The Conversation – Page 6 – MIL Africa Engine

September 8, 2026

DRC’s Ebola outbreak has the potential to become a global pandemic. How to make sure it doesn’t

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Jia B. Kangbai, Senior lecturer, Njala University

Given its speed, scale and scope, the Bundibugyo Ebola virus disease that broke out in the Democratic Republic of Congo in mid-2026 could become a global epidemic.

I am an infectious disease epidemiologist with experience in managing the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in my country, Sierra Leone. Drawing lessons from Sierra Leone and having watched the mid-2026 outbreak in the DRC, I conclude that it risks become a global epidemic.

There are a number of reasons for this.

Preventing a fast-spreading outbreak that has already taken over a large geographical region is difficult.

The speed of the outbreak makes it challenging to even quantify the true scale of its spread. It’s hard to measure its true metrics, like incidence (the number of cases detected) and case fatality rates (the proportion or percentage deaths among the detected cases) on a daily basis.

It took on average four months for the cumulative 2013-2016 west Africa Ebola outbreak cases in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to reach 1,000 after official declaration. In the DRC outbreak it took less than two months to reach that same number.

These statistics are post-outbreak declaration statistics. This outbreak started a long time before it was officially detected, which implies transmissions and deaths have occurred that are not being captured. Only those Ebola cases that presented after its official declaration have been documented. This implies that frontline health workers have to contend with huge backlogs of Ebola cases for treatment, surveillance and contact tracing.

Given its current scale and speed, the following actions are needed:

inject adequate and sustained multi-month funding to pay for frontline workers, lab consumables, personal protective equipment and infection prevention and control supplies
ensure rigorous anti-infection measures are adhered to in health facilities and border posts
actively involve community members in the response by working with trusted local leaders, religious leaders, youth groups and community health workers
screen borders
design a safer patient-care pathway – a triage, isolation, testing and treatment system.

Possible reasons for rapid spread

Ebola is generally a highly contagious disease with a high transmission rate. A primary Ebola case can transmit the infection to between 1.5 and 2.5 other people.

But the rapid spread of Bundibugyo virus disease falls outside this expected epidemiological unit. A number of interlinking factors are driving this rapid spread. These include: the emergence of super-spreaders; a lack of data; a lack of therapeutics and vaccines; the slow and non-adoption of public health interventions; challenges to full community engagement and trust; and insecurity due to ongoing armed conflict.

The role of super-spreaders

The role of disease super-spreaders in outbreaks is not new. In one study conducted during the 2014-2016 west Africa Ebola outbreak, super-spreaders were reported to have been responsible for more than 60% of sustained onward transmission.

Super-spreaders are infected people who disproportionately transmit pathogens to susceptible people during an outbreak. This can be due to the way disease affects the body, and to environmental, behavioural, social and demographic factors.

Disease super-spreading is more common during the early stage of an outbreak. It is more pronounced for a relatively new disease or a rare strain of a pathogen. In these situations, infected people serve as super-spreaders mostly because they don’t know how the infection is spread or prevented.

The rarity of the Bundibugyo strain makes it a likely candidate for super-spreading. The lack of appropriate diagnostic kits was largely responsible for the late diagnosis in the early period of the outbreak. This has led to its continued spread. Because of the geographical size and velocity of this outbreak, the challenge caused by insufficient diagnostic kits added another layer to managing it.

When someone gets sick, the expected thing to do is to diagnose and treat. This works well when the infected person is familiar with the signs and symptoms of the disease. Unfamiliarity with the symptoms can lead to delays in seeking treatment and hence sustained transmission.

Age has also played a role in super-spreading – in this outbreak and in previous ones. The age of an infected person (especially infected children below 15 and adults above 45 years) was reported to have been primarily responsible for super-spreading in the 2014-2016 west Africa outbreaks. In the ongoing DRC outbreak, the age group of 18-49 years accounts for the bulk of the infection, while a quarter of deaths are children below 15 years. Children are unfamiliar with the signs and symptoms of Ebola and seek treatment late. Because of this they will spread the disease to their caregivers. The age group 18-49 years will engage in high-risk activities, including unprotected sex, that will increase the transmission rate of the disease. Bundibugyo Ebola virus is transmitted through contact with the blood or bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated surfaces or material.

Super-spreading is also affected by how the disease presents itself.

In the DRC, because of the rarity of Bundibugyo virus, little is known about its signs and symptoms, which makes it challenging during early physical diagnosis.

Ebola Zaire, the most common strain of the virus, has an early acute wet-phase characterised by vomiting, diarrhoea, coughing and haemorrhaging. But the early symptoms of a Bundibugyo infection are dry: the person may experience fever, fatigue, muscle pain, headache, and sore throat. These symptoms could easily be misclassified as other tropical infections. This mild nature gives false hope to patients and serves as an “incentive” to delay seeking treatment.

Adding to this layer of complexity is the prevailing insecurity climate in the DRC, which in turn delays people being able to source treatment. The eastern DRC has been plagued by violent conflict for decades, and this is where the outbreak is spreading.

Data gaps, resistance and insecurity

The DRC outbreak has shown what outbreak preparedness can achieve and what still needs to be delivered.

A big challenge is data. When an outbreak has been going on silently for weeks, undetected, the data that emerges after it’s declared an emergency is mostly speculative.

With less than 20% of all Bundibugyo incidences in some health zones traced to recognised contacts, there is a tendency for the disease to spread to unaffected regions. This makes controlling an outbreak difficult.

Adding to that problem are attacks on health and aid workers by the families of affected patients. August 2026 saw the highest number. The attacks mostly stem from deep mistrust of authorities, as well as cultures and traditions clashing with medical protocols.

Other factors contributing to the spread include:

the sheer size of the DRC – almost the size of western Europe in land mass. By September 2026 Bundibugyo had affected an area the size of France.
porous borders, making it impossible to trace people
ongoing insecurity: the government in Kinshasa finds it difficult to govern and provide basic services across the entire country
treatment void – the lack of registered therapeutics and vaccines to treat and prevent the spread of Bundibugyo is another reason it risks becoming a global epidemic.

The failure to develop a Bundibugyo vaccine has been a catastrophic biomedical and governance oversight. It should not have happened, given that localised Bundibugyo outbreaks had occurred several times in the DRC.

Potential diagnostic kits, therapeutics and vaccine candidates have been put into trial stage. But outbreak preparedness should have started much earlier.

Preventing a global Bundibugyo epidemic

Preventing a fast-spreading outbreak that has already taken over a large geographical region will be difficult. It requires nuanced strategy.

One major lesson I learned from the 2014-2016 west Africa Ebola outbreaks was that prevention strategies should always be designed to accommodate setbacks. Planners need to be able to address, persevere with and respond to those emerging challenges as they go along.

The deployment of Ervebo Ebola Zaire vaccine in the DRC is welcomed. But stopping an epidemic relies on strong public health interventions, including vaccination, in the presence of total community engagement and trust. At least the current Ervebo Ebola Zaire vaccine trial will lead to the collection of evidence, which is better than starting all over again in future.

