Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Misheck Mutize, Post Doctoral Researcher, Graduate School of Business (GSB), University of Cape Town

The rating agency S&P Global’s Africa Credit Rating Trends 2025 reviews the past year’s rating activities and analyses the continent’s prospects for 2026. It is an important document because it interprets underlying drivers of creditworthiness. It shapes how global investors and policymakers understand risk, opportunity and reform dynamics across the continent.

But the document had some serious flaws in it. As someone who has been researching Africa’s capital markets and the institutions that govern them for decades, I believe they are worth commenting on because mistakes like this can influence investor perceptions. In turn, this can reinforce existing biases and affect how African economies are priced in global financial markets.

Firstly, there were several basic errors. Burundi was mislabelled as Uganda. Sudan and South Sudan were merged into a single country despite being separated since 2011.

The report also displayed a non-existent lake in the Great Lakes region and the Republic of the Congo was casually referred to by its unofficial name, Congo Brazzaville. The agency also presented the continent as having 54 countries, excluding the Sahrawi Republic, which is recognised by the African Union.

At first glance, these errors may seem like minor technical mistakes or editorial lapses in a document focused on financial analysis. But that reading misses the deeper issue. These are not just errors on a map. Errors like this raise questions about the accuracy, depth and rigour of the research and analytical processes behind the credit rating reports that move billions of dollars across the globe.

Systematic risk overestimation is what has led to African countries being penalised with higher interest rates and limited financing options. In effect, seemingly small errors have translated into real economic costs for African economies.

Moody’s made such errors in the past. It issued speculative downgrades for Kenya and Nigeria that it reversed within six and 12 months, respectively. One speculative commentary by Moody’s cost Kenya over US$150 million in a derailed bond buyback programme.

The gaps

At the core of these research shortcomings is a simple but consequential reality – limited presence on the ground.

S&P Global has an office in South Africa from which the team is expected to cover the whole continent. In addition, most of its rating analysts are based in Europe and Asia. These analysts visit the countries they rate for a maximum of two weeks in a year. These short visits and inadequate consultations have resulted in risk assessments based on conservative assumptions, desktop research and publicly available information.

S&P Global has been rating Uganda since December 2008. Yet its researchers still confuse the country’s location on the map.

This matters because global investors who engage Africa from a distance often operate with a cautious instinct. They still, erroneously, perceive Africa as a single, homogeneous risk bloc rather than 55 distinctive sovereigns with different risk dynamics.

Such geographical inaccuracies inadvertently validate this flawed narrative and risk perception, feeding into the misperceptions that distort capital allocation and inflate borrowing costs.

Another flaw the mistakes in the report illustrate is weak internal controls.

In global institutions like S&P Global, it is assumed that every publication undergoes multiple layers of quality assurance and editorial scrutiny. If such fundamental inaccuracies can pass through these filters, what about an analyst’s own assumptions that are embedded in sovereign risk models?

Is it possible that such errors escape scrutiny?

What is also worrying is how S&P Global responded to this issue when it was raised. The errors were flagged repeatedly on S&P Global’s social media platforms after the report was published, yet they remained uncorrected for nearly two weeks.

That delay was telling. It is fair to argue that these inaccuracies did not trigger the required urgency or institutional reflex because they concerned Africa. The corrections would most likely have been immediate, accompanied by formal apologies and internal reviews, if they had involved more powerful or closely watched regions. For example, if such a report had a map combining North and South Korea as one country or mislabelled Germany as France.

The reputational stakes would have been too high for the rating agency to ignore.

Way forward

Africa should not remain on the sidelines while its narrative is being driven by institutions that keep demonstrating a superficial understanding of its fundamentals.

One clear solution, in my view, is the establishment of an African credit rating agency to rebalance the narrative.

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Read more: Africa’s new credit rating agency could change the rules of the game. Here’s how

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But more needs to be done. Here are three solutions.

First, African governments must move from being passive recipients of ratings to active engagement with analysts. Where justified, they must contest assumptions, methodologies and errors. Engagement should not begin after a downgrade. It must be continuous, technical and evidence-based with credible and timely data about their economies.

Second, global institutions such as S&P Global must recalibrate their approach in dealing with Africa. Credibility is derived from consistent accuracy and timely responsiveness. They must invest in permanent senior research and analytical presence on the continent, not episodic visits. It means expanding consultation beyond a narrow set of stakeholders to include local economists, market practitioners and independent researchers. More important, strengthening internal quality controls so that basic errors do not undermine the integrity of complex analytical outputs.

Perception continues to move faster than data, and negative narratives travel further than positive fundamentals. That is why African countries must insist on analytical rigour, demand accountability and build their own capacity to interpret risk.

– Credit and credibility: rating agency errors come with a cost
– https://theconversation.com/credit-and-credibility-rating-agency-errors-come-with-a-cost-279672

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Daniel Cash, Senior Fellow, United Nations University; Aston University

Some developing country governments spend years making the reforms that international financial institutions want – only to find that their efforts are not rewarded.

They may make budgets more transparent, publish their debt obligations, set up independent bodies to monitor government spending, and complete an International Monetary Fund programme, but still receive the same ratings from credit agencies. Borrowing costs remain high.

The gap between what countries have built and how that progress is reflected in credit ratings and market pricing is persistent and has consequences. It translates into higher borrowing costs, tighter fiscal space, and fewer resources for public investment.

The standard explanation points to bias in method – that credit rating agencies undervalue developing country institutions or rely on indicators that favour the global north.

There is some truth in this observation, and reformers have tried solutions like more agencies, methodology reviews and transparency codes. But these don’t tackle a deeper structural problem.

Based on my work as a researcher on the working of rating agencies, it’s clear that in practice, assessments of developing countries are often made on the basis of incomplete or fragmented information. Data sits in different institutions across the country, is not always produced to a common standard, and is frequently assembled under time pressure ahead of rating reviews. What reaches external assessors is therefore, at best, a partial view of the country’s institutional and fiscal position.

The issue was a major point of discussion at the United Nations in late March 2026 when delegates convened for the inaugural special meeting on credit ratings.

A recurring theme across the discussions was the need to look upstream – at what needs to exist before the rating process actually begins. Then assessments might more accurately reflect the infrastructure that developing countries have built.

That is a meaningful shift. It moves away from demanding that credit rating agencies behave differently, and towards asking what the system as a whole needs to provide. Upstream is where the problem originates and where the most concrete action is possible.

The debate suggests a shift in how key actors, including the United Nations, multilateral development banks and sovereign borrowers themselves, are approaching the problem. This could begin to change how institutional progress is translated into credit assessments and, over time, into borrowing costs.

