Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Selma Uugwanga, Clinical Psychologist (Namibia) and PhD Researcher on Emerging Adulthood in sub-Saharan Africa, University of Zurich

Around the world, people become adults in different ways. In some places, it’s when you get a job, get married, or move out of your parents’ house. In others it might include an initiation ritual, or taking leadership in your family or community.

These milestones may differ, but they all point to the same question: what does it mean to “become an adult”? Understanding this matters – not only for psychologists who study human development and behaviour, but also for society, because adulthood is more than just getting older. It shapes our motivations and identity, how we relate to others, and our mental health and well-being.

Local views on adulthood set the stage for how young people learn to take responsibility and find their place in the world.

We are cross-cultural personality and developmental psychology researchers who study emerging adulthood, identity development, personality, and mental health. We were interested in what the transition to adulthood looks like in sub-Saharan Africa – specifically, among the Ovawambo people of Namibia. One of us (Selma Uugwanga) is Omuwambo, offering an important insider perspective.

We interviewed 50 young Ovawambo adults, aged 18 to 25, living in both rural and urban areas of Namibia. We wanted to understand how they defined adulthood: what signals its beginning? What responsibilities and challenges come with it?

Our goal was to centre African perspectives, which are underrepresented in global psychology, and to understand how traditional values and modern realities shape the experience of growing up.

We identified five key themes, relating to gender roles, birth order, becoming a parent, community responsibility, and psychological maturity. A common thread was how participants connected personal aims and achievements with the capacity and duty to help others. An adult is someone who can care for both themself and for others.

Our findings are a reminder that there is no single pathway to adulthood. Recognising cultural differences is essential if we want to build a truly inclusive understanding of human development across the globe.

Why Namibia and the Ovawambo?

Namibia, a country in the south-western part of Africa with a population of about 3 million, is home to many ethnic groups. Nearly half of the population are Ovawambo. Traditionally, Ovawambo communities included formal rites of passage to adulthood, such as ceremonies and new roles in the household or community. For example, the Olufuko ceremony prepared girls around age 14 for womanhood, allowing them to become sexually active, have children and marry. These practices changed during colonialism and later with the rise of Christianity.

Today, things are shifting even more with globalisation. Many young Namibians now stay in school longer, with higher education enrolment rising from just 3% in the 1990s to nearly 29% in 2022. Young people also often wait longer to marry or have children. Yet, unlike their peers in many western countries, daily life is still strongly shaped by family obligations and community ties. For example, one young participant explained that he supported his grandmother and took on responsibilities for other relatives because his parents had limited resources.

Since Namibia’s independence in 1990, rural-to-urban migration has surged. The country’s urban population has risen from about 28% in 1990 to approximately 54% by 2025. Young people are often navigating between rural traditions and urban change.

While our focus was on Ovawambo youth, this group shares many cultural and social dynamics with other young people in sub-Saharan Africa, and we believe the patterns we observe here may reflect broader regional trends.

Perceptions of adulthood

We collected in-depth interviews, then generated overarching themes from close attention to meaning in participants’ stories.

We spoke with 50 young adults – half of them women – equally split between urban and rural areas in Windhoek and northern Namibia. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 25 years; most had finished secondary school and were enrolled in higher education, with only a few in steady jobs. Almost half lived with parents, and others with siblings, cousins, or extended relatives, showing how family households remain central at this stage of life.

We asked open-ended questions like:

• Do you feel like you’re an adult?

• What are the most important signs of adulthood?

• Is adulthood different for men and women?

• Do your parents consider you as an adult?

These conversations gave us deep insights into how young Namibians view themselves and their roles in society.

From the interviews, we identified five key themes:

1. Gender shapes the path to adulthood

Almost all participants said adulthood looks different for men and women. Ovawambo women are often seen as becoming adults earlier in their teenage years than men, because they take on caregiving roles like cooking and caring for siblings. Men are expected to be independent and financially responsible earlier, but often face more pressure. Both currently contend with high youth unemployment and carry different but significant burdens.

2. Birth order matters

Your position in the family shapes your adult responsibilities. Firstborns, especially in large families, are often expected to help care for siblings or even support the household. This can lead to earlier maturity. By contrast, youngest children are often protected longer, even if they are legally adults.

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Read more: Eldest daughters often carry the heaviest burdens – insights from Madagascar

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3. Parenthood signals change, but not always adulthood

Having a child, especially for women, is often a major turning point. Yet, because parenting is commonly supported by extended family, being a parent doesn’t automatically mean being seen as an adult. Maturity and independence remain essential markers.

4. Family and community responsibility is central

Adulthood in Namibia does not primarily centre on personal independence, but instead on caring for the wider community. An adult is someone who can support family members, neighbours, and others in need – emotionally, financially and socially.

5. Maturity means more than age

Participants emphasised that true adulthood is about behaviour and mindset – thinking carefully, learning from mistakes, showing resilience, and knowing when to seek advice from elders.

Difference in emphasis

Most psychological research on young adulthood focuses on the US and Europe, where this life stage is often framed as a time of freedom, self-focus and exploration. But our study shows a different picture: in Namibia, young adults are embedded in strong social networks and often assume serious responsibilities early in life, with their independence serving as a key resource for doing so.

Despite facing challenges like high unemployment and limited resources, many participants expressed pride in their ability to care for others. They saw responsibility as a source of meaning.

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Read more: Young men on South Africa’s urban margins: new book follows their lives over 10 years

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Some findings mirror patterns seen in other contexts. For example, in East Asia or among immigrant youth in North America, researchers have also found that adulthood is closely linked to family responsibility.

What seems more distinct in Namibia is the emphasis on “agentic communalism”: the idea that personal agency (making your own decisions) and communal values (helping others) are not in conflict. Instead, they are interwoven. Being an adult means both acting independently and contributing to others’ well-being.

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Read more: Survey of young people in east Africa shows their values mirror those of adults

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Becoming an adult in Namibia isn’t just about age or personal milestones. It’s about growing into a role that combines independence with care for others. It means taking responsibility – not only for yourself, but for your family and community – and earning respect through your actions.

– What does it mean to become an adult? In Namibia, it’s caring for others
– https://theconversation.com/what-does-it-mean-to-become-an-adult-in-namibia-its-caring-for-others-263223

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Temitayo Isaac Odeyemi, Research fellow, University of Birmingham

Across Africa, democracy is being tested – by rising authoritarianism and military coups as well as a growing disconnect between citizens and the institutions meant to represent them.

The latest flagship report from Afrobarometer, a pan African research network, delivers a powerful warning. Citizen Engagement, Citizen Power, released in July 2025, reports that over 60% of Africans are dissatisfied with how democracy works in their countries. Support for democracy remains high, but belief in its effectiveness is fading, especially when citizens feel excluded from meaningful participation in decisions that affect them.

Put simply: the crisis of participation results from people being absent from the room when decisions that affect them are made. This article sets out practical ways parliaments can bring citizens in.

