The Conversation – Page 5 – MIL Africa Engine

August 3, 2026

Invasive rats are stopping small mammals from returning to Madagascar’s regenerating forests – study

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Sabine Cudney-Valenzuela, Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California, Berkeley

In south-eastern Madagascar, patches of forest that were once cut down to make way for farms are slowly naturally regenerating after being left to lie fallow. But recovering a native forest needs more than just gaining tree cover. The animals that once lived in these forests also need to make their way back so that the forest can function the way it used to.

When these native animals try to return, however, they often find that the forest has been taken over by invasive species they’ve never encountered before.

I am part of a group of interdisciplinary biologists from Canadian, American and British universities who are working with students from the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar to study how forests there regenerate. For the past two years, we’ve studied the forest in and around Ranomafana National Park, in south-eastern Madagascar. This park is home to 12 species of the country’s famous lemurs.

Our aim was to find out how birds, mammals and plants recover (or not) when forests are left to regenerate naturally, but we also found some unexpected results.

We found that native small mammals, such as brown mouse lemurs (Microcebus rufus), tanala tufted-tail rats (Eliurus tanala) and greater long-tailed shrew tenrecs (Microgale principula), were rare in recovering forests. Instead, we found that black rats (Rattus rattus) were the most common small mammal even in forests that had been recovering for more than 50 years. Black rats are the most widespread invasive alien mammal worldwide, and have ecologically wreaked havoc in many island and tropical ecosystems. They evolved in south-east Asia, but have made their way across the world, as unintentional cargo in land and maritime trade.

We also found that forest areas with many black rats had fewer native species, while sites with fewer black rats had more native species, regardless of how long the forest had been regenerating.

A Tanala tufted-tailed rat (Eliurus tanala), one of the native species that is being displaced by black rats. Nerée Beson Raharo

This pattern was inverted in mature forests within Ranomafana National Park.

For example, about 90% of the small mammals in protected forests were native species. But in regenerating forests, almost 80% of the small mammals were invasive. This may suggest that invasive rats struggle to establish themselves in intact old-growth forests but can dominate forests that are still recovering, preventing native species from returning.

Our findings question the belief that regenerating the vegetation of a native forest will automatically ensure that the whole ecosystem recovers. Instead, our research suggests that forest regeneration alone is not enough to help small mammal communities recover if and when invasive rat populations are left to flourish.

Mouse lemurs vs. invasive rats

We could not know which species had been there before the forest was cut down since these sites were not sampled many years ago. But we looked at 25 plots in the forest, comparing five (the control sites) in the protected part of the forest with 20 outside the protected area.

We set up folding traps at each site for six consecutive nights every three months for one year. These traps close when an animal enters, capturing it without hurting it. We identified every individual animal captured, and measured and released them back to the same area.

To understand how invasive rats affect individual native species, we needed enough observations of each species to make reliable statistical tests. However, most native species were caught too rarely to provide statistically reliable results. Only brown mouse lemurs were found often enough for us to confidently analyse how their numbers changed as invasive rat numbers increased.

Mouse lemurs play a key role in rainforest regeneration, as they eat fruits and defecate their seeds in degraded sites, helping the seeds to sprout. Unfortunately, they are also an endangered species, mostly because of human destruction of their habitat.

While we did not find a direct effect of black rat abundance on brown mouse lemur abundance, we did find a negative effect on their weight. The greater the number of invasive rats we found at a site, the skinnier mouse lemurs would get. This could indicate that mouse lemurs are competing with invasive rats for food resources, and losing, which could negatively affect their health and long-term survival.

Another interesting finding was that mouse lemurs may be able to coexist with rats, provided rat numbers remained low. We estimated that finding no more than 3.3 black rats per 100 trap nights indicates a rat population low enough not to affect mouse lemurs.

This calculation is useful because it gives conservation managers a practical target. Our results suggest that if rat numbers can be kept below this level, brown mouse lemurs may be able to coexist alongside them. However, we still don’t know whether the same is true for other native species.

What needs to happen next

Brown mouse lemur trapped and safely released. Ginot Kava

While invasive black rats are a clear threat to native species, eradicating them without endangering native species would be hard to achieve. Poisoned pellets have successfully been used to eradicate black rats in other island ecosystems where they had no native small mammals. But many native birds also consumed the poison and died.

Trapping is a safer way of removing black rats. Our identified threshold can be used as an early benchmark for when intervention is warranted, at least for brown mouse lemurs. But it would be impossible to set up enough traps across huge forests to control their population. However, traps can be placed in human settlements. This could both help curtail the spread of black rats in forests and reduce their negative effects on human populations.

The only thing we can be certain of is that protecting old-growth forests is vital for native species to thrive in the long term.

– Invasive rats are stopping small mammals from returning to Madagascar’s regenerating forests – study
– https://theconversation.com/invasive-rats-are-stopping-small-mammals-from-returning-to-madagascars-regenerating-forests-study-288735

August 3, 2026

What Gabon’s rating downgrade tells us about how sovereign credit worthiness is judged

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Daniel Cash, Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR), United Nations University; Aston University

The sovereign credit ratings of the leading credit rating agencies are most visible through their outputs: an upgrade, a downgrade or a change in “outlook”. The evaluative work that produces those outcomes receives far less attention. Yet it is precisely that work that explains why credit rating agencies occupy such an influential position in international finance.

The recent case of Gabon provides an unusually clear opportunity to observe this process in action.

Gabon had recently:

revised its budget
widened its deficit – meaning that it expected government spending to exceed revenues by an even larger margin
planned a Eurobond (borrowing from international investors in a foreign currency).

It was also in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund to launch a new programme that would combine financial support with commitments on fiscal and transparency reforms. In addition, an audit that was examining a decade of public borrowing was still ongoing.

Fitch had previously warned that Gabon’s widening fiscal deficit would complicate negotiations over a new IMF programme. Moody’s had cautioned that the country’s ongoing public debt audit could uncover additional undisclosed liabilities. Investors drew similar conclusions, with Gabon’s government bond prices falling after the revised budget was announced. Different institutions had independently reached related judgements about the country’s fiscal outlook.

Gabon is a small central African economy of around 2.5 million people and a member of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community. Oil, manganese and timber account for almost all of its exports, leaving government revenues highly exposed to commodity prices and external financing conditions.

Moody’s affirmed Gabon’s rating at Caa2 in June and moved the outlook to negative. Fitch had already affirmed Gabon at CCC- a month earlier. A CCC- rating sits near the bottom of Fitch’s long-term sovereign scale and indicates that default risk is considered very high, although default is not regarded as inevitable.

The published rating is only the most visible output. Credit rating agencies also assemble political, institutional and financial evidence into judgements that governments, investors and international organisations can use. Their assessments sit alongside those of the IMF and auditors and investors. Each examines different aspect of the same sovereign.

