The Conversation – Page 8 – MIL Africa Engine

August 26, 2026

Africa’s herbarium collections are a scientific treasure. They need to be digitised before more biodiversity is lost

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ronell R Klopper, Extraordinary Lecturer, University of Pretoria

Universities and biodiversity institutes have hidden treasures: their collections of pressed plant specimens. These are plants that have been flattened, dried and mounted on special cardboard sheets. Some of them were collected centuries ago. They hold information about where species occur and how ecosystems changed over time.

Yet for many researchers and policymakers, that information remains invisible. The collections are filed in cabinets and the data mostly only accessible if seen in person, one specimen at a time.

Pressed plant specimens stored in herbarium cabinets. RR Klopper

This is the central challenge facing African herbaria today. Herbaria are libraries of the plant world, holding collections and botanical records. Too few of these records are digitised, searchable or accessible online. That gap has real consequences for science, conservation and Africa’s ability to make evidence-based decisions about its natural heritage.

Botanical taxonomists like ourselves study herbarium specimens and live plants to explore and organise botanical diversity. They generate data which informs other plant related research, conservation priorities and biodiversity legislation.

In a recent paper, we explained how digitisation of herbarium specimens in South Africa and the western Indian Ocean island states (La Réunion, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte, the Comoros, and the Seychelles) makes access to collections easier while protecting specimens.

Our research shows that digitisation allows researchers, institutions and policymakers to share information and work together. It reduces costly travel and specimen loans, and supports assessments of whether species are becoming scarce. It also provides evidence for protected area planning, environmental authorisations and invasive species management.

What herbaria hold and why it matters

Herbarium specimens are archival records of plants. This specimen, held at the National Herbarium in Pretoria, dates from the early 1800s. SANBI

The plant specimens in herbaria are linked to information on species identity, collection date and location. Together, these specimens form an archive of plant life across centuries. For example, in South Africa alone, 66 herbaria hold more than 3.2 million specimens of about 21,600 species found and collected in the country. South African collections also hold specimens from other African countries – but we don’t know exactly what’s there because these collections are mostly not digitised.

Labels contain details of the specimen. SANBI

Herbarium specimens include a label with details of where, when and by whom they were collected. Often there’s also information about plant characters and habitat. Digitisation means transcribing (capturing label details in a database), georeferencing localities (converting text-based place descriptions into geographic coordinates) and imaging specimens at high resolution.

Digitised herbarium records underpin global efforts to protect species and the planet. The data are used:

by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List – an inventory evaluating extinction risks of plants, animals and fungi
during threatened species assessments using IUCN categories and criteria, and monitoring their survival over time
to inform ecosystems identification and highlight biological communities providing essential services (like water supply) that should be targeted for conservation
to support climate change research
to help identify Important Plant Areas for conservation planning.

For historical reasons, many specimens collected on the African continent are housed in northern hemisphere institutions. The herbarium of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris alone holds over 11,230 type specimens from the western Indian Ocean islands. The herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London holds over 2,200 types collected in South Africa.

These collections contribute enormously to botanical science and biodiversity research globally. Fortunately, they are accessible digitally.

Progress worth celebrating

Significant progress has been made within African institutions, and shows what is possible.

The Southern African Botanical Diversity Network (1996-2005) has transcribed 450,000 herbarium specimens across ten southern African countries and built a generation of botanical expertise on the continent. The African Plants Initiative (2003-2008) has digitised more than 290,000 specimen images and helped establish JSTOR Global Plants, now one of the world’s largest digital plant specimen repositories.

In South Africa and the western Indian Ocean islands, several herbaria are currently digitising their collections. Some are transcribing label information first; others are imaging their collections.

The mass digitisation system currently in use at the National Herbarium, Pretoria, South Africa. SANBI, taken by Siyabonga Tibini

The challenges

There are still barriers, however:

unreliable internet connectivity in many African countries
funding is intermittent and often project-based
there is a shortage of taxonomists, curators and data science professionals
some decision-makers do not fully understand why herbaria matter, leaving collections under-resourced.

What needs to be done

Africa is losing species biodiversity faster than scientists can discover, study, describe and catalogue it. Globally, more than 2,500 plant species are described each year, indicating how much remains undiscovered. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, established in 2022 by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, sets targets for halting biodiversity loss by 2030 and demands that the world moves faster.

Based on our research findings we make the following recommendations:

A pan-African coordinated digitisation effort, managed from within the continent, is needed. This should begin with an audit of what exists and what is at risk.

African collections must be fairly represented in the emerging global metaherbarium – an interlinked, open-access, global digital herbarium. Data and images from northern hemisphere institutions must also be repatriated to accessible African repositories.

Community networks must grow to share skills, infrastructure and funding strategies.

Policymakers and funders need a clearer understanding of how herbarium data underpins conservation decisions, protected area planning and species recovery.

Artificial intelligence could accelerate the process. Automated transcription of handwritten specimen labels is just one emerging capability that would dramatically reduce the time and cost of digitisation. The value and usefulness of digitised specimens further increase through image-based taxonomic determination and machine-learning tools for trait extraction.

Herbaria remain important

Digitisation significantly expands access to specimen data and images, as highlighted in the State of the World’s Plants and Fungi report. But it does not replace the scientific value of the physical collections themselves. Digital records can reduce the need to handle fragile specimens and make information instantly accessible across borders, but many important characteristics remain invisible in photographs alone. Features like microscopic anatomy, floral structures, DNA, chemical composition, texture and scent require direct examination of the original material. Continued access to physical specimens remains essential.

Digitisation extends the value and reach of herbarium collections, which must continue to be curated and preserved. The specimens were gathered at great effort and often great sacrifice. They are irreplaceable records of a living world that is changing faster than at any time in recorded history.

– Africa’s herbarium collections are a scientific treasure. They need to be digitised before more biodiversity is lost
– https://theconversation.com/africas-herbarium-collections-are-a-scientific-treasure-they-need-to-be-digitised-before-more-biodiversity-is-lost-288632

August 25, 2026

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

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

The large-scale war between the Ethiopian federal government and Tigray regional government forces ended in November 2022 with the signing of the Pretoria Agreement. The two sides agreed that the Tigrayan forces would disarm, and that foreign forces and other troops outside the federal army would withdraw from Tigray. They also agreed to restore constitutional order in Tigray and resolve disputes over contested areas in accordance with the constitution.

I study armed conflict, governance and political communication in Ethiopia. I recently analysed the Pretoria Agreement and its implementation. I examined official statements from Ethiopian, Eritrean and Tigrayan authorities, reports by international organisations and conflict monitors, and news reports published between November 2022 and June 2026. This enabled me to trace how disputes over disarmament, territory and political representation became connected to the rivalry between landlocked Ethiopia and Eritrea over access to the Red Sea.

I found that while the Pretoria Agreement remains accepted by the Ethiopian federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), its main commitments have been applied selectively.

The peace agreement has formally survived, but the conflict it was meant to end continues in other forms. I call this conflict consolidation. Large-scale fighting stopped, federal services resumed, and an interim regional administration was established. But Western Tigray has not been returned to Tigrayan administration, foreign and non-federal forces have not fully withdrawn, and Tigray has not been fully reintegrated into federal politics. Disarmament remains incomplete, and displacement, political exclusion and local fighting continue.

At the centre of it all are tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which have been sharpened by Ethiopia’s pursuit of access to the Red Sea. These tensions have made incomplete implementation of the November 2022 peace agreement more useful to the Ethiopian federal government, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and Eritrea than full implementation would be. This is the case even though Eritrea is not a signatory to the agreement.