I am a political scientist whose work in comparative politics focuses on political institutions and democratic engagement in Africa. My broader research builds on my PhD on institutional development and legislative public engagement in Nigeria.

This research has shown that democratic fatigue has many roots, including insecurity and unmet socio-economic needs. But the deeper issue is a crisis of participation where decisions that affect people are made without consultation. Too often, Africans feel that decisions are made for them, not with them. Power remains concentrated in elite circles, while public engagement is reduced to symbolic gestures.

Democracy, in this view, is something performed in capitals rather than lived in communities.

If that is to change, parliaments must take the lead. As the institutions most visibly linked to representation, they can reconnect citizens with the democratic process. When parliaments get people to take part, they help restore public confidence. When they fail to do so, the entire democratic project is weakened.

Encouragingly, many African constitutions, including those of Kenya, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, now call for public participation in making laws.

Parliaments are increasingly referring to citizen engagement in their strategic plans, and standout models like South Africa’s Public Participation Model offer practical frameworks.

South Africa’s efforts have contributed to a 27% increase in public understanding of the parliament’s mandates. Evidence from civil society and independent research corroborates this.

But in many countries implementation remains patchy, and most parliaments fall short on including citizens.

According to Afrobarometer’s October 2024 data, trust in parliaments has declined by 19 percentage points since 2011. Only 37% of Africans now express confidence in these critical policy-making and representative bodies.

There’s a sense that public participation is often tokenistic — and that parliaments engage with citizens only when politically convenient.

Two recent examples illustrate the cost of disengagement. In Kenya, mass protests over the 2024 Finance Bill erupted after parliament passed controversial tax measures without adequate public consultation. The backlash, including the storming of parliament, reflected widespread anger not just at the bill’s content, but at the lack of citizen involvement in shaping it.

In Nigeria, lawmakers reinstated a colonial-era national anthem in a single day, bypassing public input.

One of the reasons trust in parliaments is falling is that there are gaps in how the institution listens and acts.

As the Afrobarometer data shows, citizens consistently believed that parliaments hold the key to making laws and holding leaders to account. So the challenge is not what the institution does or is expected to do, it is how it does it. Thus, producing visible actions is one way for parliament to restore public faith.

What Afrobarometer tells us about participation

The message of Citizen Engagement, Citizen Power is clear: citizens want more than just the right to vote. They want to shape decisions, hold leaders accountable, and co-create solutions to the challenges they face. Participation is not a luxury; it is central to the legitimacy and effectiveness of democratic institutions.

For parliaments, this starts with communication. Many citizens are simply unaware of what their parliament does, or how to influence it. Parliamentary websites are often out of date, social media channels underused, and legislative documents filled with inaccessible jargon.

Parliaments must use plain-language summaries, infographics and citizen-focused materials to explain key issues. This is urgent in an era of misinformation and deep fakes.

Radio remains one of the most powerful and accessible tools for democratic outreach. Legislatures already using radio programmes to explain bills and gather feedback should expand these initiatives, especially in local languages. Podcasts, public dialogues and community events can also spark engagement.

But engagement is not only about information – it is about presence. Many parliaments remain physically and culturally distant from the people they serve. Members of parliament are increasingly drawn from wealthy, business-oriented elites, creating a growing perception that parliament serves its own interests.

In earlier periods, teachers, civil servants and community leaders were more common in legislatures.

To close this gap, parliaments must invest in decentralised engagement. That includes hosting hearings outside capitals, organising outreach in rural areas, and partnering with schools, universities and faith-based institutions.

Crucially, consultation must be genuine. All too often, participation is limited to elite NGOs in urban centres. They play an important role, but are not a substitute for broad-based engagement. South Africa’s Parliamentary Democracy Office offers one model: a dedicated outreach unit working to include rural voices and translate public input into policy. Similar efforts across the continent should ensure that participation becomes routine, and that citizens can trace how their contributions affect outcomes.

Existing community structures can host citizens’ assemblies and forums. Technology can also help, but must be used inclusively. With nearly half the population living in rural areas and one-third lacking formal education, digital engagement risks excluding the very groups that most need a voice.

Participation as a democratic lifeline

The Afrobarometer report shows that citizens are not turning away from democracy itself. They are turning away from democratic institutions that don’t include them. Participation can reconnect citizens to democracy and restore trust in governance. But only if it is meaningful, sustained and inclusive.

The events in Kenya and Nigeria demonstrate the risks of exclusion. If parliaments legislate without the people, citizens will seek a voice elsewhere – through protests, populist movements, or authoritarian alternatives.

– 60% of Africans don’t believe democracy is working in their interests – how parliaments can fix the problem
– https://theconversation.com/60-of-africans-dont-believe-democracy-is-working-in-their-interests-how-parliaments-can-fix-the-problem-262581

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Manu Lekunze, Lecturer, University of Aberdeen

Cameroonians will vote in presidential elections on 12 October 2025. The incumbent, Paul Biya, who has been in office for nearly 43 years, will be a candidate.

In 2025, as in the last election in 2018, and in all presidential elections since 1992, it is reasonable to expect that the ruling party will win. And opposition parties will want to protest.

If Biya wins, by the end of the new term in 2032, he will have been in power for half a century. It will be a feat no other executive head of state has ever achieved in modern history.

Moreover, in 1968, Biya concurrently occupied the roles of director of the civil cabinet of the president and secretary general of the presidency (the most important government position after the president). In 1979, he became the prime minister, and in November 1982, he succeeded Ahmadou Ahidjo to become president.

Therefore, considering Ahidjo’s limited education and health problems in the later stages of his time in office, in effect, Biya has been in charge of Cameroon since 1968 – about 57 years.

As an international security scholar, for over a decade, I have researched security in Cameroon, including the separatist insurgency in the North West and South West regions, Boko Haram in the Far North region, and the security implications of Biya’s stay in power.

In my view, regardless of the many criticisms of Biya’s rule, he has provided regulatory and political stability. In the past 42 years, foreign investors and external security partners didn’t have to worry about radical policy changes in Cameroon.

This election – whether it brings a new term or a transition – risks the stability Cameroon’s external partners have become accustomed to. It could increase ethnic or regional tensions arising from prolonged marginalisation. It could also begin a transition process that could take time to consolidate, allowing space for instability, including more armed conflict.

Threats of insurgency

Among the most cited grievances of separatists are the abolition of the federal system and the change of Cameroon’s official name in 1984 from the United Republic of Cameroon to the Republic of Cameroon (the name adopted by the former French colony of Cameroun in 1960).

The separatists argue that the word “united” made it clear that present day Cameroon was formed of two equal parts. Removing the word means one has subsumed the other.

They are also aggrieved about the under-representation of English-speakers in senior government positions.

As the secretary general of the presidency, Biya was no bystander in the 1972 referendum that ended the country’s federal system of government. He has also been in charge of appointing senior government officials since 1982.

Some separatists think that if his government had addressed the protests in 2016, it would not have escalated to an insurgency.