The Gabon case therefore reveals a broader process. Sovereign creditworthiness is interpreted and reassessed through several overlapping evaluations. Credit rating agencies evaluate institutions, financing strategies and possible future developments alongside current fiscal conditions.

Understanding these functions provides a clearer picture of what a sovereign rating represents and why it carries influence. None of these evaluative processes is unusual on its own. What makes Gabon’s case unusual is seeing so many of them converge at once.

Gabon’s revised budget, IMF negotiations, sovereign rating reviews, public debt audit and market reaction unfolded almost simultaneously. This allowed reporting by the Reuters news agency to capture how sovereign creditworthiness is constructed through overlapping assessments rather than a single institutional judgement.

More than a number-crunching exercise

The first thing to understand is that agencies do more than read the numbers. They perform several other evaluative functions that receive far less attention than the headline rating.

Moody’s noted that Gabon’s spending plans would make it harder for the government to bring spending back into line with its revenues, and also warned that if Gabon asked investors to accept less favourable repayment terms in order to ease pressure on its finances, Gabon’s debt could be classified as distressed and therefore count as a default. This is a routine part of sovereign credit analysis. Credit rating agencies assess not only a government’s current finances, but also the policy choices and future developments that are likely to shape its ability to repay.

Moody’s rates Gabon’s governance issuer profile at G-5, the weakest category on its governance scale, citing weak control of corruption and a record of extra-budgetary spending. Fitch assigns Gabon a score of 5 for rule of law and institutional quality, drawn from the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators.

Neither agency measures institutional quality directly. Instead, as research suggests, this is common practice across the industry; agencies incorporate governance assessments produced by organisations such as the World Bank into their broader judgement of creditworthiness.

Credit rating agencies also evaluate how governments choose to finance themselves. A government seeking new borrowing has several options. It can negotiate support from multilateral lenders such as the IMF, issue bonds directly to private investors, or rely more heavily on domestic borrowing. Those choices send signals about a government’s priorities, confidence and financial position.

Gabon’s decision to authorise a Eurobond while its IMF talks remain unresolved is not neutral information sitting alongside the deficit figures. Kevin Daly, an investment director specialising in emerging market debt at Aberdeen Investments, interpreted the decision as evidence that agreement with the IMF was becoming less likely in the short term. In turn this suggested any new programme would probably be delayed until 2027.

Credit rating agencies also evaluate possible future developments. Gabon’s audit of borrowing between 2016 and 2024 has not yet reported, but Moody’s has already stated that it could uncover previously unreported liabilities.

Nicholas Sauer, a portfolio manager specialising in emerging market debt at Robeco, reached a similar conclusion from the investor side, warning that if the audit uncovered more previously undisclosed debt than expected, Gabon’s debt burden could prove significantly worse than investors currently believed. Credit rating agencies are not unique in looking ahead. Investors do the same. The significance lies in the convergence of their evaluations, because similar conclusions reached independently reinforce one another.

Why this carries weight

Political economist Timothy Sinclair’s influential study of the American credit rating agencies that pioneered modern sovereign rating practice helps explain why these evaluative roles carry such weight.

Credit rating agencies, he argued, are not simply technical providers of opinion. They help construct the conditions under which governments make policy choices, which gives their judgements a political character. A rating does not just describe Gabon’s position; it becomes part of the environment Gabon’s government has to navigate next.

None of this happens in isolation. Gabon publishes a budget. Fitch responds. Moody’s responds. The audit proceeds in the background. The IMF continues its own assessment of programme viability. Investors price bonds against all these signals at once, and the market moves accordingly: Gabon’s 2031 and 2029 bonds both fell after the revised budget was published.

Each institution enters this process with a different mandate. The IMF evaluates programme viability. Credit rating agencies evaluate credit risk. Auditors evaluate the completeness of the state’s accounts. Investors evaluate expected returns. No institution is formally responsible for producing sovereign creditworthiness itself. That judgement emerges through the interaction of separate evaluations.

Each assessment is therefore partial. Sovereign creditworthiness emerges from the accumulation of those partial evaluations rather than from any single institution’s judgement.

What appears to be a single judgement about creditworthiness is, in practice, the accumulation of several distinct judgements produced by different institutions.

– What Gabon’s rating downgrade tells us about how sovereign credit worthiness is judged
– https://theconversation.com/what-gabons-rating-downgrade-tells-us-about-how-sovereign-credit-worthiness-is-judged-288226

August 3, 2026

How white farmers still dominate land ownership in South Africa in spite of land reform – new research

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Alex Dyzenhaus, Lecturer in the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews

More than 30 years after South Africa achieved democracy it remains one of the world’s most unequal countries. The democratic transition has not produced the transfer in wealth and ownership from a white minority to Black majority population that many had hoped for.

Land is at the centre of the debates about this lack of transfer of wealth. During apartheid, because of racist laws around land ownership, Black South Africans could only own land in 13% of the country’s territory even when they made up 80% of the population.

In 1995, the government set an initial target to redistribute 30% of all white-owned land to Black farmers under a market-based programme, which ensured the white farmers could choose whether to sell their land and did so at or above market value. But only between 12% and 20% of the land has been redistributed so far.

For the last seven years, I have studied the land reform programme as a political scientist, merging my knowledge of political, social and economic forces to better understand why land reform has failed to live up to its initial goals.

In a recent paper I set out to gain a deeper understanding of how land reform occurred and under what conditions transfers of land from white to Black farmers had taken place. To do this, I looked at both sides of the process.

On the one hand, I examined what motivated existing landholders to transfer land, including economic incentives to keep farms productive and social factors shaped by the legacy of apartheid and segregation. On the other hand, I looked at the forces driving demand for land reform, including land claims and pressure from landless people.

A KwaZulu-Natal cattle farm. Courtesy Alex Dyzenhaus

I held in-depth conversations with established white commercial farmers and Black land reform farmers, asking white farmers why they had sold their farms for the purposes of land reform, or why they had refrained from doing so. I then asked Black farmers about their experiences as emerging farmers in South Africa.

I found that landowners’ decisions were shaped by South Africa’s history of racial segregation. Some white farmers used land redistribution to create a buffer between their farms and neighbouring Black communities. Others, in areas with many Black farmers, used land redistribution to bring Black farmers into their farming businesses.

My findings show that where land ownership is very unequal, land redistribution doesn’t always reduce old divides. In some cases, it can actually reinforce them.

These findings are important because the powerful US government has recently taken strong action against the South African government, with US president Donald Trump publicly and wrongly accusing the land reform programme of persecuting white farmers, expropriating their land and encouraging violence against them.

Based on this, Trump withdrew all aid from South Africa and opened up an asylum process for South Africa’s white farmers to come to America as refugees.

