a well developed regulatory and financial infrastructure has increased institutional confidence, expanding stablecoin use beyond retail into business payments, remittances and other business-to-business transactions.

Their stability is usually achieved through reserves, collateral, or algorithmic mechanisms that prevent large price swings.

My book, Financial Technology Law and Regulation in Africa, looked at their operation as a crypto-asset in African states. I raised concerns about their potential impact on emerging economies, including African countries, in 2019 and 2020. A recent International Monetary Fund paper has echoed these concerns.

The journey so far

Stablecoins emerged in 2014 to reduce the volatility of crypto-assets for crypto-holders who wanted to cash out of a high-value crypto-asset before it crashed. Crypto-asset values crash easily because they are highly speculative, sentiment-driven, and can be sold instantly at scale, allowing fear to trigger rapid sell-offs.

The most popular ones are US dollar-denominated USDT and USDC issued by private companies Tether and Circle, respectively. However, stablecoins were unregulated for about 10 to 11 years before the EU Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA) regulation in 2024 and the US Genius Act in 2025. During this period, there were no disclosure requirements governing these crypto-assets.

As not all are subject to regulation, criticisms abound regarding the quality and opaque nature of the assets backing them and their robustness to withstand redemption runs or large cash redemption by holders of stablecoins.

These criticisms arise as it is often unclear exactly how liquid, safe, and transparent the assets backing stablecoins are, raising doubts about whether unregulated issuers could meet large, sudden redemption demands without stress. This matters because the stablecoin market is worth approximately US$300 billion, so a loss of confidence could trigger mass redemptions and cause disruption well beyond the crypto-asset sector.

Potential problems

The rise in the use of stablecoins poses a risk of dollarisation, as US dollar-denominated stablecoins account for 99% of the stablecoin market. Dollarisation is the excessive use of the dollar in local African economies. It could be a threat to African states’ monetary sovereignty and drive capital flight from African economies.

To avert this problem, African authorities and central banks would first need to be prepared to impose restrictions or limits on the amounts of these US dollar or foreign-denominated stablecoins that can circulate within their economies at any given time. This is to prevent the threat to monetary sovereignty.

Secondly, African economies should also be prepared to put in place sound policy frameworks through which they can build credibility for their currencies and, therefore, avoid the risk of dollarisation.

Thirdly, they can consider launching their own stablecoins. This can be in the form of a local currency stablecoin or a regional stablecoin. To prevent capital flight from the economies, these stablecoins can be backed by a commodity or a basket of commodities, from Africa’s wealth of natural resources and minerals such as precious stones, gold, diamonds, crude oil and cobalt. To have a global edge, a dollar value can be derived from these commodities.

Since the proposed African backed stablecoin would be a local currency with a US dollar value, it could be used to settle domestic, regional and global transactions without the need for US dollars, whose backing assets are held outside the country and in the US.

Fourthly, they could also consider issuing their own retail central bank digital currency, as this would have exactly the same effect as fiat but in digital form. It would have the same credibility status as fiat, which would need to be built to avoid the risk of dollarisation.

The risks

As US dollar-denominated stablecoins account for 99% of the stablecoins market, the rise of their use in Africa indicates stablecoins have heightened dollarisation.

Dollarisation already exists and is widespread across Africa. It ranges from partial and informal to deep and systemic, depending on country conditions, but stablecoins accelerate and reinforce it. Traditional dollarisation (people and firms informally using US dollars for savings and trade) remains constrained by physical cash, bank access and foreign exchange controls.

Stablecoins make dollar-denominated liquidity instantly accessible on a mobile phone, bypassing banks, foreign exchange restrictions and domestic currency infrastructure. They become “digital dollars”, circulating outside the supervisory perimeter of central banks.

The US Genius Act brings issuers under US regulatory oversight. It guarantees that US dollar-denominated stablecoins will be safe, liquid and institutionally backed, making them more attractive than many African domestic currencies, especially in inflationary environments.

Consequently, what was once an informal hedge becomes a formal, globally credible digital alternative to local currency, accelerating capital flight, weakening deposit creation, and undermining domestic monetary policy.

This has direct monetary sovereignty implications for countries such as Nigeria and Kenya. In Nigeria, persistent foreign exchange shortages and naira volatility have pushed households and small enterprises into Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) as working capital and savings instruments.

Post-Genius Act, these instruments will become more institutionally robust, increasing dependence on US-dollar-based payment and settlement systems located and governed outside the country’s financial system and reducing the Central Bank of Nigeria’s ability to influence liquidity, lending and inflation.

In Kenya, where digital finance is already deeply embedded through M-Pesa, US dollar-stablecoins offer a hedge against the shilling, bypassing local credit creation and weakening the Central Bank of Kenya’s monetary transmission mechanism.