Constructing a country’s credit story

A sovereign credit rating is not solely formed inside a credit rating agency. It takes shape in the months and years before an analyst arrives. It happens across finance ministries, central banks, statistical offices, debt management offices and audit institutions. It’s a process of data assembly, verification and presentation that most developing country governments have never had the capacity to manage systematically.

Before a rating is issued, a country’s credit story must be constructed. Fiscal data must be gathered, reform trajectories documented, institutional changes verified and contingent liabilities disclosed. A debt management office holds one part of the picture. A central bank holds another. A statistical office holds a third.

When those parts are properly coordinated, the credit story arrives at the assessment stage in verifiable form. When they are not, documentation has to be pulled together reactively before a rating deadline, and the story arrives incomplete.

Put simply, the analyst cannot reconstruct what was never assembled. Facing incomplete information, even where the core data required is broadly similar across countries, the rational response is often conservative assessment. The uncertainty premium stays elevated, and any reforms go unrecognised – not because they did not happen, but because the system required to make it visible was never built.

This upstream process can be understood as sovereign credit formation. If it’s weak, and external assessors can’t see what genuine progress has been made, there’s a formation gap. The formation gap does not mean that all low ratings are unwarranted. It simply means the system currently has no reliable way to tell the difference between a sovereign with weak fundamentals and one with strong yet largely invisible institutions.

No actor in the current system has the mandate or the incentive to build that upstream infrastructure on behalf of the countries that need it most. That is the problem.

On top of this, developing country governments are being asked to reform in ways that will take sustained investment in institutional capacity. Better data systems; coordinated institutions; clearer evidence. That investment takes years, diverts scarce resources, and demands political commitment across electoral cycles. It is being asked of governments that don’t have the fiscal space to do it – because their borrowing costs are high.

They are being asked to solve a problem they did not necessarily create, using resources that the problem itself is consuming.

The intervention that fits

Multilateral institutions, including the United Nations and multilateral development banks, cannot change what credit rating agencies do inside their own methodologies. Assessments are made independently. Interfering with the way they do it would undermine that independence.

Recent evidence in the multilateral development bank system shows that coordination is the prerequisite to movement.

Coordination across multilateral development banks and their shareholders led first to the creation of an emerging markets credit risk database, then to the formal review of multilateral development bank lending by an expert panel appointed during Indonesia’s presidency of the G20, and then to major credit rating agencies changing their methodological processes.

The infrastructure that makes governance reforms legible to credit markets is a public good. Public goods require public investment. This is not a call for a new institution. It is a reorientation of existing ones towards a gap that nobody is currently filling.

Every sovereign that has undertaken genuine reform and watched its credit conditions remain unchanged knows the problem this article describes. They are being assessed before a full appreciation of their credit worthiness is possible. Building the upstream infrastructure to close this gap is the multilateral system’s most important contribution to sovereign credit reform.

– Countries suffer when credit rating agencies lack data: how to fix the problem at source
– https://theconversation.com/countries-suffer-when-credit-rating-agencies-lack-data-how-to-fix-the-problem-at-source-279671

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Elliot Doornbos, Senior Lecturer of Criminology, Nottingham Trent University

Last year Kenya Wildlife Service warned of a growing demand for garden ants in Europe and Asia, where some people view them as exotic pets. An attempt to smuggle over 2,000 garden ants out of the country’s main international airport made the news in 2026. Echoing this, in 2025, four men were sentenced for attempting to smuggle more than 5,000 ants out of the country.

The defendants in the 2025 case pleaded guilty to the illegal possession and trafficking of live wildlife species, an offence under the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act (2013). They got a choice of paying a fine of US$7,700 or serving 12 months in prison.

Globally, although wildlife trafficking is mostly associated with larger animals such as elephants, rhino and tigers, a broad array of species are traded. The illicit trade in invertebrates is one part of this, including insects, other arthropods such as spiders and scorpions, and myriapods, for example centipedes.

The scale of the illegal trade is difficult to calculate due to limited wildlife crime statistics globally, enforcement challenges and the often hidden nature of wildlife trafficking as a whole. Some estimates have placed the legal market for insect consumption specifically at around US$17.9 billion by 2033. This offers some indication of the popularity of insects.

For me as an academic in wildlife crime, the Kenyan seizures help to demonstrate not only the existing demand for these species but also the similarities these markets share with broader wildlife trafficking networks, including their enforcement challenge.

The global scope of the challenge

There is limited data on the global problem. But existing seizure records highlight dynamics within insect-trafficking markets. These encompass a wide range of species, trends and motivations.

While insects are traded legally for reasons such as research, pet markets or human consumption, these patterns are often mirrored in illicit trade. One prominent driver is the exotic pet market.

The seized Kenyan ants were reportedly intended for sale as pets. Similar motivations have been noted with other trafficked insects, such as the demand for rhino beetles in Japan and praying mantises in Italy.

More broadly, the exotic pet trade has consistently been recognised as a key driver of wildlife trafficking. Reptiles and birds are key targets. There are parallels between insect trafficking and wildlife trafficking more generally.

Alongside the demand in species, the smuggling techniques used in insect trafficking reflect methods seen in other wildlife trafficking markets.

One case involved a trafficker attempting to smuggle centipedes, bullet ants and tarantulas out of Peru in plastic bags strapped around his body. In another instance praying mantis eggs were disguised as children’s toys and rhino beetles as snacks. These methods echo wider cases of wildlife being concealed using novel and diverse approaches.

Alongside this, several cases involve insects being trafficked in large quantities. This technique has been used with small fauna such as birds and reptiles, where smugglers transport high numbers with the expectation that some will die but profits can still be made from the survivors.

Enforcement authorities face the complication that a legal market exists for certain species. This can potentially allow traffickers to launder protected species alongside legal ones, a technique that parallels other wildlife trafficking markets. This further complicates enforcement with relevant authorities needing to have awareness of species specific policies and training around species identification.

Protection for insects

Globally the protection of insect species varies. Whereas most jurisdictions have legislation which protects wildlife, the trade and level of protection is often shaped by their conservation status – the risk of extinction for the species. This is similarly observed in how the trade in wildlife is regulated. Levels of criminalisation for wildlife trafficking often vary based on the species, attitudes towards them and country legalisation.

Research has pointed to one challenge in relation to insects being the potential lack of clarity regarding international regulations governing their trade. There are also uncertainties about the legal requirements for transporting and selling insects.