Protests by English-speaking lawyers and teachers in 2016 against perceived francophone dominance sparked a violent crackdown by security forces. This led to the formation of armed separatist groups who declared an independent state called “Ambazonia” and initiated an armed conflict with the government.

Similarly, it could be said that Biya’s approach to foreign policy contributed to the growth and strength of Boko Haram, a regional terror group, in Cameroon. The group exploited lapses in Cameroon’s security architecture and Biya’s strategy of keeping a low profile in international politics.

The International Crisis Group and several analysts believe that had Cameroon’s government cracked down on the activities of Boko Haram, the insurgency would have struggled to gain the momentum it did in 2014 and 2015.

In my view, Biya’s reluctance to draw international attention to Cameroon made him hesitant to act against Boko Haram.

To sum up: more of the same is unlikely to address the threat of persistent insurgency.

The election can deepen fractures

Maurice Kamto was the leading opposition candidate in the last presidential election. His protest against the results caused a degree of post-election crisis. His candidacy in the 2025 election was rejected.

Kamto is of the Bamiléké ethnic group, with its homeland in the West region, where a feeling of political exclusion already exists.

Issa Tchiroma, an opposition figure who has served as government minister for extended periods since 1992, resigned in 2025 to become a candidate for the elections in October. Tchiroma is from the north (Adamawa, North and Far North regions). There is a degree of expectation that the presidency should rotate between the north and the south. It is the turn of the north because Biya, the second president, is a southerner, while the first president, Ahidjo, was from the north.

Tchiroma is likely to claim unfair treatment if he does not win. He has already protested publicly against being prevented from travelling out of the country.

Violence in Kamto’s Bamiléké homeland or Tchiroma’s north could expand sections of Cameroon’s territory affected by insurgency. There are parts of the North West (where separatists operate) and West regions that connect to Adamawa, then to the North and Far North regions (where Boko Haram operates). A coalition between the Bamiléké and the north against the core south (Biya’s support base) could seriously challenge Cameroon’s security. The divide could create more than a peripheral insurgency.

If Cameroon is destabilised because of Biya overstaying in power or a botched transition, it threatens security in the central Africa region.

Way forward

My research on the separatist insurgency clearly shows that Cameroonian officials and their international backers must address feelings of marginalisation or political exclusion.

Biya’s age and longevity in office, and the prospect of another seven year term, raise questions about eventual transition, and which ethnic group the next president should come from.

Careful consensus building would be necessary to ensure that a politically significant group like the Fulani, Bamiléké or anglophones do not feel seriously marginalised or excluded from politics.

– Cameroon’s election risks instability, no matter who wins
– https://theconversation.com/cameroons-election-risks-instability-no-matter-who-wins-262582

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Stig Jarle Hansen, Professor of International Relations, Norwegian University of Life Sciences

More than 100 civilians have perished in a spate of attacks by Islamic State-backed rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in mid-2025. The Islamic State’s Central African Province – known locally as Allied Democratic Forces – claimed an attack on Christian worshippers in late July which killed at least 49. Other attacks in August killed 52 villagers. By mid-2025 the group had been more active than during any previous year. Stig Jarle Hansen, a researcher and author of several books on jihadism in Africa, answers questions on what’s behind the cycle of attacks.

What is the Islamic State’s Central African Province today?

I have written before on the evolution of the Islamic State’s Central African Province from its beginnings as the Allied Democratic Forces on the border between Uganda and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. It was at the time sponsored by both Zaire (now DRC) and Sudan and even contained Christian members. However, this changed over time, and the organisation increasingly used Islamic rules and symbols in its indoctrination and propaganda.

In 2017, a video emerged showing a small group of its fighters declaring loyalty to the Islamic State, the Sunni jihadist terrorist organisation that, at its peak, controlled vast territory in Iraq and Syria and claimed to be a worldwide Islamic caliphate. In April 2019, the only remaining Islamic State periodical, Al-Naba, published its first pictures from Congo. Allied Democratic Forces allegiance to the Islamic State was declared later the same year.

The declaration was not embraced by all. Several of the old guard of leaders of the Allied Democratic Forces, such as Benjamin Kisokeranio, refused an oath of allegiance to the Islamic State and were severely punished by the organisation for that (page 57).

As a result, the group bears little resemblance to the original rebel group. There is a new and younger generation in the top leadership of Islamic State Central African Province. A prominent example is camp leader Ahmed Mahmood Hassan “Abwakasi”, a Tanzanian foreign fighter born three years before the original Allied Democratic Forces was created.

The group also frequently features in the Islamic State’s global media network. This makes the interchangeable references to Allied Democratic Forces and Islamic State Central African Province problematic in the present context.

Yet, there are some similarities between the old and new. First is that the organisation remains organised into “camps”. These can evacuate quickly in the face of strong enemy attacks and re-establish themselves in new areas. However, they also are more than mere military units; they are mobile villages, where the wives and children follow the fighters in their movement.

A second similarity is the propensity to attack civilians. In this respect they are not unique in a region known for targeting civilians. However, the group has changed in the sense that Christians have become explicitly a stated target.

The third similarity is its continued emphasis on forced recruitment.

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Read more: Tracking the DRC’s Allied Democratic Forces and its links to ISIS

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What explains the resurgence in attacks?

Islamic State’s Central African Province’s most recent attacks on civilians may seem to suggest that it’s on an upswing, but this is not necessarily the case. Instead, the embattled group appears to be rebounding from several military defeats over the last years. The current situation fits in within an established pattern observed in the DRC over the last three decades. There has been a cyclical pattern of military offensives against Islamic State’s Central African Province. The group withdraws until the offensive ends, then reemerges. It is still in its withdrawal phase.

The current offensive against Islamic State Central African Province – Operation Shujaa – was launched jointly in 2021 by Uganda and DR Congo. The offensive seeks to defeat the Islamic State in North Kivu. By November 2023, the fourth phase of the offensive started. This operation was expanded further into areas west of the RN4 road, covering critical areas near the border of North Kivu and Ituri provinces. The last offensive was strained by Congo’s need to fight the M23 offensive further south, and Congolese distrust of Uganda’s intentions inside Congo, but proceeded. Uganda, which had stayed out of the M23/Congo conflict, launched 6,000 soldiers and used air assets in the following campaign. Local militias also fought against the Islamic State. The operations did force Islamic State Central African Province to withdraw camps, and to centralise its forces.

Why target Christians?

First, it gives the group media attention in the global press and in Islamic State outlets. African affiliates have grown in their importance for the Islamic State; they are seen as examples of “success” and the “new fields of jihad”. Islamic State Central African Province shows they are active, despite the beating it has received from Uganda. Such attention might also lead to both new foreign fighter recruits and more financial support from outside Congo.

Tanzanian-born commander “Abwakasi” leads the unit behind most of the attacks against civilians. His closeness to the Islamic State centrally might contribute to such a modus operandi. Abwakasi seem to have a stronger ideological leaning, and this might influence his actions against civilians.