But as my research shows, land reform does not unfairly target white farmers. Instead, white farmers find it to be a useful and profitable tool to resolve longstanding problems that they face. This shows that the best way to understand land reform is to look at the evidence rather than the political debate.

Land reform to buffer against theft

An emerging farmer’s farm in the Free State. Courtesy Alex Dyzenhaus

I looked at how land reform was going in the Free State province, a part of South Africa with historically stark spatial segregation that led to minimal Black agriculture and high urbanisation. During apartheid, white and Black residents interacted in specific buffer zones between Black towns and white rural areas.

I interviewed 10 white farmers who lived next to the buffer areas. They said they were afraid of livestock theft and land reform had allowed them to sell their land to the state for a good price and move into the rural heartland.

It also meant that stock theft then became the problem of the new group of Black land reform farmers, just as national statistics on farm attacks have shown that Black people make up most of the victims of rural crime.

How land reform preserved old farming patterns

I also interviewed a dozen KwaZulu-Natal farmers to find out why they had sold their land. In this province, white farmers historically employed Black workers in a form of semi-feudal servitude called labour tenancy. Labour tenants were given access to small plots of land in exchange for their labour on the white-owned farm.

This meant that many more Black rural dwellers had small livestock farms scattered among the province’s white commercial farms in KwaZulu-Natal than in Free State.

Some white farmers sold part of their land through the land reform programme because they wanted to separate labour tenants’ small cattle herds from their larger commercial herds. Before land reform, labour tenants’ cattle often roamed across the farm, breaking fences and mixing with commercial cattle, which made grazing and disease control more difficult. Selling land allowed farmers to confine former labour tenants and their livestock to one part of the farm, separate from the commercial herd.

However, my research found that this left Black land reform beneficiaries on small plots with little opportunity to expand into profitable commercial farming, preserving the economic divide between the white commercial and Black cattle sectors.

What needs to happen next

My research suggests we need to rethink land reform rather than abandon it. In South Africa, much of the land has been redistributed through willing sellers selling land to willing buyers, with government support. This approach may help keep farms profitable, but it does little to tackle the deep inequalities created by colonialism and apartheid over many centuries.

While the US government has strongly condemned South Africa’s state-driven land reform framework, my research suggests the opposite problem: the state has relied too heavily on market forces instead of taking a more active role in deciding how land is transferred and supporting new farmers.

For example, in the Free State, land reform did little to reduce racial divisions where people live or the large gap in land ownership between Black and white South Africans. The state must do more to acquire farms or create incentives for existing landowners to sell if it wants to change the make-up of the Free State’s agriculture.

In KwaZulu-Natal, the government redistributed more land, but many of the small-scale farmers who received it have not been given the support they need to succeed. If the government wants more people to benefit from South Africa’s farming economy, rather than simply transferring land, it needs to do more to help emerging farmers get access to larger farms or earn a decent living from the land they already have.

Land reform will inevitably change agricultural practices in South Africa. It is up to the state and commercial sector to more equitably incorporate the new modes of farming that are present in the growing Black farming sector.

– How white farmers still dominate land ownership in South Africa in spite of land reform – new research
– https://theconversation.com/how-white-farmers-still-dominate-land-ownership-in-south-africa-in-spite-of-land-reform-new-research-285507

August 2, 2026

Africa shaped the global 2030 development agenda. How it can influence what comes next

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Hafte Gebreselassie Gebrihet, Research fellow, University of Oslo; University of Cape Town

All United Nations member states adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. They cover poverty, health, education, inequality, climate change, peace and other global issues. The goals are now approaching their 2030 deadline.

The goals matter because they shape national plans, international cooperation and decisions about development funding. The question of what should follow them can no longer be postponed.

The UN has already begun preparing for that discussion. The Pact for the Future invites the High-level Political Forum, under the auspices of the General Assembly, to consider in September 2027 how sustainable development should be advanced by 2030 and beyond.

This gives the African Union and its member states about a year to agree on their priorities and influence the debate before its main ideas are settled.

Will Africa help write it, or simply respond to it?

We study Africa’s leadership in global development debates. A recent study led by Hafte Gebreselassie Gebrihet examines how the Common African Position, a shared set of African priorities for the negotiations that produced the SDGs, influenced the post-2015 development agenda. It shows that Africa has helped shape a global development framework before. In 2014, African governments adopted the common position while negotiations on the goals were still under way. It gave African negotiators a shared set of priorities before the final agreement was reached.

Entering the process with an agreed position gave them more influence. It identified structural transformation, decent work, science and technology, peace and security, environmental sustainability, development finance and more equitable global partnerships as priorities for the continent. Several of these ideas were later reflected in the SDGs.

This mattered because African governments had long been treated more as implementers of global development agendas than as agenda setters. Structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s and 1990s introduced major economic reforms across the continent with limited regard for African priorities. The Millennium Development Goals later focused global attention on poverty, health and education, but offered little space for a coordinated African role in defining the agenda itself.

The Common African Position changed that pattern. It showed that influence begins before leaders arrive at a summit, when priorities are defined, coalitions are built and negotiating language is drafted.

That lesson matters again.

Can the African Union do it again?

The Common African Position was not the product of easy agreement among African governments. It followed two years of political organisation and consultation.

The AU Assembly gave the African Union Commission responsibility for identifying continental priorities with member states and regional economic communities. The assembly also created a committee of ten heads of state and government. Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf led it. The committee coordinated African leaders and built support beyond the continent.

Parliamentarians, regional organisations, civil society groups, women and young people, trade unions, academics and businesses contributed to consultations at national, regional and continental levels.

African and UN institutions provided technical support. After the common position was adopted, the AU Assembly told member states to speak with one voice. It also asked the committee to develop a plan for advocacy, negotiation and alliance building.

A similar effort is possible today. Africa still has time to shape the process.

The Addis Ababa Declaration, adopted in April 2026 at the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development, calls for active and collective African engagement in shaping the post-2030 framework.

The declaration links the process to African priorities and the AU’s Agenda 2063. It sets out initial ideas for the next framework. It also asks Mauritius to present the declaration and its main messages at the 2027 summit and other international meetings.

But the declaration is a starting point, not a new common position.

Turning it into a formal continental negotiating position will require leadership from heads of state. The African Union Commission must coordinate the process. Governments must also consult widely and agree on priorities.

The next framework will be negotiated under very different conditions. Climate change has intensified. Debt has increased. Aid budgets are shrinking. Competition among global powers is changing international cooperation. New technologies are also creating opportunities and widening inequalities.

Africa’s experience with the Common African Position points to five ways the continent can strengthen its influence when negotiations begin.

Five crucial steps

1. Agree on priorities early

African leaders adopted the common position before the global goals were finalised. They entered the process with a common understanding of their priorities and interests.