Red Sea tension complicated the Pretoria Agreement

Ethiopia has been landlocked since Eritrea became independent in 1993. It currently relies on the port of Djibouti for most of its international trade in goods. Previously, Assab – a port in Eritrea’s southern Red Sea region – was Ethiopia’s main entry point until the 1998 to 2000 war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

This history has made Assab the subject of a dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Within Ethiopia, the TPLF has been blamed for leaving the country without access to the sea. This is because a transitional government dominated by the TPLF accepted the 1993 referendum that established Eritrea as an independent state.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed argues that a population of 150 million cannot live in a geographic prison. Ethiopian rhetoric moves between seeking commercial access to the sea and asserting a historical claim to Assab. It portrays the acceptance of Eritrean independence without securing Ethiopian control of a port as the mistake that left Ethiopia without a coastline.

For Eritrea, Assab is not simply a port. Control of the coastline is part of the independence secured after 30 years of war against Ethiopia. When Ethiopian politicians present sea access as a historical right, Eritrea hears a possible claim to its territory.

Over time, port access, border control and armed opposition inside Ethiopia have become parts of the same confrontation.

Tigray is where these issues meet. It borders Eritrea. Western Tigray, a large part of Tigrayan territory, remains under Amhara administration and military control. Furthermore, Tigrayan forces have not fully disarmed. For the federal government, securing the border and disarming Tigrayan forces would reduce the risk of Eritrean support reaching Tigray or of Ethiopia facing two connected northern fronts.

The wartime alliance between Addis Ababa and Asmara during the Tigray war broke down after the Pretoria Agreement was signed in November 2022. One consequence is that Eritrea and the TPLF have found common ground against the federal government. No formal alliance has been announced. But reports of contacts and possible coordination, together with federal accusations of joint military preparations, suggest an informal tactical alignment. The TPLF has rejected claims that it is coordinating with Eritrea.

For Eritrea, continued conflict inside Ethiopia reduces the threat to Assab. A federal government fighting in the Amhara, Oromia and Tigray regions has fewer troops, less money and less political space to pressure Eritrea. Eritrea does not need a permanent alliance with the TPLF. Even limited cooperation can force Addis Ababa to focus on several internal fronts.

My analysis suggests that the Ethiopian government has made the opposite calculation. This is supported by federal government warnings that the TPLF is siding with Eritrea in a possible proxy war, an accusation the TPLF denies. But by presenting the TPLF as an Eritrean partner, the federal government can portray resistance to disarmament as a foreign-backed threat. This helps Addis Ababa defend its failure to fully implement the Pretoria Agreement and rally domestic support around national unity and sovereignty.

The federal accusation also creates a political logic for weakening the Tigray People’s Liberation Front before increasing pressure on Eritrea over the Assab port. I interpret this as a two-part sovereignty argument. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front can first be treated as an internal partner of a foreign enemy. The same defence of sovereignty can then support pressure on Eritrea over Assab.

Claims that Assab historically belongs to Ethiopia can make that pressure appear as recovery of national territory. This does not prove that the federal government has adopted such a military plan. It shows how the same sovereignty argument can be directed against both the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and Eritrea.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front can make its own calculation. Hostility between Ethiopia and Eritrea gives the TPLF an opportunity to use possible Eritrean support as leverage to press Addis Ababa to implement the Pretoria Agreement. For Eritrea, supporting pressure from Tigray can weaken the Ethiopian government as it presses its claim to the Assab port.

Local observers in Tigray and Eritrea use the Tigrigna term Tsimdo for the reported cooperation between Eritrea and the TPLF. Its extent remains contested. But Addis Ababa treats the possibility as a security threat.

Red Sea rivalry keeps Pretoria on hold

The rivalry blocks the Pretoria Agreement at its most important point. The military implementation plan linked Tigrayan disarmament to the withdrawal of foreign forces and forces outside the federal army. Tigrayan forces were expected to surrender their weapons as the forces that threatened Tigray withdrew.

That exchange has been interrupted. Tigrayan actors ask why they should disarm while Western Tigray has not returned to Tigrayan administration. Keeping their weapons also provides protection if the tension between Ethiopia and Eritrea develops into war.

My analysis suggests that federal authorities may be reluctant to restore a strategically important area to a divided Tigrayan leadership. Restoring the area could also bring the federal government into confrontation with Amhara political and military actors and cost it Amhara political support.

Each side treats its own obligation as a loss of security and demands that the other move first.

And Western Tigray bears the heaviest cost of the impasse. More than 760,000 Tigrayans remain displaced. The dispute concerns not only where displaced people can live, but which regional authority will govern the area. Displaced people are therefore trapped inside a security contest they did not create.

Political exclusion makes armed power more valuable. Tigray did not take part in the 1 June 2026 election. Tigray People’s Liberation Front leaders who cannot bargain through parliament have stronger reasons to retain military leverage. Federal authorities can then cite that military power as evidence that Tigray is not ready for political reintegration.

Protect peace in Tigray from regional rivalry

Preventing another war requires two connected processes.

Ethiopia and Eritrea must address the Assab dispute peacefully, including access to the port, sovereignty and alleged support for armed groups. The Pretoria Agreement cannot carry the burden of a dispute that was not part of the peace deal.

In Tigray, the implementation of the peace deal needs a verifiable order: withdrawal of foreign forces and forces outside the federal army, restoration of Tigrayan administration in Western Tigray, safe return of displaced people, disarmament of Tigrayan forces and political reintegration.

These steps would narrow the opportunities created by Red Sea tension. Eritrea would have less room to use conflict in Tigray to constrain Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s federal government would have less reason to treat Tigrayan demands as foreign threats. Tigrayan forces would have less reason to seek Eritrean support as protection. Peace in Tigray depends on making implementation more valuable than continued uncertainty.

– Ethiopia-Eritrea tensions over Red Sea port have turned the Tigray peace deal into a political weapon
– https://theconversation.com/ethiopia-eritrea-tensions-over-red-sea-port-have-turned-the-tigray-peace-deal-into-a-political-weapon-290096

August 25, 2026

Rwanda’s national pension fund has helped power the economy, but it faces new challenges

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Pritish Behuria, Reader in Politics, Governance and Development, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester

Rwanda is routinely celebrated as a growth miracle on the African continent. The country’s GDP growth averaged 7.4% annually between 2000 and 2023, one of the fastest in Africa.

Three decades after the 1994 genocide, Kigali has been transformed. It is a services hub, with a gleaming convention centre, a growing airline and a skyline of new hotels. Most scholarship has argued that this has either been driven by party-affiliated firms or through foreign investment.

However, the most significant driver is Rwandan workers’ retirement savings through the country’s pension fund. The Rwanda Social Security Board manages assets of roughly 2 trillion Rwandan francs (about US$1.4 billion to US$1.5 billion). This makes it one of Rwanda’s largest institutional investors. Its portfolio spans government securities, bank deposits, equities, real estate and other investments.

My research examines the politics of economic transformation under contemporary globalisation in eastern and southern Africa. In a new paper, I describe how the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front has used the country’s pension fund as an instrument of what political economists describe as the new state capitalism. The state capitalism literature refers to how some governments have used state-controlled institutional investments (including pension funds) to invest in strategic assets in their own economies and not just act as regulators from the sidelines.

My paper shows how the Rwandan case demonstrates potential to use pension fund assets for strategic investments in the national economy. However, it suggests that the potential gains of such investments will not be sustained unless they focus on employment-generating sectors. Sustaining structural transformation, as per the arguments of developmental state scholars like Alice Amsden, also requires the support of domestic firms to invest in technological capabilities and become competitive in global markets.