The input of global health actors at the international and national levels is also needed. The dissolution of USAID and cuts in public health funding are bound to create more global health problems. Providing ad hoc funding during a public health crisis cannot fill the gaps in outbreak preparedness and prevention.

The cut in funding has placed tremendous pressure on surveillance, which is very important during such a high-paced outbreak. Health zones where the Bundibugyo prevalence, mortality and transmission rates are high should be areas of paramount concern for surveillance. In a country as vast as the DRC, surveillance requires huge logistics and human resources.

The most urgent action needed to prevent a global epidemic is to double down on real-time testing, which in turn depends on robust disease surveillance.

Funding is key. Lack of funds can affect the arrival of international experts, logistics and humanitarian aid to the remaining unaffected areas outside eastern DRC. Over US$500 million is reported to have already moved into the DRC since the outbreak was declared. This means there shouldn’t be any reason for frontline workers to go unpaid. The strike actions by frontline workers suggest that public health activities to tackle an outbreak of such scale and pace should work in tandem with financial accountability and thorough administrative policies.

– DRC’s Ebola outbreak has the potential to become a global pandemic. How to make sure it doesn’t
– https://theconversation.com/drcs-ebola-outbreak-has-the-potential-to-become-a-global-pandemic-how-to-make-sure-it-doesnt-290965

September 8, 2026

South Africa has new electricity pricing rules after 18 years: what it gets right and wrong

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Felix Dube, Lecturer in the Department of Public Law, University of Venda

The South African government has released a new electricity pricing policy for the first time in 18 years. The policy sets rules that the national energy regulator, the state-owned electricity utility Eskom and municipalities must follow when working out electricity prices.

The policy explains which costs can be recovered from customers and how these charges should appear on electricity bills. Its aim is to ensure that prices are fair and clear, while bringing in enough money to maintain the electricity system and support poor households.

It also updates the pricing rules to reflect major changes since the last policy was released in 2008. Recent changes include the entry of private power producers and the addition of large amounts of rooftop solar power by businesses, farms and households since 2022.

The new policy explains how households and businesses with solar should contribute to maintaining the national grid. It also aims to prevent certain costs, such as unpaid bills and electricity that is stolen or lost through faulty infrastructure, from simply being added to electricity price increases.

I research electricity governance, administrative law, constitutional accountability and the right to electricity. I argue that there are some things the new electricity pricing policy gets right, and some it doesn’t.

About 10 million poor households in South Africa are entitled to a limited amount of free electricity each month. The minister of electricity and energy recently proposed giving these households substantially more free electricity.

But the new electricity pricing policy does not include this proposal. A separate policy governs free electricity for poor households. The two policies are not clearly linked. This means it is unclear who will pay for the extra free electricity or how it will be protected when tariffs are set.

It is my view that the government needs to update both policies together. It must explain how the increased free electricity will be funded, how it will fit into the new tariff system and how municipalities and Eskom will ensure that every qualifying household actually receives it.

The new pricing policy’s weakness

When free basic electricity was introduced in 2003, impoverished households received 50kWh per month. This was a basic survival amount, enough for lights and very limited use of a kettle, iron, television and radio.

Households need at least five times more electricity to improve their living conditions.

However, the new draft pricing policy does not guarantee poor households more free electricity. It says two government departments and the National Treasury must decide each year how much they should receive. The amount will depend on regular reviews and available funding. The government must also study the effects of the allocation over two years. Therefore, the draft creates a process for considering an increase, but does not promise one.

This is a concern because many qualifying households already do not receive free electricity, in part because local municipalities don’t keep accurate registers of families who qualify. Other reasons are poor communication, and a complicated claiming process. Eskom estimates that 10 million households may qualify, but only about 2 million receive the benefit. Increasing the amount on paper will make little difference unless the government guarantees it and ensures that all qualifying households can access it.

What the policy gets right

The draft electricity pricing policy recognises that Eskom is no longer the country’s only major electricity producer. Private companies have entered the market, and different organisations are increasingly responsible for generating, transmitting and distributing electricity.

Therefore, the draft policy seeks to ensure that paying customers are not made to pay for other people’s unpaid bills and for other losses caused elsewhere in the electricity system. This could make electricity prices fairer.

The draft also responds to a problem identified in my own research about households and businesses moving off-grid. Electricity sales help municipalities to fund other services. Therefore, when customers with solar panels buy fewer units but still use the grid for backup, some costs can shift to poorer customers who remain fully dependent on the grid.

Eskom now faces a tariff-and-sales trap

As South Africa’s state-owned electricity utility, Eskom is responsible for generating, transmitting and selling electricity. It earns most of its revenue from tariffs paid by municipalities, businesses and other electricity customers.

From 1 April 2026, direct Eskom customers faced an average tariff increase of 8.76%. Eskom’s bulk tariffs to municipalities rose by an average of 9.01% from 1 July 2026. The national energy regulator has also approved an average increase of 8.83% from April 2027. These increases are lower than the 12.74% increase in the previous year. But they are still difficult for households and businesses whose incomes are not rising at the same pace.

In the last two decades, electricity prices shot up by 1,172%, compared with 174% inflation. In 2025 alone, tariffs rose by 12.74%, while inflation was 3.79%.

Electricity sales fell by 6.2% in 2026. Eskom said this was because of “weak industrial demand and the effects of embedded self-generation”.

These figures do not mean that Eskom is about to collapse, given that it turned a profit of more than R30 billion (about US$1.88 billion). In fact, Eskom achieved this growth even though it was owed billions by municipalities. This prompted questions about whether Eskom was funding its profitability by increasing prices.

Eskom is also spending more money. Its staff numbers rose from 42,030 employees to 43,274 in the year to March 2026. Its employee benefit costs rose by 11% to R50.4 billion (about US$3.16 billion). In its annual results presentation, Eskom said the new hiring was intended to rebuild critical skills and support its operational recovery. The utility noted that it had suffered from years of skills drain and needed more human capital to address chronic plant breakdowns and restore stability to the power grid.

Eskom pays its permanent employees from the money it collects through electricity tariffs. Therefore, it should disclose what new jobs were created and why, whether it spent less on contractors as a result, whether staff became more productive, and whether bonuses were awarded for improvements that lasted. Cutting too many jobs could undermine maintenance and lead to more power cuts. However, allowing staff numbers to grow without proper scrutiny could leave customers paying permanently higher electricity prices.

What needs to happen next

I have previously argued that access to electricity is a human right, and that prices cannot be legitimate when the cost-of-supply studies behind them are hidden.

To protect poor households, the final policy should guarantee them a minimum amount of free electricity nationwide, or set out how this minimum will be introduced over time.

It should require all municipalities to use a national database, apply the same rules when deciding who qualifies, and provide a simple way to appeal if someone is wrongly excluded.

It should also explain exactly how the free electricity will be paid for and ensure that municipalities cannot spend this money on anything else.

– South Africa has new electricity pricing rules after 18 years: what it gets right and wrong
– https://theconversation.com/south-africa-has-new-electricity-pricing-rules-after-18-years-what-it-gets-right-and-wrong-291214

September 8, 2026

Partnerships between government, business and civil society are often tense: 3 tips on how to manage them

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ralph Hamann, Professor, University of Cape Town

The Southern Africa Food Lab has brought businesses, farmers, government and community groups together since 2010 to help address the problems of hunger and malnutrition. When these diverse groups first came together, everyone agreed that the region’s food system was in trouble. The disagreement came next.

