Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Salah Ben Hammou, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Rice University

Niger’s military regime, led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, faced its most significant challenge on 29 August 2026 since coming to power in 2023. For several hours, soldiers clashed with forces loyal to the junta across the capital, Niamey, in an apparent attempt to seize power. The situation then stabilised and the defence ministry claimed that security forces had regained control.

The episode came after a year in which jihadist violence repeatedly reached Niger’s capital. But this time the challenge came from within the armed forces themselves.

More specifically, the alleged involvement of younger, junior officers and frontline soldiers exposes a vulnerability for military juntas.

As a scholar of military coups who has published on west Africa and beyond, I view Niger’s recent coup as part of a dangerous feedback loop when military rule meets protracted insurgency.

As juntas centralise power while failing to improve security, they can create discontent within the very institution that sustains their rule. Lower-ranking officers bear the costs of an unresolved conflict while having little influence over how it is fought. Battlefield frustration can become political discontent within the ranks.

Similar pressures have emerged in Burkina Faso and Mali, where coup leaders have struggled to deliver on their security promises. The problem can become self-reinforcing. The longer insurgencies persist, the harder it becomes for juntas to maintain cohesion within the armed forces.

Recent events suggest that Niger’s security crisis has generated precisely this kind of pressure within the military. More broadly, it suggests that the wars that helped bring the Sahel’s juntas to power may threaten their hold on it.

Persistent insecurity & personalised power

When democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum was overthrown in 2023, Tchiani, his former commander of the Presidential Guard, blamed the government for corruption and its failure to contain insurgency involving Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP).

Tchiani proclaimed that Bazoum’s “security approach has not brought security to the country despite heavy sacrifices”. His seizure of power, he argued, was necessary to save Niger from a “gradual and inevitable demise”.

Three years later, those words resonate. The security situation under military rule has steadily deteriorated, with JNIM and ISSP expanding the scope of their attacks. Civilian and military casualties have surged since the 2023 coup, approaching 2,000 in 2025 alone.

The violence has also moved closer to the seat of power. In January and June 2026, attacks reached Niamey, including the airport.

The deteriorating security situation stands in contrast to Tchiani’s entrenchment and personalisation of power.

In 2025, he formalised his grip by becoming transitional president, effectively extending military rule from the 2023 coup through at least 2030.

Simultaneously, political parties have been fully dissolved. High-ranking officers with personal ties to Tchiani have ascended to politically sensitive positions and gained influence across the bureaucracy.

The military’s consolidation of power does not mean that the junta commands sustained support across the ranks.

Coups, like the one in 2023, can initially attract broad support, but that support can erode when new rulers fail to deliver. This is especially relevant for lower-ranking officers, who bear the brunt of a worsening insurgency.

Niger had already shown signs of this growing disconnect. In 2025, a junior officer directly confronted General Moussa Salaou Barmou, a senior junta member, over the conduct of the insurgency and the resources available to troops.

Earlier that year, soldiers at a garrison in Termit mutinied over poor living conditions, shortages of critical supplies and a perceived lack of support from the capital. When senior officers flew in to negotiate, the soldiers detained them, a clear breach of the chain of command.

The August 2026 coupists included frontline soldiers deployed in Niger’s south-west, where ISSP has inflicted some of the heaviest losses on the armed forces. There, too, shortages of supplies and other resources have fuelled frustration among troops.

A regional challenge?

Niger is hardly alone in confronting this dilemma. Military officers in Mali and Burkina Faso, fellow members of the Alliance of Sahel States, came to power promising to resolve the security crises that had undermined their civilian predecessors.

In Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traoré and other junior officers overthrew Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba in September 2022 after accusing him of failing to contain the insurgency. Traoré now faces a similar challenge, having faced repeated allegations of coup plots.

In Mali, an offensive by JNIM and the Azawad Liberation Front reached Bamako earlier this year and killed defence minister General Sadio Camara, prompting junta leader Assimi Goïta to assume the defence portfolio himself.

The juntas have also changed how they fight these wars. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have withdrawn from the regional economic body Ecowas, abandoning an important regional framework for security cooperation, while turning increasingly to Russia and its Africa Corps for military support.

The new partnership has helped the regimes protect themselves from challenges, but has done little to contain the insurgencies.

This is the feedback loop facing these regimes. Prolonged insurgencies place growing pressure on military leaders who come to power promising to solve them. Increasingly personalised rule gives junior officers and frontline soldiers little influence over how the war is conducted despite the fact that they bear the greatest cost. Dissatisfaction moves up the chain of command, creating incentives for soldiers to challenge the leadership.

– Niger’s failed coup is a warning to the Sahel’s military rulers: those with power must keep their promises
– https://theconversation.com/nigers-failed-coup-is-a-warning-to-the-sahels-military-rulers-those-with-power-must-keep-their-promises-290867

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Laura Alfers, Research Associate, Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit, Rhodes University

Rising inequality is, at its core, a political and policy choice. This is the central message of the Global Justice Report authored by experts based at the World Inequality Lab, led by economists Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel.

As economists and experts on labour, inequality and the informal economy, we believe there is a great deal to support in the report, which was released in June 2026. It is a bold effort to connect redistribution, climate action and global democracy.

Among the proposals it makes is the creation of a Global Justice Fund financed through additional taxes on the wealth and incomes of roughly the richest 1% of the world’s population. Much of the initial revenue would be invested in a World Sovereign Fund. The returns would finance continuing transfers to countries on an equal per-capita basis. These country dividends would support investment in health, education, climate action and infrastructure.

The report makes a number of other proposals too. These include moving towards “sufficiency”, through

a sharp reduction in labour hours and material footprint and large changes in consumption patterns, food habits, land use, and forest cover.

These proposals deserve to be taken seriously.

But the report’s understanding of how labour markets operate in the global south demands scrutiny. A programme conceived in the name of global justice must not turn the particular history and institutions of the developed world into the future prescribed for everyone else.

Rather, it should start from a defining economic reality of the global south. This is that most workers earn their livelihoods in informal employment, beyond the employment relationships, labour protections and redistributive institutions on which many of the report’s proposals implicitly rely.

Working time

Consider the report’s proposal on working time. It envisages using productivity growth to reduce average annual working time by more than half – from approximately 2,100 hours today to 1,000 hours by 2100. The report argues that this can be done without reducing workers’ incomes. A greater share of the remaining working hours would be devoted to relatively low-carbon services, particularly health and education.

The attraction is obvious. Productivity gains should give people more control over their lives, rather than simply producing ever-higher profits and consumption. Shorter working time could:

• create more leisure

• promote a fairer distribution of paid and unpaid work between women and men

• reduce the environmental consequences of production.

The historical record also shows that rising productivity has enabled substantial reductions in working time in many wealthy economies.

Our concern is with the assumption that the pathway followed by wealthy economies can be turned into a universal prescription. We believe that reducing working hours could reduce the incomes of the largest component of the workforce in developing countries: workers in informal employment, especially those in self-employment.