The post-2030 framework may sound distant. But the ideas that will shape it are already being discussed. By the time governments enter formal negotiations, many of the main proposals will have been developed, debated and revised.

African governments should begin that work now, before the main choices are made.

2. Speak with one voice

The African Union has 55 member states. They have different political systems, economies and development priorities. Complete agreement is neither realistic nor necessary. But the 2014 experience showed that African countries can gain influence by agreeing on their main priorities.

A coordinated position gives negotiators greater leverage than dozens of separate national interventions. It also shows that certain concerns are continental rather than national.

This will matter in debates over climate finance, debt restructuring, access to technology and reform of international institutions.

3. Align the post-2030 agenda with Agenda 2063

Africa does not need to invent a new vision for itself every time the international community develops a new framework. It already has one.

Agenda 2063 sets out the African Union’s long-term aspirations for an integrated, prosperous and peaceful continent driven by its own citizens.

Building on Agenda 2063 would give the African position both continuity and political credibility.

The task is to ensure that the next global framework reflects priorities Africa has already chosen.

4. Focus on a limited number of strategic priorities

A long list of demands would weaken Africa’s negotiating position. A future common position should not include every challenge facing the continent. It should focus on issues where African countries have urgent needs and shared interests.

The priorities should include development finance, climate adaptation, debt sustainability, technological capacity and reform of global institutions.

A shorter list would help African negotiators defend each priority more consistently. It would also make it easier to build alliances and keep attention on the issues that matter most.

5. Move from reacting to agenda-setting

Africa’s influence increased when it helped define the debate rather than reacting to proposals developed elsewhere.

For decades, African countries have often been portrayed as recipients of development agendas designed by others. The Common African Position challenged that assumption. It showed that African governments can shape international priorities when they enter the process early, coordinate their positions and connect their concerns to wider global debates.

Before the 2027 SDG Summit, the African Union and its member states should agree on a concise post-2030 position rooted in Agenda 2063. Otherwise, Africa risks returning to a familiar role: accepting choices that were made elsewhere.

– Africa shaped the global 2030 development agenda. How it can influence what comes next
– https://theconversation.com/africa-shaped-the-global-2030-development-agenda-how-it-can-influence-what-comes-next-287922

August 2, 2026

Election misinformation spreads faster than facts can be checked: 3 insights from Kenya’s experience

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Michael Asiedu, Researcher, University of St.Gallen

Kenya went into its general election in August 2022 with one of the continent’s most developed networks for countering false information.

After the disputed 2007 vote – when rumours helped drive violence in which more than 1,200 people were killed – a dense network of fact-checkers emerged in the country. This includes organisations such as Africa Check and PesaCheck, backed by newsrooms, civil society groups and big tech platforms.

Fact-checking is the careful work of verifying a claim and publishing a correction if the claim is false. Fact-checkers set as their core mission identifying misinformation (false information shared by people who do not mean to deceive) and disinformation (false information spread on purpose, usually to gain an advantage).

Yet, false claims still saturated the information environment around the vote in 2022. In a survey taken shortly before polling day, 60% of Kenyans said they had come across election information they suspected was deliberately false or inaccurate. Separately, Reuters Institute data found that at least 75% of Kenyan news consumers struggle to tell real from fake news online.

I am a comparative politics scholar who studies how African governments seek to control the flow of information – and how courts, journalists and civil society respond. In a recent paper, I examined the limits of fact-checking during Kenya’s 2022 elections, drawing on practitioner interviews and an analysis of 150 fact-checks.

I argue that fact-checkers were caught in what I call a “timing trap”: even in a well-resourced verification environment, they struggled to disrupt the spread of mis/disinformation during elections.

Three forces create this trap:

false claims travel faster than anyone can check them
careful verification is necessarily slow
in a polarised race, people judge a correction by whose side it appears to help rather than by whether it is true.

The obstacles

A fact-check only helps if it reaches people before they have made up their minds. During an election, that rarely happens.

My study identified three reasons for this.

1. Speed: false claims travel faster than corrections. A 2018 study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tracked millions of social media posts. It found that false stories spread further and faster than true ones, with the gap being widest for political news. A rumour can reach millions of phones before anyone has finished checking it. Kenya’s information environment makes that speed particularly hard to outrun. By 2022 the country had 11.75 million active social media users. False claims typically surfaced first in closed WhatsApp and Telegram groups before moving to Twitter, Facebook and vernacular radio, circulating through private networks that formal verification organisations cannot monitor.

2. The nature of good fact-checking: done properly, it is slow. It means pinning down the exact claim, gathering evidence, contacting the institutions involved and passing the result through editorial review. This makes a correction trustworthy, but it costs time an election doesn’t give. One case from my Kenya study shows this clearly. A forged notice, dressed up with the electoral commission’s letterhead, claimed that 6,000 new polling stations would open in areas that favoured one candidate. It began spreading on WhatsApp and Twitter on 14 July 2022. Africa Check confirmed it was fake on 18 July and published the correction, by which time it had already been shared thousands of times.

3. It’s political: whether people accept a correction depends on the mood around them. Kenya’s 2022 race was tight and tense, and was settled only when the supreme court confirmed William Ruto’s narrow win over Raila Odinga. In that atmosphere, information becomes a matter of loyalty. A correction that seems to help one side over another feels like an attack, so people reject it. Fact-checkers told me they were accused of bias for whichever claim they checked. Confusion even came from official quarters. Four election commissioners publicly disowned the presidential results moments before they were declared, leaving fact-checkers to untangle a dispute that had begun inside the very body meant to safeguard the vote.

Put together, these three forces spring the timing trap. False claims peak at the exact moment when checking is slowest and minds are most closed.

Why this matters

Governments, donors and platforms increasingly treat fact-checking as the frontline against election lies and fund it as if it can hold that line on its own.

My findings suggest we are asking one tool to do a job it cannot do alone. When it is overwhelmed, the cost is not just a few false stories. It is eroded trust in results and, as Kenya’s own history shows, the danger that disputes turn violent.

The timing trap does not press with equal force everywhere, however. It bites hardest where disinformation is well organised, politics is deeply polarised and trust in institutions is low. Kenya in 2022 sat close to the worst case on all three counts: structured campaign operations producing false claims at speed, a presidential result decided by fewer than 250,000 votes out of more than 14 million, and an electoral commission that split in public days later.

Where claims spread more slowly, or feelings run cooler, honest corrections have more room to land. Ghana’s 2024 election illustrates this. A coalition of fact-checking organisations was in place before polling day, and the losing candidate conceded quickly rather than contesting the count. Where the result is not in dispute, my framework predicts that verification delays carry far less cost.

Knowing when the trap is tightest tells us where to concentrate effort.

What should be done?