Moreover, the need to plunder new villages to sustain the organisation inevitably causes civilian casualties. Violence becomes a strategy to create fear among the locals to smooth forced recruitment, and ease the plundering of villages in new areas that the larger camps are fleeing to.

For Islamic State Central African Province, violence against Christians serves both an instrumental and an ideological purpose.

Where does this leave the Islamic State’s Central African province?

The group has been known for targeting Christians in the past, and is one of the few Islamic State provinces that operates in regions with a majority of Christians. By presenting these attacks as victories, without the need to confront military enemies, it serves as a distraction from the losses the organisation has faced, and a way to plunder and recruit new recruits. It should not be misunderstood as a sign that the organisation is winning on the battlefield. It’s rather a part of a cyclical pattern of withdrawal and advance that we have seen for the last three decades.

– Islamic State massacres in eastern DRC: who are the insurgents and why are they killing civilians?
– https://theconversation.com/islamic-state-massacres-in-eastern-drc-who-are-the-insurgents-and-why-are-they-killing-civilians-263462

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Daniel Cash, Reader in Law, Aston University

Senegal’s dramatic two-notch credit rating downgrade in February 2025 by the credit rating agency Moody’s was followed by a Standard & Poor’s downgrade in July.

Moody’s decision marked a three-notch deterioration in Senegal’s rating in four months. The scale of the revisions was rare, especially for countries not already in default or active restructuring.

The ratings collapse triggered a selloff in Senegal’s Eurobonds. It also cast a shadow over the country’s ongoing negotiations with the International Monetary Fund.

More broadly, it sent a signal about how the credit rating agencies are now responding to governance failures, not just macroeconomic trends. For others watching closely, this was not just a market correction, it was a warning.

So why did it happen?

A report released by Moody’s in July 2025 on “large, unaccounted for debt increases” provides context. The report looked at how fiscal transparency failures – situations where governments provide incomplete, outdated or inaccurate information about their debts and budgets – undermine sovereign creditworthiness. This applies globally, not just to African countries.

Moody’s research centres on stock-flow adjustments. This is the gap between how much a government’s total debt rises in a year, and what that increase should be, based on the officially reported budget deficit. In other words, if a country runs a US$5 billion deficit, you would expect its debt to rise by about US$5 billion. When that debt increases by much more (or less), it suggests that something is missing or misreported in the official data.

The research demonstrates a clear correlation between large stock-flow adjustments and weaker governance scores.

Moody’s downgrade of Senegal’s sovereign rating, and its research report, underscore how transparency and governance issues are increasingly influencing sovereign credit assessments. Rating agencies have improved their methodologies to capture these risks. Governance factors now represent about 25% of sovereign ratings across major agency frameworks.

In addition, transparency issues are showing up as a stumbling block in debt restructuring negotiations. Zambia’s restructuring process took 3.5 years (2021-2024), partly due to transparency complications. Ethiopia’s ongoing restructuring (since 2021) demonstrates similar challenges. For its part, Ghana’s relatively faster process benefited from greater initial debt transparency.

As a researcher who has looked closely at the working of rating agencies, I suggest that Moody’s comprehensive analysis provides governments with a diagnostic tool as well as an early warning system for potential transparency issues.

The message for sovereign debt managers is clear: in an era of enhanced transparency requirements and sophisticated rating methodologies, the quality of fiscal data has become inseparable from creditworthiness.

Early warning signs

Moody’s research found that large and persistent stock-flow adjustments often signal weak fiscal transparency. And that, over time, they reflect incomplete reporting and weak expenditure controls.

Critically, Moody’s noted that

frontier markets in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America have experienced the biggest stock-flow adjustments over the past decade.

There are many technical drivers behind stock-flow adjustments. Many are often legitimate. These can include debt management operations, asset acquisitions, arrears clearance and statistical revisions.

But Moody’s research pointed out that these technical reasons accounted for only half of the stock-flow adjustments. The other half remained unexplained – an indicator Moody’s treats as a serious red flag for fiscal credibility.

Senegal’s transparency failures

Senegal’s situation exemplifies how transparency gaps can rapidly destabilise sovereign credit profiles.

Following the March 2024 election audit findings by Senegal’s Inspectorate of Public Finances, its Court of Auditors report revealed “substantially weaker fiscal metrics” with “central government debt at close to 100% of GDP in 2023, around 25 percentage points higher than previously published”.

The scale of the revisions was unprecedented: debt-to-GDP ratios jumped from a reported 74.4% to 99.7% for end-2023. The fiscal deficit was revised upward from 4.9% to 12.3% of GDP.

Moody’s assessment was unambiguous:

The scale and nature of the discrepancies portray a much more limited fiscal space and higher funding needs than previously thought, while also indicating material past governance deficiencies.

The rating impact was swift and severe. Moody’s downgraded Senegal’s rating to B3 from B1 in February 2025, changing the outlook to negative, following an earlier downgrade from Ba3 in October 2024.

Senegal’s debt metrics reflect the severity of the fiscal challenge. The International Monetary Fund estimates Senegal’s debt reached 105.7% of GDP by end-2024, with gross financing requirements – the total amount the government needs to repay and borrow again to keep functioning – projected at around 20% of GDP in 2025 by the Senegalese budget.

The International Monetary Fund suspended its US$1.8 billion Extended Credit Facility in June 2024 following the misreporting discovery. However, the fund, in a note on negotiations during an August 2025 staff visit that was focused on working with Senegal in light of the post-election audits, wrote:

The IMF staff team commended the Senegalese authorities on their commitment to fiscal transparency and accountability, following their disclosure of the large misreporting that occurred over the past few years.

Troubling patterns

Moody’s emphasises that stock-flow adjustments occur across all regions and income levels. But the persistence and magnitude differ significantly by region. Recent African cases demonstrate particularly troubling patterns.

Some examples include:

Why this matters

The economic logic of the correlation between large stock-flow adjustments and weaker governance scores is straightforward. Persistent positive stock-flow adjustments indicate that fiscal deficits may not accurately represent government financing needs. As Moody’s explains:

when stock-flow adjustments are positive, a higher primary balance is required to stabilise debt over the long term.

This creates both fiscal and credibility challenges that rating agencies must incorporate into their assessments.

For countries with histories of significant adjustments, Moody’s notes it may

make a more negative assessment of fiscal policy effectiveness.

Transparency matters too because a lack of it can complicate debt restructuring efforts. An example is negotiations under the G20 Common Framework, which aims to coordinate debt relief among official and private creditors.

The process depends on clear and comprehensive debt data to determine how much relief is needed, and who should provide it. When key debts are hidden, disputed, or poorly recorded, the entire negotiation slows down, or stalls entirely.

The way forward

The convergence of rating methodology enhancements and transparency requirements creates both challenges and opportunities for sovereign borrowers.

Improving fiscal data systems is no longer merely a technical accounting exercise. It’s a strategy for maintaining market access and creditworthiness.

The rating agency response suggests this trend will intensify.