The proposal assumes a worker has an identifiable employer, a contract, a regular wage and defined hours of work. Productivity rises within the enterprise, and workers, usually through collective bargaining and labour regulation, claim part of those gains in the form of higher wages or shorter working hours. Their income can be maintained even as their hours decline.

But this is not how most of the world works.

Just over 60% of the global workforce – approximately two billion people – is informally employed. The proportion is higher in developing and emerging economies. Moreover, well over half of informal workers are engaged in non-wage work. They include own-account workers, contributing family workers and subcontracted workers whose livelihoods may depend on contractors, supply chains or digital platforms, even though they are not formally recognised as employees.

A recent analysis of an International Labour Organisation database covering 91 countries suggests that only around 17% of workers are in formal wage employment. Yet it is this small part of the global workforce that most closely resembles the employment model underlying proposals to reduce working time.

For own-account and other informal workers, there is no employer who can be required to pay the same income for fewer hours. A street vendor, waste picker, home-based producer or small farmer does not gain more leisure simply because a government reduces the statutory working week. If earnings depend on how many hours a person trades, produces or searches for customers, reducing those hours without increasing hourly income will reduce total earnings.

For many of the world’s lowest-paid workers, therefore, the immediate need is not simply to work fewer hours. It is to earn more, and more predictably, for the hours they work.

The deeper objective should therefore be to give people greater control over their time. That cannot be achieved just by reducing working hours.

This also raises a question about productivity.

Productivity conundrum

The report assumes that future productivity gains can make shorter working time possible without reducing income. But productivity gains do not distribute themselves.

In many supply chains and digital platforms, workers classified as self-employed operate under highly unequal contractual arrangements. Lead firms, retailers, contractors and platforms can capture the gains from new technologies or more efficient organisation while transferring costs and risks to workers. Productivity may rise without workers receiving higher incomes, greater security or more control over their time.

The question is therefore who controls technological and organisational change, who captures the gains and whether workers can convert those gains into better lives.

This points towards a different policy agenda.

What protection should look like

Macroeconomic redistribution through global taxation and fiscal transfers is essential, but it cannot stop there. It must be matched by “pre-distribution”: changing the institutions and economic relationships that determine incomes and power in the first place.

Alongside social protection and public services, this requires:

• infrastructure and services that support livelihoods as well as protection against arbitrary eviction and confiscation

• improved access to finance, technology, markets and public procurement

• regulation that encourages employment and livelihood creation, while ensuring that firms, contractors and platforms exercising employer-like power bear a fair share of the responsibilities, costs and risks associated with production

• meaningful worker recognition and representation.

Different labour markets require different routes to greater freedom over time.

Working time is only one example of a wider problem.

Misplaced assumptions

Taxation, fiscal transfers and welfare systems have reduced inequality in wealthy countries. But these policies are effective in economies with:

• relatively high tax-to-GDP ratios

• mostly formal workforces

• the administrative capacity to reach most citizens.

In the global south, tax bases are often narrower, informal employment is widespread and welfare systems may have limited or uneven reach.

This does not weaken the case for the Global Justice Fund, for effective fiscal policies to reduce inequality, or for greater international redistribution.

But redistribution from above cannot substitute for understanding how incomes are generated, inequality is produced and economic power is exercised. Where the state’s fiscal and welfare reach is limited, the organisation of work, the terms on which workers participate in markets and supply chains, and their power to claim a fair share of the value they create become even more important.

– Global justice report offers bold ideas but misses the realities of 2 billion informal workers – economists
– https://theconversation.com/global-justice-report-offers-bold-ideas-but-misses-the-realities-of-2-billion-informal-workers-economists-290449

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Wandile Sihlobo, Senior Fellow, Department of Agricultural Economics, Stellenbosch University

The focus on agricultural development at the Southern African Development Community’s 46th summit in August 2026 reflected a clear understanding that the sector can still play a key role in the region’s economic development. Agriculture accounts for around 10% of the GDP of many of the regional community’s members.

The conversations about agriculture focused on improving productivity, agricultural finance, climate resilience and regional value chains, all to enhance food security within the region.

As an agricultural economist, I would argue that the sector faces three major challenges in contributing to economic growth and food security.

The first is weak land governance. Informal land tenure is a feature of most farming in the region. As a result, agribusinesses may be reluctant to invest at scale. It’s also meant that smallholder farmers, who struggle with low agricultural productivity, remain prevalent.

The second challenge is weak agricultural value chains. The summit discussed the need to deepen regional agro-processing value chains. But these can’t be fully developed if road networks linking farmers to consumption points remain in poor condition. Agriculture is about buying and selling perishable products. Roads are key.

The third big issue – and the focus of this article – is the need to boost trade between countries in the region. Agricultural production can’t be increased without new markets.

In the past few years there have been instances of trade friction. For example tension has been high between South Africa and and some of its neighbouring countries, with Namibia, Botswana and recently Mozambique signalling their intention to limit the imports of vegetables and fruits from South Africa.

Failure to make progress on this front will jeopardise the success of new entrant farmers. They need access to markets to grow and sustain their farming operations. It will also stand in the way of agriculture playing a bigger role in increasing food security.

One way to ensure shared prosperity through agriculture is for all countries to focus on producing what they can trade within the region, and to sell to world markets.

Bottlenecks

There’s a strong basis for increased trade between countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. This is because one of the elements of the SADC arrangement is a commitment to a free trade area between the 16 member countries.

In addition, five of the countries – Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa – are in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), which is meant to get goods moving freely.

In both cases the arrangements have had some impact in ensuring goods flow freely between the countries. But trade in agricultural products has not benefited substantially.

The reasons for this are three-fold.

Firstly there’s the issue of size.

Trade flows vary between the countries because they differ in size. For example South Africa has a large food market, spending over US$7 billion annually on imports. Eswatini imported only US$806 million of agricultural products in 2025, according to data from Trade Map.

South Africa accounts for more than half of the SADC’s agricultural exports to the world market, followed by Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique, according to data from Trade Map. South Africa, Zambia, Eswatini, Zimbabwe and Tanzania are major players in intra-regional trade.

This mismatch in size has led to tensions, particularly between smaller countries and South Africa.

Secondly, there is the issue of compliance with phytosanitary rules. For example, in 2025 Tanzania announced that it was banning imports of agricultural products from South Africa in retaliation against that country’s decision to ban the imports of Tanzanian bananas. The South African government denied it had imposed a ban, and put the reports down to miscommunication and noncompliance with general standards. The fracas underscored the sensitivity around phytosanitary rules being used as a tool to block imports.

Third, there is also a practical problem of low agricultural output in a number of countries. Consider maize, which is a staple grain in the southern Africa region. The yield has been stagnant for the past three decades at about one tonne per hectare. In South Africa it’s about six tonnes per hectare, and this is all because of differences and the continuous improvement in seed cultivars. Because of these productivity differences, most SADC members – Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania and Mozambique, among others – import more than they can export.