1. Explainers to get ahead of falsehoods. Fact-checking organisations did this in 2022, publishing explainers on how tallying works and how forged documents are made before voting began. This work belongs with electoral commissions and public broadcasters, too, since they hold the procedural detail and national reach.

2. Keep the coalitions going. Kenya’s 2022 fact-checking coalition brought together Africa Check, PesaCheck, Debunk Media, mainstream newsrooms, community radio networks broadcasting in local languages and platform partnerships with Meta and Twitter. Sustaining this coalition between elections, rather than assembling it during one, falls to the fact-checking organisations that convene it and the donors that fund it.

3. Strengthen local knowledge. Kenyan fact-checkers relied on networks of contributors who could monitor claims in local languages. Sustaining this capacity needs investment and training from organisations and content platforms.

As Kenya returns to the polls in 2027, the deeper lesson is to change what we expect fact-checking to do. Its real value is not the instant rebuttal but the slow building of informational infrastructure – the archives, habits and public scepticism that a healthy democracy leans on over time.

The point is not that fact-checking failed in 2022. It is that it was placed at the wrong moment in the fight. Move it earlier, and surround it with other defences, and the timing trap starts to loosen its grip.

– Election misinformation spreads faster than facts can be checked: 3 insights from Kenya’s experience
– https://theconversation.com/election-misinformation-spreads-faster-than-facts-can-be-checked-3-insights-from-kenyas-experience-287529

August 2, 2026

South Africa’s privacy laws are evolving, but vulnerable people are being left behind

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Phumezo Ntlatywa, Lecturer, Sol Plaatje University

Imagine receiving a message from your bank about suspicious activity on your account, only to discover that someone has accessed your personal information after an organisation you trusted suffered a data breach. Or finding that your medical records or identity details have been exposed online without your knowledge. As more South Africans use digital services for banking, healthcare, education and social media, such incidents are becoming an increasing concern.

Privacy breaches involving personal information do not affect everyone equally. Some people are more vulnerable than others because of their social circumstances, limited digital literacy, economic dependence, or the sensitive nature of the information they share online.

People who may be disproportionately affected include older adults who are less familiar with digital technologies, low-income communities with limited access to digital literacy programmes and children whose personal information is often shared by parents, schools or caregivers. People who rely on community organisations or informal support networks can also face privacy risks.

For example, a stokvel (community-based saving group) may collect members’ identity numbers and banking details to manage contributions, while neighbourhood lift clubs often share names, phone numbers and locations through messaging apps. These are everyday activities that depend on trust, making the responsible handling of personal information especially important. If this information is mishandled or exposed, the consequences can be significant for those involved.

When personal health information is compromised, the consequences can extend far beyond fraud or identity theft. People could be exposed to stigma, discrimination and loss of dignity.

I am a researcher whose work focuses on privacy and social media use in South Africa, particularly how people and communities share sensitive information online. In a recent study, I analysed published South African research on privacy and data protection to understand what scholars are studying, and what may be receiving less attention.

I found encouraging growth in this research in South Africa. Much of the work has focused on areas such as legal rules, cybersecurity measures that protect systems from attacks and organisational practices that help institutions handle information responsibly.

But important blind spots remain. Vulnerable groups receive limited attention in the research. The same is true for community structures such as non-profit organisations, civil society groups, community-based organisations and small enterprises. These institutions regularly handle sensitive personal information with limited resources, little compliance support and low public awareness of privacy risks.

This matters because research often shapes public discussion, policy priorities and awareness programmes. If vulnerable communities receive little attention in research, the challenges they face may also receive less visibility in efforts to improve privacy protection. Solutions won’t be reached with them in mind.

How privacy research changed after legislation

South Africa has legislation in place to protect sensitive information such as children’s data, health records and religious beliefs. The Protection of Personal Information Act (known as Popia) introduced major compliance requirements from July 2020, with full enforcement beginning in July 2021.

Popia has increased awareness of privacy responsibilities among organisations and created greater accountability for handling personal data. It also gives citizens stronger rights over their information. They are able to know how their data is being used and to challenge misuse.

Annual growth in South African privacy research publications (2013–2025). Author supplied

The introduction of Popia brought about an increased focus on privacy scholarship. My analysis showed this moved through three distinct phases.

In the early period, 2013-2017, research focused mainly on understanding the newly enacted Popia and what it would mean for organisations. Much of the work examined the purpose, scope and obligations of the legislation while many of its substantive provisions had not yet come into operation. Keywords such as privacy, data protection and personal information dominated the conversation, reflecting efforts to interpret the new law and anticipate its practical implications.

During the middle period 2018-2020, the conversation broadened. Researchers explored the technical and organisational realities of protecting personal information. Topics that gained prominence included:

cloud computing (storing and managing information online)
cybersecurity (protecting systems and information from digital threats)
ethics (ensuring information is used responsibly)
institutional compliance (helping organisations follow privacy rules and regulations).

This signalled a shift from asking what the law meant to asking how organisations should put it into practice.

Following full enforcement of Popia, the period 2021-2025 saw a sharp increase in research output and a stronger focus on practical solutions. The analysis showed that studies began examining:

compliance strategies (how to follow the law)
ethical handling of data (collecting and using personal information responsibly)
operational challenges in implementing privacy protections (practical difficulties of keeping information secure and complying with regulations).

New conversations started emerging around community-based compliance, non-profit organisations and public awareness programmes. This shows that South Africa’s privacy scholarship is evolving.

What South Africa studies most about privacy

The keyword analysis from my study helped identify themes and patterns in the scholarship.

Keyword co-occurrence in South African privacy scholarship, illustrating dominant relationships between legal, technical and organisational privacy themes. Author supplied

The strongest themes in South African privacy research can be grouped into three broad areas:

understanding privacy law
developing technical safeguards
helping organisations comply with legal requirements.

These are all essential areas of research. But they are not the whole picture.

Who is still missing from the conversation

Several important areas remain underexplored. One possible reason is that research often follows where funding, resources and expertise are concentrated. That is typically in larger organisations, government institutions and major urban centres. Smaller organisations and vulnerable communities may be less able to participate in research initiatives.

Sectoral gaps: Most research focuses on government institutions, corporations and formal organisational settings. Yet smaller organisations often collect highly sensitive personal information while operating with limited technical capacity and fewer compliance resources.

Disciplinary gaps: Much of the existing work comes from legal and technical perspectives. Comparatively little research explores privacy as a social, ethical or behavioural issue. This includes how ordinary people understand consent, digital trust, or their rights over personal information.

Geographical gaps: Research output is heavily concentrated in major urban centres in Gauteng and the Western Cape. This leaves other provinces underrepresented. It limits our understanding of privacy challenges in rural communities, smaller towns and under-resourced areas. In these regions, digital literacy, access and institutional capacity may differ significantly.