How Rwanda did it

At independence in 1962, the Rwandan government created the Caisse Sociale du Rwanda (Social Security Fund of Rwanda). It was a public institution charged with managing pension and occupational hazard schemes. Since the early 2000s, the Rwandan government has focused on increasing pension fund contributions, as well as mobilising pension fund resources to invest in strategic priorities. Between 2003 and 2020, the number of Rwandans contributing to the scheme nearly tripled from 200,000 to 691,756. As a way to streamline the management of public pension funds, the Rwanda Social Security Board was established in 2010. This was a merger of the Social Security Fund of Rwanda and Rwandaise d’Assurance Maladie, Rwanda’s health insurance system.

The Rwanda Social Security Board’s assets under management have grown from US$212 million in 2012 to US$2.07 billion in 2025.

The fund owns shares in domestic commercial banks and holds significant deposits in several banks. It invests in local and foreign fixed-income investments in government securities, fixed deposits and corporate bonds. There are also local and foreign non-fixed income investments in publicly listed equity, private equity and real estate.

The Rwandan government uses the Rwanda Social Security Board – alongside its party- and military-owned firms – to steer investments in line with its services-first development strategy. In this way, Rwanda’s approach is partially modelled on Singapore. Singapore has used government-linked companies, pension funds and government-owned holdings in Temasek, a multinational investment firm, to steer investment to strategic sectors.

Where the model runs into limits

The Rwandan government’s use of the Rwanda Social Security Board has delivered in many ways. It has provided the government with significant funds, which it directly controls and can use for strategic priorities. The board has also been the key financial driver of the transformation of Kigali into a tourism and services hub.

But my research also shows where pension fund activism may be more fragile than it seems. North American, European and east Asian developmental states all employed pension funds to direct investment into employment-generating sectors, particularly manufacturing. Crucially also, pension fund investment encouraged and worked alongside the growth of domestic firms.

The Rwandan case has differed in two fundamental ways.

First, the Rwanda Social Security Board has directed its investments into bolstering Rwanda’s services-first model, which has not yielded substantial formal sector employment.

Second, the board has done very little to support the growth of domestic firms to invest in technological capabilities. This has reinforced the economy’s reliance on state-affiliated firms and foreign firms.

Rwanda’s youth dominate its demographics but east Asia may show a picture of its future and the possible vulnerabilities a reliance on pension fund investments may lead to. The histories of Japan and South Korea show how ageing demographics place increasing pressures on pension systems. It narrows the once longer-term horizons through which pension fund managers could make investments.

This is because, as societies get older, there are more demands to pay out pensions. There may also be reduced contributions to the pension system if the working-age population shrinks. Rwanda is not yet facing these challenges.

Rwanda is currently experiencing a “youth bulge”: more than 60% of the population is under 25.

The Rwanda Social Security Board estimates that it has a 25-year time span to receive a return on its investments. Most pension contributors are currently in their mid-30s and will only retire in three decades.

While time may be on the side of Rwanda’s pension fund managers, the economy is not. Rwanda’s services-based strategy has not yielded sufficient employment generation. In 2025, unemployment was at 12.4%, far above the government target of 7%.

The employment rate also masks the number of workers who work fewer hours than they wish to. This has resulted in Rwandans working several precarious jobs. Based on the government’s own labour market data, the combined rate of workers who work fewer hours than they want to and unemployed workers was estimated at more than 50% in 2025.

Another source of vulnerability is that the government is reliant on either state-affiliated firms or foreign investors as lead investors in nearly every sector of the economy. The government has failed to use pension funds to invest in supporting domestic private sector firms. One reason is that the government has not developed effective relationships built on reciprocity with domestic private firms. This is partly because some formerly prominent Rwandan business people funded opposition movements outside the country once they had fallen out with the government.

Relying on a single state-owned pension fund has its benefits. It enables the ruling party to concentrate control. However, the pension fund’s investments have not been used to support investments in manufacturing or agro-processing, key sectors that could not only diversify exports but also create employment.

A model for the rest of Africa?

Rwanda is often presented, by the Rwandan Patriotic Front and outside observers, as a template for other African states to follow. However, its economic model is still poorly understood. Its pension fund – perhaps the key institutional investor in the economy – is rarely discussed. However, it is perhaps the most innovative example of state intervention in Rwanda.

The Rwanda Social Security Board has driven the growth of Rwanda’s services-first model. But whether it can sustain economic momentum depends on employment generation, the growth of domestic firms and ensuring that investments are in line with long-term goals rather than short-term profit-making.

– Rwanda’s national pension fund has helped power the economy, but it faces new challenges
– https://theconversation.com/rwandas-national-pension-fund-has-helped-power-the-economy-but-it-faces-new-challenges-289633

August 24, 2026

South Africa produces enough food, yet millions face hunger. Better cold storage could help change that

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ikechukwu Opara, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Stellenbosch University

South Africa can produce enough food for its population, according to official statistics. But millions face hunger, partly because food is lost and wasted in the value chain. An estimated 10.3 million tonnes of food are wasted annually in the country, 19% of it fresh produce.

A substantial portion of this loss and waste occurs during harvesting, transportation and marketing in the form of handling problems and inadequate infrastructure.

We are agri-food systems specialists who have studied food waste both at the farm level and further along the chain towards consumers. For example, I (Opara) have found that for pomegranates, 15.3% to 20.1% of the harvest is lost at the farm (for several reasons, but mainly sunburn and cracks) and 6.74% to 7.69% at the packhouse (as a result of superficial injuries and missorted fruits from the farm).

Another study (Opara) measured post-harvest waste at a produce market. This ranged from 0.68% to 1.26%.

The research confirms that food waste is partly due to inadequacies or failures in the cold chain, especially during summer when temperatures are high, affecting the physical quality of fresh produce. A cold chain is a temperature-controlled supply chain that keeps perishable products safe and fresh.

Better cold storage would reduce waste.

Impact of seasons on fresh produce waste

My (Opara) recent study set out to assess the magnitude and seasonal variations of postharvest waste at the wholesale level using a case study of a fresh produce market in Gauteng province, South Africa. The study used the historical fresh produce waste data of the market over three years (2021 to 2023).

The results show that fresh produce is affected by seasonal heat and humidity, which affect the physical quality and consumer acceptability of fresh produce. Fresh produce is marketed and sold on claims of its freshness.

High temperatures typically result in increased moisture loss. If that’s uncontrolled, the produce deteriorates and can’t be sold or safely eaten. Across the seasons in South Africa, temperatures and humidity levels vary considerably.

Much of the fresh produce waste occurs during summer, often requiring improvement in handling, storage and maintaining the cold chain to preserve quality.

The study shows that about 9,124 to 17,969 tonnes, which is about 0.68% to 1.26% of the supplied fresh produce, are discarded annually at the fresh produce market. Much of it is a result of high temperatures during summer, which is a period when cold storage facilities are stretched the most due to high demand.

Cold chain for food security

That’s why an efficient cold chain system and storage is so important. Cold chain systems involve a sequence of supply chain processes that are temperature-controlled, aimed at managing the temperature of perishable items from the moment they are harvested until they reach store shelves. This can involve storing fresh produce under shades immediately after harvesting, and insulating them from heat or direct sunlight through refrigeration throughout the supply chain.

This regulation slows down biological deterioration and spoilage. The cold chain is crucial for extending the shelf life of fruits and vegetables by ensuring optimal transport, storage and sales conditions. Maintaining a consistent cold chain preserves food quality and enhances safety, reducing the risk of foodborne diseases. This increases the availability of fresh produce and helps keep prices affordable for consumers.

Solutions to reduce fresh produce waste

One key to solving food waste problems in the country is investment in cold chain facilities. The wholesale markets in South Africa are formalised and the cold chain system is advanced compared to many sub-Saharan African countries. But more investments are needed in cold chain logistics, packhouses and storage, especially at the National Fresh Produce Markets, which serve as storage, distribution and wholesale hubs.