For emerging and frontier market sovereigns, there are clear incentives for transparency improvements. Research shows governance improvements lead to decreased “spreads” in the market, while poor governance adds 50-200 basis points to sovereign spreads.

In other words, for sovereign borrowers, it pays to demonstrate better governance; investors clearly respond positively to the prospect of investing in borrowers who have clearly defined and transparent governance structures.

From warning to opportunity

Senegal’s case illustrates how transparency failures can trigger rapid and severe credit deterioration. But it also demonstrates the rating agencies’ increasing sophistication in detecting and penalising such weaknesses.

Sovereign borrowers shouldn’t view enhanced transparency requirements as burdensome oversight. They are opportunities to reduce borrowing costs.

– Senegal’s rating downgrade: credit agencies are punishing countries that don’t check their numbers
– https://theconversation.com/senegals-rating-downgrade-credit-agencies-are-punishing-countries-that-dont-check-their-numbers-261583

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Jack Swab, Assistant Professor Department of Geography & Sustainability, University of Tennessee

The African Union has endorsed the #CorrectTheMap Campaign, a call for the United Nations and the wider global community to use a different kind of world map. The campaign currently has over 4,500 signatures.

The map most commonly used is called the Mercator projection. Map projections are how cartographers (map makers) “flatten” the three-dimensional Earth into a two-dimensional map.

The Mercator projection was created over 450 years ago, designed for colonial exploration and maritime trade. But, over the centuries, it has become an “all purpose” projection for many governments, educators and companies.

That flat drawing inflates the size of countries closer to the North or South Pole. It exaggerates the area of North America and Eurasia while under-representing the size of much of South America and Africa. As the largest continent in the global south, Africa is a victim of this cartographic inequity.

The #CorrectTheMap campaign calls for a move to the Equal Earth map projection, developed in 2018 by an international team of cartographers. It addresses the distortions found in the Mercator projection.

Controversies over map projections are not new. Since the 1970s cartographers have discussed how certain projections distort how the Earth looks and how people imagine their place in that world.

At the heart of the debates about maps are tensions about what sort of power maps have in the world.

A change in map projections, for the African Union, is about more than correcting a technical flaw. It’s also a chance to influence how current and future map users view, talk about and value Africa.

The call is a demand for Africans to be represented on their own terms, rather than through cartographic traditions that have long diminished their scale and significance.

As cartographers, we pay attention to the social and communicative power of maps.

Given that maps help shape how we make sense of the world, the simplest decisions that go into crafting a map can have major geopolitical consequences.

Maps are not neutral

There are over 200 major projections of the world map. Each one warps the image of the Earth in different ways, making the choice of projection a consequential and complicated decision rather than a neutral one.

For example the Dymaxion projection, developed by the American engineer Buckminster Fuller, was designed to challenge ideas of the north and the south. Others, like the Lambert conformal conic projection, are used extensively in aviation to aid in flight planning.

Maps are a form of storytelling, as well as an information source. Even the lines, colours, symbols and size of regions depicted on maps communicate social meaning. They subtly but powerfully educate people, from schoolchildren to world leaders, about who and what matters.

US president Donald Trump’s recent interest in the US buying Greenland, citing its large size, was likely influenced by map distortion. The Mercator projection shows Greenland as nearly the same size as Africa, when in reality Africa is about 14 times larger.

Other projections do a better job at more accurately representing the true size of continents. Some projections are better than others for this specific task; for example the Gall-Peters projection has been used in the past as an alternative to the Mercator projection.

Cartography as a tool of control

Cartography has been a powerful tool of control throughout Africa’s history. Topographers and surveyors participated in the European conquest and colonisation of Africa, regularly accompanying military expeditions. Map-makers in Europe framed Africa as a landscape to be exploited by populating maps with trade routes, resources and blank spaces ready for development – all while often ignoring the mapping traditions and geographic knowledge of indigenous Africans.

The Berlin Conference of 1885, where European powers assembled with no African representation, was one of the pinnacles of this cartographic and colonial grab and partitioning of the continent.

The Mercator projection is joined by other kinds of western storytelling – found across popular culture, the news and diplomatic circles – that have stereotyped, degraded and undersized Africa’s place in the world.

Viewed in this light, the public reckoning over the Mercator projection can be interpreted as not just about the visual accuracy of a map, also the restoration of dignity and autonomy.

Why changing the world map is difficult

Bringing about changes won’t be easy.

Firstly, global map production is not governed by a single authority. Even if the United Nations were to adopt the Equal Earth projection, world maps could still be drawn in other projections. Cartographers are frequently commissioned to update world maps to reflect changes to names and borders. But the changes don’t always find quick acceptance. For example, cartographers changed English-language world maps after the Czech Republic adopted the name “Czechia” as its English name in 2016. While making the change was not difficult, broader acceptance has been harder to achieve.

A person’s mental image of the world is solidified at a young age. The effects of a shift to the Equal Earth projection may take years to materialise. Previous efforts to move away from Mercator projection, such as by Boston Public Schools in 2017, upset cartographers and parents alike.

Given the African Union’s larger goals, supporting the Equal Earth projection is the first step in pushing the global community to see the world more fairly and reframing how the world values Africa. Mobilising social support for the new projection through workshops with educators, diplomatic advocacy, forums with textbook publishers, journalists, and Africa’s corporate partners could help move the world away from the Mercator projection for everyday use.

Shifting to the Equal Earth projection alone will not undo centuries of distorted representations or guarantee more equitable global relations. But it’s a step towards restoring Africa’s rightful visibility on the world stage.

– World maps get Africa’s size wrong: cartographers explain why fixing it matters
– https://theconversation.com/world-maps-get-africas-size-wrong-cartographers-explain-why-fixing-it-matters-263833

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Vhothusa Edward Matahela, Associate Professor: Health Sciences Education, University of South Africa

Young people in rural Limpopo, the South African province bordering Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, face high risks of HIV, unplanned pregnancy, and other societal challenges.

One reason is that they aren’t always getting sexuality education that connects with their lived realities. Schools provide lessons on reproduction, HIV prevention and relationships. But too often, what’s taught in class doesn’t match what learners are experiencing outside, leading to unsafe sexual practices.

We are part of the University of South Africa community engagement project focusing on HIV prevention among learners in Limpopo province. To understand the gaps, we ran a three-day workshop with 19 teachers (16 of them women) from rural schools near Musina. This border town is on a busy trade route, where high mobility, transactional sex and the risk of trafficking shape the everyday lives of learners.

Our goal was to hear directly from teachers about how they navigate sexuality education and to explore ways to make it more effective.

Talking about sex at school

The 19 teachers came from eight public primary and secondary schools. They all taught the Life Orientation curriculum, a mandatory subject in South African schools, which covers life skills, sexuality education and HIV prevention for learners from grades 4 to 12 (ages 9 to 18). It covers topics such as health and well-being, including sexuality education. Teachers are expected to deliver these lessons in an age-appropriate, participatory way.