In both cases, the US Genius Act effectively shifts monetary authority away from African central banks and towards US regulators and private issuers – not by design, but through market incentives. Stablecoins thus do not merely mirror existing dollarisation; they legalise it at scale, embedding it into Africa’s digital financial systems.

There is also the risk of capital flight from African economies to the jurisdictions where the denominated stablecoins are backed.

In summary, stablecoins can truly advance financial inclusion in Africa, but heavy reliance on foreign-denominated stablecoins risks deepening dollarisation and weakening monetary sovereignty.

Next steps

To deal with these risks, African economies need stronger policy frameworks to build currency credibility and reduce the risk of dollarisation. This means that the fiscal deficit must be contained – meaning that governments must not spend far more than they earn. Current account balances must be managed, and foreign exchange, bank and corporate sector balances must be closely monitored.

My take on this issue is that central banks should be at the forefront of these developments, and this could also involve issuing their own central bank-issued tokenised money or digital currencies. This can co-exist alongside stablecoins rather than allowing privately issued, foreign-denominated stablecoins to become the dominant digital currency in circulation in a state.

So, while the dance at the stablecoin summit was commendable, I am concerned that only one dimension, looking at the benefits of stablecoins to facilitate payments and financial inclusion, is being put forward.

Policymakers must clearly articulate the implications of foreign-denominated stablecoins and prepare appropriate responses.

– Stablecoins are gaining ground as digital currency in Africa: how to avoid risks
– https://theconversation.com/stablecoins-are-gaining-ground-as-digital-currency-in-africa-how-to-avoid-risks-271359

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Lyzbeth King, PhD Student, School of Communication Studies, Ohio University

Imagine living in a country where talking openly about depression or anxiety can cost you your job, your reputation, or even your freedom. That is still the reality in Ghana, where mental illness is often explained in spiritual terms, and seeking help can mean being taken to a prayer camp instead of seeing a therapist. Even with global mental health awareness campaigns flooding social media and calendar days dedicated to ending stigma, many Ghanaians continue to struggle in silence.

We study communication and wanted to understand how Ghanaian celebrities, in particular, communicatively manage the stigma that is associated with their mental illness. Celebrities are often treated as near-superhuman figures; they are admired for their talent, resilience and public influence. But they suffer too.

For our research, we reached out to some celebrities who helped us reach out to others who were experiencing or had experienced a mental illness. Altogether, 20 celebrities were interviewed.

Most of them told us they hide their struggles and turn to private prayer rather than professional care. Fear of being labelled “weak”, judged as “spiritually afflicted” or losing work opportunities keeps them quiet. Instead of speaking out, they pray behind closed doors, hoping their symptoms will disappear before anyone notices.

Their status makes it even harder for them to speak openly about their mental illnesses. Their careers depend on credibility and the impression of strength. As a result, they cope privately, turning to prayer rather than professional help.

Celebrities influence public perceptions. Therefore, understanding how they manage mental illness stigma can offer valuable insights into broader societal attitudes and behaviours towards mental health communication.

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Read more: Why Africa needs to invest in mental health

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Insights from our conversations

Our candid conversations with 20 Ghanaian celebrities in the entertainment and sports industries revealed the unique ways they manage stigma associated with mental illness. For example:

I would wake up at dawn and walk to a church and pray. I could stand outside for the dawn dew to fall on me just so that I could pray and ask God to use the dew to change the happenings in my life. (male, actor)

Some reported that prayer served not only as a way of managing stigma, but also as a source of healing from the mental illness itself. One said that “prayers and fasting” helped.

Others use a combination of acceptance and praying to cope. Acceptance is a stigma management strategy identified by health and stigma researcher Rebecca Meisenbach. It refers to acknowledging the existence of stigma around a certain condition and its application to the individual.

Acceptance as a stigma management strategy manifests through behaviours such as displaying symptoms associated with the mental illness and forming bonds with other individuals who are similarly stigmatised.

Our study participants said they managed stigma by connecting with others going through similar experiences:

When I was dealing with depression and all of that, the person I spoke to about it was my cousin. He was also depressed at the time. So it was like, we are sharing notes. You know, and we end up encouraging each other. (male, actor and comedian)

Another male actor and comedian shared: “Among celebrities who go through mental health issues, we talk. We have discussions among ourselves. It will not be possible to go out and say it publicly but among ourselves, I can call a colleague and say, guy, I have been experiencing this breakdown.”

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Read more: Unpacking the role of religious counselling services in Ghana

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What needs to be done

Our research shows an important truth for Ghanaians. The people we admire most are also actively navigating mental health challenges behind closed doors. Their silence and ways of handling their mental struggles reflect the same fears many ordinary Ghanaians carry. If people in the spotlight are quietly battling mental illnesses, it shows that mental illness is far more common than some people are willing to admit.