For some, the priority was resilience: keeping supply chains running through droughts, price spikes and political shocks. For others, those same supply chains were the problem and they needed to be transformed. For instance, they wanted a shift towards agroecological farming — working with natural processes instead of chemical inputs, and favouring diverse smallholdings over monocultures. This would have meant changing some of the very structures their partners were trying to protect.

This tension is not a quirk of one initiative. In a recent article, we argue that it is a common challenge for cross-sector partnerships. These are initiatives in which government, private sector and civil society come together to jointly address shared problems. They are the world’s favourite tool for tackling sustainability problems.

The logic is appealing. No single sector can fix food insecurity, water stress or climate change alone, so why not pool resources and act together?

But do they work?

Despite their obvious appeal, partnerships often flounder. One of the difficulties is that many partnerships face a version of the Food Lab’s question: what should be preserved, and what should be changed?

We are scholars who have studied cross-sector partnerships for many years. We are especially interested in how they respond to complex problems like food insecurity.

Two concepts have been central to this work. Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb a shock and reorganise while keeping its essential structure and identity. Transformation is about changing that structure, so that the system becomes more just and less ecologically damaging.

The two are bound together because sometimes a system has to change in order to endure. But they can pull in different directions, because resilience emphasises what should be maintained, while transformation is about what must go.

We explore this relationship in our recent paper. It is based on a review of the literature, some of our previous research and case studies, as well as papers we included in the special issue of the journal Business & Society that our article introduces.

Our argument is that partnerships generally emphasise either resilience or transformation, especially if they are focused on a particular scale, such as a small town. Some partnerships do include both ambitions but this often involves focusing on one or the other at different scales or in separate programmes. Truly integrated approaches are rare and difficult.

We describe these common emphases and ambitions below. We then recommend three practices, through which partnerships can proactively manage this relationship between what should stay and what should change.

Common approaches

Our analysis suggests that partnerships tend to follow one of three pathways.

Some emphasise resilience. Take the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, founded in 2004 by the World Wildlife Fund alongside Unilever, the Malaysian Palm Oil Association and other companies. It is now more than 6,000 members strong, including growers, traders, retailers, banks and NGOs. Or the Marine Stewardship Council, founded in 1997 out of talks between the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever, which now certifies fisheries with its blue label. Both aim to limit the damage of existing industries and safeguard supplies.

But critics point out that these schemes do little to move the industries away from extractive models. Greenpeace and a coalition of NGOs have gone further, accusing the palm oil roundtable of certifying business as usual.

Other partnerships are more explicitly about transformation. Oxfam, the anti-poverty confederation, works with the Stockholm Environment Institute, a research body. They track the emissions of the very richest individuals, finding that the richest 1% produced as much carbon pollution in 2019 as the five billion people making up the poorest two-thirds of humanity. And then they push for policies that confront the concentrations of wealth and associated environmental impacts.

Partnerships like these tend to meet resistance from the industries and governments whose models they question, and they struggle for funding, precisely because they challenge entrenched interests.

A third group does both, at different scales. For instance, CGIAR, the global agricultural research partnership founded in 1971, helps local communities adapt to climate change while pushing for transformative shifts in global food and trade policy.

That third path is promising, because local resilience and global transformation can feed each other rather than compete. It is also the hardest. What partners agree on at one scale can be unintelligible, or threatening, to people at another. For example, the European Green Deal, the EU’s plan to reach climate neutrality by 2050, set continental ambitions that collided with farmers protesting for their livelihoods and short-term security. Tractors blockaded Brussels in early 2024, and the European Commission rolled back several environmental rules.

What helps

Our review points to three practices that help partnerships hold the tension between what to preserve and what to change rather than be paralysed by it.

First, pay attention. Partnerships may notice social or ecological warning signs late. One study in our collection looked at France’s river basin committees, multi-stakeholder bodies of local officials, water users and state representatives, sometimes nicknamed “water parliaments”. It found they took years to start deliberating about climate change despite some early signals that basin temperatures had already begun to rise. Partnerships need to build in ways of noticing signals early, drawing in researchers and regulators who work at other scales, rather than waiting until the signals are impossible to ignore.

Second, argue honestly. Smoothing over disagreement may enable initial progress, but silencing awkward voices tends to backfire later. Power imbalances inside the partnership need to be named, and where possible rebalanced. The Food Lab is an example. Its convenors found that progress depended on moving beyond polite exchange to a deeper form of dialogue, in which the power imbalances between, say, black small-scale farmers and white corporate managers could be put on the table.

Third, follow through and persevere. It is tempting to harvest easy wins that look good in an annual report, but interventions matter when they match what the partners set out to preserve or change.

Another study in our collection follows a partnership in Milan that set up neighbourhood hubs to get food to people during the COVID-19 crisis. Rather than winding down when the emergency passed, the city, the food banks and private partners built the hubs into a lasting structure for tackling food waste and food insecurity together, and cut the city’s dependence on corporate food donations along the way. An initial emphasis on resilience carried through into an effort towards transformation.

The Food Lab’s argument over supply chains, in other words, was not a failure of partnership. It was the real work, surfacing the underlying differences in partners’ priorities in a dialogue.

The partnerships that will matter over the next decade are the ones willing to have that argument openly, and to decide together what is worth keeping and what must change.

– Partnerships between government, business and civil society are often tense: 3 tips on how to manage them
– https://theconversation.com/partnerships-between-government-business-and-civil-society-are-often-tense-3-tips-on-how-to-manage-them-290795

September 8, 2026

Nonprofits spend too much time reporting to funders: a single universal template could help

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Wayne van Zijl, Associate Professor and CLM Assistant Dean of Research, University of the Witwatersrand

Imagine being asked to prepare monthly reports that all demand their own classifications, measurement bases and templates.

This is the reality that nonprofit organisations (NPOs) face across the world.

In a recent paper, my co-authors and I present findings from interviews with 21 nonprofit stakeholders from South Africa, the UK, the US, Sweden and Uganda. The aim was to understand the reporting challenges they faced, and to consider possible solutions.

One NPO spends two weeks each month just reporting to donors. The problem is not how much information is required, but that each donor uses different templates to request largely the same information.

The lack of standardisation matters because funding is scarce and every hour and dollar spent repackaging the same information is an hour and dollar not spent, for example, feeding vulnerable children, protecting endangered species or educating disadvantaged communities.

Part of the problem is a lack of globally accepted and adopted reporting frameworks that satisfy donors’ and other users’ financial and non-financial information needs. At present, many NPOs comply with financial accounting frameworks. But these were designed for entities with a fundamentally different purpose: profit-making.

The International Non-Profit Accounting Standard, launched in 2025, marks a significant milestone for NPO standardisation. But, while it includes some non-financial reporting, it is primarily a financial accounting framework.

Consequently, many donors need more non-financial information and design their own templates. However, these often request irrelevant information while omitting other useful information.