Small-scale farmers and packhouse operators need financial help to build refrigeration infrastructure, especially for first-mile cooling, and temporary storage before fresh produce is processed for the market. One instrument is blended investment: a mix of public funds and private capital. This approach attracts private investors as public money takes the first financial hit if an investment fails, thereby protecting private investors. It can drive innovation and investment in the food system.

Collaboration between research institutions and industry will aid in measuring food loss and waste effectively, enabling evidence-based decision-making to reduce food waste.

In addition to these solutions, studies elsewhere in the world have shown that integrating AI could enhance cold chain systems to reduce waste, improve food quality, lower costs and increase access to nutritious foods.

AI enhances the efficiency of the cold chain system. The national fresh produce markets can benefit from the automation and efficiency of AI integration to monitor cold storage temperatures. Advanced algorithms can help manage cold storage demand using real-time data and predictive modelling to balance energy use, cut costs and keep temperatures stable, especially during periods of high demand. This would minimise waste and ensure fresh produce reaches consumers in good condition.

A collective effort from farmers, cold chain operators, transport and logistics, research institutions and the government is vital. South Africa must focus not just on food production but on preserving what is produced through improved cold chain infrastructure.

– South Africa produces enough food, yet millions face hunger. Better cold storage could help change that
– https://theconversation.com/south-africa-produces-enough-food-yet-millions-face-hunger-better-cold-storage-could-help-change-that-288445

August 24, 2026

Ageing with HIV: global report highlights the need to prepare health systems

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Luicer Anne Ingasia Olubayo, Visiting Researcher at Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of the Witwatersrand

The Lancet HIV Commission on Ageing’s 2026 report highlights how profoundly the global HIV epidemic is changing.

In 2025, an estimated 11.5 million (29%) people living with HIV were aged 50 years and older. This is projected to increase to 20.2 million by 2040. That would account for more than half (51%) of all people living with HIV. And, crucially, 96% will live in low- and middle-income countries. Sub-Saharan Africa is continuing to shoulder the greatest burden of the global HIV epidemic.

Much of this change reflects the success of antiretroviral therapy (ART), which has enabled millions of people who acquired HIV earlier in life to grow older. The challenge has gone beyond helping people live longer, to ensuring they age well – that they maintain good health, independence and quality of life throughout older age.

Older adults are also acquiring HIV and being diagnosed later in life. But prevention and testing campaigns remain focused on younger people.

Older adults are often assumed to be at low risk because of the misconception that they are no longer sexually active. Healthcare workers may be less likely to discuss sexual health, recommend testing or offer prevention options such as PrEP. Moreover, older people may not see themselves reflected in HIV messaging that’s directed to younger people. These assumptions contribute not only to delayed diagnosis and treatment, but also to discrimination within healthcare, where opportunities for prevention and early detection may be missed.

African context

Our recent Lancet Healthy Longevity study, using data from the Africa Wits-Indepth Partnership for Genomic Research (AWI-Gen), provides an important longitudinal (long-term) African perspective that reinforces the Lancet Commission’s message. We analysed data from more than 7,000 adults 40 years and older in Kenya and South Africa, including rural and urban populations. The data was collected in 2013-2016 and 2019-2022. Data like this helps us examine what is changing over time: whether treatment outcomes are improving, and which groups remain overlooked.

Our findings also show that older adults are not one uniform population. HIV risk was shaped by gender, education, socioeconomic circumstances and place.

Widowed women had the highest HIV prevalence, at 30.8%. This may reflect economic insecurity and persistent gender inequalities that continue to influence HIV vulnerability later in life. Prevention must respond to these gendered and social realities.

Stigma and ageism compound the problem. The perception that HIV is a disease of younger people can make diagnosis in later life feel especially shameful. Older adults may delay testing or avoid discussing their sexual health because they do not perceive themselves – or are not perceived by others – as being at risk. This can affect testing, disclosure, mental health and continued engagement with care.

Comorbidity

The Lancet Commission supports our findings that the population over 50 is more likely to receive a delayed HIV diagnosis, and calls for tailored HIV prevention and screening for this age group. It further recognises the need for thoughtful screening and management of age-related comorbidity. In addition it calls for the integration of HIV services with health services provided to the general public.

A distinctive strength of our work is that we do not study HIV in isolation.

Through the long-term research undertaken be the MRC/Wits Agincourt unit and AWI-Gen, we have spent years examining ageing and health in African populations. Our longitudinal data allow us to consider HIV alongside hypertension, diabetes, obesity and other chronic conditions, and to investigate how these conditions accumulate and interact as people age.

A person may be taking ART with medicines for hypertension and diabetes while also coping with reduced mobility, depression or financial insecurity. Several individually appropriate treatment guidelines can become unmanageable when applied to the same person. Care must consider physiological rather than chronological age (what’s happening to a person’s body, not just how old they are in years), functional ability (what they are still able to do), polypharmacy (being on multiple medications) and what matters to the individual.

Health systems must also adapt to these new circumstances where more people are living with different chronic (long-term) conditions. An older person should not have to attend separate clinics and make repeated journeys. This is particularly burdensome in rural areas. HIV, chronic disease and healthy-ageing services need to be brought closer together, with HIV testing available through chronic disease services and HIV care routinely addressing noncommunicable diseases and mental health.

Looking ahead

The Lancet HIV Commission provides a timely roadmap for responding to this changing epidemic, but its success will depend on evidence generated where the need is greatest.

The international value of this evidence is clear. Historically, much of what’s known about ageing with HIV has come from wealthier settings, yet the overwhelming majority of older adults living with HIV now live – or soon will live – in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The HIV response must prepare for people growing older with HIV while recognising that older people remain at risk of acquiring it.

– Ageing with HIV: global report highlights the need to prepare health systems
– https://theconversation.com/ageing-with-hiv-global-report-highlights-the-need-to-prepare-health-systems-289168

August 24, 2026

Refinery rivalry: billion-dollar oil projects expose East Africa’s long-running regional tensions

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Brendon J. Cannon, Associate Professor, Khalifa University

East Africa, a region that has been working to deepen economic integration for more than 25 years, has a history of disagreements about the location of energy infrastructure. Uganda discovered oil in 2006 with the potential to pump an estimated 210,000 to 230,000 barrels of oil per day at peak production. Back in 2014, Kenya and Uganda agreed on a joint crude oil pipeline from Uganda’s oil fields at Lake Albert to the Indian Ocean. But the plan was shelved in 2016. Eventually, Uganda chose a southern route through Tanzania, forcing Kenya back to the drawing board.

This year, Kenya’s president William Ruto and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni announced plans for a new east African oil refinery, reportedly in Tanzania by Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person and the founder, president and chief executive of the Dangote Group. The refinery plans looked like a win for east African solidarity and sovereignty. However, days later, President Samia Hassan said she hadn’t been consulted on the plans to build it in Tanzania.

The Dangote refinery has now been slated for Lamu, Kenya’s new port north of Mombasa. That should have closed the matter but it did not. Uganda and Tanzania have since signed a memorandum of understanding with commodity trader Vitol Bahrain to build a US$20 billion regional energy hub in Tanga, Tanzania complete with petroleum storage, refining, logistics, trading and distribution facilities.

Brendon J. Cannon and Stephen Mogaka have written about east African politics, pipelines and security for over a decade. They shed light on these latest developments.

You studied the regional energy rivalry in east Africa over a crude oil pipeline. How did it play out?

Uganda and Kenya agreed in 2014 to jointly build a pipeline from Uganda’s oilfields to Kenya’s planned port at Lamu.

The deal collapsed within two years. Kenya’s push for its northern route, inflated security concerns and land compensation issues all played a part.