This is why real mental illness conversations must begin now. To reduce mental illness stigma, it must be openly spoken about, and every shift starts somewhere: in our homes, religious spaces and workplaces. When people speak honestly about their struggles, and if others listen and respond with compassion, it creates a culture where seeking mental help is not seen as shameful.

Celebrity stories show that prayer plays a central role in how celebrities largely cope with mental illness. Prayer is meaningful, culturally rooted and, for many, spiritually essential. But prayer should not replace medical help. In short, prayer and seeking medical help should not be seen as mutually exclusive; rather, they should be seen as complementary.

Mental health professionals and religious leaders can help reframe mental illness healing as a process that can be accomplished through both medical care and spiritual prayers and not as a choice between them, especially in a religious culture like Ghana. Doing this can offer a more holistic pathway to recovery and a more accepting community for people who fear stigmatisation.

Healing does not have to be hidden, and help does not have to be feared. A new culture of openness can begin with each person who chooses to speak, listen and support. We hope that this shift starts now and that Ghana becomes a place where spiritual care and medical support work in tandem to make mental health care accessible and stigma-free.

– Ghanaian celebrities are dealing with mental illness stigma behind closed doors – why speaking up matters
– https://theconversation.com/ghanaian-celebrities-are-dealing-with-mental-illness-stigma-behind-closed-doors-why-speaking-up-matters-270710

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Paola D’Orazio, Associate Professor, IÉSEG School of Management

Climate change is no longer just about melting ice or hotter summers. It is also a financial problem. Droughts, floods, storms and heatwaves damage crops, factories and infrastructure. At the same time, the global push to cut greenhouse gas emissions creates risks for countries that depend on oil, gas or coal.

These pressures can destabilise entire financial systems, especially in regions already facing economic fragility. Africa is a prime example.

Although the continent contributes less than 5% of global carbon emissions, it is among the most vulnerable. In Mozambique, repeated cyclones have destroyed homes, roads and farms, forcing banks and insurers to absorb heavy losses. Kenya has experienced severe droughts that hurt agriculture, reducing farmers’ ability to repay loans. In north Africa, heatwaves strain electricity grids and increase water scarcity.

These physical risks are compounded by “transition risks”, like declining revenues from fossil fuel exports or higher borrowing costs as investors worry about climate instability. Together, they make climate governance through financial policies both urgent and complex. Without these policies, financial systems risk being caught off guard by climate shocks and the transition away from fossil fuels.

This is where climate-related financial policies come in. They provide the tools for banks, insurers and regulators to manage risks, support investment in greener sectors and strengthen financial stability.

Regulators and banks across Africa have started to adopt climate-related financial policies. These range from rules that require banks to consider climate risks, to disclosure standards, green lending guidelines, and green bond frameworks. These tools are being tested in several countries. But their scope and enforcement vary widely across the continent.

My research compiles the first continent-wide database of climate-related financial policies in Africa and examines how differences in these policies – and in how binding they are – affect financial stability and the ability to mobilise private investment for green projects.

A new study I conducted reviewed more than two decades of policies (2000–2025) across African countries. It found stark differences.

South Africa has developed the most comprehensive framework, with policies across all categories. Kenya and Morocco are also active, particularly in disclosure and risk-management rules. In contrast, many countries in central and west Africa have introduced only a few voluntary measures.

Why does this matter? Voluntary rules can help raise awareness and encourage change, but on their own they often do not go far enough. Binding measures, on the other hand, tend to create stronger incentives and steadier progress. So far, however, most African climate-related financial policies remain voluntary. This leaves climate risk as something to consider rather than a firm requirement.

Uneven landscape

In Africa, the 2015 Paris Agreement marked a clear turning point. Around that time, policy activity increased noticeably, suggesting that international agreements and standards could help create momentum and visibility for climate action. The expansion of climate-related financial policies was also shaped by domestic priorities and by pressure from international investors and development partners.

But since the late 2010s, progress has slowed. Limited resources, overlapping institutional responsibilities and fragmented coordination have made it difficult to sustain the earlier pace of reform.

Looking across the continent, four broad patterns have emerged.

A few countries, such as South Africa, have developed comprehensive frameworks. These include:

• disclosure rules (requirements for banks and companies to report how climate risks affect them)

• stress tests (simulations of extreme climate or transition scenarios to see whether banks would remain resilient).

Others, including Kenya and Morocco, are steadily expanding their policy mix, even if institutional capacity is still developing.

Some, such as Nigeria and Egypt, are moderately active, with a focus on disclosure rules and green bonds. (Those are bonds whose proceeds are earmarked to finance environmentally friendly projects such as renewable energy, clean transport or climate-resilient infrastructure.)