Our research developed the Civil-Society Organisations Reporting Practice (CORP) framework. The goal is not another layer of compliance reporting, but a common reporting structure that integrates financial and non-financial information to meet users’ general information needs.

This reduces the need for donors to waste time developing templates themselves. It also reduces NPO stress and anxiety when trying to meet all their stakeholders’ needs.

Why profit tells the wrong story

Financial reporting is largely developed around the needs of investors and lenders. They care about cash flows, financial position and a company’s ability to generate financial returns. Applied to nonprofits, these metrics can distort more than they reveal.

Why?

Because NPOs deliver social and environmental services to those who cannot pay for them. They don’t try to make profits. To illustrate, consider two otherwise identical NPOs that each receive R10 million.

NPO A spends R1 million on salaries and R9 million delivering services. At year-end, it reports no surplus and no financial return.

NPO B also spends R1 million on salaries but nothing to advance its mission. At year-end, it reports a R9 million surplus, R9 million in net cash inflows and a strong balance sheet.

NPO B appears to significantly outperform NPO A but has provided no social or environmental services. In contrast, NPO A used all its resources for precisely its intended purpose.

While deliberately extreme, the example highlights why using financial performance alone can be misleading and incentivise bad behaviour. Organisations can appear financially stronger by accumulating cash and cutting programme costs – precisely the behaviours that limit impact.

Non-financial information is vital. Suppose a maths tuition NPO delivers 1,000 lessons. This is its output. Comparing participants’ and non-participants’ pass rates helps assess outcomes. Most importantly, impact asks what happened in the longer term: did participants enter and graduate from university, find employment and ultimately improve their households’ circumstances?

The distinction between outputs, outcomes and impact matters. NPOs can be busy but make no difference to society. Outputs speak to effort; outcomes to short-term changes; and impact to whether NPOs are actually making a difference.

Reporting impact is the hardest and could be costly. Accordingly, reporting must be proportional, balancing costs with benefits.

Accountability in both directions

Donors dominate what nonprofits report as they, understandably, want evidence that their money is being used as intended. It’s known as upward accountability.

But this risks letting donors define what “good” and “bad” NPO performance looks like, potentially driving undesirable behaviour.

It can also exclude the people that NPOs exist to serve.

Downward accountability is needed to balance this power relationship. Beneficiaries should be able to evaluate NPO performance and influence service delivery. A tuition programme may have excellent pass rates but inadvertently exclude under-resourced learners if lessons finish after the last bus departs, leaving those without private transport unable to attend. Such feedback helps NPOs and donors understand what is needed to drive impact.

An integrated structure

Our framework contains five elements.

First, a report from the CEO or trustee explaining:

the NPO’s theory of change – how its activities are expected to create impact
strategy – how it plans to achieve its objectives
commentary on past performance and future expectations.

This will help donors and beneficiaries assess whether their interests and needs align with the NPO’s mission and activities.

Second, a report providing key historical financial and non-financial information with year-to-date information – what we’ve termed a flash report. This is key because contexts change quickly and users need certain information to stay up to date.

Third, a statement of credibility addressing legitimacy risks, including concerns about NPOs being used for self-enrichment. It reflects the NPO’s legal status, governance structures, assurance arrangements, track record and key partnerships, which provide important signals about which NPOs to engage and which to avoid.

Fourth, a statement of activities in which the NPO integrates financial and non-financial information to tell its story and facilitate comparability.

Financial statements, summarised or linked, complete the picture.

Next steps

Standardising reporting structures is not the same as making NPOs look alike. The content will – and should – differ. A common structure reduces the cost and anxiety of reporting while allowing users to find what they need without first decoding unfamiliar documents.

Helping the NPOs that serve society and the environment requires NPOs, governments, donors, beneficiaries, academics and standard-setters to work together towards a commonly accepted and adopted NPO integrated reporting framework.

The International Non-Profit Accounting Standard provides an important foundation in this direction while our framework provides a complementary non-financial starting point for further testing, refinement and, ultimately, acceptance by those who produce and use NPO reports.

– Nonprofits spend too much time reporting to funders: a single universal template could help
– https://theconversation.com/nonprofits-spend-too-much-time-reporting-to-funders-a-single-universal-template-could-help-290312

September 7, 2026

A child’s first 5 years set them up for life. African study explores how to target education spending

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Katherine Theiss, Assistant Professor of Economics, Radford University

The first five years of life lay an important foundation for children’s future schooling, health and earnings. Yet over 77% (table 2) of children in sub-Saharan Africa don’t have access to early childhood care and education. This places them at risk of not reaching their development potential.

In response, governments across Africa are increasingly committing to expanding enrolment in pre-primary school.

But research suggests that expanding enrolment is not enough. It’s also important to create healthy, nurturing learning environments that help prepare children for primary school.

Economists like us have an interest in this because we want to be able to help design effective and scalable early childhood education programmes and policies. We need to know:

what types of pre-primary education programmes are offered?
what effects do these programmes have on children’s developmental outcomes?
which components of pre-primary education bring about these effects?

We set out to answer these questions by reviewing the most recent evidence available on pre-primary education programmes in low- and middle-income African countries. Our research examined why some pre-primary education programmes may be more successful than others.

Our study identified and reviewed the findings from six programmes carried out by local governments in The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Mozambique. Most were in poor, rural and remote areas.

We found that most programmes focused on play-based learning. And, on average, they generated positive effects on children’s development. The research also suggests that programmes that offer support for parents may generate the largest impacts on children’s development outcomes.

This points to the need for programme planners to recruit high-quality teachers and personnel who can effectively engage with both children and parents.

Studies of child development

To address our research questions, we began by searching for studies on the effects of pre-primary education programmes in low- and middle-income countries in Africa. We only reviewed studies with large enough populations to be meaningful and that used rigorous ways of evaluating the results.

Six programmes met our inclusion criteria. There was one each in four countries – The Gambia, Mozambique, Kenya, and Malawi – and two in Ghana.

In particular, we examined the effects on two categories of children’s development: cognitive and socioemotional.

Cognitive development. This refers to a child’s thinking process. This outcome is measured by assessing children’s numeracy, literacy, spatial ability, language, communication, and executive function skills, such as attention and working memory.
Socioemotional development. This encompasses a child’s social and emotional competence, temperament and behaviour regulation. It is measured by assessing children’s awareness of other people’s feelings and how they behave towards others.

On a broad level, we focused on the quality of the classroom environment and the quality of instruction. In particular, we looked at interventions designed to improve teaching practices and teacher-child interactions through play-based learning.

All programmes included teacher training. Some also provided teachers with resources such as basic play and learning materials or teacher guides. In addition, two programmes offered a monthly stipend to teachers who completed training. Teachers did not typically earn a salary.

Most also engaged with parents about school-related activities or educated parents about positive caregiver practices. For example, they encouraged parents to read and play with children, reduce harsh discipline and understand their influence on child development.

Success of programmes

On average, the programmes were successful in improving children’s cognitive, social and emotional development. This finding is important because improvements in these skills early in life are associated with better educational, employment and economic outcomes later in life. These longer-term benefits can be substantial. For example, in the United States, every dollar invested in the Perry Preschool Program, an early childhood education programme targeted to low-income youth, is estimated to have generated approximately US$7–US$12 in benefits to society.