Citizen awareness gaps: In practice, privacy protection depends not only on regulation but also on whether citizens understand how their information is being used and what rights they have.

As more South Africans live, work and access services online, privacy protection cannot remain a conversation for lawyers, regulators and large organisations alone. It must also reflect the lived realities of vulnerable communities. A privacy system is only as strong as the protection it offers those most at risk.

– South Africa’s privacy laws are evolving, but vulnerable people are being left behind
– https://theconversation.com/south-africas-privacy-laws-are-evolving-but-vulnerable-people-are-being-left-behind-282439

July 30, 2026

Did Cape Town’s gunshot detection system work? Why jury is still out on what ShotSpotter achieved

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Grant Oosterwyk, Senior Lecturer, University of Cape Town

In mid-2026 Cape Town’s city council ended the use of ShotSpotter, a US-developed gunshot detection system and a form of dragnet surveillance. The system was first piloted in 2016. The council said it was reviewing a renewal of the contract. The acoustic system was marketed as being able to detect and alert police officers to gunfire within 60 seconds.

Information systems researcher Grant Oosterwyk and his colleagues unpack a recent paper that raises questions about accountability, commercial interests and community participation in the context of surveillance technology.

What is dragnet surveillance?

People often imagine surveillance as targeted: police following a suspect or gathering evidence in a specific investigation.

Dragnet surveillance works differently. It monitors a whole area rather than a particular person. Examples include city-wide CCTV networks, automatic number-plate recognition, bulk communications monitoring and acoustic sensors that listen for possible gunfire.

Instead of beginning with an individual suspect, dragnet surveillance begins with a location. People are monitored because they live, work, or move through an area covered by the system. Surveillance of an individual normally requires some justification, and often judicial authorisation. Dragnet systems require none: everyone within range is monitored, whether or not they have done anything wrong. And some neighbourhoods live under permanent monitoring; others never do.

South Africa’s constitution protects privacy, and laws regulate the processing of personal information. But the issue is also power: who decides where surveillance is deployed, how it is evaluated and how affected communities can influence its use.

What is ShotSpotter?

ShotSpotter is an acoustic gunshot-detection system developed by the US company SoundThinking. Sensors placed on buildings or poles detect sounds that may be gunfire. When several sensors detect a possible gunshot, the system estimates its location and sends an alert to police.

The technology is used most widely in the United States, where SoundThinking says it operates in more than 180 cities and communities.

Cape Town first piloted ShotSpotter in Hanover Park and Manenberg in 2016. These are settlements on the Cape Flats where families were forcibly resettled under racial laws in the 1960s and 1970s.

The project was stopped in 2021 due to budget constraints, then revived and expanded, also to apartheid-era settlements. This formed part of the city’s broader investment in technologies like CCTV, drones and aerial surveillance.

The investment responds to a severe problem. Cape Town has among the highest murder rates in South Africa. Cape Flats communities accounted for roughly three-quarters of murders recorded in the Cape Town policing district in the first nine months of 2025. Gang conflict drives much of it. Of 242 gang-related murders recorded nationally in one quarter of 2025, more than 90% occurred in the Western Cape province. Policing capacity is stretched, so technology that promises to pinpoint gunfire is politically attractive.

City of Cape Town reports suggest that the system was useful. In the 2024/25 financial year, ShotSpotter logged 3,893 alerts and 9,223 rounds fired, about 30% lower than the year before. Between April and June 2025, more than half of all firearms recovered by city enforcement agencies were in areas covered by ShotSpotter.

But there has not yet been an independent public audit of the system’s accuracy, false alerts, response times, or effects on policing outcomes.

The public doesn’t know whether it reduced gun violence.

Why is it controversial in Cape Town?

At first glance, the case for ShotSpotter is straightforward: faster gunfire detection could help police respond more quickly, and might save lives. The controversy is not about whether detection can ever be useful, but about evidence, placement, and how violence is framed.

First, the evidence is contested. In the US, ShotSpotter has faced scrutiny from public oversight bodies independent of the police. A court found that fewer than one in ten alerts produced evidence of a gun-related crime; Chicago cancelled its contract in 2024.

Our recent study argues that Cape Town imported not only the technology but also the language promoting it, without independent scrutiny. In the US, that scrutiny came from institutions independent of both police and vendor: inspectors general, an elected comptroller, and courts.

Cape Town has no standing equivalent for policing technology. The city assessed its own programme largely using data generated by the supplier. An independent evaluation could have come from the auditor-general of South Africa, which audits municipal performance; from council oversight committees commissioning external review; or from researchers granted access to the raw alert data. None was published.

Second, placement. The system is concentrated in poor, working-class areas shaped by apartheid spatial planning. Are these communities being better protected, or simply more closely monitored, with little say in how the technology is governed?

Third, our research found a gap between official and community framing. Officials and vendors speak of precision, rapid response and smart policing; residents speak of fear, trauma, unemployment and mistrust of police.

There is also opportunity cost. Money spent on surveillance is money not spent on the conditions that drive violence. The central question is who decides that surveillance comes first.

What needs to happen?

First, Cape Town needs independent audits. Claims about accuracy and effectiveness should be tested by bodies with no financial or political stake in the system.

Second, scrutiny should happen before and during deployment, not only after controversy emerges. A review should ask whose definition of safety a technology encodes, which institutions it assumes exist and whose knowledge it treats as authoritative.

Third, affected communities should have a stronger voice. Residents and community organisations should help define what safety means, how impact is measured and what safeguards are needed.

Finally, detection is not prevention. Sensors may identify where shots were fired, but they cannot explain why violence persists. Lasting improvements in public safety require investment in the social conditions that shape violence, including unemployment, trauma, weak social infrastructure, illicit firearms and strained trust between residents and police.

The central question is whether a surveillance system strengthens public accountability, community safety and democratic trust.

– Did Cape Town’s gunshot detection system work? Why jury is still out on what ShotSpotter achieved
– https://theconversation.com/did-cape-towns-gunshot-detection-system-work-why-jury-is-still-out-on-what-shotspotter-achieved-287252

July 30, 2026

Alcohol’s hidden calories: product labels could help fight obesity in South Africa

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Siphiwe Dlamini, Lecturer, Department of Physiology, University of the Witwatersrand

South Africa is grappling with an obesity crisis. Nearly half of adults are overweight or obese. Public discussion often focuses on ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks as reasons for weight gain. But there’s another source of calories that’s often overlooked: alcoholic drinks.

Alcohol contains nearly twice as much energy per gram as carbohydrates or protein. Many alcoholic beverages also contain leftover sugars and other carbohydrates that were not fully converted into alcohol during fermentation. These contribute extra calories on top of those supplied by the alcohol itself. In Australia, for example, a 330ml bottle of cider was shown to contain as much as 724kJ of energy. This is more than twice the energy content of the average sugar-sweetened soft drink in South Africa. Drinking may also increase appetite and encourage the consumption of high-calorie foods.