But the decisive factor was Total, the French oil major developing Uganda’s fields. It lobbied for and helped finance an alternative pipeline bypassing Kenya entirely to Tanzania’s port of Tanga. Landlocked Uganda’s chronic unease about depending on Kenya did the rest.

Author provided

By 2016, the pipeline deal was dead. The Uganda-Tanzania route, known as the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, is becoming a reality, at reportedly 90% complete as of August 2026. The first oil is expected in early 2027.

The heated pipeline will carry Uganda’s waxy crude oil from its Lake Albert oilfields to Tanga in Tanzania for export.

What drives mistrust and competitive statecraft in the east African region?

Competitive statecraft in east Africa, particularly between Kenya and Tanzania, is old and deep. It is rooted in divergent post-independence ideologies, and in recent decades by rival ambitions to be the region’s main commercial gateway to international markets.

Kenya’s post-independence leaders were once dismissed by Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere as running a “man-eat-man” society on account of Nairobi’s capitalism. Kenyan attorney-general Charles Njonjo shot back, calling socialist Tanzania a “man-eat-nothing” society.

The legacy of mutual suspicion continues to cast a shadow despite some improvements in bilateral relations between Kenya and Tanzania.

Kenya has pushed for decades to fully develop its northern transport corridor. Tanzania has attempted to do the same for its central and southern routes. As early as 2016, journalists were already describing Kenya’s planned port at Lamu and Tanzania’s answer at Bagamoyo as rivals in the race to become east Africa’s most important port.

Kenyan transport officials are still weighing upgrades to the northern corridor to fend off Tanzania’s expanding central corridor and its new electric railway.

Each has courted landlocked Uganda and Rwanda, and more recently Uganda’s oil, as the prize that determines which corridor prevails. But the biggest prize of all would be a pipeline corridor to South Sudan and its oil, with proven reserves of of 3.5 billion barrels, making it the third-largest holder of oil reserves in sub-Saharan Africa and the primary major oil producer in east Africa.

Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have been consulted on the Dangote-financed refinery. Does the Lamu decision mark a break from past rivalries?

The decision to build what is billed as east Africa’s only refinery in Lamu seems, at first, to be more of the same politics of intrigue.

But it’s worth pointing out that the Tanga idea began as a joint regional concept: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and others floated a Dangote-style refinery in early 2026.

And Dangote offered to lead its construction if governments agreed on a site.

Ruto’s early embrace of Tanga was itself widely misread in Kenya as him favouring Tanzania over his own country. It prompted uncomfortable questions about his motives before Dangote’s own commercial preference for the Kenyan coast settled the matter. His public rebuke by Tanzania’s president only added to the ill will.

Reports on the deliberations indicate Dangote’s team weighed Uganda’s oilfields near Hoima, Mombasa and Tanga before settling on Lamu. This was on the strength of ample land suitable for large-scale industrial development and a functioning deep-water port. Kenya’s more liquid banking sector was also capable of helping underwrite the US$16-US$17 billion project.

As with the east African pipeline saga in 2014, an external investor’s commercial calculus, not regional consensus, decided the outcome.

Dangote does not need east African solidarity. If one government proves difficult, he can build elsewhere, exactly as Total once did.

Kenya, chastened by its clumsy pipeline diplomacy circa 2014, appears to have lobbied more skilfully this time. It has reportedly pledged seed capital totalling KSH 21.5 billion (approximately US$166 million) and invited its neighbours to take stakes.

Yet within weeks, Uganda and Tanzania answered with their own Tanga hub, framed around retaining more value from regional oil rather than exporting crude and importing refined fuel.

Uganda, notably, keeps hedging: attempting to finance its own Hoima refinery while backing both Lamu and Tanga.

Rivalry has not disappeared from east Africa. It has simply been repackaged as parallel, competing “regional” projects.

How strong is the case for a regional refinery?

The underlying economic logic for a refinery is strong.

East Africa refines almost none of its own fuel despite an estimated 4.7 billion barrels of reserves across Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Iran’s threats and attacks against shipping in the Gulf this year underscored how vulnerable the region is to Middle Eastern supply shocks.

A Lamu refinery sits at the terminus of a multi-country corridor: the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport project. This is a multi-decade, multi-billion-dollar plan to link the deep-water port at Lamu with road, rail, pipeline and airport infrastructure reaching South Sudan and Ethiopia.

It will also potentially carry South Sudan’s abundant, higher-quality crude (still shipped mostly through Sudan), plus Kenya’s own onshore reserves in Turkana and prospective offshore fields.

Linking this to a refinery, rather than only a crude export pipeline, would give Lamu a far more durable rationale than the aborted Uganda-Kenya pipeline ever had. Whether this happens depends less on engineering than on east Africa’s politics and financing.

Stephen Mogaka contributed to this article.

– Refinery rivalry: billion-dollar oil projects expose East Africa’s long-running regional tensions
– https://theconversation.com/refinery-rivalry-billion-dollar-oil-projects-expose-east-africas-long-running-regional-tensions-289820

August 23, 2026

Air traffic control is becoming more automated. Is regulation keeping up?

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Cindy Hendrikse, PhD in aviation law, University of Cape Town

The International Civil Aviation Organisation, a specialised UN agency responsible for developing standards, oversight and monitoring, is leading the advancement of the global air traffic management system through the Global Air Navigation Plan. The introduction of automated air traffic control systems aims to improve the operational safety and efficiency of air traffic controllers. But these automated systems could introduce new risks.

Around the world, air navigation service providers offer a range of services, including air traffic control. The majority of these service providers are modernising their communication, navigation, surveillance and air traffic management systems in line with the global plan. This is to accommodate the growing number of flights while improving efficiency, reducing costs and lowering aviation’s environmental impact.

South Africa has been part of this global trend. The South African Air Traffic and Navigation Service has employed numerous automated systems to enhance operational efficiencies in line with global standards.

During my career as an air traffic services officer in Johannesburg, I provided flight information services to aircraft, coordinated international flights with neighbouring countries, conducted high frequency radio communications with aircraft over South African oceanic airspace, assisted with search and rescue missions and participated in the replacement of various outdated air traffic control systems. Much of the work involved implementing automated technologies designed to improve air traffic controllers’ performance and ultimately increase airspace capacity and efficiency.

But a noticeable increase in South African aviation incidents was reported over four years. During 2021-2022, a 69% increase in general aviation accidents and a 77% increase in incidents were reported over the previous year. Also, air traffic controllers’ incident and confidential hazard reports increased significantly in 2023-2024.

These increases raised the question: if the technology was intended to improve safety, why were there more incidents?

My doctoral research examined this question by exploring the effects of automation on air traffic controllers and analysing the international, regional and national regulatory frameworks governing these technologies. The findings suggest that the answer lies not in the technology alone, but in the complex interaction between air traffic controllers, automated systems and regulations.

Key findings from a survey included air traffic controllers’ complacency, overreliance and the diminishing of manual skills, while automation failures increased their workload. While participants indicated that they did not trust artificial intelligence (AI) to do their work, no participant knew how AI was already employed in their operations. The legislative analyses unveiled various shortcomings at international, national and operational levels.

Technology changes jobs

Automation is often presented as a way of reducing human error and workload. In air traffic management, automated systems can process large amounts of information, monitor aircraft movements and assist air traffic controllers. But introducing automation does not eliminate the human role. Instead, it changes it.

Air traffic controllers are moving from actively separating traffic to monitoring systems and intervening when necessary. While this can reduce workload in some situations, it can also create new cognitive challenges.

The study of human factors examines human strengths and limitations to explain why incidents occur. It has identified several risks associated with highly automated environments. Air traffic controllers may become over-trusting of automated systems, a phenomenon known as automation bias. An air traffic controller’s mental picture of what is happening on the radar and around them, termed situational awareness, can decline, resulting in increased complacency. This happens when an air traffic controller spends more time monitoring automated systems than actively controlling traffic. Skills that are rarely used may deteriorate over time.