To explain the positive effects in low- and middle-income African countries, evidence points to the importance of both the classroom and the home environment.

First, successful programmes generally improve teacher practices and classroom quality. Our research shows that teacher training can decrease teacher burnout, increase the use of appropriate instruction materials, and improve the quality of teacher-child interactions. For example, in Ghana, training encouraged teachers to consider children’s ideas during lessons and create opportunities for children to reason and solve problems.

Second, programmes that engage parents may be even more effective in improving children’s development. For example, a programme in Malawi that integrated group-based parenting education sessions into pre-schools with trained teachers brought about even greater gains in children’s language skills and prosocial behaviours. This programme focused on teaching parents tools for stimulating children’s development and promoting health, such as reading and playing with children and washing hands.

Third, the quality of implementation matters. Recruiting high-quality, experienced teachers is important for the success of the programme. Where the researchers didn’t find positive programme outcomes, it may have been attributed to inexperienced staff (in The Gambia) or the difficulties personnel (in Ghana) experienced in communicating with parents about new approaches to early childhood education.

Implications for policy and practice

The findings suggest that positive caregiving practices should be delivered by qualified personnel who can effectively communicate and engage with caregivers who may have low levels of education or limited access to resources.

Our research has implications for Sustainable Development Goal 4.2. The goal is to provide all children with access to quality pre-primary education by 2030 so that they are ready to enter primary school.

– A child’s first 5 years set them up for life. African study explores how to target education spending
– https://theconversation.com/a-childs-first-5-years-set-them-up-for-life-african-study-explores-how-to-target-education-spending-288977

September 7, 2026

OnlyFans in South Africa: what creators say about sex work, personal safety and the gig economy

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Phiwokazi Qoza, PhD researcher, University of Cape Town

OnlyFans was established in 2016 as a platform for content creators to post images and videos or host live streams in exchange for money. But what began as a small and relatively quiet niche startup suddenly exploded.

Global traffic to the site increased by over 90% between November 2019 and October 2020. At the height of the COVID pandemic, when governments all over the world issued stay-at-home orders, OnlyFans was one of the few marketplaces to experience major growth, from 7.5 million registered users to 85 million. In mid-2021, the platform was estimated to be worth over a billion dollars and, by 2026, over three times that.

Today OnlyFans is the most popular of many similar sites. In a digital gig economy, creators earn money directly from their fans through monthly subscription fees, tips, and pay-per-view messages.

Even though the platform hosts fitness and wellness instructors, music and bands, sports and athletic stars, it is by far best known for its adult content creators.

When I began studying OnlyFans in South Africa in 2022, there was growing consensus that it was a digital sex work marketplace.

In the global north, it’s been argued that OnlyFans is a prominent example of a “subscription-based pornographic sharing content website”. Academics outline how it has revolutionised the commercial sex work industry by providing a platform for creative independence and professional autonomy. It’s offered greater earning potential compared to other forms of sex work. In the process it has contributed to lessening the stigma of sex work by blurring the lines between traditional pornography and social media influencing.

These factors have potentially created a more acceptable career path than sex work in a physical space. But do South African OnlyFans creators even identify as sex workers?

It’s one of the questions that I asked them as a social scientist in the course of my PhD research on OnlyFans use in South Africa as an example of platform labour in the gig economy. My work explores the meanings that attach to the body when young people use digital media to curate alternative realities for themselves that might help them reclaim agency and redefine their self-image.

I found that many South African OnlyFans creators do not identify as sex workers; they prefer to distinguish themselves from physical sex workers or from creators who also do in-person hook-ups. They manage online stigma by using pseudonyms. Even though they face piracy and extortion, they avoid taking legal action for fear of being judged.

Yet they are able to achieve moderate long-term income and some stability in a country with high youth unemployment. They do this by blending entrepreneurial skills and digital savvy to operate independently, and by constantly balancing online competition, algorithms and personal pressures to do their work.

Labouring on digital sexual spaces

How sex work happens cannot be separated from its legal status. While sex work is technically criminal in South Africa, platforms like OnlyFans are able to operate legally. In 1996, the country’s Films and Publications Act decriminalised the creation and distribution of sexually explicit or sexually suggestive content.

I write about South Africans on OnlyFans as “labouring on digital sexual spaces”. This is a marketplace that blurs the “illegality” of sex work but also legitimises the labour that goes into creating content.

This labour includes, among other things, cultivating an audience, most often by using social media; managing relationships with collaborators; the admin of processing requests; and managing the reputational damage risk of being outed as a sex worker.

Instead of merely stating “sex work is work”, my research identifies the labour processes that differentiate digital sex work from traditional sex work. This is done to argue for how labouring on digital sexual spaces is a legitimate form of platform and gig economy work.

The study

Media articles signalled the existence of South Africans who were creating content for OnlyFans, but there was an absence of research on their experiences on the platform.

So, I shared a call for participants on social media and allowed people to volunteer to be part of the research by contacting me via email. At the same time, participants were recruited by word of mouth.

Reflecting South Africa’s demographics, many of the 17 participants who ended up sharing their lived experiences were Black women below the age of 35.

What I found

In part of my research, I set out to understand how OnlyFans creators see themselves and their peers who labour in a platform that gained notoriety for hosting sexually explicit or sexually suggestive content.

While some creators proudly embrace the label of sex worker, many others reject it.

Creators’ self-perceptions generally fall into two categories. The first, as adult content creators. They see their work as a form of media production, like art or performance, rather than a sexual service. For these individuals, this moral distinction is about not having physical sexual contact with the audience. This allows them to choose when and how they work. They compare their choice with what they see as survival-dependency of street-based sex workers.

At the same time, other creators proudly identify as sex workers. They view the term as an umbrella for anyone in the business of pleasure, and further believe that selling sex and arousal through audiovisual mediums is fundamentally still sex work.

The judgment of hook-ups by the former is then framed as an instance of “intra-industry stigma” (judgments within a line of work). Regardless of the label they choose – sex worker or adult content creator – they all anticipate stigma and have experienced it in their lives. Being an OnlyFans creator comes with social judgments from others.

They also all make use of stage names, pseudonyms and online alter egos. This functions as a psychological buffer, allowing them to perform confidently while keeping their authentic selves separate from the job.

A major hurdle is telling their family and intimate partners that they work as OnlyFans creators. If they do, they might tell family members they are posting “body art” or compare OnlyFans to platforms like Instagram. Intimate partners often place boundaries on what content can be made.

There are other significant obstacles. While using watermarking (their user names are superimposed on their images), they are still highly vulnerable to their content being pirated and distributed on other platforms like Telegram or WhatsApp. They also live with the threat of cyber extortion. Stolen content might be used to blackmail creators, with threats of leaking it to their friends and family.

Yet none of the participants in my study felt safe to approach the police or lawyers to punish cyber bullying, extortion, stalking or harassment. This has an impact on their occupational health and safety.

What needs to happen

While digital platforms like OnlyFans offer financial freedom and sexual agency, the environment for South Africa’s creators remains dangerous. Decriminalising and properly regulating sex work could help ease some of these pressures.