Finally, many countries in central and west Africa have introduced only a limited number of measures, often voluntary in nature.

This uneven landscape has important consequences.

The net effect

In fossil fuel-dependent economies such as South Africa, Egypt and Algeria, the shift away from coal, oil and gas could generate significant transition risks. These include:

• financial instability, for example when asset values in carbon-intensive sectors fall sharply or credit exposures deteriorate

• stranded assets, where fossil fuel infrastructure and reserves lose their economic value before the end of their expected life because they can no longer be used or are no longer profitable under stricter climate policies.

Addressing these challenges may require policies that combine investment in new, low-carbon sectors with targeted support for affected workers, communities and households.

Climate finance affects people directly. When droughts lead to loan defaults, local banks are strained. Insurance companies facing repeated payouts after floods may raise premiums. Pension funds invested in fossil fuels risk devaluations as these assets lose value. Climate-related financial policies therefore matter not only for regulators and markets, but also for jobs, savings, and everyday livelihoods.

At the same time, there are opportunities.

Firstly, expanding access to green bonds and sustainability-linked loans can channel private finance into renewable energy, clean transport, or resilient infrastructure.

Secondly, stronger disclosure rules can improve transparency and investor confidence.

Thirdly, regional harmonisation through common reporting standards, for example, would reduce fragmentation. This would make it easier for Africa to attract global climate finance.

Looking ahead

International forums such as the UN climate conferences (COP) and the G20 have helped to push this agenda forward, mainly by setting expectations rather than hard rules. These initiatives create pressure and guidance. But they remain soft law. Turning them into binding, enforceable rules still depends on decisions taken by national regulators and governments.

International partners such as the African Development Bank and the African Union could support coordination by promoting continental standards that define what counts as a green investment. Donors and multilateral lenders may also provide technical expertise and financial support to countries with weaker systems, helping them move from voluntary guidelines toward more enforceable rules.

South Africa, already a regional leader, could share its experience with stress testing and green finance frameworks.

Africa also has the potential to position itself as a hub for renewable energy and sustainable finance. With vast solar and wind resources, expanding urban centres, and an increasingly digital financial sector, the continent could leapfrog towards a greener future if investment and regulation advance together.

Success stories in Kenya’s sustainable banking practices and Morocco’s renewable energy expansion show that progress is possible when financial systems adapt.

What happens next will matter greatly. By expanding and enforcing climate-related financial rules, Africa can reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks while unlocking opportunities in green finance and renewable energy.

– Africa’s climate finance rules are growing, but they’re weakly enforced – new research
– https://theconversation.com/africas-climate-finance-rules-are-growing-but-theyre-weakly-enforced-new-research-270990

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Sharthi Laldaparsad, PhD Student, University of Pretoria

“Turn right after the first big tree; my house is the one with the yellow door.” In parts of South Africa, where settlements have grown without formal urban planning due to rapid urbanisation, that could well be a person’s “address”.

Having an address has many purposes. Not only does it allow you to find a place or person you want to visit, it’s compulsory in South Africa to provide an address when opening a bank account and registering as a voter in elections. Address locations are used to plan the delivery of services such as electricity or refuse removal and health services at clinics or education at schools. Police and health workers need addresses in emergencies.

Nowadays, address data is integrated and maintained in databases at municipalities, banks and utility providers, and used to analyse targeted interventions and developmental outcomes. Examples would be tracking the spread of communicable diseases, voter registration or service delivery trends.

South Africa has had national address standards since 2009 to make it easier to assign addresses that work in multiple systems, and to share the data. But the standards are not enforced, so the struggle with addressing persists. There is still no authoritative register of addresses in South Africa, and it’s not clear who is responsible for the governance of address data.

We work in geography and geoinformatics, an interdisciplinary field to do with collecting, managing and analysing geographical information. We recently turned to a neglected source to explore the issue of addresses: the people in government and business who actually use the information. We wanted to explore what they said about whose job it is to give everyone an address, how the data is maintained and what’s standing in the way of doing this.

Our research took a qualitative approach. We interviewed stakeholders to get their unique insights and daily experiences about what addresses are used for, how they are used, challenges that are experienced and how these are overcome. We spoke to 21 respondents across different levels of government with in-depth experience of projects, in both urban and rural settlements, as well as private companies that collect, integrate and provide address data and related services.

Our main finding was that there’s no clear vision of future address systems, or leadership on the issue. Without agreement on whether there is a problem, or whose problem it is, a resolution isn’t possible.