Import restrictions

Some countries have tried to boost local agricultural production by restricting imports. Botswana and Namibia are examples.

They say they would like to boost their domestic production but can’t because they rely on South Africa’s imports.

At face value, their argument is compelling. But, in my view, countries in the region can’t lay the problems of trade expansion at South Africa’s door.

Firstly, trade bans go against the spirit of the customs union, which encourages free trade, and against the SADC trade approach, which also prioritisese free trade within the region.

Secondly, countries in the region have been slow to grow their exports to South Africa. That’s because the agricultural products that South Africa needs can’t be sourced in the region. It imports wheat, rice, palm oil, poultry products and whiskies, among other products. Countries in the region don’t have a surplus of these products.

What needs to happen next

The dominance of certain countries such as South Africa needs to be addressed. But this can happen through collaboration on farm inputs and knowledge exchange, rather than unjustified restrictions on imports.

Other steps to take include:

• a clear focus on increasing increase agricultural output with an eye on expanding external growth opportunities. Without this, countries risk losing out to competitors in export markets where they don’t yet have free trade agreements.

• a comprehensive review of the SACU framework, to resolve trade friction in the region and boost exports to the world market. Under its present terms, countries in the union have to negotiate for new markets alongside other members. A review should consider giving countries greater flexibility in signing bilateral trade agreements that aren’t tied up in SACU issues.

• investment in human capital to drive economic diplomacy with the aim of helping businesses seeking new markets. For example South Africa has over 100 missions and embassies abroad. These should be equipped with staff who focus on maximising economic opportunities for the country.

– Farming can help drive southern Africa’s growth if countries in the region make trade easier
– https://theconversation.com/farming-can-help-drive-southern-africas-growth-if-countries-in-the-region-make-trade-easier-290397

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Derek R. Peterson, Ali Mazrui Professor of History & African Studies, University of Michigan

John Iliffe, the distinguished scholar renowned for his life’s work in African history, died on 20 August 2026 at the age of 87.

He shed light on big themes in Africa’s history. His 12 books were scrupulously researched, many of them being pioneering works that set out new areas of scholarship. He taught hundreds of undergraduates in Tanzania, Malawi and the UK over a career that lasted over 40 years. He trained over two dozen doctoral students, many of whom now occupy positions of importance in African and British universities.

The young Iliffe did his PhD at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. He wrote about the early 20th century governor of German East Africa, Albrecht von Rechenberg, whose policies had pushed the local population toward rebellion. His dissertation came in at 1,046 pages (Cambridge’s history faculty was later to cap dissertations at 80,000 words).

In 1965 Iliffe went to Tanzania, where he took up a lectureship in the history department at the University College of Dar es Salaam. It was a heady time. Tanzania had just been born out of the union of two territories – Tanganyika and Zanzibar. President Julius Nyerere was looking for cultural and historical properties that could unify the nation. Dar es Salaam was hosting an astonishing range of liberation movements.

Iliffe and his colleagues were part of what came to be called the “Dar es Salaam School of African History”. They responded to the cadence of the age by authoring works that affirmed resistance against colonial rule.

Iliffe and his colleague Gilbert Gwassa were the coordinators of the Maji Maji research project. This involved sending students to southern Tanzania to interview elderly men and women who had taken part in that anti-colonial war.

Within two years, Iliffe published an important article about the interethnic organisation of the Maji Maji rebellion. The research helped make the rebellion a foundation for Tanzanian identity, an inspiration for a generation of artists and nation-builders.

The National Archives of Tanzania opened for scholarly use in the year that Iliffe took up his post. He seems to have read through every file. Users of the Tanzanian archives must sign the first page when they read a file, and today, researchers invariably find Iliffe’s characteristic signature there, first on the list.

African political actors at the centre of the story

In 1971, Iliffe left Dar es Salaam to lecture at Cambridge. He was elected a fellow of St John’s College, where he spent the next 55 years.

From Cambridge he wrote up his voluminous notes from the Tanzanian archives and published his Modern History of Tanganyika, which came out in 1979. It was and remains the best work of national history concerning any African country.

In 616 pages, Iliffe chronicled the economy and politics from 1800 to the 1950s. Commercial and educational opportunity drew people into larger, more cosmopolitan circles, creating linguistic, financial and political infrastructures that nationalists could build upon.

In Modern History, as in all his works, Iliffe insisted on putting African political actors at the centre of the story. At a time when nationalists had come to regard tribalism as an impediment to unity, Iliffe chronicled the political work that African activists had done to create and foster ethnic solidarity. In his memorable formulation about colonial governance:

Europeans believed Africans belonged to tribes; Africans built tribes to belong to. (page 324)

In the years that followed Modern History, Iliffe published on a great range of subjects. His books included:

The African Poor, published in 1987. The book showed how poor people struggled to uphold their dignity and their humanity in the face of other people’s condescension.

East African Doctors, which came out in 1998. The book brought into view the infrastructures that incubated the medical profession in eastern Africa, and chronicled the public health disasters that set the stage for Aids in the 1980s.

Honour in African History, which came out in 2004. It is my favourite among his books. Iliffe argued that, across the continent, and across historical time, Africans (like most of us) acted to secure the respect of their contemporaries. The book chronicled the changing nature of Africans’ ideas about honour. He helped us see the motivations that structure political behaviour.

Africans: the History of a Continent, which came out first in 1995 and has gone through several editions. It is the best textbook on Africa’s past. In a place where soil is thin, water is scarce and agronomy is difficult, the struggle to build up human population was the basic civilizational achievement. Iliffe’s magisterial book managed to explain the nature of Africa’s religious traditions and its political history by putting demography at the core of the continent’s history.

The opposite of an influencer

I met Iliffe in the last months of 2004. I was newly appointed to a lectureship in what was then called “extra-European history” at the University of Cambridge. He interviewed me for the job.

I spent the summer of 2004 corresponding with him about Paper 25: Africa Since 1800, for which I was to give a course of lectures. Iliffe did not use email, so our dialogue had to be conducted through postal mail. Once the teaching year began it became clear that I had much to learn. His lectures were clearly laid out, compellingly delivered and guided by a core argument: that population history could explain political, social and religious behaviour.

Iliffe was famously reclusive, the opposite of an “influencer”. All of his book manuscripts were typed out on an old typewriter he kept at hand. I never saw him at an academic conference. Among the small circle of Cambridge Africa scholars, though, he was a generous and warm host.

The questions he asked of graduate students and visiting colleagues were always about evidence and interpretation. They were never about theory. His approach to scholarship was documentary, not given to theoretical abstraction.

When a student or a colleague visited his rooms to discuss their work, he would disappear into his back rooms to emerge a few minutes later with a handful of cards. His notes were always concise, gilded with well-chosen quotations drawn from the documents he’d read through.