Informing national policies, the international trade in fauna and flora is regulated by Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which has 185 signatory countries. CITES classifies international trade under three categories:

• Appendix I all but bans the trade outside exceptional circumstances

• Appendix II means regulated trade can take place

• Appendix III relates to species not currently recognised as being threatened by trade but for which some countries have regulations in place.

However, research shows that enforcing wildlife protections presents an array of challenges. Studies indicate that CITES and related enforcement efforts are not fully effective. Furthermore, wildlife crime is not always seen as an enforcement priority or given the resources it needs. This may hinder efforts to protect insects from trafficking.

Overall, these high profile cases and continued media discussion can help to recognise insects as victims of wildlife trafficking. This has the potential to build public support for underrepresented wildlife crime issues and encourage the development of further measures to reduce species harm.

– Seizure of 2,000 ants at Nairobi airport highlights the hidden scale of insect trafficking
– https://theconversation.com/seizure-of-2-000-ants-at-nairobi-airport-highlights-the-hidden-scale-of-insect-trafficking-279571

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ruben Prütz, Postdoctoral Researcher, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Global efforts to limit climate change require deep cuts to carbon emissions. However, global emissions are still growing. Currently, we emit roughly 42 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use and land use changes every year.

To achieve the targets of the Paris Agreement, which included a long-term commitment to limit global warming to 1.5°C, it will also be necessary to do more than cut emissions. What is also needed is large-scale removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Any delay in emission reductions increases our reliance on future carbon removal. Yet, carbon removal does not come without trade-offs.

Some strategies to remove carbon are very land intensive. Examples include planting trees, or growing crops that can be used as alternative sources for energy production. This would have to be done at massive scale – across millions of square kilometres of land. In turn, this could have serious biodiversity implications if not carefully managed.

In a recent study, our team of climate scientists set out to better understand the dynamics between future climate action and the protection of biodiversity. Our aim was to identify potential conflicts – but also synergies – between carbon removal and biodiversity conservation goals.

We analysed widely used decarbonisation scenarios. Scientists use these to figure out how our energy, economy and land use patterns should change to achieve ambitious climate targets. We wanted to gain deeper insights into how much – and where – land is allocated for carbon removal strategies in such scenarios, and how that might affect biodiversity conservation.

We combined scenario-based global maps of future land use for carbon removal (like planting trees or energy crops) with biodiversity maps and assessed the extent to which these overlap.

We found that, in many places of overlap, carbon removal strategies may conflict with biodiversity conservation. For example, in pristine ecosystems such as savannas and grasslands, which do not normally have much forest cover, planting trees and energy crops can harm habitats.

But our study also showed how careful choices about locating land-intensive carbon removal strategies may avoid negative impacts. There could even be benefits for biodiversity.

Our findings could inform plans for how to achieve ambitious climate action as well as biodiversity conservation.

Important biodiversity areas

The world has been losing biodiversity at a rate of 2%-6% per decade over the last 30-50 years. Intense resource extraction, climate change, environmental pollution and invasive species are some of the drivers. Biodiversity is critical for pollinating food crops and regulating water and nutrient cycles.

To address this crisis, the 2022 landmark biodiversity conservation agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, set out a target to

bring the loss of areas of high biodiversity importance … close to zero by 2030.

But the framework does not clearly define areas of high biodiversity importance. In our study, we set a focus on so-called climate refugia, which are critical areas for biodiversity. These climate refugia areas were defined by a team of biodiversity experts as part of the Wallace Initiative. Specifically, climate refugia are areas where climate change occurs relatively slowly. In these locations, animal, plant and fungal species are protected from harm – at least to some degree.

We also looked at biodiversity hotspots. These are areas that have very high levels of different and rare species. Both climate refugia and biodiversity hotspots require special policy attention to avoid human disturbances and to curb global biodiversity loss.

Carbon removal in biodiversity areas

Our analysis took in various scenarios, ranging from current policy plans to highly ambitious ways to limit long-term global warming to 1.5°C. It showed that land-intensive carbon removal strategies would take place in up to 13% of global climate refugia areas. The overlap between carbon removal and biodiversity areas is not a problem in every case, but we identified several areas where it would likely be harmful for ecosystems.

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Read more: Zimbabwe’s forest and energy projects reveal the downside of carbon credits

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One example is western Africa. Here, several of the scenarios show overlap between important biodiversity areas and future production of energy crops – crops grown to produce energy and capture carbon, such as miscanthus or switchgrass.

The Global Biodiversity Framework aims to prevent harmful changes in land use (for example, changes from a biodiverse natural area to a single-crop area). But this restriction could make it more difficult to allocate enough land for carbon removal to meet ambitious climate targets.

Our study shows that if this target is strictly enforced, more than 50% of the land set aside for carbon removal in the assessed scenarios would become unavailable. Other land would have to be used instead, potentially abandoned cropland. Or less land-intensive strategies to remove carbon would be needed.

Towards biodiversity-sensitive planning

Careful planning and site selection for carbon removal are key. Our study shows several biodiversity areas in which carbon removal strategies may bring ecosystem benefits.

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Read more: Mozambique forest stores huge amounts of carbon: laser technique puts new value on miombo woodlands

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For example, forest restoration (to remove carbon) in degraded areas could create green corridors, reconnecting fragmented habitats. That would be good for biodiversity. Carbon removal strategies may also reduce the warming-related loss of biodiversity areas. That would help preserve important habitats.

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Read more: DRC’s plan for the world’s largest tropical forest reserve would be good for the planet: can it succeed?

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But carbon removal interventions must be carefully tailored to the local context.

Ultimately, rapid and deep emission reductions are our best chance to limit global warming, reduce the need for carbon removal and lower the related risks to biodiversity.

– Planting trees to remove carbon can harm the environment – or protect it: study highlights trade-offs
– https://theconversation.com/planting-trees-to-remove-carbon-can-harm-the-environment-or-protect-it-study-highlights-trade-offs-276335

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Frederick Kibon Changwony, Lecturer in Accounting & Finance, University of Stirling

Kenya devolved power and public spending to 47 counties in 2013. This was in line with a global trend in which governments were pushing power and resources down to local levels in the hope that decisions made closer to people would lead to better outcomes.

The logic was straightforward: local governments should be better placed to understand and respond to local needs.

Kenya’s version of this – set out in its 2010 constitution and implemented three years later – was particularly ambitious. It guaranteed counties a share of national revenue and directed extra funds to 14 historically marginalised counties through an equity-based formula and an “equalisation fund”.