Categories of addresses

First we collected all the different purposes of addresses and systematically categorised them. The main categories were:

• finding an object (for example, for postal deliveries)

• service delivery (such as electricity)

• identity (for example, for citizenship)

• common reference (for example, use in a voter register or in a pandemic).

The broad spectrum of address purposes suggests that addresses are essential to society, governance and the economy in a modern world.

So what’s standing in the way of better address coverage?

Need for governance: The interviews confirmed that stakeholders need clear rules, regulations, processes and structures to guide decisions, allocate resources and ensure accountability about addresses and address data. Most of the respondents considered addresses to be necessary for socio-economic development.

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Read more: ‘Walk straight’: how small-town residents navigate without street signs and names

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Leadership: These responses suggest that the societal problem of addressing is not (yet) clearly identified and defined. That makes it difficult to determine who should legitimately resolve the problem, for whom and how.

Interviewees raised concerns about leadership and vision at different levels of government affecting the country’s ability to solve the address issue. They agreed that the task had not been assigned to municipalities, which have many other pressing priorities and limited resources. The South African Post Office could play a role. But it has been placed in business rescue.

Adapting to gaps: In this constrained environment, stakeholders resort to short-term “fixes” that don’t have systemic impact. For example, some municipalities assign numbers to dwellings based on aerial photography, or barcodes on dwellings, or only locate the main assembly points in their jurisdiction, to fulfil their own responsibilities. So nothing changes: addresses and address data are incomplete and of poor quality.

Respondents also made suggestions.

Some questioned whether addresses were needed at all. They said there were other ways of finding a house or a business, such as navigating to a coordinate shared via Google Maps, or using verbal directions.

Some suggested that the uncertainty about responsibilities could be an opportunity for the private sector. It is already collecting address information from various sources like municipalities, then standardising, integrating and making available address data and related services, at a cost.

However, as is the case with many other services in the country, rural areas may be left behind where there is no economic incentive. Access to private data becomes unaffordable for government and society at large.

Ending the aimlessness

The deficiencies and adaptations in South Africa suggest that addressing is in a state of aimlessness.

How to fix the problem will require a number of interventions.

Firstly, there need to be decisions, actions and institutional commitments towards long-term strategies that will stop the drift. For example, cities and municipalities should strive for full coverage of addresses. They should also improve the quality and standardisation of the data, so that they are more useful.

Secondly, there’s a need for innovation and investment to transform and strengthen the governance of the country’s addressing infrastructure. For example, the European Commission recommends e-government based on a set of interlinked registers for property, addresses, people, business and vehicles.

Thirdly, data collection platforms and databases should be designed with the understanding that different types of addresses are in use – it could be a street name and number, or an informal description. Different types of addresses should have equal validity or credibility.

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Read more: South Africa needs a national database of addresses: how it could be done

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At a more technical level, address metadata (information about the data) should make it possible for different systems to use it.

Addresses connect us to society – locally to our community and globally to the rest of the world. Addresses are essential for socio-economic growth and good governance in cities and municipalities.

– South Africa’s addressing system is still not in place: a clear vision is needed
– https://theconversation.com/south-africas-addressing-system-is-still-not-in-place-a-clear-vision-is-needed-268135

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Marlize Lombard, Professor with Research Focus in Stone Age Archaeology, Palaeo-Research Institute, University of Johannesburg

The oldest evidence for the use of arrow poison globally was long thought to come from Egypt, dating to 4,000 years ago. It was a black, toxic residue on bone arrowheads from a tomb at the Naga ed Der archaeological site.

New evidence from southern Africa is challenging this.

New research has found poison on stone arrow tips from South Africa dating to 60,000 years ago. It is the oldest direct evidence for hunting with poisoned arrows.

This adds to what is already known about the know-how of ancient African bowhunters. These abilities may have contributed to our species’ long and flourishing evolution in the region, and ultimately the successful spread of Homo sapiens out of Africa.

Hunter-gatherers in southern Africa

The evidence comes from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter, in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. The site was partly excavated in the 1980s to preserve archaeological material that could be damaged during the construction of the N3 highway between the cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg.

Umhlatuzana is recognised as an important Stone Age site where hunter-gatherers lived at least 70,000 years ago. It is one of only a few sites in southern Africa where people continued to live until just a few thousand years ago.

In southern Africa, people have a long history of hunting with poisoned arrows. For example, a team of South African and Swedish archaeologists found residues on arrow tips dating to between a few centuries and 1,000 years ago, that revealed how different arrow poison recipes were used.

Recently, three bone arrowheads stored in a poison-filled bone container were reported from Kruger Cave in South Africa dating to almost 7,000 years ago. This pushed back direct molecular evidence of arrow poison use to about 3,000 years before the Egyptian poisoned arrows.