His passing brings an era to a close.

The nation-building project that drove him at the start of his early career has now run out of steam. So too has magisterial thematic history gone out of fashion. It is not that scholars of today lack ambition. It is that the register in which he wrote seems closed to us.

Iliffe’s thorough acquaintance with archival materials grew out of years-long immersion in collections that are hard to use. Few of us today have the personal discipline and the financial wherewithal to sustain months or years in the lonely work of reading through archives. The itinerary his career followed – back and forth between African and European universities – is scarcely possible now as salaries available in most African institutions have dramatically declined. And few of us possess the monastic habits that were at the core of his scholarly life.

His death is for me a cause of sorrow. For all of us, it is a good time to remember what disciplined, clear-minded research can yield: insights into the forces that shape and constrain human life; guidance into animating principles of our social world.

– John Iliffe: the historian who changed how Africa’s past was understood
– https://theconversation.com/john-iliffe-the-historian-who-changed-how-africas-past-was-understood-290554

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Dereje Melese Liyew, Lecturer and Reseacher, Political Science, Debre Markos University,

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has been one of Ethiopia’s most influential institutions for more than 1,600 years. Church and state were closely intertwined from the official adoption of Christianity in the 4th century until the overthrow of the imperial regime in 1974.

The church has shaped the political order, education systems and cultural identity. It remains one of the country’s largest religious institutions, along with Islam and protestant Christianity. About 43% of Ethiopians identify as Orthodox Christians in a national population estimated at 135.5 million.

The 1974 revolution marked a turning point in the relationship between the state and religion. The military junta (called the Derg) introduced secularism. The church’s status as the official state religion was abolished and its property confiscated by the regime.

The church’s influence and role in national life subsequently declined.

Since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed assumed power in 2018, a significant trend has emerged. It’s marked by an increase in hostility seen in verbal and physical attacks against the institution. Attacks against Orthodox churches, monasteries, clergy and worshippers have been documented by human rights groups, religious institutions, international observers and scholars.

I am a political science researcher specialising in peace and security, state-religion relations, and political dynamics in the Horn of Africa. In a recent paper, I explored why one of the oldest and most influential institutions in Ethiopia had become a target of public hostility.

My study is based on interviews with church scholars, government officials, religious leaders and peace and security experts. There were also focus group discussions with church members.

A central theme of my findings is that violence against religious communities does not start when churches are destroyed and attacks are made against worshippers. Typically it is preceded by the systemic dissemination of hostile historical narratives.

These narratives against the Orthodox church are propagated by political elites, activists and media figures. For example, revisionist stories focus only on the Church’s historical role in seizing land and power in southern regions. But they downplay or erase its legacy as a pillar of Ethiopian literacy, architecture, and sovereignty.

My findings show that hostile stories set the stage for violence by destroying an institution’s reputation. When a group is stripped of its legitimacy, attacking its buildings and followers starts to look justifiable or even politically necessary.

My findings matter because in Ethiopia, where 98% of the population identifies as religious, managing religious affairs is crucial for national cohesion and the broader peace-building process.

Dangerous labelling and violence

The negative image of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as a symbol of domination, exclusion or ethnic privilege has been gaining traction in influential political and intellectual narratives. For five decades, these portrayals have circulated through political speeches, traditional media and social media.

These narratives have used historical reframing of the Orthodox church as imperial domination. They have also represented the church as an institution associated primarily with Amhara identity. The link to Amhara identity draws on the historical dominance of Amharic-speaking elites in the imperial state. Critics brand the church as a symbol of historical Amhara hegemony rather than a multi-ethnic spiritual body.

Since the 1970s and more prominently after 1991 the church has been portrayed as an instrument of imperial state expansion and cultural domination. In these narratives, the church is associated with the spread of Christianity, Amharic language and imperial political authority in newly incorporated areas. It is then presented as part of a broader process of cultural and political domination.

Some of these negative portrayals distort or selectively interpret the church’s history. At the same time they overlook its contributions to Ethiopian society. By marginalising or excluding these aspects of the church’s historical experience and contributions, such representations can be understood as a form of epistemic violence.

The danger is that these kinds of narratives can make physical violence seem acceptable, justifiable or unremarkable.

Religion, ethnicity and the state

A second important discovery from my research relates to the increasing confluence of ethnic and religious identities in current-day Ethiopia.

The study focuses on the tendency to identify one religion with one ethnic group. In Ethiopia, Orthodox Christianity is often depicted as a religion of certain ethnic groups and not a multi-ethnic religion.

This matters because ethnicity has become a major part of political identity in Ethiopia. This makes the linking of religion to particular ethnic groups politically loaded. Tying religious institutions to ethnic contestation risks tying them up in wider identity and power struggles.

This was evident in 2023 when Ethiopian Orthodox Tehahedo church bishops in Oromia region sought greater use of Afaan Oromo in worship. The language is one of Ethiopia’s most widely spoken languages. They also call for greater Oromo representation in church leadership. Questions of language and ethnic representation have become linked to disputes over church authority and regional politics.

As a result, religious institutions have become targets in ethnic, political and armed conflicts that are not primarily about religion. It also raises questions about whether the state has done enough to protect churches and clergy from such attacks.

What needs to be done

My study does not attempt to present the church as a flawless institution. Like other institutions, the Ethiopian Orthodox church has tended to have complex power dynamics and has struggled with governance issues of its own. It has experienced leadership divisions, struggles over representation and authority, and internal conflicts.

But denying the institution’s history and identity or its contribution to society has gone beyond rhetoric. The exclusion and marginalisation of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church can deepen social fragmentation and leave its adherents more vulnerable to discrimination and violence.

I conclude from my findings that stopping physical attacks is only part of what’s required. There also needs to be an effort to dismantle narratives that conflict with the legitimacy, dignity and history of specific communities.

Understanding the relationship between narratives and violence can help to prevent harm. It can also help contribute to building a more inclusive and peaceful future for Ethiopia.

– Religion, power and politics: what’s behind the violent attacks on Ethiopia’s Orthodox Tewahedo Church
– https://theconversation.com/religion-power-and-politics-whats-behind-the-violent-attacks-on-ethiopias-orthodox-tewahedo-church-289775

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Elena Moore, Professor of Sociology, University of Cape Town

Your grandmother in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, is struggling to breathe. You call the public ambulance service, but you’re told it could take more than 24 hours to arrive, if it comes to your area at all. So you make the only call that might actually save her: the City of Windhoek’s ambulance service. It arrives quickly. It also comes with a bill of 800 Namibian dollars (about US$50).

If you can’t pay on the spot, the city doesn’t turn you away, it simply adds the charge to your municipal account alongside your water and electricity. That should be a relief. In practice, it becomes a trap. Fall behind on that bill, and the city can cut your water and power.

So, families borrow to keep the lights and taps on, turning an emergency transport fee into a long-term debt.