Access to clear and accurate nutritional information helps consumers make informed choices about their diets. This is key, whether they’re managing their weight, reducing sugar intake or living with conditions like diabetes. Nutrition labels are one way to inform those choices.

Most packaged foods are required to have detailed nutrition labels. But alcohol is in a unique regulatory position in South Africa – the rules that apply are mostly under the Liquor Products Act. Manufacturers generally have to disclose their alcohol by volume (ABV) or the percentage of alcohol in the beverage. Information such as calorie content, sugar levels, carbohydrates or ingredients is often not disclosed.

My colleagues and I are researchers who study the interactions between nutrition policy, food environments and chronic disease risk in South Africa. We recognise the importance of nutritional labelling. We recently analysed the nutrition content information provided online for more than 3,500 alcoholic beverages sold by major South African retailers. These included beers, wines, spirits and ready-to-drink beverages. We found a wide information gap.

Most products disclosed alcohol by volume. Information on calories, sugars, carbohydrates and ingredients was rarely available. Without this information, it becomes far more difficult to understand how specific products contribute to overall dietary intake.

What we found: the transparency gap

Only about one in three products disclosed sugar content. Information on energy, carbohydrates, protein, fat, fibre and sodium was available for fewer than 3% of products. Ingredient lists were disclosed for only a small minority.

In practice, this means that consumers shopping online can usually see how much alcohol a beverage contains. But other nutritional information or ingredients are seldom available. Manufacturers are not legally required to put this information on alcohol labels. The situation is unlikely to be much different for consumers shopping in stores.

Levels of disclosure also varied across beverage categories.

Beers and wines generally provided more information than other products. Spirits and ready-to-drink beverages were among the least transparent. This is despite some of these products containing substantial amounts of sugar and other energy-contributing ingredients.

But disclosure remained limited overall. The typical alcoholic beverage disclosed only a single piece of nutritional information: its alcohol content.

International moves towards transparency

South Africa is not alone in grappling with the question of how much nutritional information should be provided for alcoholic drinks.

A growing number of countries are moving towards greater transparency. The approaches differ between countries. But they recognise that alcohol is not only a psychoactive substance. It’s also a contributor to dietary energy intake and noncommunicable diseases.

The European Union introduced reforms in 2023 that require wines to provide ingredient lists and nutritional information. These can either be on the product itself or through electronic tools such as QR codes.

Australia and New Zealand have approved mandatory energy labelling for alcoholic drinks. Ireland is introducing comprehensive alcohol labelling requirements, including health warnings and nutritional information. Chile has similarly extended its front-of-package warning system to alcoholic beverages.

These developments show that improved transparency is feasible and is being seen as an important part of public health policy. These policies all aim to give consumers information to help them understand the nutritional content and potential health implications of alcoholic beverages.

Improving nutritional transparency for alcohol

South Africa has an opportunity to build on emerging international practice. It also has the chance to close a gap in the rules that leaves consumers in the dark. A full nutrition information panel may not be necessary for every product.

But sharing information about nutrition has to be done carefully.

Labels that emphasise claims such as “low sugar” or “low carbohydrate” may lead consumers to perceive certain products as healthy when they aren’t.

Any future labelling requirements should clearly communicate alcohol-related health risks and be aligned with broader public health objectives.

South Africans deserve the same level of transparency for alcoholic beverages that is increasingly expected for other foods and drinks.

The lack of nutritional disclosure also has implications beyond individual consumer choice. Without standardised reporting requirements, researchers and policymakers have limited information about the nutritional content of alcoholic beverages available on the market. This makes it more difficult to monitor population exposure to these nutrients, and challenging to develop evidence-based public health policies.

– Alcohol’s hidden calories: product labels could help fight obesity in South Africa
– https://theconversation.com/alcohols-hidden-calories-product-labels-could-help-fight-obesity-in-south-africa-288208

July 30, 2026

Kenya’s running stars attract suspicion and awe – our research gives a more human picture

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Dawson McCall, Assistant Professor, Loyola University New Orleans

In April 2026, Kenyan runner Sabastian Sawe became the first person to officially run the marathon in under two hours. This milestone was anxiously awaited by the running world.

The discussions that followed touched on several topics. These ranged from the “secrets” of Kenyan running successes, to the new-fangled “super shoes” Sawe and others wore during the race. From curiosity about his running statistics leading to a spoof app account to suspicions of doping that haunt many Kenyan runners.

In Kenya, Sawe’s family and neighbours noted the pride and joy they felt. Politicians hailed the performance as a symbol of national pride.

For anyone who pays attention to Kenyan distance running, conversations like these are not uncommon. Elite Kenyan athletes regularly record world-beating results. They’re followed by outpourings of pride and an interest in the secrets that underpin such performances.

As scholars who study the history of Kenyan running, we believe such debates fail to take into account many of the valuable experiences that define the lives of Kenyan runners.

They seldom include the ways Kenyan athletes use the sport to pursue social mobility, connect with local communities, and navigate unequal, racialised treatment in the sport.

Exploring these themes helps us better understand how Kenyan athletes experience the full range of what it means to be human. They push us to think critically about both the possibilities and limits of sport as a way to expand human potential and connection.

Social mobility and education

One of the things that gets lost in the focus on elite performance is how, despite serious challenges, Kenyan athletes have used their abilities to create global lives, especially in the pursuit of social mobility.

For example, when Kenyan runners began earning intercollegiate scholarships during the 1970s, they were intent on pursuing higher education for the purposes of employment. They were less interested in achieving elite results or promoting the nation.

Our research bears this out. Tecla Chemabwai, who competed for Kenya at two Olympics during the late 1960s and early 1970s, used her talents to become the first female Kenyan athlete to earn an intercollegiate scholarship. Upon returning to Kenya in 1978, she transformed her degree in physical education into a 30-year teaching and coaching career. Today she runs a school, the Chemabwai-Sang Education Centre, that is partially funded by connections she made in the US.

A second pattern that’s often overlooked is the role of local institutions, especially schools. While most Kenyan athletes recall taking part in a range of games before starting school, runners regularly say school is where they were introduced to organised, competitive running.

Indeed, sports have been central to schooling experiences in Kenya since the colonial era. Following independence in 1963, they’ve been Kenya’s most prominent centres of athletic success. A good example is St. Patrick’s High School in the town of Iten, which has excelled in a range of sports and become one of Kenya’s most important athletics institutions.

The lack of attention paid to these stories is a missed opportunity. They demonstrate the ways Kenyan athletes have looked to both transnational networks and local institutions to build their lives and their sport.