Traces of poison have previously been found on a stick and in a lump of beeswax dating to between 35,000 and 25,000 years ago at Border Cave in KwaZulu-Natal. These were seen as indirect suggestions of early hunting poisons.

As a researcher in cognitive and Stone Age archaeology, I studied some of the artefacts from Umhlatuzana almost 20 years ago, finding use traces and adhesive residues on some of the quartz backed microliths (small, shaped stone tools) from 60,000 years ago. This showed that they were probably used as arrow tips.

Now, Sven Isaksson in the archaeology laboratory at Stockholm University has been able to identify molecular traces of toxic plant alkaloids (chemical substances), known to be an arrow poison, on a handful of these artefacts.

Poison from indigenous plants

This latest research revealed the presence of buphandrine and epibuphanisine toxic alkaloids on five out of ten analysed arrow tips from Umhlatuzana. The same alkaloids were also found on bone arrowheads collected by Swedish travellers in the region 250 years ago. This tells us that the same arrow poison was used for many millennia in southern Africa.

Both alkaloids can be found in several southern African species of Amaryllidaceae, a family of flowering plants growing from bulbs. But only what is colloquially known as gifbol (poison bulb, Boophone disticha) is well-recorded as the source of an arrow poison. The plant’s bulb contains a toxic juice (exudate).

Finding these specific alkaloids on five out of the ten quartz arrow tips studied cannot be coincidental. Ancient hunter-gatherers would have been familiar with the toxic properties of the gifbol exudates. For example, by about 77,000 years ago, people of the same region also understood the insecticidal and larvicidal properties of some aromatic leaves that were used for bedding. So they probably would not have kept the gifbol substance in their living space.

Substances with buphandrine and epibuphanisine molecules are not used commercially or in archaeological conservation, ruling out accidental modern contamination of the arrow tips.

Gifbol bulbs can survive for a century or more, despite drought cycles and fire regimes. The plant is indigenous to South Africa, thriving in grassland, savanna and Karoo vegetation. It is widespread throughout the southern, eastern and northern regions of South Africa, growing within a day’s walk from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter today. For various reasons, it’s likely that it was also available to the inhabitants of the site thousands of years ago.

The toxic chemicals in the bulb last a long time. They don’t decompose easily, even in wet environments, and they interact well with mineral surfaces like stone arrow tips. That’s probably why they survived for 60,000 years at Umhlatuzana.

Implications of the world’s oldest known poisoned arrow tips

The quartz arrow tips with gifbol poison now represent the first direct evidence for hunting with poisoned arrows in southern Africa, and globally – at 60,000 years ago.

It demonstrates that these ancient bowhunters possessed a knowledge system enabling them to identify, extract and apply toxic plant exudates effectively. They must have also understood prey ecology and behaviour to know that the delayed effect of poison shot into an animal would weaken it after some time. That would make it easier to run down, a technique known as persistence hunting.

Such out-of-sight, long-distance action is a convincing indicator of complex cognition that requires response inhibition (being able to delay an action for a reason). Because poison is not a physical force, but functions chemically, the hunters must also have relied on advanced planning, abstraction and causal reasoning.

Thus, apart from providing the first direct evidence of hunting with poisoned arrows, the findings contribute to the understanding of human adaptation, techno-behavioural complexity and modern human behaviour in southern Africa.

– Arrow tips found in South Africa are the oldest evidence of poison use in hunting
– https://theconversation.com/arrow-tips-found-in-south-africa-are-the-oldest-evidence-of-poison-use-in-hunting-271444

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Hayley Clements, Senior Researcher, African Wildlife Economy Institute and Centre for Sustainability Transitions, Stellenbosch University

South Africa has a thriving wildlife economy – enterprises like trophy and meat hunting, ecotourism, live wildlife sales and game meat production.

Over the past few decades private (predominantly white) farmers have converted millions of hectares once reserved for livestock into game ranches. These enterprises generate profits and jobs while maintaining natural vegetation and conserving indigenous large mammals.

Government policy considers the sector key to integrating conservation with rural development. The national 2024 strategy is to grow “sustainable and inclusive eco-tourism-based businesses by 10%” every year.

It is also projected that the GDP contribution of game meat will increase from US$4.6 billion (2020) to US$27.6 billion by 2036. The overarching aim is to:

• grow the wildlife economy to include more black landholders and communities

• expand the amount of land that is conserved “from 20 million ha (hectares) to 34 million ha by 2040”.

In South Africa, land uses based on wildlife could address the twin land reform objectives of economic development and empowerment, while also conserving biodiversity.

Land reform is central to the country’s strategy to rectify historical inequities in land access. Beneficiaries of reform include black individuals, families and communities.

Yet little is known about how land reform beneficiaries – who often begin with fewer resources – might realistically participate in the wildlife economy.