Understanding the vulnerabilities of digital sex workers can help guide policy initiatives to make digital sexual spaces safer work environments.

From my study it’s clear that there also needs to be a concerted effort to develop educational resources that promote digital literacy and ethical online behaviour.

– OnlyFans in South Africa: what creators say about sex work, personal safety and the gig economy
– https://theconversation.com/onlyfans-in-south-africa-what-creators-say-about-sex-work-personal-safety-and-the-gig-economy-289316

September 6, 2026

Discovery of ancient DNA from antelope fossils in South Africa opens a new window on the past

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Deon de Jager, Researcher in ancient DNA, University of Copenhagen

Over the past 50,000 years, many of the world’s large mammals have gone extinct. Until recent decades, all we knew about them came from fossils. Now, analysis of ancient DNA is adding to the picture.

Ancient DNA is damaged and degraded genetic material often obtained from fossils thousands of years old. It’s giving scientists insights into hidden species diversity and the way populations expanded and contracted, based on changes in genetic diversity across time.

These ancient DNA studies have in large part been carried out in cold regions at northern latitudes, where low temperatures and permafrost mean DNA is better preserved – think woolly mammoths.

Across Africa, climates are warmer and DNA preservation in fossil remains is generally much poorer. As a result, there have been few ancient DNA studies of African large mammals, and the few that have been done were focused mainly on humans and domestic species within the past 2,000 years or so.

Ancient DNA allows us to study extinct species and their genetic relationships to living species, and to measure the genetic diversity of past populations. It can tell us something about how species respond to changes in their environment and reveal details about the mechanisms of evolution, population loss or species extinction.

As researchers with expertise in African hoofed mammals and in ancient DNA, we set out with collaborators to investigate how long ancient DNA is preserved in mammal fossils from archaeological sites in South Africa. Our goal was to test the possibility of obtaining ancient DNA from multiple individuals of the same species that lived at different times in the past. This would allow us to compare patterns of genetic diversity within a species through time, to understand the impact of past environmental changes.

A selection of the fossils screened for DNA preservation. Deon de Jager, Author provided (no reuse)

We tested 144 fossils aged 1,500 to 110,000 years old, and found that DNA can be preserved for up to 50,000 years, although most of the fossils with preserved ancient DNA were younger than 11,700 years old. This age marks the transition between the Pleistocene, or the last ice age, and the Holocene, our current geological epoch, where climates are warmer.

The oldest DNA in our sample belonged to a mountain reedbuck and was found at Boomplaas Cave, in the Swartberg mountains of the Western Cape province, South Africa. It may be the oldest animal DNA to be found in Africa so far, by 30,000 years (a finding we are still confirming via radiocarbon dating).

Our findings mean two main things:

we can retrieve ancient DNA from the fossil remains of large mammals that are tens of thousands of years old, something considered nearly impossible until now
we can investigate past population dynamics of African species within the Holocene.

We thus show it is possible to genetically study African mammals that went extinct during or after the last ice age. This represents a breakthrough in African palaeontology and opens a new window into how Africa’s extinct mammals can be studied.

We also show that it is possible to investigate genetic changes that happened in animal populations during the Holocene. Data like this can serve as a baseline of genetic diversity before the major declines caused by human activities during the past two centuries. Baseline data are crucial to monitoring biodiversity change and conserving African wildlife.

DNA from animals in South African caves

In our study, we tested for DNA in teeth and bones from four antelope species (Cape grysbok, grey rhebok, reedbuck and eland), the African buffalo, and the extinct giant long-horned buffalo. The fossils were excavated from six archaeological cave sites in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape provinces of South Africa. This enabled us to investigate differences in DNA preservation among species and across sites.

We presume the bones were left in the caves by ancient humans who ate the animals. We know how old they are through radiometric dating of charcoal and other material in the layer of the cave they were found in.

Archaeologists excavated the sites between 1950 and 1995, and the fossils have since been kept at the Iziko Museums of South Africa in Cape Town. We subsampled the fossils by drilling with a dentist drill to obtain 50mg of tooth or bone powder for DNA extractions.

Our results showed no major differences in the preservation of DNA among the six species. However, we did show that some sites, like Nelson Bay Cave in Plettenberg Bay on the southern Cape coast, preserved DNA better than others. The oldest African animal DNA sequenced before our study, a blue antelope tooth about 9,300 years old, was also from Nelson Bay Cave. So were three teeth from the extinct giant long-horned buffalo, aged 12,000-21,000 years old, from which we successfully obtained ancient DNA.

But there’s a catch with ancient DNA: not all the DNA we extract belongs to the fossil. This is because the animal’s DNA degrades over time, and the DNA of microbes that decompose it and other organisms in the environment becomes more abundant. Sometimes the DNA of the people who handle the fossil also get into the mix.

In our 65 African fossils that had ancient DNA, we found that on average, only 2% of the DNA we retrieved was from the target species. Fossils younger than 2,000 years old tended to have more (as much as 30%), which makes sense as there’s been less time for degradation and mixing.

Collagen as a proxy for DNA

We also evaluated how well collagen, the protein that makes up 22%-50% of vertebrate teeth and bones, is preserved in these fossils.

Collagen can be used for radiocarbon dating, to directly estimate the age of a fossil.

Previous studies have shown a correlation between the preservation of collagen and that of DNA. Our analysis showed a 77% correlation, but only in some sites. Still, this is an encouraging finding as measuring collagen content is less costly than retrieving and sequencing ancient DNA.

Thus, collagen preservation can be used as a proxy for DNA preservation. This can assist researchers in selecting which fossils to target for DNA sequencing and for radiocarbon dating.

Overall, our study gives researchers who want to use ancient DNA and collagen in their work on African fossils an idea of what they can expect and what to consider when designing future studies.

– Discovery of ancient DNA from antelope fossils in South Africa opens a new window on the past
– https://theconversation.com/discovery-of-ancient-dna-from-antelope-fossils-in-south-africa-opens-a-new-window-on-the-past-289848

September 3, 2026

Early mammals weren’t all loners, as scientists thought – some already lived in pairs alongside the dinosaurs

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Carsten Schradin, Director of Research, Université de Strasbourg; University of the Witwatersrand

About 200 million years ago, furry little egg-laying creatures evolved the ability to feed their offspring with a secretion from some special glands: milk. Their evolutionary journey continued and by about 160 million years ago, the first mammals with a real placenta had come into being. Instead of laying eggs, they gave birth to live young that had been connected via a placenta directly to their mother during pregnancy, allowing the exchange of oxygen, nutrients and waste products.

These early mammals looked like shrews do today. They were small and had a long body, eyes typical for nocturnal mammals and little spiky teeth for eating insects. But they were not shrews. They were the ancestors of all the placental mammals that exist now, including shrews, bats, elephants and humans.

Juramaia, a very early placental mammal that lived about 160 million years ago. Wikimedia

While we know quite a lot about what our ancestors looked like and what they ate, so far we didn’t know anything about their social behaviour. Because behaviours don’t fossilise.

Scientists used to think that the first placentals behaved like shrews because they looked like shrews. And as the common belief was that all shrews are solitary, scientists thought the first placental ancestors were too.