These challenges do not necessarily indicate poor performance. Instead, they reflect predictable human responses to changes in how work is organised and performed.

New technology can create new risks

As part of my research, I surveyed air traffic controllers from the US, Canada, Europe, the UK, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa.

One of the identified risks was that training programmes did not fully prepare air traffic controllers for the practical realities of operating the automated system. Procedures developed for older systems did not align with the capabilities and limitations of the automated systems. Civil aviation authorities may lack the skills to detect the slow, invisible shift in daily work away from safety procedures, known as operational drift, that occurs after implementation.

Another risk is that the failure of automated systems can result in a significant increase in air traffic controllers’ workload. The timing of the increased workload matters. If it happens when air traffic controllers have developed an overreliance on these systems, they may no longer have the necessary experience to control air traffic procedurally.

In some cases, the automated system performs exactly as designed, but air traffic controllers interact with it in ways that system developers did not anticipate. Electronic flight strips exemplify how air traffic controllers still favour writing on paper to record flight information, as typing could hinder their efficiency during busy times.

The majority of air traffic controllers surveyed confirmed that most automated systems were not inter-operable and that they used temporary nonstandard procedures or manual interventions to bypass system limitations. In other words, they used “workarounds”. As a result, incidents occurred, such as reduced separation between aircraft, which could cause a collision.

These new risks raises a further important question: who would be liable for an accident if an air traffic controller had to rely on these “workarounds” to control air traffic?

Regulation has struggled to keep pace

The challenges are not limited to operational environments. They extend to international, regional and national legislators too.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation recognises the rapidly growing role of automation and AI. However, it is unable to keep pace with it. Making standards is a lengthy process.

Another shortcoming is that no explicit international standard requires automated air traffic control systems and AI to be certified by national regulators. Only as recently as 2023 did the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, for example, propose establishing a new regulatory framework for certifying automated systems.

In South Africa, the South African Civil Aviation Authority complies with the international standards and therefore also does not require automated air traffic control systems to be certified. The authority reported a shortage of skilled technical inspectors and therefore would need automation and AI-skilled inspectors to certify systems in the future.

As automation becomes more sophisticated, responsibility for safety is becoming a shared responsibility among system designers, regulators, service providers and air traffic controllers.

A lesson for the age of AI

Technology does not operate in isolation. Its success depends on the people who use it, the organisations that implement it and the regulatory systems that govern it. When incidents occur, the explanation is rarely as simple as blaming automation or the human operator. Interactions across the entire system shape safety outcomes.

As governments and industries turn to automation and AI to solve complex problems, the aviation sector demonstrates that introducing AI is not simply a technical challenge. It is also a human, organisational and regulatory one.

Aviation regulators will have to revise current legislation to determine how they will certify and oversee it, regulate AI and air traffic controller liability, and consider their role in this complex system.

– Air traffic control is becoming more automated. Is regulation keeping up?
– https://theconversation.com/air-traffic-control-is-becoming-more-automated-is-regulation-keeping-up-288444

August 23, 2026

DR Congo’s riverboat economy – how a floating transport system tells the country’s story

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Peter Lambertz, Research associate, Centre d’anthropologie culturelle, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

Road transportation in the Democratic Republic of Congo has received much scholarly attention. Some studies have examined the urban landscape (p.142). Others have studied transportation in the context of armed conﬂict in the east of the country, where roadblocks are a pronounced feature.

The Congo Basin’s inland waterways, of which 25,000km are classiﬁed as navigable, have been studied with regard to the taxation regime of larger pushboat-barge convoys. The less far-reaching scale of small- and medium-scale river transportation, however, so far has been less studied. This is despite the overwhelming reliance of cities such as Kinshasa, Mbandaka and Kisangani on these smaller craft.

A significant part of the traffic on these waterways is handled today by wooden cargo ships called baleinières (literally “whaleboats” in English). Measuring between 20 and 40 metres in length, these locally developed, handcrafted vessels connect the ever-growing cities with crop-producing communities in the rainforest hinterlands along distant fertile riverbanks.

Baleinières have been the focus of my ongoing research, centred mainly on the city of Kisangani in DR Congo’s Tshopo province. I have been interested in the emergence, transformation, materials and socio-technical realities of these handmade watercraft, their propulsion system and their crews. I have also paid attention to the systemic character of their artisanal infrastructure and its reliance on traditional environmental knowledge.

Wooden baleinières date back to the early 1960s. But since the 1990s they have been crucial to the reinvention of a transport system across the Congo Basin. These wooden ships ensure the food security of central Africa’s riverine cities, including the continent’s third-largest city, Kinshasa. They also connect the national capital to many of the country’s provinces.

Owing to a lack of statistics and limited research to date, reliable figures are available only for Kisangani, a city of two million at the upper end of the navigable Congo river. Here, about 80 baleinières arrive in the private secondary ports of the city every month, each carrying an average of 150 tons of goods and around 150 passengers.

Kinshasa, a city of 17 million, is estimated to welcome several hundred baleinières every month.

Map showing the Congo River drainage basin. Kmusser/Wikimedia Commons

Sadly, baleinières are notorious for their frequent and often devastating accidents. Every year, hundreds, if not thousands, of lives are lost.

There is still a lack of detailed research into the complex socio-technical factors underlying these accidents, as well as into how hundreds of people cope with them every year. Key factors include structural weaknesses of the ships and lack of professional training and safe operation in a context of economic urgency.

Entirely the product of local, frugal innovation, these ships have been developed out of necessity. This accounts for their affordability, their uncompromising efficiency, and their capacity to operate without infrastructure like fortified harbours, cranes and docks, within a dynamic environment.

The Congo’s wooden ships encapsulate the realities and the paradoxes of Congolese life today. A grassroots technical and economic ingenuity secures the food supply of millions, yet enjoys no encouragement or protection against divisive, unregulated capitalism. This capitalism wears on the bodies of people and ships alike. Owners, crews, and the traders they carry shield themselves by working alone on the basis of interpersonal ties.

Origins, materials and propulsion

The colonial ancestors that gave the baleinières their name were nine-metre, deckless, engineless vessels riveted from prefabricated Belgian steel and towed behind steamers to carry building materials. Today only the name survives. The prototypes of wooden baleinières were built in the early 1960s by André “Bibeyi”, a Congolese craftsman who fused colonial carpentry skills with local traditional knowledge.

Bibeyi crafted the frame with local hardwoods and sealed it with bitumen, n’kasa ya kwanga leaves and strips of recycled aluminium sheet. The hull he made of the soft tola wood, the preferred timber for dugouts. In the 1980s and 1990s Bibeyi’s colleagues and their offspring opened shipyards on nearly all major waterways. In 2007, boat builders from Lake Kivu, in eastern DRC, introduced the Indian Ocean ship building tradition to Tshopo province. The presence of both these two building and caulking styles at the upper end of the navigable Congo spurred creativity among younger Congolese builders.

In the late 2000s, baleinières were further improved by converting low-cost Chinese-made diesel engines into a new propulsion system. Local mechanics soon modified the cooling system and started adding more engines as the ships could now grow in size.

Video: river transport in the Congo river.

Beyond cost and simple spare parts, the advantage of this new propulsion system was that when one engine needed repair, the others kept running. So there were no more real breakdowns. What had been a makeshift solution for occasional travel gradually became a regular and reliable transport system.

Baleinières are indeed one of the DR Congo’s very few locally developed and exported technologies. Congolese shipbuilders have opened mobile shipyards in the neighbouring countries of the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), the Central African Republic and Cameroon.