Teachers told us they often struggle with this part of the curriculum. Talking about sex in the classroom is not straightforward. Some learners giggle, others stay silent, and some challenge the teacher’s authority. Teachers admitted that their own discomfort, shaped by cultural and religious beliefs, sometimes made it even harder to engage openly.

What the teachers said

During the workshop, teachers spoke candidly about the barriers they face.

• Cultural and religious taboos: Many communities expect adults, especially women, not to discuss sex openly. Teachers worried about being judged by parents or community leaders if they spoke too frankly with learners. They are held back by cultural taboos, personal discomfort, and local realities – like families depending on relationships between girls and older men.

Traditional beliefs and stigma surrounding HIV in Limpopo make it hard for teachers, parents, and learners to talk openly about prevention. Educators teaching Life Orientation are sometimes referred to as thitshere wa u funza zwavhudzimu – “the teacher who teaches forbidden topics”. This silence allows myths and misunderstandings to persist.

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Read more: Let’s talk about sex education: race and shame in South Africa

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• Limited training and resource constraints: Teachers said they had not received sufficient preparation for teaching sexuality education. Some relied only on textbooks, which they felt did not address the realities learners face, such as early sexual debut, peer pressure, or access to social media.

Teachers often feel alone. Some said they had not received enough training or materials to teach about HIV, sexual health, or sensitive issues. Sexuality is still seen as a private matter in this cultural context.

When we were brought up, it was taboo to talk about sexuality with kids. Some parents think we’re teaching forbidden things.

Some teachers have over 60 learners in a class, making it hard to give everyone attention. And, with learners speaking different languages, some important messages get lost.

Videos, posters and teaching aids are rare. Teachers have to rely mostly on talking, which does not always work for difficult topics such as sexuality.

Despite these challenges, teachers also shared how they try to adapt. Some use storytelling, role play, or small group discussions to make learners more comfortable. Others bring in health professionals to talk about sensitive topics. These approaches, despite the challenges, can make lessons more engaging while respecting local norms and working with limited resources.

What teachers can do differently

During our workshops, teachers discussed what they believed would be effective ways to deliver culturally relevant sexuality education in rural schools.

1.) Small group discussions: Teachers felt that learners are more comfortable sharing in small groups.

Learners open up more and learn from each other.

2.) Drama and role play: They suggested that acting out real-life situations, such as handling peer pressure or supporting a friend with HIV, could make lessons more real and memorable.

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Read more: We used performing arts to map out gender violence in Sierra Leone. What we found

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3.) Using videos: Short, simple videos made by the experts about HIV and relationships would help explain tough topics.

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Read more: Social media for sex education: South African teens explain how it would help them

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4.) Demonstrations: They saw value in showing, not just telling, how to use condoms (male and female), for example, to build practical skills.

5.) Storytelling and case studies: Teachers believed that sharing stories, whether true or made up, would help learners connect lessons to their own lives.

Children remember stories better. They see themselves or their families in them.

6.) Peer teaching and games: They recommended letting learners or other teachers lead parts of the lesson, and using local games and songs to keep things fun and engaging.

These suggestions by the teachers match approaches used in successful sexuality education programmes in South Africa and beyond.

Overall, the teachers’ ideas reflect proven strategies from other successful programmes and could be highly effective if adapted for rural Limpopo.

What teachers need

The Department of Basic Education reports that Life Orientation teachers receive sexuality education content during initial teacher training. The department has also developed scripted lesson plans to improve teacher confidence and curriculum consistency. In-service training is offered sporadically through workshops linked to the Life Skills and HIV/AIDS Education Programme, but these sessions are not consistently available across all provinces, creating gaps in teacher preparedness.

Studies highlight that many Life Orientation teachers still feel under-prepared, especially when dealing with learners’ trauma or sexual violence. Many teachers rely on self-study, peer networks, and NGO-supported programmes to strengthen their skills in sexuality education.

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Read more: Why sexuality education in schools needs a major overhaul

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The teachers we spoke to wanted to know more about HIV, sexual health and new treatments. They needed to know how to support children who might not fit traditional gender roles. They asked for training in how to counsel and support learners facing problems. And they called for support from other teachers, principals, and the community.

Workshops like ours can help teachers build confidence, share strategies, and support each other. The teachers told us they valued the space to reflect on their own beliefs and to practise new approaches.

What’s clear is that teachers cannot carry the burden alone. Training programmes must equip them with practical tools, not just theory. Parents, community leaders and health workers need to be engaged too, so that sexuality education is reinforced beyond the classroom.

We’ll also be tracking how these methods affect learners’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviour over time.

– Talking about sex isn’t always easy for teachers in South Africa. Here’s what they told us
– https://theconversation.com/talking-about-sex-isnt-always-easy-for-teachers-in-south-africa-heres-what-they-told-us-260462

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Kenny Chiwarawara, Senior Lecturer, University of Johannesburg

Post-apartheid South Africa is characterised by frequent public protests. On average, between 2007 and 2013, there were over 11 protests daily. Research shows that protests almost doubled in the 20 years after 1997.

Service delivery protests – over basic services such as housing, electricity, refuse removal, water and sanitation – feature most prominently in these protests.

These protesters employ diverse tactics at different times: marching to government offices, barricading roads, destroying property and attacking unpopular individuals.

Often people ask why protesters resort to destroying public and private property and attacking people.

I have researched poor people’s struggles for housing and basic services in South Africa since 2012.

This article draws from a study involving 20 in-depth interviews and two focus group discussions in Gugulethu and the same number in Khayelitsha. These are low-income black townships in Cape Town.

The study investigated three inter-related questions: the reasons for protests, the tactics used by protesters, and the character and organisation of the protests. This article focuses on when, how and why different tactics are used in these protests.

It may be easy to blame protesters for barricading roads, vandalising property and attacking people. However, as my study shows, protesters often initially engage in peaceful and orderly marches. They resort to more radical tactics only when peaceful tactics fail to yield results.

Rather than placing the blame squarely on protesters, there is a need to consider the seriousness of their grievances (such as lack of water), and the failure by the authorities to respond speedily and adequately. Genuinely acknowledging and addressing the grievances discourages more militant protest tactics.

Findings

There is often a perception that communities have an appetite to engage in violent protests. But my research shows that this is not the case.

Aggrieved communities often engage in protests to push for the delivery of basic services.

Usually, poor communities first engage in rounds of orderly and peaceful means of engagement with government officials to alert them to their grievances.

These means of engagement – which are less reported by the media – include holding meetings with the officials responsible for addressing their challenges, and handing them written demands.

When all these means of engagement fail to yield fruit, communities resort to more dramatic means of engagement. These include barricading roads to pressure the government to meet their demands. Even when they turn to dramatic tactics, they first exhaust less dramatic ones.

As the scholar-activist Trevor Ngwane has rightly remarked,

When people start hitting the streets, they should have a banner saying: ‘All protocols observed’, because they’ve gone through all the channels … People feel that the only way to be heard, to get attention, is to burn tyres and engage in some of protest.

My research in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha found that a lack of response, or a poor or unsatisfactory response, led to more radical tactics.