Now we know that both assumptions were wrong.

For 10 years I led a group of volunteers, master’s students, PhD students and researchers who conducted a literature survey to better understand the social organisation of wild living mammals – in other words, whether they live as solitary individuals, in pairs or in groups. Together we reviewed more than 15,000 scientific publications.

Using this data for modern mammal species and statistical methods to analyse evolutionary relationships, we could estimate how the first placentals had lived.

Our findings transform the understanding of how our own ancestors lived in the age of the dinosaurs. Rather than being exclusively solitary, they regularly formed stable female-male pairs. Our results also show that early mammals were not locked into one single social system. Like many modern mammals, they showed variation in social organisation.

These findings challenge the traditional image of early mammals as strictly solitary animals, with social behaviour evolving much later. We suggest that the roots of mammalian sociality – and with this some aspects of our own social behaviour – reach much deeper into evolutionary history than previously thought.

Pair-living is common in extant mammals

Round-eared elephant shrew, known to most often live in pairs. Carsten Schradin, CC BY

We first studied the shrews and their relatives, and found our first surprise: while around 400 species had been classified as solitary living, only 16 had actually been studied. And most of them at least sometimes lived in groups, 38% in pairs.

If shrews are not solitary but often social, then maybe the early, shrew-like looking ancestors were also more social than we’d believed. No study had tested what the social organisation of early mammals had been. We were able to do this using statistical advances of comparative studies and our new high-quality database.

Our dataset includes data for 806 of the 5,740 extant mammal species, 80 of which are marsupials and 726 placental mammals. Nearly a quarter (24%) are solitary-living, 17% pair-living and more than half (59%) are group-living.

To estimate the social organisation of the ancestor, the evolutionary history of mammals has to be taken into account. Using a statistical model, we were able to do this, by controlling for the fact that some species are closely related to each other.

We found that variation in social organisation within species was common for both extant marsupials and placentals. Their ancestors showed flexibility too. They were not all living solitary lives. Some of them lived in pairs. For placentals, where we had the most data, we found that about one-quarter of the population was pair-living.

In other words: the first placentals, and as such our ancestors living 160 million years ago, sometimes lived in pairs.

Several other studies have shown that the ancestors of major groups of placental mammals living approximately 70 million years ago were predominantly pair-living. That was the case for elephant shrews, even-toed ungulates and primates. This means that from 160 million years ago to 70 million years ago, pair-living transformed from an alternative possibility to the most common form of social organisation in several lines of placentals.

Then about 66 million years ago, the dinosaur era came to an abrupt end. The Earth was struck by an asteroid, and dinosaurs (excepting birds) and most other large animals became extinct. Only small animals survived, including the small mammals which became the ancestors of all today’s mammals.

These mammals found themselves in an environment without large predators. This allowed them to become bigger and bigger over the millions of years that followed. And they became more social. Pair-living ancestors gave rise to group-living mammals. The main benefit was protection against predators.

Today most mammals are group-living. They are the only vertebrate taxa where group-living is common.

What’s still missing

Our findings are important because for decades researchers have tried to explain the evolution of pair-living in mammals. But our research shows that this was the wrong question: the hallmark of mammalian social evolution is group-living, while pair-living is an ancient mammalian trait.

Thus, what we need to ask is how mammals became so tolerant and amicable, that several females and several males could live together.

– Early mammals weren’t all loners, as scientists thought – some already lived in pairs alongside the dinosaurs
– https://theconversation.com/early-mammals-werent-all-loners-as-scientists-thought-some-already-lived-in-pairs-alongside-the-dinosaurs-290381

September 3, 2026

Europe relies on Morocco to keep migrants out – Ceuta shows the political cost

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Moha Ennaji, Professor, Université Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah

The movement of tens of thousands people into Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on the north African coast, in July 2026 has highlighted faultlines in the politics of migration between Europe and Morocco.

More than 70,000 people entered Ceuta over a 48-hour period. The extraordinary surge followed the spread of misleading claims on social media that people who reached Ceuta by sea could not be returned to Morocco. An estimated 57 people died. Most drowned while trying to swim around the border breakwater.

Ceuta is on the African continent and borders Morocco. It has a population of about 83,600 people, 40% of whom are of Moroccan origin. The city’s reception facilities were already overwhelmed as around 1,500 people had arrived the previous week. Facilities for unaccompanied minors were operating at 2,400% of their capacity.

I am a researcher on north African migration issues, and in my view, the Ceuta situation is about more than migration. It reflects the complicated political relationship between Spain, Morocco and the European Union, and deep structural inequalities.

Understanding the unfolding crisis requires looking at both the international and domestic dimensions.

International attention needs to be paid to Europe’s outsourcing of border controls, and to the geopolitical relationship between Spain and Morocco. Domestically, the crisis raises questions about illegal migration, pressure on public services, and the political and media narratives surrounding migration.

The international dimension

Migration has become a source of political leverage. American political scientist Kelly M. Greenhill calls this coercive engineered migration: the deliberate use – or threat of using – migration flows to pressure other states into making concessions.

In Ceuta, this dynamic is part of a broader pattern.

In May 2021, for instance, more than 5,000 people entered Ceuta after Morocco eased border controls. This followed a diplomatic crisis triggered by Spain’s decision to allow Brahim Ghali, the leader of the Polisario Front, to receive medical treatment in the country. The Polisario Front seeks independence for the Sahara, a territory claimed and recovered by Morocco since 1975.

Morocco considered Spain’s decision to receive Ghali as support for its political adversary. Relations between the two countries deteriorated sharply. Morocco subsequently relaxed controls on its border with Ceuta, which allowed thousands of people to cross into the Spanish enclave. Spain accused Morocco of using migration to pile on political pressure.

Morocco’s leverage in this situation has been amplified by Europe’s outsourcing of migration control. Rather than managing migration only at its own borders, the European Union has increasingly relied on countries like Morocco to prevent people from reaching Europe in the first place.

Further, some politicians have framed the 2026 Ceuta arrivals as an “invasion” or a threat to national security. This has contributed to the process of “securitisation”, an approach that tends to prioritise state security over the safety and rights of migrants themselves.

The European Parliament has condemned the use of migration as a tool of political gains.

The outsourcing of migration control has made Morocco an essential partner for the European Union. But it has also made the union increasingly dependent on Morocco to prevent migrants from reaching European territory.

In 2023, the European Commission allocated 152 million euros to strengthen Morocco’s border management. By transferring part of its responsibilities, Europe has given Morocco real leverage over migration cooperation.

This dependence creates a dilemma for the European Union. Morocco’s importance in curbing migration can make it harder for European governments to challenge the country over other matters in the future.

The domestic dimension

A Spanish court ruling may have played a role in the July 2026 crossings. The supreme court ruled out the use of the exceptional “rejection at the border” procedure for people intercepted at sea trying to enter Ceuta and Melilla by swimming.

The court found that this procedure applies to people crossing physical border barriers, such as the fences surrounding the enclaves, rather than those intercepted while swimming.

This decision was misinterpreted by many in Morocco. Its simplified interpretation may have encouraged crossings by creating the impression that those arriving by swimming would not be sent back. According to the Spanish prime minister, smuggling networks exploited this court ruling.