Performance and technology

Another dominant narrative that needs rethinking is the focus on chemical substances and on performance technologies.

Because of the increase in the number of Kenyan athletes found guilty of violating anti-doping protocols, runners like Sawe have to contend with constant suspicion of chemical doping. To counter this, Sawe, his management, and his sponsor spent US$50,000 on voluntary testing ahead of his record-breaking performance.

While athletes performing at elite levels are viewed with both suspicion and admiration, Black and African sporting bodies have been disproportionately treated with suspicion for a long time. This ranges from discriminatory gender verification to accusations of chemical doping, age doping (age fraud), and mechanical doping because of running in super shoes, despite such shoes being worn by runners from other regions.

A history of injustice

These suspicions mirror historical patterns. As in other sports, east African running success has long been explained through racialised notions of innate Black athletic ability, rather than mental skill or social dynamics.

In other instances, begrudging the overwhelming success of Kenyan runners, race directors in the 1990s tried to outright limit Kenyans from competing. More recently, the International Association of Athletics Federations decided to remove races longer than 3,000 metres from the professional athletics circuit. This had an unfairly negative impact on professional east African runners who have dominated those distances.

Kenyan runners continue to compete in an unequal sporting world where their belonging is constantly challenged. It’s in an effort to claim belonging that athletes like Sawe subject their bodies to intensive out-of-competition blood and urine testing. We should not romanticise such efforts as upholding sports ethics. Rather, those of us who write and talk about Kenyan running must critically analyse how such narratives obscure discussions about fairness and belonging.

In fact, given that doping occurs across a range of sports and countries, African sport scholars have cautioned against uncritically embracing the branding of east Africa as a unique hot spot for doping. Such perceptions give a veneer of legitimacy to the racism underpinning detractors of Kenyan running success.

Toward a fuller conversation

Most sports reporting ignores the rich communities Kenyan athletes build and live in, both past and present. Rethinking these conversations helps us understand that African sporting experiences are not just defined by elite achievement, national identity, and an obsession with performance.

Kenyan athletes care about the mechanics of running and they care about the implications their performances hold for their nation and the wider sports world. But their lives are also significantly influenced by the complex social networks and communities to which they belong. They lead lives that touch the full range of human experience.

A deeper exploration of these ideas will generate a discussion of Kenyan running that engages more fully, in both critical and celebratory ways, with the inspiring performances that Kenyan athletes like Sawe continue to produce.

– Kenya’s running stars attract suspicion and awe – our research gives a more human picture
– https://theconversation.com/kenyas-running-stars-attract-suspicion-and-awe-our-research-gives-a-more-human-picture-288462

July 30, 2026

Early childhood is a great time to learn about clean energy: this game aims to make it fun

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Moleboheng Mokhele, Senior lecturer, North-West University

Early childhood is an important stage when children develop curiosity, values and problem-solving skills. This developmental window provides a strong foundation for lifelong learning, making it an ideal entry point for introducing key concepts such as environmental stewardship, cultural identity and social responsibility.

That is the idea behind ReneWable Rangers, a learning game prototype that uses play, storytelling and adventure to teach young children about science and renewable energy. The game contributes to the ongoing conversation about developing educational approaches that are equitable, locally relevant and globally conscious. Moleboheng Mokhele, an innovative early childhood STEM education researcher, unpacks the findings of her co-authored conceptual paper on how ReneWable Rangers can serve as a model for science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) education.

Why focus on play-based learning?

Global challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion, force a rethink of how to prepare the next generation. These issues are not far away from children’s lives.

Education holds a responsibility. Early childhood – from birth to 8 years old – is a stage where children develop values and problem-solving skills. It is marked by rapid cognitive growth, heightened curiosity, and an increasing awareness of the world around them.

However, much of STEM learning in South Africa, particularly science, is introduced as a standalone subject only in Grade 4. This delay misses early developmental windows for critical thinking. It creates a gap between what children learn at school and what they experience at home and in their communities.

My research focuses on how early STEM education can be made more meaningful, engaging and inclusive for children. Children learn best when they are having fun, asking questions, and actively taking part in what they are learning.

That is the idea behind Renewable Rangers, an educational game that uses play, storytelling, guided inquiry, physical activity and visual learning to help young children learn about science and renewable energy in a fun, meaningful and age-appropriate way.

What is ReneWable Rangers and what are its objectives?

In many cases, STEM education remains focused mainly on technical skills and academic achievement. As a result it does not fully prepare children for the environmental, cultural and ethical challenges they will face in life.

Our conceptual paper responds to this gap. The play-based educational initiative aims to show how playful, inclusive and culturally meaningful learning can better prepare children to understand global challenges, value their local contexts, and see themselves as active agents of change for a more sustainable future.

The game follows me, Dr Mummy Ranger, and my two sons, Wavhudi and Rivhavhudi, as we travel across South Africa on a mission to help restore electricity in the country after a nationwide blackout. We journey in our eco-friendly Ranger vehicle, bringing hope to communities and inspiring children to become young renewable energy heroes.

Since 2007, South Africa has experienced ongoing electricity shortages stemming from inadequate generation capacity, ageing infrastructure and poor maintenance. Although nationwide load shedding has decreased in recent years, many communities still experience localised power outages caused by network problems.

As the characters move from one province to another, they learn about different renewable energy sources found in each region, such as solar and wind power. They also explore the diverse cultures, languages and ways of life in each province. Each province becomes a meaningful learning space where STEM concepts are connected to real-life experiences in a fun and engaging way.

Along the way, children learn:

how electricity is made
what causes power cuts
how we can use renewable energy sources

This is achieved through stories and hands-on activities. Rather than simply teaching children facts, the game allows them to explore ideas through experience.

The game also places strong emphasis on identity and culture by creating stories and characters that children can recognise. The characters help children see themselves in the story.

ReneWable Rangers is more than a game. It’s an invitation to rethink what children are capable of and what kind of future we want to prepare them for.

What the game looks and feels like

At this stage, ReneWable Rangers is a carefully designed prototype. It combines cultural responsiveness, sustainability, self-directed learning and play-based pedagogy into one integrated learning experience.

Unlike many educational games that import foreign models and try to localise them after the fact, ReneWable Rangers was designed from the ground up with South African learners in mind. It does not treat cultural relevance or learner voice as add-ons: these are central to the experience.

That said, strong conceptual design must be followed by careful empirical validation. The next step is to take ReneWable Rangers into real classrooms, observe how learners engage with it, and measure its impact on their understanding, confidence and curiosity.

– Early childhood is a great time to learn about clean energy: this game aims to make it fun
– https://theconversation.com/early-childhood-is-a-great-time-to-learn-about-clean-energy-this-game-aims-to-make-it-fun-283817