For example, a pastor I interviewed explained the rationale for more radical protest tactics with a compelling metaphor. He explained that pain was necessary in order for someone to take action. He gave an example of a person with a sore arm, but who did nothing to address the source of the pain. He reasoned that if someone else pinched the sore arm, this would compel the patient to take necessary steps to ensure that the arm was healed.

In the same way, he explained that the government knew about the “sore arms”, or poor conditions that impoverished communities endured, but chose to ignore them.

To pressure the government to address their grievances, communities sometimes employ radical protest tactics (pinching). For communities enduring appalling service delivery, the momentary inconveniences ensuing from the “pinching” pale in comparison to the ignored service delivery challenges (sore arms).

My research, for example, highlights the precariousness of living in shacks, lacking a bathroom, toilet, running water and electricity.

It is these challenges that residents episodically protest against using primarily orderly means of engagement and sometimes more radical protest tactics to pressure (or pinch) the government to address the challenges.

What should be done?

Tactics such as the destruction of property and attacks on people that sometimes accompany protests should be discouraged. At the same time, it is important to condemn the circumstances that necessitate such radical tactics.

A more responsive government would try to make it unnecessary for people to turn to militant protests to air their grievances. The government should proactively address service delivery challenges and swiftly respond to the complaints raised by communities.

– South Africa’s service delivery crisis: why protesters are using more militant tactics
– https://theconversation.com/south-africas-service-delivery-crisis-why-protesters-are-using-more-militant-tactics-241045

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Danny Bradlow, Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria

African sovereign debtors in distress face terrible choices. They are often forced to choose between fully paying their creditors and financing the needs of their populations – health, education, renewable energy, water. Discussions with their creditors focus on financial, economic and contractual issues. The environmental and social impacts of their situation are largely excluded from negotiations.

Thanks to the initiative of some Vanuatan law students, this may be about to change.

Vanuatu is a country consisting of small islands in the south Pacific. It has been ranked as one of the countries most affected by climate change, facing threats of rising sea levels and storm surges.

In 2019, a law professor in Vanuatu, Justin Rose, asked his students to propose ways to deal with the climate threat confronting their country.

They suggested that Vanuatu ask the United Nations general assembly to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the international legal obligations of states regarding climate change. They convinced their government to adopt their proposal. They also mobilised international support, saying they wanted to take the world’s biggest problem to the world’s highest court.

In 2023, the UN general assembly agreed to seek the International Court of Justice’s advice on the following two issues:

• the obligations of states under international law to protect the environment from the impact of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions

• the legal consequences for states if they fail to meet these obligations and thereby cause significant environmental harm for present and future generations.

The case attracted unprecedented attention. The court received over 150 written submissions. Over 100 states and international organisations made oral presentations in nine days of public hearings. On 23 July 2025, the International Court of Justice issued a unanimous advisory opinion. It was only the fifth time in its nearly 80-year history to do so.

The court’s opinion was that the obligations of states extend beyond the treaties they have signed and ratified. They also include obligations arising from customary international law. This is the law that states practise out of a sense of legal obligation. It is binding on all states and international organisations, regardless of whether they have signed any applicable treaty.

The rules that matter

The court declared that there are two relevant customary international legal obligations.

The first is a duty to prevent significant harm to the environment. This requires states to exercise due diligence before acting in ways that could cause environmental damage. They must assess both the probability of causing serious harm and the likely extent of any expected impacts.

In making these assessments, states must take into account current binding and non-binding international standards. It also requires states to ensure that companies and individuals subject to their jurisdiction comply with these duties.

The second is a duty to cooperate with other states to protect the environment and to help solve international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian nature. Here, the court opined that a healthy environment is a pre-condition for the enjoyment of human rights. It affects the rights to life, health and livelihoods, and the rights of children, women and indigenous people.

The court, in discussing the second issue, advised that states can be held legally responsible if they do not take all measures within their power to prevent significant environmental harm. It noted that while all states have this duty, its precise contents will vary depending on their capabilities. The critical factor is the effort the states make and not the results they produce.

The debt angle

Although the court’s opinion is only advisory, it is likely to be highly influential. It was informed by a wide range of submissions. It was a unanimous decision of 15 judges who come from 15 countries.

The fact that the court grounded its decision, in part, on customary international environmental and human rights grounds means that it has implications for any state actions that can have significant adverse impacts on climate, the environment and customary human rights.

My work as an international lawyer working on sovereign debt and development finance convinces me that this includes the renegotiation or restructuring of African debt.

Whatever action African sovereign debtors take to deal with their debt crisis will affect their ability to manage their greenhouse gas emissions. It will also affect their ability to deliver on their obligations to their citizens’ rights. These include the rights to life, health and livelihoods.

This suggests that African sovereign debtors and their creditors need to understand the environmental and climate impacts of their transactions.

They must also work together to resolve their transactions’ negative environmental, social, economic and cultural impacts. Their respective responsibilities will differ depending on their capabilities.

The International Court of Justice opinion may therefore offer new opportunities to make debtor and creditor states, and creditor institutions, accept responsibility for the environmental and social impacts of their actions.

Three possible avenues for relief

There could be at least three ways to relate the climate opinion to debt.

First, the debtor and its stakeholders can use the decision to bolster their arguments for including the environmental and social impacts of debt in their negotiations. They can point out that the debtor state cannot avoid international legal responsibility for the effects of the transaction on its greenhouse gas emissions and on the human rights of its citizens.

They can also point out that its creditors and their home states also have a legal obligation to assess these impacts and cooperate in managing them.

Second, the stakeholders can remind both the sovereign debtor and its creditors about the content of their international legal responsibilities. There are international norms and standards that can help establish that content.

Some of them are:

In addition, there are many private financial institutions that have human rights and environmental and social policies that often specifically refer to these international standards.

Third, drawing inspiration from the Vanuatu law students, activists around the world can use the judgment to strengthen their arguments. They can say that creditor and debtor states have an international legal duty to prevent significant harm to the environment and to cooperate to protect the environment. This duty extends to ensuring that companies and individuals subject to their jurisdiction act in conformity with these duties. They can be held legally responsible for failing to comply with these duties.

Finally, there are international mechanisms that non-state actors can use to hold debtors and creditors accountable for failing to perform their duties. These include the National Contact Points. These exist in each state that has signed on to the OECD Principles of Responsible Conduct for Multinational Enterprises. Another possibility is the independent accountability mechanisms in the multilateral development banks.

There are also the courts in the growing number of states in which governments, central banks and private actors have been sued for violating their obligations to climate change.

States and financial institutions, of course, can avoid these consequences by respecting the court’s opinion and developing ways of managing African sovereign debt that comply with its international legal advice.

– African debt and climate change: how the ICJ’s Vanuatu ruling could be used for broader justice
– https://theconversation.com/african-debt-and-climate-change-how-the-icjs-vanuatu-ruling-could-be-used-for-broader-justice-263859

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Astrid R.N. Haas, Research associate at African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town

For decades, the dominant theories and models in urban studies have been built from the experience of a small set of mostly western cities. Other urban contexts, particularly those in Africa, Latin America and Asia, have too often been treated as peripheral, as if they simply copy or lag behind “northern” norms.