We are conservation and wildlife economy researchers with a focus on South Africa’s inclusive conservation agenda. In a recent paper, we explored whether land reform beneficiaries were engaging in the wildlife economy, and what might hold them back or help them.

Knowing more about this would be useful for policymakers.

We found that new landholders were not yet participating meaningfully in the wildlife economy. With focused government help and investment they could benefit from the land through mixed livestock–wildlife enterprises that align with their experience and resources. In this way, South Africa could promote inclusive economic development while safeguarding its wildlife.

The study

Since 1994, the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development has pursued a constitutional mandate of land restitution, land tenure reform and land redistribution. The intention is to redress the historical injustices of apartheid and promote equitable access to land and livelihoods. Many redistributed farms fall within areas of high biodiversity value that are well-suited to wildlife-based enterprises.

In South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, for instance, herds of kudu and springbok are a common sight on hillsides. The land that they roam is no longer managed by white farmers only, but also by black farmers, enabled in part by the country’s land reform programme.

During our study in Addo-Amathole Biodiversity Economy Node we interviewed 19 land reform beneficiaries. It is one of the government’s focal areas in the Eastern Cape for promoting the wildlife economy. It also overlaps with one of the “mega living landscapes” in South African National Parks’ new Vision 2040. The farms in our study cover nearly 50,000ha. They represent two-thirds of the land reform beneficiaries in the province who aspire to be part of the wildlife economy.

To date, land reform programmes in rural South Africa have focused strongly on agriculture. In the Addo-Amathole region, this means livestock farming.

Interviews were conducted in English and isiXhosa and covered wildlife and livestock numbers, revenue streams, infrastructure, business planning, employment, skills and barriers to market access.

We set out to understand how the characteristics of land reform farms align with existing wildlife ranches, what types of infrastructure and investment they would need to grow, and where their strengths already lie. These 19 properties were compared with 74 established wildlife ranches in the region.

The findings

One of the most striking findings is that land reform farms in this region hold a lot of ecological value. Most of the land overlaps with critical biodiversity areas.

Yet only 42% of the farms earned any income from wildlife. On average it contributed less than 5% of total income. Almost all income still came from livestock, despite all of the beneficiaries’ business plans being focused on wildlife enterprises.

The greatest barrier was the lack of basic infrastructure needed to participate legally and commercially in wildlife markets.

Only six farms out of 19 had any perimeter game fencing. Water systems, vehicles and access to game meat processing facilities were very limited. Accommodation for visitors was scarce, with about two-thirds of farms lacking suitable facilities.

Another important finding was that almost all of the land reform beneficiaries’ business plans (submitted to government in their application for land) emphasised specialised trophy hunting or high-end ecotourism enterprises.

These enterprises require hundreds of millions of rands in infrastructure, charismatic wildlife such as rhinos and lions, skilled staff and access to specialised markets.

However, the size and current wildlife densities on land reform farms closely resemble mixed livestock–wildlife ranches. These focus on a mix of trophy and meat hunting, game meat sales and domestic tourism, alongside more traditional livestock farming.

Mixed ranches require far less initial investment and align more closely with the skills many emerging farmers already have. As seen in the COVID-19 pandemic, diversified wildlife ranches can also be more resilient.

What should happen

South Africa’s wildlife economy could become more inclusive if land reform farms were supported to adopt realistic business models in stages. It’s not realistic to copy the high-capital enterprises of some established ranches.

This starts with growing mixed livestock-wildlife enterprises that match existing knowledge and allow farmers to build experience and capital.

The first investment should not be animals, but infrastructure – notably perimeter fencing, water systems and modest visitor accommodation. Then wildlife numbers should be boosted, using existing programmes such as South African National Parks’ innovative game loan and donation programme.

Landscape partnerships like conservancies – where landowners cooperate to manage their land for environmental and economic sustainability – are an option.

National and regional government entities responsible for agriculture, land reform or the environment need to work together.

Joint initiatives could also allow for private investment via the government’s Biodiversity Sector Investment Platform. The platform aims to connect investors with investment opportunities in the sector.

Meanwhile, established ranchers and private operators can mentor emerging wildlife ranchers and help them access markets. Beneficiaries could build on their existing livestock experience while gradually expanding into wildlife activities that match their capacities and resources.

Inclusive wildlife economies could connect economic opportunity, land justice and biodiversity conservation in ways that advance South Africa’s transformation and development goals.

But this will only happen if support is grounded on evidence from research.

Naledi Mneno co-authored the research on which this article is based.