Baleinières are floating microcosms of life in the DR Congo today. They embody, in short, what French anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1966) called a total social fact: their material constitution incorporates different layers of the DR Congo’s history, while their operation reveals the country’s geographic, economic, political, infrastructural and cultural realities.

Enabling an economy of survival

Across the DR Congo, decades of demographic growth and disintegrating long-distance connectivity have shifted the centralised colonial system — once funnelling towards Kinshasa — into a patchwork of disconnected territorial islands. Baleinières developed to meet the need for medium-range transport around them.

The craft carry food (rice, cassava, palm oil, poultry, caterpillars, local spirits, livestock, bushmeat, fish) to the city. They haul back to the villages manufactured goods (roofing sheets, furniture, motorbikes, mattresses, medical drugs, mosquito nets, phones, flipflops, clothes).

They also carry the traders themselves, as the economy they serve allows small-scale traders to earn a modest living with little or no starting capital. They are a window into the economic reality of most Congolese, who live day to day in a popular economy of survival. Because the thin margin of a trade is too easily lost if entrusted to anyone else, one travels with one’s goods. Officials who cite nocturnal navigation as a main cause of accidents often forget that, if one cannot travel at night, only half the trade journeys can be made, leaving little chance to make ends meet.

Artisanal infrastructure

The system’s secret lies in how it meets the infrastructural challenges of river transport. Top of these challenges is loading and unloading under ever-changing water levels, without fortified harbours, cranes and the like. A baleinière’s operability rests on the skilled integration of engineered, muscular and natural forces, through kinetic solidarity and learned technique.

One such artisanal infrastructure is “kotindika”: when the loaded ship settles onto the riverbed, porters wade in and push it into deeper water. Since a ship’s stewards are always porters too, a baleinière with two dugouts serving as mobile gangways effectively carries its own port, loading or unloading wherever it wants.

The system is more inclusive than “hard” transport infrastructure: hundreds of porters, stewards and their families depend on it. It is also cheaper and more adaptable.

Local river markets rise and fade at shifting stopover locations, in tune with the rainforest’s yearly production cycle and the volatile purchasing power of travelling traders.

However, driven by a weekly rhythm their passengers dictate, few crew members can spare the time or money for training, maintenance, or rest. Baleinières are a solution, but a double-edged one.

Governance at the margin of the state

The sheer size of the Congo Basin and its waterways makes governance difficult. Operating at the margin of the state, baleinieres’ success is clearly tied to their ability to avoid tight bureaucratic control, since roadblocks are hard to mount on the water.

At the same time, state services tap into this economy through taxation and hassles in the ports of river towns.

A few development initiatives have tried to fix the accident problem by regulating the design and construction of vessels in accordance with foreign standards. Their impact has been limited because these initiatives do not account for local operational realities. This is a phenomenon known as a “revenge of contexts”.

However, the baleinière phenomenon has grown so vast, and the need for transport too pressing, to leave the system as it is. Any future initiative hinges on its embeddedness in local communities of practitioners and their existing ways of doing, speaking and operating.

– DR Congo’s riverboat economy – how a floating transport system tells the country’s story
– https://theconversation.com/dr-congos-riverboat-economy-how-a-floating-transport-system-tells-the-countrys-story-288941

August 21, 2026

Zambia’s messy but decisive election: government shows strength; democracy shows weakness

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Michael Wahman, Professor, Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin

Across southern Africa, sitting presidents have faced a wave of turnovers and electoral setbacks in the past few years.

Malawi and Botswana saw opposition victories. In Namibia and South Africa, incumbents were re-elected, but with significantly smaller majorities.

In Zambia, the Patriotic Front suffered a humiliating defeat in 2021 as voters reacted to poor economic performance. This resulted in a new government led by Hakainde Hichilema and his United Party for National Development.

Hichilema’s government has ruled in a time of extreme global economic anxieties. Conflict, supply chain interruptions and aid withdrawal have piled pressure on governments, not least in Africa. In southern Africa, erratic weather conditions have brought droughts, food insecurity and energy shortages, adding to economic woes. In this environment, how did Zambia’s incumbent party secure such a decisive re-election in 2026?

In an impressive showing, Hichilema secured an increased 61% of the vote compared to 38% for the main opposition challenger, Brian Mundubile. However, accusations of fraud and manipulation have tainted the election.

We are politics scholars who focus on democracy and elections in the region. We’ve been following developments in Zambia as the vote turned increasingly controversial.

In our view, however, it would be a mistake to understand the party’s victory as purely a reflection of manipulation. Other important factors contributed, including voter approval of the government’s handling of the economic crisis as well as education, healthcare and food security.

Was it fraud?

While many of us political scholars had anticipated a decisive victory for the United Party for National Development, academics Nic Cheeseman and Nicole Beardsworth published a remarkable article days after the election analysing voting patterns. The numbers were not adding up.

Election results announced by the Electoral Commission of Zambia showed improbably high voter turnout in many government-party strongholds. Even more suspicious were large and illogical differences in votes cast in parliamentary and presidential elections in some constituencies.

This was compounded by a highly unusual country-wide suspension of vote counting imposed by the electoral commission the day after the election, amid reports of violence. The European Union Election Observation Mission noted that the “overall conduct of tabulation (vote counting) deteriorated significantly” after the lifting of the suspension.

If fraud was indeed perpetrated inside ruling party strongholds, the critical question is whether it is decisive. Focusing only on 16 particularly suspicious constituencies, analysis found a difference of 170,000 votes between the number of presidential and parliamentary votes, but the nationwide vote difference was more than 1.1 million between the president and the opposition challenger.

Much more clarity came after the respected domestic election observer network, the Christian Churches Monitoring Group (CCMG), published their regular Parallel Voting Tabulation survey. Indeed, the parallel results did not match the official results. It appears United Party for National Development votes were inflated.

Importantly, however, the monitoring group still had the party as the runaway winner in the presidential election. According to their survey, Hichilema received 56% of the vote (give or take 1.7 percentage points), compared to Mundubile’s 42%. In other words, manipulation does not seem to be enough to explain Hichilema’s decisive victory.

His party’s re-election was a reflection of both opposition weakness and government strength.

Opposition weakness

Throughout most of the presidential term, voters expected a re-match between Hichilema and former president Edgar Lungu. However, Lungu unexpectedly died just over a year before the election and the opposition was left without a leader.

Internal succession struggles within the Patriotic Front tore the party into factions. And the Registrar of Societies, which regulates political parties, frustrated attempts to register new political challengers. Polling voters after Lungu’s death, we did not find any opposition party with more than 12% declared support.

After dramatic nominations, Mundubile emerged as the main opposition candidate. He ran under the banner of a previously obscure opposition party, National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity. Mundubile’s strategy was to revitalise the former Patriotic Front coalition. In campaigns, he proudly declared that as president he would “rule like Lungu”.

This strategy may have been sound for uniting the opposition. However, to win national elections, emulating a coalition that voters soundly removed from office five years ago was not enough.

The final performance was nonetheless impressive for a party that was virtually nonexistent three months earlier. It won more votes than the government in most areas where the Patriotic Front dominated in 2021. It also made inroads among urban voters, a notoriously volatile voter group in Zambia.

However, the 2026 election reaffirms an old truth about Zambian politics: elections are won by mobilising the base and winning regional strongholds with big margins.

Given the apparently inflated votes in many of these strongholds, we need to treat official vote counts with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, some patterns are so clear that we can still draw some conclusions.

Mundubile’s party simply lacked the ground organisation needed to win. And the government was winning respectable shares of the vote in areas that were supposedly opposition strongholds.

Government strength

While we will probably never know the real voter turnout, independent estimates put it at around 54% of registered voters. In the last election, it was 71%.