Large-scale border crossings can also change the way migration is discussed. One study into the 2021 Ceuta crisis found a hardening of political rhetoric and a growing normalisation of racist language. Further, the far-right Spanish party Vox devoted more than 70% of its social media posts to Ceuta and migration.

The current crisis has revived similar rhetoric. Far-right politicians have used words like “invasion” and “men of fighting age”, contributing to portraying migrants as a collective threat to Spanish citizens. The media are not necessarily the source of this rhetoric. But they can help normalise it. This can happen when they repeat alarmist narratives without sufficient context or perspective.

Human rights as limit and response

In a crisis of Ceuta’s nature, human rights are not an obstacle to border management. They set the legal and ethical limits. Finding more than 50 bodies in the waters off Ceuta shows the human cost of turning a border into a zone of extreme danger.

Spain has a duty to protect human lives and ensure effective rescue operations. It also must assess each case individually, with particular attention to minors, asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking.

The primary victims remain the migrants themselves. Political parties may exploit them for electoral gain. Public narratives may reduce them to an anonymous threat.

While states squabble over influence and responsibilities, migrants face inadequate protection, arbitrary pushbacks and dehumanisation in public debate.

The response should not pit the rights of Ceuta’s residents against those of the people arriving there. It should protect both groups, while giving particular attention to the most vulnerable. They should not pay the price for political strategies over which they have no control.

– Europe relies on Morocco to keep migrants out – Ceuta shows the political cost
– https://theconversation.com/europe-relies-on-morocco-to-keep-migrants-out-ceuta-shows-the-political-cost-290780

September 3, 2026

Are South African teaching posts up for sale? School staff say an old problem hasn’t gone away

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Amy Sarah Padayachee, Lecturer, Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Questions about the integrity of educator appointments remain unresolved in South Africa ten years after a ministerial task team investigated the alleged sale of teaching posts.

The inquiry exposed vulnerabilities in a system intended to ensure that appointments are fair, equitable and transparent. A decade later, how well does South Africa’s system protect teacher appointments and promotions from improper influence? The question remains relevant because allegations of post-selling, nepotism (giving jobs to friends and family members) and unfair promotion processes continue to be investigated and reported.

My research focuses on education policy, school governance, management, leadership and teacher education. In a 2025 study, my colleagues and I examined what regulates and influences educator appointments and promotions in South African public schools.

We found that South Africa has clear rules for educator appointments. However, informal influence, uneven governance capacity and blurred stakeholder roles can affect what happens in practice. In particular, we found that educators felt it wasn’t clear that appointment processes were followed properly.

These insights matter because who becomes a teacher, head of department, deputy principal or principal is not simply an internal school staffing matter. These decisions shape school leadership, teaching and learning, staff morale and communities’ confidence in public education.

For parents, educators and school communities, the concern is whether people are appointed to responsible positions because they are suited to the role, or because of connections or influence.

A problem identified a decade ago

In 2016, the ministerial task team chaired by Professor John Volmink investigated allegations of irregularities in the appointment of educators. The report identified:

undue influence by union members and other actors over governing bodies and selection processes
cadre deployment (placing organisationally or politically aligned people in positions)
weak departmental oversight, particularly at provincial, district and circuit levels
limited capacity among school governing bodies (the statutory bodies responsible for governing public schools, with parents forming the majority of voting members).

The task team recommended stronger departmental oversight, more professional selection of senior staff, clearer limits on union observer roles and measures to end cadre deployment.

Concerns have continued to surface across provinces. In April 2026, the Education Labour Relations Council set aside a Western Cape principal’s appointment after finding unfairness in the promotion process. The same month, the Free State provincial Department of Education launched an investigation into allegations of nepotism at a special needs school. And in July 2026, the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education ordered an independent investigation into fresh allegations concerning the sale of employment posts.

Educator appointments follow a defined legal process. Under the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996 and the Employment of Educators Act 76 of 1998, school governing bodies recommend candidates to the provincial head of department, who makes the final appointment. The Personnel Administrative Measures set out the shortlisting and interview procedures. Union representatives participate as observers rather than decision-makers.

Perceptions of teacher hiring practices

The mixed-methods study combined surveys and interviews in public schools across KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and the Western Cape. It drew on participants from 20 schools in each province. They included educators, heads of department, deputy principals, principals and teacher union representatives.

The study found a gap between the formal rules governing appointments and how these processes were experienced in practice. Participants described how informal influence, uneven power and governance weaknesses could shape appointment and promotion decisions. They described situations in which personal relationships, organisational affiliations and unequal power between stakeholders affected processes.

We heard comments such as:

The appointment of educators to promotional posts is unfair, as it often depends on bribery rather than on educators’ competency.

Less than a third (29.4%) of survey respondents agreed that appointments strictly followed national policy and legislation. More than half (53%) felt school governing bodies did not ensure fair and transparent processes, while 49% rated union influence as moderate or high. Nearly three-quarters (72.5%) agreed that political or personal affiliations influenced appointments.

Another comment was:

Schools face pressure from departmental officials and teacher unions. Divisions in school governing bodies also impact fairness and transparency.

One view was:

The governing body has too much power. If you pay them, then they are willing to appoint you.

Together, the findings show that educators felt appointment processes were unfair, unclear and inconsistent.

Unfair appointments had an effect on morale, as seen in this comment:

This breaks good, dedicated, sincere workers.

The findings do not suggest that every appointment process was compromised or that these practices occurred uniformly across South African schools. They did, however, show that many of the issues that were identified a decade ago are still there.

Teacher unions and school governing bodies do have legitimate roles in democratic school governance. Governing bodies represent school communities. Teacher unions protect educators’ interests and observe appointment processes. The problem is not democratic participation itself. But when informal influence overrides formal roles and procedures, it weakens the integrity of appointments. It affects the quality of leadership, teaching and public trust in South African education.

Capacity and role clarity matter

School governing body members make consequential appointment decisions. But their knowledge of recruitment procedures, employment law and policy varies. They therefore need practical preparation in shortlisting, interviewing, managing conflicts of interest and recognising improper interference.

Role boundaries must also be clear: unions have an observer function and principals provide professional expertise. Neither should exert influence beyond those roles.

Merit-based appointments require particular nuance in South Africa because the education system continues to carry the legacy of apartheid-era racial exclusion and inequality. Suitability for a post must therefore be considered alongside constitutional commitments to ability, fairness, redress and broad representation, and legislative commitments to employment equity.

Transformation and the appointment of competent, appropriately qualified people should not be treated as competing goals. A credible process should achieve both.

What needs to change

The study concludes that South Africa does not need another layer of appointment policy. It needs:

practical capacity-building for school governing bodies
transparent scoring and record-keeping
management of conflicts of interest
stronger provincial oversight
consequences where procedures are deliberately manipulated.

No individual’s or organisation’s informal influence should be more powerful than the rules intended to protect merit, fairness and public trust.

– Are South African teaching posts up for sale? School staff say an old problem hasn’t gone away
– https://theconversation.com/are-south-african-teaching-posts-up-for-sale-school-staff-say-an-old-problem-hasnt-gone-away-290372