Before devolution, the differences between marginalised counties and the 33 others were large. For example, households in marginalised counties spent about half as much as those in the rest of the country – Sh3,250 (US$25) vs Sh6,149 (US$47) before the reform – on total consumption. This made addressing regional inequality a priority.

The constitution’s aim was to bring basic services, such as water, roads, electricity and healthcare, closer to national standards in areas that had long lagged behind.

Kenya counties classified by marginalisation

So did the extra county shillings change everyday life? Did households actually become better off?

I study public finance, regional inequality and behavioural finance, with a focus on how fiscal reforms and behaviour shape household financial decisions and everyday welfare. To answer these questions, I analysed four waves of Kenya’s nationally representative FinAccess Household Survey. This covered the period before the constitutional changes (2009, 2013) and after devolution (2015, 2018).

I compared trends in the 14 marginalised counties with those in the other 33 counties. I used a “before‑after, here‑there” method that evaluates how outcomes change over time between two groups. This approach helped isolate the effects of devolution from other changes happening in the economy.

The overall picture suggests that households in marginalised regions are now better off. Total household consumption more than doubled after devolution, rising from Sh3,250 (US$25) before 2013 to Sh7,549 (US$58) afterwards. By contrast, other counties saw a much smaller increase – from Sh6,149 (US$47) to Sh8,526 (US$66).

Spending on education increased by roughly 37%, and medical spending by about 43%. Rent went up by around 39%, while spending on utilities – such as electricity, water and cooking fuel – rose by about 29%. Even everyday expenses like mobile airtime increased by around 16%.

In effect, households in marginalised regions went from spending just over half of what better-off counties spent before 2013 to almost catching up afterwards. This before-and-after shift shows how much ground marginalised counties gained once devolution took effect.

However, the gains were not evenly distributed. Poorer households saw the biggest proportional increases in overall consumption. Better-off households, meanwhile, increased spending largely on education and healthcare.

Nevertheless, the changes shown in my research point to a meaningful improvement in households’ living standards over a relatively short period.

This shows Kenya’s devolution did not just move money between levels of government. It changed what households can afford, ranging from school fees to healthcare, housing, utilities and everyday connectivity.

The devolution debate and spending power

Public debate about devolution in Kenya often focuses on who gets what: whether funds are shared fairly, whether counties misuse money, or whether bigger budgets lead to better services.

These are important questions. But they tend to focus on inputs (how much money is allocated) or visible outputs (such as new roads or clinics).

For households, progress shows up in something more immediate: spending power. Can families put food on the table? Pay school fees? Afford medicine? Stay connected?

By looking at what households actually spent, my research showed that Kenya’s equity-focused devolution did more than shift budget lines. It translated into tangible improvements in everyday life in places that had long been left behind.

The results were clear. Households in marginalised counties saw large and broad-based increases in spending compared with households in the 33 other counties.

Total household consumption rose by about 43% in marginalised counties. Education spending in marginalised counties rose sharply, too, from Sh1,140 (US$9) before the reform to Sh4,017 (US$31) afterwards. Medical spending increased from Sh459 (US$4)to Sh1,094 (US$8).

Two main factors explain most of the increases in spending.

First, marginalised counties spent much more on services after 2013. On average, they spent roughly twice as much per person on county operations and development projects. This reflects both the higher transfers they received and the speed with which they converted funds into actual services.

Second, household incomes rose partly because devolution created local jobs and business opportunities through public contracts.

There were, however, important nuances.

Rising spending on utilities, for example, can reflect both progress and pressure. New connections to electricity and water improve quality of life, but they also bring monthly bills.

Kenya’s institutional design likely helped too.

Rules-based transfers (meaning money allocated according to a fixed, transparent formula rather than political negotiations) and the Equalisation Fund (a dedicated pot of money for areas with the greatest service gaps) reduced political discretion in how money was allocated. This resulted in more predictable funding for counties, less room for interference, and a clearer link between need and resources.

In addition, Kenya’s strong mobile money system made it easier for households to respond to new opportunities. People could move money quickly and safely, even in remote areas – allowing them to handle shocks, invest and take advantage of local economic activity generated by county spending. Evidence shows that mobile money transfer service M-Pesa, launched in 2007, has helped lift people out of poverty over time.

What should happen next?

The challenge now is to make those gains last.

First, the equity-based approach to sharing revenue should be protected and regularly updated. Allocation rules need to reflect current data so that funds continue to target real gaps.

The Equalisation Fund is due to expire in 2033. Unless it’s renewed, policymakers face a critical decision about whether, and how, to sustain support for historically marginalised areas.

Second, a small share of transfers could be linked to performance. Counties should be rewarded if they improve revenue collection without overburdening residents, publish timely financial reports, and strengthen transparency in procurement.

This would encourage better financial management while keeping equity at the centre.

Third, policymakers should pay attention to the cost of new services. As more households connect to electricity and water, temporary support, such as lifeline tariffs or targeted subsidies, can help ensure that poorer families are not priced out.

Finally, investment in county capacity and better data is essential. Strong local institutions are needed to plan, deliver and maintain services. Add to this a survey that follows the same households over time, like South Africa’s National Income Dynamics Study or the Indonesia Family Life Survey, so Kenya can track mobility and long‑run reform effects directly.

For other African countries considering decentralisation, Kenya’s experience suggests that design matters.

Predictable transfers, equity-focused allocation and local capacity can turn fiscal reforms into real gains in household welfare.

– Kenya’s counties get budgets to undo inequality – how it’s helped households
– https://theconversation.com/kenyas-counties-get-budgets-to-undo-inequality-how-its-helped-households-279369

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo, Professor of Anthropology, Rice University

Imagine a creature nearly twice the size of a modern African elephant (which can weigh up to 6,000kg. This was Elephas (Paleoxodon) recki, a prehistoric titan that roamed the landscape of what is now Tanzania nearly two million years ago. Now, imagine a group of our ancestors standing over its carcass, then butchering it and eating it.

For decades, archaeologists have debated when the hominin ancestors of humans first started eating megafauna – animals weighing more than 1,000kg.

In a new study, our team of archaeologists studying the evolution of the earliest humans in Africa has identified one of the earliest cases of elephant butchery.

This was at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, a site famous for containing some of the oldest and best preserved remains of our human ancestors. Dating back to 1.80 million years ago, this discovery at the site known as EAK reveals that our ancestors were engaging with megafauna substantially earlier than previously thought (about 1.5 million years ago was the previous estimate at Olduvai), and in a more sophisticated way.

This finding suggests that hominins (most likely, Homo erectus) may have been living in large social groups at this period, probably because their brains were developing and demanding higher-calorie diets rich in fatty acids.