This is not a rare story. It is a pattern researchers, including the authors of this article, heard in interviews with caregivers and older person households across Namibia. And it does not end with the ambulance. Roughly one in ten older Namibians now holds a personal loan with NamPost, the national postal service operator which also provides banking services, borrowed against their old age grant to cover these kinds of medical and household emergencies. A loan of N$13,000 (US$804) can end up costing nearly N$25,000 (US$1,500) to repay, N$420 (US$25) a month for five years, locking recipients of a grant meant for subsistence into years of debt.

The findings are outlined in a new report by the Family Caregiving of Older Persons in Southern Africa Programme.

The study was led by a team that we were part of, specialising in sociology, social work and psychology and exploring elder care in Namibia.

Drawing on the experiences of 80 households made up of older people and their family caregivers, the report’s central argument is stark: disability is produced as much by environment as by the body. Manageable health conditions become crises because of failing housing, absent sanitation, unaffordable assistive devices and precarious income. It falls to unpaid family caregivers to absorb these crises.

The report’s authors conclude that care in Namibia is determined by broader social and economic forces: unemployment, gendered expectations and the absence of adequate state support. When caregivers were asked what would help, their priorities were consistent: pension increases, a dedicated caregiver’s allowance, food security, basic infrastructure such as water and electricity, and recognition of labour.

A physical environment built to disable

If you walk into an older person’s home in the urban, rural or informal settlement parts of Khomasdal (a large suburb northwest of the capital, Windhoek), Samora Machel (also in Windhoek), Windhoek Rural, Okatana or Mashare (northern Namibia), the first obstacles to care are rarely medical. They are structural: a zinc roof that turns a room into an oven by midday and floods it in the rains; a toilet too far from the house, or none at all; a doorway too narrow for a wheelchair; and no money to adapt it.

Sixty-three percent of older person households in Namibia lack toilet facilities close by. This forces caregivers to dispose of human waste.

Zinc and corrugated-iron housing floods in wet weather and overheats in summer, aggravating chronic conditions. Terrain around many homes is inaccessible.

The report’s findings show the environment magnifies people’s care needs. Hypertension affects roughly half the older people in Namibia; mobility problems affect one in five; eye conditions affect a third.

Multi-generational households

Households in the research often had eight or more members. Three-generation households were common in both urban neighbourhoods and rural settlements. Almost half of the older people studied lived with both adult children and grandchildren.

Urban households faced spatial constraints: small, crowded dwellings with little room to accommodate a bed-bound relative or a wheelchair.

Rural households drew on larger homesteads and agricultural land. But researchers found this space came at the cost of infrastructure: water and firewood had to be fetched from a distance.

In all but eight of the 80 households, the primary caregiver lived in the same home as the person they cared for. Only three households could afford paid help.

Most caregivers were women – 59 of the 80 primary caregivers studied – and relatively young. The largest age groups fell between 18 and 39. At least half were also raising children of their own.

Their work was continuous. Feeding, bathing, toileting, giving medication, fetching water and firewood, and providing companionship.

A pension stretched past its limits

Namibia’s old age grant – valued at N$1,400 (US$87) during fieldwork and now roughly N$1,700 (US$105) – sits at the centre of nearly every household budget. It is expected to support entire multigenerational households averaging 6.5 people.

Mapping monthly budgets across the 80 households, researchers found spending on food, utilities, medication, debt and school fees used up the grant well before the month was out. Household incomes in rural areas were lower and therefore costs such as food, transport or debt repayments took up a larger percentage of more limited income.

Utility and infrastructure costs were chief among the environmental pressures on that budget. Combined water and electricity costs consumed 25% to 40% of household income in some areas, with several households describing being cut off entirely and left paying off multi-year arrears while still struggling to afford daily power and water.

Medication stock-outs at public facilities pushed families toward private pharmacies at a cost of N$1,000 (US$61) to N$4,500 (US$278) over three months. Loan repayments, mostly to NamPost, absorbed an average of 15% of household income, rising to 27%-29% in Mashare and Windhoek Rural.

Household incomes in rural areas were lower and therefore a debt repayment took up a larger percentage of more limited income.

Other income sources such as remittances, informal trade, Harambee food parcels (state funded aid for particularly vulnerable households) and drought relief, were irregular and reached only a fraction of households.

Families coped through subsistence farming, wild fruit harvesting, informal trade and strict rationing.

What needs to be done

Interventions should coordinate social protection, health, housing, infrastructure and climate adaptation policies.

They should also recognise that family caregivers are essential partners in the care system.

– Old people in Namibia are going into debt to pay for everyday costs – new report examines strained household budgets
– https://theconversation.com/old-people-in-namibia-are-going-into-debt-to-pay-for-everyday-costs-new-report-examines-strained-household-budgets-289948

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Peter Lockwood, Postdoctoral fellow, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Nairobi’s transformation into a “world-class city” is both anticipated and celebrated in Kenya’s media. A new book, Peasants to Paupers: Land, Class and Kinship in Central Kenya, examines how the city’s expansion conceals profound social upheavals. These have root causes in the opportunities created by surging land values in rural areas, making it tempting for landowners to sell off their peasant plots. The author, economic and political anthropologist Peter Lockwood, offers a snapshot of his six-year book research project immersed in the fringes of the city.

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What inspired your research focus on peri-urban Nairobi?

When I first visited a rural neighbourhood of smallholders in Kiambu county in December 2016, I could not have imagined it would lead to a long-term research stay, let alone a book! At the time, I was planning to carry out fieldwork for my PhD in Nyeri county, about 150km further into the central Kenya region. I wanted to research the lives of informal sector workers in Nyeri. To do this, I needed to learn the Kikuyu language.

My language teacher offered to place me with some of his family close to Nairobi in Kiambu, to learn by immersion. After moving onto their smallholding I realised that this was a much more interesting place than I could have imagined, so I shifted my research focus to Kiambu.

Kiambu is an important place to study because its rapid transformation from rural periphery into urban sprawl encompasses many of the inequalities and contradictions of Kenya today. If you travel out of northern Nairobi, you pass leafy suburbs and towering shopping malls before arriving among the rapidly growing townships of Kiambu. These are bustling places of commercial activity, where vehicles are constantly ferrying commuters, mechanics are working in the open, youth are chewing khat leaves in the shade.

If you travel even further north, this urban landscape soon gives way to the smallholdings and tea plantations beyond the old colonial boundary (raini in the local language). This geography speaks to the legacies of land dispossession under the British, and how it created a demographic of poor farmers, forced to work for cash in Nairobi.

In many ways, my book is about the encounter between skyrocketing land prices caused by Nairobi’s expansion and a terrain of land poverty that has its roots in British colonial rule, something that was never rectified after independence. The smallholdings allocated to Kiambu farmers by the British in the 1950s, which measured up to 2 hectares on average, have today become meagre plots of one hectare, if that.