– Land reform in South Africa: how new landholders could prosper from wildlife and not just farming
– https://theconversation.com/land-reform-in-south-africa-how-new-landholders-could-prosper-from-wildlife-and-not-just-farming-270986

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Duncan Mitchell, Honorary Professorial Research Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand

The Namib desert of south-western Africa can be extremely hot – the surface temperature can be over 50°C. But a surprising number of around 200 beetle species live on its bare, inhospitable-looking sand dunes.

Scientists studying them were perplexed by the astonishing behaviour of one of the beetle species – a darkling beetle, Onymacris plana.

Like most desert darkling beetles, it is black – a colour that absorbs heat. And it has a flattened body, a big surface area exposed to heat. Scientists didn’t expect to find it active on the sand surface in the dangerous heat of the day. But it sprints in the sun, sometimes pausing in the shade of a desert shrub.

In fact, it’s the fastest of all the invertebrates of the Namib desert sands. This tiny beetle can run as fast as a human can walk.

When humans and other animals run, the fuel burning in our muscles produces heat. The faster we run, the more oxygen we use and the hotter we get.

But not so these beetles.

In an astonishing discovery, we established that the beetle in fact gets cooler when it exercises. This is the first land animal to have been found with this capability (and the first research of its type on a pedestrian animal).

Their cooling system enables them to move around to find their wind-blown food before it’s covered by sand. And they can be active when other animals (predators and competitors) are not. Finally, males can spend more time looking for mates. So we believe they are adapted to move in the sun because it’s good for survival.

The hunt

In the early 1980s, entomologist Sue Nicolson and her co-workers from various universities and research institutes went out on the dunes in the hot sun to measure the temperature of the beetles. They used a thermometer in a fine hypodermic needle to measure each beetle’s temperature without harming it. The needle went into the beetle’s thorax, from underneath. They looked for beetles that had just finished a sprint and others that had rested for the same time in the shade of a shrub. The beetles that had finished a sprint were no hotter than those that stayed in the shade.

In the 1980s, comparative physiologist George Bartholomew and his co-workers from various universities measured how much oxygen the beetles used while running on a treadmill. Running fast took hardly any more oxygen than running slowly. So, running faster would not make the beetles much hotter.

So, we knew how hot the beetles were after a sprint (not very hot), and how much oxygen they used while running (not much). But what no-one had done was to measure the temperature of the beetles while they were running.

We’re a team of scientists who work on how animals’ bodies cope with heat. Much of our desert research is done in the Namib Desert. We wanted to know how the beetles achieved something that looked impossible physiologically: run in the Namib sun.

We attached a fine thermocouple thermometer fed through the end of a fishing pole.

One of our team followed the beetle while it was running in the sun, keeping the weight and drag of the thermometer off it. But the beetles did not get hotter when they ran – they got cooler.

Run like the wind

We calculated what should have happened to the temperature of the beetle. Because it was black, we could estimate how much of the sun’s radiation it would have absorbed. The Namib’s sun is so intense that the radiation falling on a tabletop would boil a kettle.

We measured how far the beetles had run and in what time, so we knew their speed. We could calculate how much heat they were generating in their muscles. Adding the sun’s heating to the heat coming from the muscles, we calculated that, in the hottest Namib sun, the beetles’ temperature should have risen by 5°C per minute. That should have killed them.

The Namib desert’s sand can be burningly hot but its air, blowing in off the Atlantic Ocean, is cool. Running generates a wind over the body. We concluded that the heat from the sun and from the muscles must be carried away by that cool wind.

The males have an especially flattened body shaped like the wing of an aircraft so that they almost float, clear of the hot sand.

We needed to confirm that what we had observed on the sand dune did not conflict with what engineers know about heat transfer (moving thermal heat from one object to another). So, we took beetles into the laboratory. We put them under a lamp which heated them as much as the sun would have done.

Then we blew cool air over them from the front at the speed at which they would have run. So, we mimicked the cool wind they would have felt when they were running on the dune. Switching on the fan dropped the temperature of the beetles by as much as 13°C.

Our laboratory experiments confirmed that the wind generated by running could carry away all the heat that the beetles absorbed from the desert sun. But to survive on the dunes, they had to run. Standing still in the sun in windless conditions would have meant death by overheating.

So evolution has delivered an animal that is cooled by running. This is unique for a pedestrian animal so far, though we think that some desert ants may also be able to do it. Many aquatic animals do cool by swimming and some insects cool by flying.

Carole S. Roberts, Mary Seely, Liz McClain and Victoria Goodall of the Gobabeb Namib Research Institute, Walvis Bay, Namibia, contributed to this research and article.

– A Namib desert beetle runs to stay cool: how scientists solved the puzzle of this unique and speedy species
– https://theconversation.com/a-namib-desert-beetle-runs-to-stay-cool-how-scientists-solved-the-puzzle-of-this-unique-and-speedy-species-269433