‘Smoking guns’

Part of the reason our ancient diet has been debated is that it is not easy to find evidence of how much animal food early humans were eating and how they were acquiring it.

In traditional archaeology, the “smoking gun” for butchery (cutting up carcasses) is a cut mark left on a bone by a stone tool. However, when dealing with big animals like elephants, these marks are difficult to find. An elephant’s skin is several centimetres thick, and its muscle mass is so vast that a butcher’s tool might never touch the bone. Furthermore, millions of years of burial can weather the bone surface, erasing any subtle traces. And if a bone is deposited in an abrasive sediment, trampling by other animals may generate marks on bones that look like cut marks.

At the EAK site, we found the partial skeleton of a single Elephas recki individual in the same place as Oldowan stone tools. But to prove that this wasn’t just a natural death or the work of scavengers, we couldn’t rely on bone marks. Instead, we turned to a new kind of detective work: spatial taphonomy. This is the study of how stone artefacts and bones occur spatially on the same site. We also turned to more direct evidence: bones from those fossilised elephants that had been splintered while they were fresh (“green breaks”).

The geometry of a carcass

To solve this 1.8-million-year-old mystery, we analysed the way the bones were scattered across the site. Every agent that interacts with a carcass – whether it’s a pride of lions, a group of hyenas, or a band of humans – leaves a unique “spatial fingerprint”. Lions and hyenas tend to drag bones away, scattering them in predictable patterns based on their weight and the amount of attached meat. Natural deaths, like an elephant dying in a swamp, result in a different, more localised skeletal “collapse”.

By using advanced spatial statistics, and later comparing the EAK site to several modern elephant carcasses that we studied in Botswana (not yet published), we found that the spatial configuration at EAK was unique. The clustering of the bones and the density of the stone tools among them did not match the “random” or “scavenger-driven” models. Instead, it reflected a focused, high-intensity processing event. The spatial signature was a match for hominin butchery, which has also been documented at Olduvai sites that are half a million years younger.

This was confirmed by the presence of green-broken long bones not just at EAK, but in several locations in the landscape where other elephant and hippopotamus carcasses were butchered. Today, only humans can break elephant long bone shafts; not even spotted hyenas, which have very powerful jaws, can do it.

Glimpses of this behaviour can be detected at other sites too. For example, a cut-marked bone fragment of a large animal (probably a hippopotamus) was documented at El-Kherba (Algeria) dated to 1.78 million years ago.

This intensive and repeated discovery of multiple elephant and hippopotamus carcasses butchered at different landscape locations indicates that humans were butchering the remains of large animals, whether hunted or scavenged.

Why does an elephant meal matter?

This discovery isn’t just about a prehistoric menu; it’s about the evolution of the human brain and social structure. There is a long-standing theory in paleoanthropology called the “expensive tissue hypothesis”. It suggests that as our ancestors’ brains grew larger, they required a massive increase in high-quality calories, specifically fat and protein. Large mammals like elephants are essentially giant “packages” of these calories. Processing even a single elephant provides a caloric windfall that could sustain a group for weeks.

Butchering an elephant is a monumental task, however. It requires sharp stone tools and, most importantly, social cooperation. Our ancestors had to work together to defend the carcass from predators like sabre-toothed cats and giant hyenas, while others worked to extract the meat and marrow.

This suggests that even 1.8 million years ago, our ancestors already possessed a level of social organisation and environmental awareness that was truly “human”.

The discovery also has another dimension. Humans at that time, like modern carnivores, consumed animals whose size was related to their own group size. Small prides of lions eat wildebeests; larger prides eat buffalo and in some places even juvenile elephants. The evidence that those early humans were exploiting large animals comes in parallel with evidence that they were living in much larger sites than before, probably reflecting bigger group sizes.

Why early humans started living in large groups at that time remains to be explained, but this indicates that they certainly needed more food.

A shift in the ecosystem

The EAK site also tells us about the environment. By analysing the tiny fossils of plants and microscopic animals found in the same soil layers, we reconstructed a landscape that was transitioning from a lush, wooded lake margin to a more open, grassy savanna. Our ancestors were already eating smaller game. There is evidence that two million years ago, they were hunting small and medium-sized animals (like gazelles and waterbucks). A little earlier, they began using technology (stone tools) to bypass their biological limitations.

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Read more: Large mammals shaped the evolution of humans: here’s why it happened in Africa

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The evidence from Olduvai Gorge shows that our ancestors were remarkably adaptable, capable of thriving in changing climates by developing new behaviours.

As we look at the spatial layout of these ancient remains, we aren’t just looking at the bones of an extinct elephant. We are looking at the traces of a pivotal moment in our own history – when a small group of hominins looked at a giant and saw not just a threat, but a key to their survival.

– How to eat an elephant: fossil find in Tanzania shows oldest signs of butchering these giant mammals
– https://theconversation.com/how-to-eat-an-elephant-fossil-find-in-tanzania-shows-oldest-signs-of-butchering-these-giant-mammals-276907

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Olivier Moreillon, Research Associate, University of Johannesburg

There’s a line in Cape Fever, the new book by award-winning South African novelist and playwright Nadia Davids, that doesn’t just establish the story, it also makes a haunting promise:

But small house, big house, smells or no smells, this is much the same: that in the city you will come to know a person by two things: what’s inside their house, and the house’s way with the wind.

The remark gestures towards the invisible forces moving through both houses and history. Just as a building’s “way with the wind” reveals how it stands in relation to its surroundings, Davids suggests that a household’s inner life exposes the moral currents shaping an entire society.

What lies inside Mrs Hattingh’s decaying colonial manor thus becomes a measure not only of its inhabitants’ inner lives, but also of an entire colonial society teetering on the brink of moral and historical reckoning.

Set in an unnamed harbour city in the early 1920s, clearly reminiscent of Cape Town, the novel follows Soraya Matas, a young Muslim woman who becomes a live-in maid for the financially struggling widow Mrs Hattingh. Mrs Hattingh’s household exists in a state of uneasy anticipation. Her son Timothy, a soldier who survived the first world war, is expected home from England, yet his return is repeatedly delayed.

Assumed to be uneducated, Soraya quietly conceals her literacy. When Mrs Hattingh offers to write weekly letters to Soraya’s absent fiancé, Nour, on her behalf, what begins as an act of benevolence unfolds into a strange ritual that binds the two women ever more tightly.