This is because of Kikuyu inheritance practices, which have caused these plots to be subdivided even further across two or three generations since the 1950s. On the one hand, Kiambu’s smallholders are now approaching what we might call, after social anthropologist Tania Murray Li, “the end of the land”. At the same time, these smallholdings are becoming immensely valuable. Nairobi’s approach is driving their price upward, sowing tensions over them within families.

What did you seek to investigate and how?

After I settled in on my host’s smallholding in January 2017, the book’s topics emerged from the research context and the relationships I made through the family. People were talking about land sales, and the importance of holding onto “ancestral” land inherited from one’s parents. Some people in the neighbourhood were selling their smallholdings for large sums of money, creating tensions within their families over who got to keep these enormous cash windfalls.

In contrast, senior men from the area would stress the importance of holding on to this land. But unfolding events also shaped my perspective. The book is based on a long period of research, carried out from 2017 to 2022. By 2022, the same senior men who once preached land retention had begun to sell. I think this long-term perspective on the changing relationship between land markets and economic practice is a strength of the book.

Other topics include the gendered conflicts over land that this scenario is creating, where male inheritors try to “freeze out” their sisters from receiving land when parents die.

A central arc of the book is told through the predicament of a man I anonymise as “Mwaura”, the then 19-year-old son of my host family. Through following his story across the years of research, I examine how young people struggle to make good lives despite limited prospects for finding regular, decently paid work.

What were your main findings?

I could see how the very ideas that senior Kiambu men were clinging onto – of land and family – were being hollowed out by the opportunity to “get rich” from selling land.

One of the key arguments of the book is that precarious smallholders were not only selling out of a lack of options, but out of a sense of abandon, something I elaborate on in a recent article. I argue that land sales are informed by a profound hopelessness about the future – a sense among working-age Kikuyu men that working for low, piecemeal wages is not worth the trouble, and it is better to enjoy life in the present.

While their fathers sell their land, younger men in their 20s have lost belief that hard work will take them where they want to go in a setting where work simply does not pay. The idea of jipange (Kiswahili for “planning for oneself”) and lifting oneself out of poverty is often encountered in conservative discourse in Kenya. The book looks at how young men live with this “bootstraps” ideology while managing the hopelessness that comes from being land-poor and underemployed.

How do these findings matter?

Kiambu is on the periphery of a growing city, one where urbanisation is experienced through growing tensions within families over precious yet meagre plots of land. Human geographers have done much to explain the economics of urbanisation, but anthropologists can investigate the kinds of social tensions created by heating land markets.

The book’s attention to downward social mobility among young Kenyans is equally important. We have seen in recent years enormous youth protest in Kenya, driven by a rising cost of living and a profound sense of discontent with the country’s political system. Many of my young interlocutors joined the protests of 2024.

Kenyan graduates are struggling to find good jobs, while informal sector workers are struggling harder than ever. This book’s attention to hopelessness and alcoholism among Kiambu youth provides a stark warning. State intervention is desperately needed. As the late anthropologist James Ferguson argued, a universal basic income may be the only way to ameliorate these conditions but there is much to do politically to arrive at that.

I also believe Kenya needs a renewed discussion about the immense inequalities in access to land. It was no wonder to me that William Ruto’s so-called “Hustler Nation” presidential campaign in 2022 directed ire towards Kenya’s land-rich “dynasties” like the Kenyattas.

– Nairobi’s expansion is swallowing up rural land: new book reveals the impacts on families
– https://theconversation.com/nairobis-expansion-is-swallowing-up-rural-land-new-book-reveals-the-impacts-on-families-289739

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Teklehaymanot G. Weldemichel, Lecturer in Environment and Development, University of Manchester

The Ethiopian federal army and Tigrayan forces have resumed their war, having failed to turn the November 2022 peace deal into a lasting political settlement.

The Tigray war of 2020-2022 was one of the deadliest conflicts of the 21st century. The war was driven by ethnic hatred, which the Ethiopian government and allies fomented and used to mobilise violence against Tigrayans.

The war caused enormous loss of life, mass displacement and widespread destruction. It drew in Ethiopian federal forces, Tigrayan forces, Eritrean troops and other armed groups.

Fighting ended when the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front signed the Pretoria ceasefire deal in South Africa. The African Union brokered the peace agreement, which the US and EU supported. It provided for the protection of civilians and disarmament of Tigrayan forces.

Many of the political and territorial disputes that fuelled the war were left unresolved, however.

Large numbers of people remain displaced. Territories occupied by Amhara and Eritrean forces during the war have yet to return to Tigrayan administration. Accountability for wartime abuses has been limited, and the parties involved don’t trust each other.

In August 2026, fighting broke out again in western Tigray between Tigrayan and Ethiopian federal forces. There have been drone strikes and attacks on civilians in southern Tigray, Mekelle and other areas.

These incidents follow clashes earlier in 2026.

I have researched and written about the war since its start. In my view, the Pretoria agreement has not yet provided a pathway towards an improved political and security environment. But it remains the best available framework. It brought large-scale fighting to an end and contains commitments that address some key unresolved issues. These include the return of displaced people and justice processes.

The recent confrontations in Tigray, however, are a sign that the ceasefire and peace process have seriously derailed.

The priority must be to stop localised clashes and violence from developing into full-scale war. This requires five things:

• implement and, where necessary, improve the Pretoria agreement

• political renegotiations

• establish an independent mechanism to address wartime atrocities

• protect civilians, particularly young people, from forced mobilisation

• resolve the displacement crisis.

1. The Pretoria peace deal

The first task is to return to the Pretoria agreement, implement it and improve it where necessary.

The agreement was imperfect. It left difficult legal and political questions unresolved. These include control over annexed territories, responsibility for protecting civilians, and justice and accountability for crimes committed during the war.

But its shortcomings are an argument for completing and improving the agreement. The immediate priority should be to stop the fighting, and strengthen mechanisms for dialogue and implementation.

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Read more: Ethiopia-Eritrea tensions over Red Sea port have turned the Tigray peace deal into a political weapon

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The international community should put implementation of the agreement at the centre of engagements with Ethiopia.

2. The political calculations driving escalation

Ethiopia’s federal government must be pressed to exercise restraint and return to meaningful political negotiation. Military force and coercion cannot become the first choice for resolving disputes.

Tigrayan political and security actors must likewise recognise that political disagreements cannot be sustainably resolved through armed mobilisation.

External powers should not be permitted to turn Ethiopia’s internal political disputes into a wider contest for influence.

The involvement of the United Arab Emirates, Eritrea and others supporting the warring parties should be addressed through transparent diplomacy. Their competing interests risk fuelling a wider confrontation.

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Read more: Ethiopia-Eritrea tensions over Red Sea port have turned the Tigray peace deal into a political weapon

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Eritrea is particularly important. It played a major role in the 2020-2022 Tigray war. Further, tensions with Ethiopia have grown over a shared border and the Ethiopian government’s desire to annex Eritrean ports. Preventing another war in Tigray, therefore, requires addressing the wider regional security environment.