In 2021, voters were highly motivated to vote and oust a highly unpopular government. This wasn’t the case in 2026.

Key to the government’s popularity is its strong handling of the economy. The government successfully restructured debt, kept inflation under control, and delivered steady growth. Voters credited government with stepping up drought initiatives to ease the suffering of rural Zambians.

Our poll showed strong approval of the government’s performance on education, healthcare and food security. Hichilema’s approval rating was measured at an unusually high 79%. His party’s campaign posters touted slogans such as “continuity”, a globally rare campaign message in days of anti-incumbent sentiment.

A weakening of democracy

A decisive victory leaves Hichilema with a strong mandate and a weakened opposition.

His party is now looking to gain a comfortable majority in parliament. This dominance was certainly helped by controversial constitutional changes instituted just ahead of the election. A new bill created new constituencies, expanded presidentially nominated seats, and introduced new seats for women, youth, and persons with disabilities. This aided the party.

It has also asserted stronger party discipline. The debate over the bill ignited infighting, but the election seemed to settle the contest. Hichilema took a hard line against MPs who voted against it. He now leads an increasingly unified and loyal party.

However, the election is not settled and leaves many questions unanswered. The opposition intends challenging the results in the Constitutional Court. Crucially, they will have to show that manipulation changed the outcome. While it will be hard to argue it did, it looks like it may have affected the proportional distribution of parliamentary seats.

Generally, the election has weakened Zambia’s democratic credentials in an environment where western pressure to protect democratic institutions is weaker than it has been in decades.

Not only did the election itself raise questions, but also a mysterious security operation the day after. This targeted opposition officials, including Mundubile. It left one person dead and several more detained. It raises serious human rights concerns.

This will be Hichilema’s last term, and the battle over who succeeds him is likely to begin soon. How his party uses its new dominance, whether to manage succession or to change the rules to consolidate its position further, will shape Zambian politics in the years to come.

– Zambia’s messy but decisive election: government shows strength; democracy shows weakness
– https://theconversation.com/zambias-messy-but-decisive-election-government-shows-strength-democracy-shows-weakness-289953

August 20, 2026

Changing the history curriculum is not enough if English always dominates the classroom – South African study

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Nhlanhla Mpofu, Researcher in TESOL & Literacy, University of Notre Dame Australia

In many South African classrooms, learners continue to experience the subject of history through the language, concepts and perspectives inherited from colonial traditions. Changes have been made to what children are taught. But the curriculum changes might not be enough to change what children learn in history classrooms.

The reason for this is that English continues to dominate as the language of learning and teaching in most secondary schools. This is despite the fact that South Africa officially recognises 12 languages.

As education researchers with an interest in the languages used in the classroom, we wanted to examine the relationship between language choice and the teaching of history.

We did this through a study of Grade 8 history classrooms in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Focusing on a local historical event, learners were encouraged to examine whose perspectives become visible or invisible through different language choices.

We found that this allowed them to think critically about how history is recorded, challenge the standard versions of the event, and create more of a connection between their own lives and the bigger historical picture.

Our research suggests that if learners are to engage critically with history, they must also be empowered to question the language through which the subject is taught.

The Kimberley diamond rush

Our research focused on the Kimberley diamond rush. The development of Kimberley can be traced back to the discovery of diamonds around 1870 on a farm in what was then known as Griqualand West, now part of South Africa’s Northern Cape province. News of the discovery spread quickly and attracted thousands of prospectors, fortune seekers and labourers from across the region and beyond. As people flocked to the area in search of wealth and employment, a small settlement rapidly grew into the bustling town of Kimberley. The diamond rush played a significant role in shaping South Africa’s economic and social history, establishing Kimberley as one of the country’s most important mining centres.

This is a topic taught in South African schools in Grade 8 (for learners in the age group 14-16 years).

Traditionally, learners encounter this history through narratives centred on economic development, industrialisation and influential figures such as Cecil John Rhodes. All these texts are written in English. While these accounts are important, they leave little room for the experiences, languages and perspectives of African communities affected by mining, land dispossession and labour exploitation.

Our study followed an approach known as decolonial language awareness. The approach positions indigenous languages as legitimate sources of knowledge.

The study took place in two public secondary schools in the Northern Cape. Participants were two Grade 8 History teachers and learners in linguistically diverse classrooms. The schools served multilingual communities where isiXhosa, Setswana, Afrikaans and English were commonly used, although English remained the primary language of learning and teaching.

The intervention began with what looked like a simple question posed by teachers:

Why is the story of Kimberley diamonds always taught in English?

The discussion that followed revealed a level of critical awareness often underestimated in young learners. Students quickly linked English to political power, pointing out that many historical records were written by colonial administrators, mine owners and government officials. They recognised that the voices preserved in textbooks were often those of people who held power rather than those who experienced the consequences of that power.

What happened next was perhaps the most significant aspect of the project.

Teachers and learners in this study worked together to develop a historical glossary in English and isiXhosa. This was more than a simple translation exercise. Instead, learners explored whether familiar historical terms accurately represented the experiences of African communities. They drew on family histories, community memories, oral narratives, cultural knowledge, and contemporary experiences of language, identity and inequality to make sense of events that had occurred generations earlier.

Take the term “compound system”. In many history textbooks, it is presented as a labour arrangement that housed African mine workers in employer-provided accommodation to facilitate the management and control of the workforce. Yet when learners explored isiXhosa alternatives such as inkampu yabakhonziswa (“a camp of those compelled to labour”), they began to question the neutrality of the textbook term. Their discussions shifted attention from labour organisation to the lived realities of confinement, coercion and restricted freedom.

In this way, language became a tool for uncovering different interpretations of the same historical phenomenon and for foregrounding perspectives often absent from dominant historical accounts.

A similar process unfolded around the concept of “dispossession”. When discussions shifted towards isiXhosa expressions such as ukuncothulwa emhlabeni (“being uprooted from the land”), the historical event acquired a more human and emotional dimension. Learners connected the concept not only to the loss of land but also to disrupted ties of belonging, community, identity and ancestry. What had previously appeared as an abstract textbook term was reinterpreted as a lived experience with profound social and cultural consequences.

These discussions transformed the dynamics of the classroom. Learners who were often quiet during conventional history lessons became active participants. Some brought stories, expressions and insights from parents and grandparents into classroom debates. Others challenged textbook terminology and proposed alternative ways of understanding historical events. Home language was no longer treated as something left at the classroom door. It became a valuable academic resource.

Perhaps most importantly, learners began to recognise that history was not a single story.

When presented with a British mine manager’s report describing workers as “industrious but sullen”, learners asked how those same workers might have described the manager. Whose perspective was represented? What experiences were omitted? How would the story change if told from another viewpoint? These questions demonstrate a level of historical thinking that goes far beyond memorising facts and dates.

Beyond curriculum change

Critics may argue that such approaches make history too political. Yet history has always been political. Decisions about which events are recorded, whose voices are preserved and which languages are regarded as authoritative are never neutral. By making these processes visible, learners are being equipped to think critically about knowledge itself.

The broader implications extend beyond history classrooms. Three decades after the end of apartheid, South Africa continues to grapple with questions of transformation, equity and inclusion. If educational success remains tied to English, many learners will continue to experience a disconnect between their lived realities and what schools recognise as knowledge.

Decolonising education is not about replacing one version of history with another. It is about giving learners the agency to ask difficult questions, evaluate competing perspectives and participate in the ongoing construction of historical knowledge.

– Changing the history curriculum is not enough if English always dominates the classroom – South African study
– https://theconversation.com/changing-the-history-curriculum-is-not-enough-if-english-always-dominates-the-classroom-south-african-study-289515