As a scholar of South African literature, I am interested in how fiction revisits the country’s layered pasts and the intimate spaces in which power unfolds. Davids’s work has occupied a distinctive place within this landscape, combining historical sensitivity with psychological insight. Cape Fever offers a tense and atmospheric story that gradually reveals itself as a probing meditation on voice, authority, and memory.

The power of the pen

Although Soraya dictates what she wants to say in the letters, Mrs Hattingh shapes the words on the page. She does not always record Soraya’s words faithfully. Sometimes she embellishes them, sometimes she alters their tone, and sometimes she quietly inserts her own interpretations. What appears to be an act of help becomes a quiet act of power.

As Mrs Hattingh’s words travel outward to Nour in the letters she writes for Soraya, the domestic space mirrors the wider colonial order, where white employers exercised intimate authority over the lives of the people who served them. Relationships were often framed as paternal kindness or protection, yet they were sustained by profound inequalities.

Davids captures this uneasy mixture of intimacy and hierarchy with striking precision. Assumed kindness masks control, hierarchy seeps into intimacy, and the power to tell a story becomes the power to define reality.

It is here that Davids’s portrayal of Mrs Hattingh reveals itself as one of the novel’s great strengths, resisting caricature and allowing complexity to unsettle easy moral certainties. The widow could easily have remained a brittle emblem of colonial entitlement. Instead, she is rendered with psychological nuance.

She is controlling and condescending, yes, but also fragile, lonely, and quietly desperate. Against expectation, and however unlikely it may seem at first, Mrs Hattingh grows on the reader. Her vulnerability surfaces in fleeting gestures, and her dependence on the ritual of writing exposes her own need to be heard.

Haunted by history

Cape Fever, however, is far more than a chamber drama. Mrs Hattingh’s manor is haunted by presences only Soraya senses. These spirits hover in corridors and cling to cracked plaster, whispering of historical memory and unresolved grief. The decaying house stands as a gothic embodiment of colonial decline saturated with what has been silenced.

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Read more: Caine Prize for African Writing: Nadia Davids on her winning story about women and freedom

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Mrs Hattingh’s son Timothy hovers over the story as another kind of ghostly figure. His anticipated arrival turns the manor into a place of suspended time. The promised homecoming deepens the novel’s atmosphere of unease, and Timothy becomes a living reminder of war’s distant violence and its lingering aftermath, his absence intensifying both Mrs Hattingh’s solitude and the fragile balance of the household.

Davids uses psychological suspense to expose the emotional afterlives of empire and the war. The unseen shapes the living, and ancestral echoes unsettle the present. The house’s “way with the wind” becomes a metaphor for the forces that move through history.

Shifting shadows

The novel’s tension arises from the shifting balance of power between two women who seem fundamentally unlike yet become inextricably bound to one another. Their relationship is marked by subtle renegotiations of authority, moments of advance and retreat, dominance and vulnerability.

At one point Soraya declares:

I see the marvel now, that we, who have been ripped to pieces so many times over, who have known such darkness, can still spin and sew lives of such brightness, make music that fills the streets, sing prayers that ring out over the entire city; that we find ways to say over and over, We are here! We are here!

Davids’s language is suffused with a lyricism that lends the novel sustained grace, imbuing each scene with subtle beauty. Her prose shimmers with layered meaning, giving even the most mundane gestures an undercurrent of tension.

Suspense-packed yet intellectually incisive, Cape Fever is far more than a domestic affair. It is a meditation on voice, power, and memory. It is a gothic-inflected exploration of empire’s intimate spaces. It is a novel whose echoes will travel far beyond the Cape.

– Cape Fever: a haunting new novel from award-winning South African writer Nadia Davids
– https://theconversation.com/cape-fever-a-haunting-new-novel-from-award-winning-south-african-writer-nadia-davids-277685

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Admire Thonje, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Johannesburg

A growing brand of new Pentecostal churches in southern Africa is known to emphasise the prosperity gospel, deliverance, miracles and healing.

Miracles, including people apparently rising from the dead, are just one of the contentious issues swirling around these churches. Pastors have been the subject of sensational media headlines for spraying congregants with insecticide or making them eat grass, selfies taken in heaven, or claims of fraud and rape.

In response to these kinds of abuses, the South African government even established an independent cultural commission which created a special committee “to deal with issues in the religious sector”.

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Read more: Christianity is changing in South Africa as pentecostal and indigenous churches grow – what’s behind the trend

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The concerns of government regulators are easy to understand, given Pentecostalism’s status as a rapidly growing arm of Christianity all around the world, including South Africa and other parts of the African continent.

But such spectacular events are less important in my research than finding out how most of these churches really work in everyday life. The complex reality of lived experience is far harder to regulate than the spectacular event.

Since 2019, my ongoing research has focused on a Zimbabwe-founded church whose growth followed migrants to South Africa, starting off in inner-city Johannesburg.

One of my key interests is to understand how church members navigate everyday Pentecostalism. To explore this, I use the social science idea of affect and emotion, which can be found in both regular church performance and during moments of spectacle.

I define affect as the raw physical buzz or charge felt during powerful church moments – before you even know what to call it. Emotion is when that feeling gets a name, like joy or sorrow, shaped by what culture and community have taught one to feel in those moments.

It is clear from my fieldwork that miracles and bizarre acts are not in the regular repertoires of the churches I studied. Instead, religious lives form around care, around forging friendships, relations, emotional support systems and events which bring members together, even as daily tensions arise within the church. Much religious activity happens in ordinary, everyday conduct that consists of simple activities, performances, rites and rituals.

These kind of environments are what scholars have called “affective economies”, where emotions like hope and security help a community to manage a precarious world.

This gives us a deeper understanding of the reasons behind the rise of new Pentecostalism, often missed when media or governments focus on the spectacle alone.

Everyday Pentecostalism

On almost any given Sunday in the churches I study, one sees grimaces on people’s faces; swaying of bodies during song; mumbling of words along with great physical gestures with hands and arms; tears flowing down faces. This is not because the members are sorrowful or in pain. Rather, it is the normal course of performing religion within Pentecostal settings.

After church on Sundays, prayer meetings on Tuesdays, in home groups on Wednesdays, prayer meetings on Fridays and at social events or preaching on the streets on Saturdays, members catch up on one another’s lives.

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Read more: Kenya’s wailing warriors: how women in Pentecostal churches claim their power

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Prayer and teaching are part of the social mix. I have attended church soccer matches that start in prayer, are followed by a braai (barbecue) and end with biblical teachings.