The objective should be to reorganise political relationships around de-escalation rather than confrontation.

3. End impunity

Impunity breeds violence. When perpetrators of atrocities are not held accountable, victims and communities receive the message that violence can be repeated without consequence.

Renewed violence and reports of attacks against civilians underline the dangers of leaving past abuses unresolved. Many scholars argue that the atrocities committed during the 2020-2022 war amounted to genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

Accountability must apply to everyone.

Crimes committed during the previous war should be investigated, no matter who the alleged perpetrators were.

Where domestic institutions cannot credibly investigate or prosecute cases, international actors should consider establishing an independent judicial mechanism or tribunal with sufficient independence and expertise.

There is currently no credible accountability mechanism in place. Previous initiatives have been dismantled following opposition from the Ethiopian government.

4. Stop forced conscription

Civilians and combatants must be protected from another cycle of mobilisation.

Reports of the forced recruitment of young boys and girls by both the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan authorities are alarming. No political authority or armed group should compel young people to war because political leaders have failed to resolve their differences.

The previous war demonstrated the enormous human cost of mass mobilisation. Renewed mobilisation would make de-escalation harder as each side became more invested in conflict.

Demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration must be treated as essential parts of the peace process.

5. Resolve the displacement crisis

The return and resettlement of internally displaced people cannot be separated from the territorial questions that forced them from their homes.

Displacement should not become a permanent consequence of war, nor should occupied territories remain indefinitely under the control of armed militias.

Resettlement must be voluntary, safe and dignified. It should begin with restoring the political and security conditions that make return possible.

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Read more: Millions of Africans are displaced without crossing a border – and their needs are often overlooked

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The window is narrowing

War is already in Tigray, both in rhetoric and practice. Another full-scale war is not inevitable. But preventing it requires a change in approach.

The African Union and its peace envoys bear part of the responsibility for the derailment of the ceasefire process. Implementation was not followed through consistently.

A ceasefire cannot hold on paper alone. It requires sustained monitoring, political engagement and pressure on the parties to honour their commitments.

The Pretoria agreement stopped the bloodshed once. The window to prevent another catastrophe has not closed. But with violence resurfacing, it is narrowing rapidly.

– Conflict is rising in Ethiopia’s Tigray region: 5 steps that could stop a return to full-scale war
– https://theconversation.com/conflict-is-rising-in-ethiopias-tigray-region-5-steps-that-could-stop-a-return-to-full-scale-war-290573

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Zil Audi-Poquillon, PhD Candidate – Health Policy and Health Economics, London School of Economics and Political Science

For decades, Kenyans without health insurance have had one option when they fall sick, or a hospital bill arrives. Reach out to friends and family to gather what they can for their healthcare.

By 2023, official figures showed only about a quarter of Kenyans had any health cover. And most of these were people working in formal sector jobs. For the remaining 75%, who had no cover, falling sick meant paying out of their own pockets at health facilities. The few exceptions include maternity care and basic services in local clinics.

The World Health Organization estimates that half of all people worldwide impoverished by out-of-pocket health expenditures live in Africa.

In 2023, shortly after taking office, President William Ruto’s government pushed through a major health financing law, the Social Health Insurance Act. This new law scrapped the National Hospital Insurance Fund, the state insurer since 1966. The insurer had collected members’ contributions and paid their hospital bills, yet only managed to cover about a quarter of Kenyans. The new law replaced it with a new body, the Social Health Authority.

Every Kenyan, formally employed or not, is now expected to register with the authority and contribute 2.75% of their income. The law was immediately challenged in court. Petitioners argued that it had been rushed through without adequate public participation; that the executive bypassed parliament; the burden of 2.75% contribution was too heavy; and that tying healthcare access to registration and contributions violated constitutional rights.

In July 2024, the High Court agreed that public participation had been inadequate and struck down parts of the law. But an appeal court put the ruling on hold, allowing implementation to begin in October 2024.

That a reform was needed is not in doubt. The failures of the old system had been widely documented. But what almost no one remembers is that Kenya tried to pass health financing reform similar to the 2023 law nearly 20 years earlier. Championed by then health minister Charity Ngilu, this was vetoed by then president Mwai Kibaki.

In each case, the goal was the same: to increase health insurance coverage, to pool contributions, and move Kenya towards universal health coverage. So why did a reform built on the same basic model fail in 2004, yet pass in 2023, in just six weeks?

I set out to answer this in my PhD research. It struck me that most of the problems facing healthcare provision in Kenya hadn’t changed. We still had low health insurance coverage. Out-of-pocket expenditures remained high, as did the disease burden. And the national insurer was still dogged by corruption and inefficiency. So what had changed?

My paper concludes that three factors made the 2023 reform possible, where 2004 had failed: concentrating power in the presidency (which enabled the bypassing of institutions that might have opposed or slowed the reforms); co-opting opponents who had blocked the previous attempt; and framing the reform as a fight for the ordinary Kenyan.

This matters, because it changes how we think about reform. We often assume that big changes happen when the moment is finally right. But Kenya’s case suggests conditions for reform can be strategically built.

What I found

For my research I interviewed 48 people intimately involved in the formulation or review of one or both reforms. These executive-level respondents included presidential advisers, insurers, ministry of health officials, external aid agencies, a former health minister, and members of civil society. I also drew on parliamentary records, media reports and policy documents.

I wanted to know why a reform was needed, how each reform was designed, who drove it, who supported or opposed it and why, and how any resistance was overcome. I corroborated their accounts with archival records – especially relevant for the 2004 attempt. I compared a “successful” and a “failed” reform, to reach a conclusion.

One important caveat. The study focuses on the design and how the law passed, not whether it’s working.

I found that while the challenges affecting the health system were nearly identical in both periods, what had changed substantially was the politics, in three distinct ways.

First is executive dominance and institutional bypass. In 2023, the reform process was run from the president’s own office, rather than the health ministry. This top level leadership shielded it from opponents, but also enabled what I call institutional bypass – going around the bodies that would normally shape and check such processes, like the health ministry, the national insurer, and the parliamentary processes of scrutiny and public participation.

Parliamentary scrutiny was shortened (from 14 to three days), and the reform driven through before opposition could organise. Rather than reforming the old insurer, the government scrapped it altogether. By stripping away every point at which the law could be slowed, amended or blocked, the president was able to speedily pass the reform in weeks, with minimal changes.

In 2004, by contrast, the reform was led by the health minister, without strong presidential backing. Without this support, she couldn’t push the bill past the treasury, private sector, employers, and insurers who opposed it. The bill was eventually vetoed by the president.