Urban geographer Jennifer Robinson has called this out, arguing that urban theory needs to take seriously the diverse realities of all cities. This means starting from places like Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial capital, and São Paulo, Brazil’s financial capital, not just as isolated case studies, but rather as central sites for understanding dynamic urban processes. The majority of urbanisation in the coming decade will take place in contexts just like these.

I came to Urban Power, a book written by professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University Benjamin Bradlow last year, with this framing in mind.

Bradlow’s focus is on three essential urban public goods in São Paulo, population 22 million people, and Johannesburg, population 6.5 million people: housing, transport and sanitation.

His central question is: why are some cities more effective than others at reducing inequalities in the built environment?

The answer lies in what Bradlow calls urban power.

What is ‘urban power’?

Bradlow defines urban power as the way formal and informal relationships come together in a city that influences how that city is governed and ultimately how the public services and infrastructures are distributed across the urban space. Two elements determine how well this functions in any given city context.

First, embeddedness – the ties between city government and social movements in civil society. Second is cohesion. This is the abiltiy of city governments to coordinate across their own departments and agencies.

Bradlow argues that effective urban power is built when both embeddedness and cohesion are strong, as these determine how well policy is informed by and accountable to those most affected.

Thus struggles to build and exercise such power form a core foundation of urban governance. This ultimately shapes both the distribution of urban public goods and how effectively they reach the most marginalised.

Basically, it’s about how those in power are willing and able to coordinate with society and within government to meet everybody’s needs fairly.

Housing: different paths

As São Paulo (1980s) and Johannesburg (1990s) entered their democratic eras, both were led by mayors who explicitly committed to redistributing wealth by extending adequate housing to the most excluded neighbourhoods.

Yet, housing is also the sector in which Bradlow finds some of the starkest contrasts in outcomes between the two cities.

During South Africa’s democratic transition, the rallying cry of “one city, one tax base” brought together neighbourhood associations, social movements and local branches of trade unions. To overcome the fiscal fragmentation left by apartheid, wealthy and largely white areas of the city were to contribute property taxes to a central fiscal administration. This central body would then cross-subsidise precisely the new capital investments in poor black townships.

But in the years that followed, the governing African National Congress (ANC) party demobilised social movements in favour of a centralised one-party system.

The effects of this were evident in Johannesburg. Weakened ties between the city government and civil society (embeddedness) led to the municipal bureaucracy becoming increasingly detached from housing movements. As a result, it was poorly positioned to challenge the dominance of private real-estate interests.

In São Paulo, the municipal bureaucracy maintained close ties with housing movements. It used this embeddedness to build cohesion within its own ranks. This enabled the city to make use of national mandates to challenge the power of real-estate interests and introduce innovations that expanded social housing.

Central to this effort was the 2001 City Statute. This piece of legislation enshrined the “social function of property,” a constitutional right, at the city level. The legal framework unlocked tools such as the Special Zones of Social Interest (ZEIS), which reserved well-located land for social housing.

Crucially, São Paulo became one of the first major Brazilian cities to adopt a master plan that explicitly advanced the redistributive goals of housing movements.

São Paulo’s housing story is far from perfect. And the city still struggles to meet the demand for affordable housing. Nevertheless, it has made important strides.

Transport: institutions or technology first?

Bradlow illustrates how São Paulo pursued an “institutions first” approach towards transport. For years, social movements had pressed for lower fares and better services to the city’s peripheries. Responding to these demands, the Erundina administration (1989-1992) restructured the relationship between private bus operators and the municipal concessioning authority. Fare revenue was collected by the authority itself. It then paid operators based on the quality and quantity of service provided.

This shift allowed the city to introduce reforms like the bilhete único, a single ticket valid across the entire network. It meant that shorter trips subsidised longer ones. This made access more equitable regardless of where one lived. In addition, large and small operators were integrated into a single system, revenue became more predictable, and planning could prioritise network-wide benefits.

Johannesburg, by contrast, led with a “technology first” approach. The Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, Rea Vaya, emerged in the early 2000s. However, the minibus taxi operators, who were the backbone of existing transport, were largely excluded from the planning process.

The BRT’s economics were challenging from the outset, given Johannesburg’s spatial fragmentation. Operators were offered shares in newly created bus companies if they withdrew their taxis. But this arrangement relied on an untested profit model.

Institutional complexity (lack of cohesison) compounded the problem. Operational licences and recapitalisation were controlled at the provincial rather than the municipal level. Most importantly, the lack of embeddedness meant that resistance from the local operators was almost inevitable.

The comparison of the transport sector highlights a recurring theme. São Paulo’s slower, messier process fostered embeddedness. It treated redistribution through collective transport as a political project rather than a technocratic exercise. Johannesburg pursued a faster, technology-driven route that bypassed the negotiations which might have made the system more sustainable.

Sanitation: building accountability

If housing is a residential public good and transport a networked one, sanitation sits in between. It’s delivered to individual homes, but reliant on city-wide infrastructure.

Bradlow highlights how in São Paulo, the municipal government succeeded in creating downward accountability from the state-level sanitation company (cohesion). By doing so, it shifted decision-making power closer to the local level. This ensured that service priorities better reflected the city’s everyday realities rather than distant state-level agendas.

The new alignment made it possible to extend services into informal settlements without requiring formal tenure, a critical flexibility that had long been a barrier to inclusion. At the same time, it strengthened municipal planning and coordination capacity. Service delivery became more firmly embedded within the city’s own governance structures.

In Johannesburg, by contrast, weak cohesion, reflected in the lack of planning integration, meant housing projects were often implemented without corresponding sanitation infrastructure. Reforms had separated sanitation from broader spatial planning, fostering fragmented governance.

The city also adopted a model shaped by private-sector principles. Examples include self-financing, performance-based contracting, and competition. In practice, these led to service cuts in poorer areas where cost recovery was impossible.

The comparison illustrates how the same broad national reform agenda can play out very differently depending on municipal capacity and institutional alignment (cohesion).

Why the comparison matters

Cross-context comparisons reveal patterns and possibilities that single-city studies might miss. Bradlow’s book illuminates how rapid urbanisation, entrenched inequality and fiscal constraints intersect. These insights have significance far beyond these cases.

His book is a call for urban theory to start from the global south not as an afterthought, but as a foundation. As urban studies specialist Jane Jacobs observed:

Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.

Bradlow’s book shows, with precision, what it takes, politically and institutionally, to make that vision real.

For anyone interested in the politics of making cities fairer, it is essential reading.

– Africa’s city planners must look to the global south for solutions: Johannesburg and São Paulo offer useful insights
– https://theconversation.com/africas-city-planners-must-look-to-the-global-south-for-solutions-johannesburg-and-sao-paulo-offer-useful-insights-263285