Everyday churching is characterised by joy, compassion, sincerity, collegiality and care. This is particularly evident in the church groups that many join. As one member told me:

I’m in the music team so I go to practice every Saturday. That is when I socialise with church people. There are church people who become like friends as well as like very close friends … we visit each other, hang out, share life experiences, and so forth.

It is these feelings of connection that enable members to persist with their faiths. Such connections amount to what is called “affective solidarity” – a bond, or alliance that’s built on shared emotions. Congregants experience it differently, but it is how care is established in the church and even spread outside the church.

It also affects love. It’s not uncommon for church members, who spend so much time together, to fall in love and get married. In my study I explore how, within affective solidarity, love and marriage is negotiated in the church. It is one of the areas of church life that can also create discord.

Tensions

Relations in the church can, of course, be exploited by church leaders, who have more spiritual authority than ordinary members. Spiritual authority allows religious leaders to lay claim over abilities that unlock a better life – like access to economic and social capital. These are signs of upward mobility and, perhaps more importantly, divine blessing.

To tap into these networks, members will need to show respect, loyalty and submission to a pastor’s authority. Loyal members seek guidance from pastors on life decisions like whether to relocate for work or whether a potential partner is suitable to marry.

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Read more: God and Nollywood: how Pentecostal churches have shaped Nigerian film

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But relations among ordinary members are less scripted. Disagreements are common. Some are affronted when leaders advise against their choice for marriage. Others are uneasy about finding love in a church where undesired suitors are the only ones available, yet pastors strongly encourage courtship and marriage within the church.

When bad conduct happens, like actual or rumoured financial wrongdoing by church leaders, some members leave while others will disagree and stay in the church and continue paying money to it. Tensions arise and wane in the ordinary course of churching.

It is in the ordinary where simple ideas and rationalisations like loyalty and submission become normalised. Unfortunately, it is also where opportunities for abuse exist, as many church leaders are aware.

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Read more: Prophets and profits: the art of the sell in Shepherd Bushiri’s YouTube sermons

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These, I found, are the issues that characterise the Pentecostal churches I have studied. The big spectacle and the dubious miracle are few and far between.

Regulation

Real accountability for new Pentecostalism’s abuses requires understanding how these churches actually work. It also involves churches taking heed of the everyday dynamics which open opportunities for exploitation.

Until regulators and churches engage in dialogue, regulations will miss their mark, and churches will resist oversight that seems disconnected from their reality.

– Pentecostal churches are a place of everyday care, not just bizarre spectacle: southern African study
– https://theconversation.com/pentecostal-churches-are-a-place-of-everyday-care-not-just-bizarre-spectacle-southern-african-study-278564

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By David B. Moore, Research Associate, Dept of Anthropology & Development Studies and Fellow, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, University of Johannesburg

Zimbabwe’s ruling party, Zanu-PF, wants to amend the constitution through a bill in parliament. It won’t be that simple, however. Under the constitution, voters must approve such changes through a referendum.

The new bill’s most significant proposals include extending presidential and parliamentary terms by two years. This would allow Zimbabwe’s 83-year-old president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, to remain in power until 2030, ending the hopes of vice-president Constantino Chiwenga reaching the presidency in 2028. Chiwenga, as the head of the armed forces, was the main organiser of the 2017 coup that brought the exiled Mnangagwa to power.

The proposals could also pave the way for further changes that help Zanu-PF realise its long-cherished dream of permanent rule. The amendment proposes ending direct presidential elections. Instead, the president would be chosen by members of parliament. Given that Zanu-PF can, and has, co-opted enough MPs to dominate parliament, this would consolidate executive power within the ruling party.

Other proposed changes include expanding the senate to 90 members and returning the electoral commission to a largely discredited registrar-general who has been accused of bias. The bill also creates a Delimitation Commission that would allow the ruling party to shift constituency boundaries.

I have researched and written on Zimbabwe’s political history and political economy since the early 1980s. In my view, these changes risk weakening already fragile democratic protections in Zimbabwe.

Extending term limits entrenches incumbency. Long-serving president Robert Mugabe established de-facto one-party rule – always contested, but maintained consistently by carefully calibrated doses of coercion, cheating and crafted consensus – in 1987 as he became executive president. This followed the genocidal Gukurahundi massacre of the 1980s when thousands of people were killed as Zimbabwe’s main opposition party was crushed.

The military forced Mugabe to resign in 2017 under “Operation Restore Legacy”. Mugabe was at the time 93. The coup was later legitimised by being given the “military-assisted transition” label.

Zanu-PF veteran Mnangagwa, who had been Mugabe’s recently fired deputy, and since 1978 his key security advisor, took on his mantle. This transition was violently consummated with a contested election in 2018 and vicious quelling of the January 2019 “stay-away” protests calling on the state to improve citizen livelihoods.

These latest proposed amendments – dubbed Agenda 2030 – point to a system where political competition is narrowed and power is more tightly controlled by the ruling party and its leaders.

What it means for Zimbabwe

Removing direct presidential elections reduces voter choice. The weakening of independent institutions – including electoral and judicial bodies – further reduces accountability.

The constitutional amendment proposes that the presidential vote take place in parliament by party-based MPs, who would likely elect one of their own.

However, the generally unpopular ruling party fears going through the necessary referendum to pass such changes. Additionally, 90 days of public consultation on constitutional amendments are needed. The Zanu-PF state has already compressed these to four days at about 65 locations, allowing about an hour each for discussion.

The first meetings were stacked with busloads of Zanu-PF supporters. And as happens during the party’s rallies, there were gifts of bikes and food as the carrots, and intimidation and threats as the sticks. Besides this mix, session chairs ignored opposition efforts to voice their opinions.

By the end of the second day of these meetings, the coalition of the three “defend the constitution” movements opposing Zanu-PF’s proposals boycotted the hearings.

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Read more: Zimbabwe’s president was security minister when genocidal rape was state policy in 1983-4. Now he seeks another term

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No matter: Zanu-PF will either choose to push a referendum forward (with low participation) or pursue more repressive and/or judicially engineered means to secure the amendments.

What it means for Zanu-PF

The proposed constitutional amendments also have major implications within Zanu-PF itself, particularly for Chiwenga. They would effectively end his chances of becoming president in 2028.

In 2008, highly contested presidential election results forced Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to a run-off. As is widely acknowledged, Mnangagwa and Chiwenga – then leading Zimbabwe’s Joint Operations Command – agreed to let Mugabe stay on. They would strike at a more opportune time: Mnangagwa would then lead first, and Chiwenga would take power in the next term.

The severe violence during the run-off led to a transitional inclusive government. This eventually led to the development of the 2013 constitution, which introduced a two-term limit for the presidency.