Second is elite realignment. The powerful players who had blocked the 2004 reform shifted to supporting or not actively opposing the 2023 reform. These included the formal employers’ lobby, private insurers, unions, treasury, and even some external donors. This appeared to be part of a deliberate strategy. Employers, for instance, didn’t have to match their employees’ contributions. This is the very cost they fought against in 2004. And private insurers were left as second payers, topping up the public cover rather than being displaced by it, as they had feared in 2004.

Third is the populist framing applied. In 2023, the reform was sold not as a technical fix, but as a moral cause. The president framed the old system as one where the “poor subsidised the rich” and dismissed opponents as “cartels” profiting from a broken system. The reform itself was presented in a populist way as a fight for the ordinary Kenyans – the so-called “hustlers”.

Framed that way, opposing the reform – even for sound reasons – became difficult. And there were credible grounds to oppose it. The 2.75% contribution was too heavy; the legislative process was rushed; and public participation had been inadequate. But in that moral frame, raising any of these looked like defending the rich or status quo. The framing helped justify speed and sidelining of institutions.

Why this matters

The most striking implication is that a reform doesn’t just pass because the timing is right, or because there are real problems. At any moment, there are countless problems competing for policymakers’ attention. But reform can be strategically designed to pass, by concentrating power, bypassing institutions, co-opting opponents, and framing it as the people’s cause.

This isn’t just a Kenyan story. Many countries are trying to build universal health coverage, and they keep hitting the same walls: tight budgets, competing priorities, powerful opponents, hesitant leaders. Kenya shows how to get around those “walls”.

But this also raises important questions for democracies. The same tactics that pushed a much needed reform over the line also reduce scrutiny and public debate that give a law legitimacy. So whether this reform truly helps the ordinary Kenyan depends on whether the government keeps its financial promises once the political moment has passed.

And because it was rushed through, the reform is left vulnerable. Opposition leaders are already talking about undoing it, making it a contested issue heading into the 2027 elections.

– Kenya’s president rushed through universal health reforms. How he did it and why this matters
– https://theconversation.com/kenyas-president-rushed-through-universal-health-reforms-how-he-did-it-and-why-this-matters-289903

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Yaw Agyabeng-Mensah, Lecturer in Project Management, Macquarie University

Across Africa, governments are promoting industrialisation while encouraging businesses to reduce waste and keep materials in use for longer. Many manufacturers, however, especially the smaller ones, can’t afford the advanced technologies often associated with greener production.

This has created the impression that sustainability is a luxury only large, well-funded businesses can pay for.

We are researchers who help businesses build and manage supply chains. Our recent study of manufacturing firms in Ghana suggests there’s another path to sustainability. We collected data from 250 locally owned small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises. We then built a model to examine how manufacturers can use what they already have and learn from others to become more sustainable without relying entirely on expensive new technologies.

Our findings are important for the circular economy. This is about reducing waste and keeping products and materials in use for as long as possible through reuse, repair, recycling and re-manufacturing.

We found that manufacturers can reduce waste and be more competitive by:

• Learning from existing technologies. This includes studying and taking apart competing foreign products to understand how they work. Also, visiting competitors’ production facilities and learning from their reports.

• Adapting what they learn to local needs.

• Working more closely with suppliers, customers and other partners to access resources, share knowledge and solve problems together.

This pathway is not unique to Africa. Chinese companies such as Huawei and Geely are examples. They learned during their development from relatively small emerging-market firms into major global innovators. Huawei acquired and absorbed technological knowledge from others. Carmaker Geely learned from established automotive technologies and partnerships before developing its own.

Our research suggests this approach can also support the circular economy. This is important because moving towards a circular economy often requires manufacturers to change how products are designed, produced, reused and recovered. Learning from existing technologies means businesses need not develop expensive new ones from scratch.

Building on what already exists

We surveyed 250 locally owned small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in Ghana. They were across industries – food processing, electronics, textiles, machinery, healthcare and automotive manufacturing.

The purpose of our research was to challenge the assumption that innovation requires breakthrough technologies, scientific discoveries or companies pouring millions into research and development.

Our key findings were threefold.

Firstly, not all businesses need to start from scratch. One way is through reverse engineering. When firms understand the components and design features of existing technologies, they can use what they know to adapt and innovate. For example, manufacturers in our study reported buying products made by foreign competitors and taking them apart to understand how they work.

Secondly, learning from existing technologies is not enough. Manufacturers also need resources and expertise to put that knowledge into practice. We found that firms built relationships with suppliers, customers, government institutions and NGOs to draw on resources and expertise they might not have themselves.

Thirdly, businesses need to make creative use of these resources. Their advantage comes from combining what they learn with the resources and expertise available to them. For example, firms in our study reported using resources from outside to improve existing products. They developed new product designs and improved production processes.

Bringing together knowledge, resources and creativity can help manufacturers come up with circular practices.

Winning formulas

Businesses do not have to do this on their own. A circular economy depends on businesses learning from one another, sharing resources and solving problems together.

We found that manufacturers achieved the greatest benefits when technological learning was combined with strong collaboration across supply chains and other stakeholders. Working with suppliers, customers, universities, industry associations and government agencies gives businesses access to technical knowledge, finance and complementary capabilities.

These relationships can help firms produce things more sustainably.

For smaller manufacturers, collaboration can provide expertise and resources they would struggle to develop on their own.

Our findings also challenge the notion that manufacturers must choose between competitiveness and sustainability. African manufacturers can pursue both. For example, firms in our study reported improving production processes to reduce waste and increase energy efficiency. They reported the same in redesigning products for repair, recycling and remanufacturing.

What governments can do

Discussions about African manufacturing often focus on what businesses lack: capital, advanced technologies and research infrastructure.

Our findings tell a different story.

Supporting sustainable manufacturing should involve more than helping businesses purchase new technologies.

Firstly, they should strengthen innovation ecosystems. This means creating an environment where manufacturers can easily connect with universities, research institutions, financiers, suppliers and government agencies. Governments can help build these systems by supporting innovation hubs, shared research and testing facilities. They should encourage technical training and funding for businesses and researchers to work together.

Secondly, governments should encourage collaboration between manufacturers, universities, suppliers and industry associations. The UK’s Catapult Network, for example, brings businesses and researchers together. It gives firms access to specialist expertise, research facilities and opportunities to develop and test technologies. Manufacturing USA is similar, bringing government-supported institutes, manufacturers, universities and other organisations together to solve shared problems.

Thirdly, governments should make it easier for companies to exchange technical knowledge and practical solutions. They could support industry workshops, demonstration centres, shared technology facilities and training programmes where manufacturers can learn from researchers and one another. Germany’s Fraunhofer institutes provide one model. The organisation transfers technological knowledge to industry through public-private partnerships, training and other mechanisms.

These approaches could be adapted to African contexts to help smaller manufacturers access knowledge and resources that would be difficult or expensive to develop on their own.

– Ghana’s businesses don’t always need costly tech. How to build on what’s already been done
– https://theconversation.com/ghanas-businesses-dont-always-need-costly-tech-how-to-build-on-whats-already-been-done-289874