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Read more: Zimbabwe elections 2023: a textbook case of how the ruling party has clung to power for 43 years

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At a Zanu-PF congress soon after the 2018 election, Mnangagwa announced he’d vie again in 2023.

Now, the proposed extension to 2030 effectively blocks Chiwenga’s path to the presidency. At the very least, those two years would allow Mnangagwa to consolidate his – and his family’s – power. Zanu-PF’s ever present factional tensions will be exacerbated.

As my book Mugabe’s Legacy: Coups, Conspiracies, and the Conceits of Power in Zimbabwe argues, Zanu-PF’s past and present – before, during and after the liberation war – are replete with factional fighting as those near its top seek to entrench one-party rule with its control over the country’s wealth.

What it means for opposition politics

Zimbabwe’s opposition remains fragmented and weakened. The once-powerful Movement for Democratic Change splintered and its closest successor succumbed to Zanu-PF, partly induced by its leader’s megalomania.

After the boycott of the hearings, how will the proposed constitutional amendments be stopped? Resistance to the proposals had created an opportunity for greater opposition unity.

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Read more: Zimbabwe’s rulers won’t tolerate opposing voices – but its writers refuse to be silenced

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Events such as the October 2025 firebombing of a civil society meeting meant to discuss the amendments foretold the current intimidation.

Will the changes sail through?

Success on the constitutional amendments is not guaranteed. Internal factional tensions, particularly around succession, could complicate the process. Chiwenga is far from the only challenger in Mnangagwa’s sight.

If (when?) the shambolic – yet brutal – ruling party manages to move to a post-Agenda 2030 phase, it may well crash under the weight of its own contradictions. And with it all of Zimbabwe goes.

– Zimbabwe’s push to extend the president’s rule could deepen elite divisions and weaken democracy
– https://theconversation.com/zimbabwes-push-to-extend-the-presidents-rule-could-deepen-elite-divisions-and-weaken-democracy-279792

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

By Easter 2026 it was still not clear when – or how – the war initiated by Israel and the US against Iran would end. But what was already clear was that it would harm Africa in a number of ways.

Firstly, it would adversely affect the global supply and prices of oil and gas, fertilisers and food. Secondly, local currencies would be affected. More than a month after the war had started a number of African currencies had begun to lose value against the US dollar.

Thirdly, interest rates stopped falling and further rate increases were highly likely. Fourth, there will be a decline in access to affordable foreign financing.

How should Africa respond?

African countries cannot avoid being harmed by the current Gulf war. Nevertheless, based on my work in international economic law and global economic governance, I think there are two lessons that, if followed, can help the continent emerge from the crisis in a better place.

First, governments and societies need to be pragmatic. Their first priority must be to do whatever they can to mitigate the impact of the war, particularly on their most vulnerable citizens. This will require governments to make trade-offs.

They will have to reallocate budgets to at least maintain the level of imports necessary to meet the society’s basic needs. They will need to convince their creditors to help finance their necessary imports. They will also need to persuade them to be flexible enough that they leave governments with at least some policy space.

Second, states and societies need to identify opportunities within the crisis for actions that over the medium term can help them meet their financing, economic, environmental and social challenges. This requires collaboration between the state and its non-state stakeholders. Business, labour, religious groups, civil society organisations and international organisations all have something to contribute.

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Read more: Oil price surge is hurting African economies: scholars in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa take stock

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Action in the short run

The focus of Africa’s efforts in the short term must be on minimising the negative effects of the war and on managing the state’s external debts in the most sustainable and effective way.

This is easy to state, but hard to implement. This is particularly the case in the current international environment, in which it is not realistic to expect donor countries and other international sources of finance to be particularly generous.

African countries will need to convince their creditors to acknowledge that this crisis is beyond Africa’s control and that they should not compound the pain that’s being experienced. This will require, at a minimum, that the creditors agree to suspend debt payments for the next year.

Creditors have already accepted the principle that debt payments can be suspended when debt challenges arise from sources beyond the debtor’s control. Many of them have accepted clauses requiring such action under specific conditions in their most recent debt contracts. They also did this during COVID.

Second, African countries, which are already heavily indebted, should challenge their multilateral creditors to accept the consequences of being among the biggest creditors for the continent. This includes the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank. By custom these institutions are treated as preferred creditors. This means that they get paid before all other creditors. Instead of participating in any debt restructurings, they also make new loans to the debtor in crisis. This shifts the debt restructuring burden onto the debtor’s other creditors. It also increases the total amount owed to the multilaterals.

This cannot continue. These institutions need to be more creative in providing Africa to financing. This should include:

Third, governments should work with the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions to use these institutions more effectively to finance African development. For example:

• They should require the institutions to only undertake transactions that are consistent with their development mandates. This means no more opaque transactions like the recent one that the African Finance Corporation concluded with Senegal.

• African governments should take the necessary action to activate the African Financial Stability Mechanism that they agreed to establish last year. This would create a useful financial safety net for the continent.

Fourth, African governments must build on the efforts they began last year to become a more effective advocate for African development financing interests at the international level. Among these efforts was the initiative by African ministers of finance to develop common African positions on sovereign debt restructurings. Another was South Africa’s launch of the African Expert Panel that proposed a number of initiatives on African debt and development financing.

In the medium term

African countries should advocate for the IMF to review its governance arrangements so that it becomes more accountable and responsive to developing countries, including African states and societies.

They should also advocate for the IMF to more use its existing resources, including its gold reserves, more creatively to support Africa.

Second, Africa should call for a debate on the preferred creditor status of multilateral financial institutions. This has become particularly relevant because the members of the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions are claiming that, like all other multilateral financial institutions, they are entitled to this status.

It is not clear that there are good arguments for excluding these institutions from preferred creditor status while protecting the position of the legacy institutions. This suggests that there is a need for some general principles that help determine which institutions should be treated as preferred creditors. These should be acceptable to all multilateral financial institutions and other market participants.

Third, African societies must make every effort to demonstrate that they are taking control of their own development. They should demand that their governments and all other actors in African development finance behave responsibly in regard to the financial, economic, environmental and social aspects of these transactions.

Another medium term objective should be to limit the illicit financial flows that are so often associated with international trade and investment. This goal would be advanced by the successful conclusion of the current efforts to agree on a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation.

– Iran war: what African countries can do to get through the crisis and emerge in a better place
– https://theconversation.com/iran-war-what-african-countries-can-do-to-get-through-the-crisis-and-emerge-in-a-better-place-279689