MIL Africa Engine

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By David Richard Walwyn, Professor of Technology Management, University of Pretoria

South Africa has committed to reaching phasing out human-caused carbon pollution by 2050. To get there, it needs to push as much renewable energy as possible into the national grid.

The country is the world’s 15th largest carbon polluter. It’s one of only a handful of countries still heavily dependent on burning coal to generate electricity. The country’s transport system is totally reliant on crude oil and its derivatives.

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Read more: What’s stopping sunny South Africa’s solar industry? Court case sheds light on the wider problem

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One of the keys to the transition to net zero is decarbonising household energy consumption. This means finding ways for homes to reduce the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. At the moment, household energy use contributes up to 40% of total emissions.

I am an engineer and technology management specialist who recently researched how South Africa could use excess clean power from rooftop solar systems on homes if it was fed into the grid. I also studied how battery electric vehicles could be used to store solar energy at home, and feed this into the grid too.

The following analogy explains the idea: think of South Africa’s current solar energy potential like a leaking rainwater tank. It has plenty of “rain” (sunlight). But because it lacks the “pipes” (bidirectional meters) and “extra buckets” (electric vehicle batteries), half of that “water” (clean energy) spills onto the ground unused.

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Read more: How South Africa can spread renewable energy to low income areas

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Instead, a system could be built that captures every drop of sunlight. This solar energy could be shared between the house, the car, and the neighbours to ensure the whole community has enough. Commercial projects based on this approach are already operational in China, Japan and Germany.

The biggest obstacle to this idea in South Africa is that both small-scale solar and electric vehicles are too expensive for most households, as we showed in two recently published studies on solar electricity for homes and electric vehicles.

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Read more: Electric vehicles in South Africa: how to avoid making them the privilege of the few

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Fortunately, there is a solution: the aggressive use of two technologies. The first would be giving every home with solar power a bidirectional (two-way) meter. This is a meter that allows homeowners to sell their excess solar power back to the grid. The second would be giving electric vehicle owners a vehicle-to-grid device so that they could store excess solar power in their electric vehicle batteries and sell it back to the national grid.

We believe that a synchronised effort between two novel technology adoptions – infrastructure modernisation (installing bidirectional smart grids and vehicle-to-grid devices in homes) – could dramatically increase the country’s clean energy production.

Energy from small-scale embedded solar systems

Rooftop solar systems installed on residential buildings are estimated to generate about 40% more energy than the residences need. This is because most rooftop solar systems are set up to generate enough energy to power a house during winter when the demand is greatest – people run heaters and tumble driers – and sunlight is at its weakest.

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Read more: Home solar systems in South Africa: more will be installed if households are given loans, free maintenance and security

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If these homes were fitted with bidirectional meters, which are already widely available, they could sell their unused solar power back to the grid.

Municipalities could also benefit by buying the excess renewable energy generated by homes and reselling it. In Cape Town alone, the city would generate an estimated R144 million (US$8.8 million) per year from doing this, equivalent to an additional 3% in profit, if the bidirectional meters were in place. At the same time, it would be supporting a more inclusive energy transition and reducing the amount of greenhouse gas produced by burning coal to generate power.

Vehicle-to-grid devices

My research also found that home solar systems could be integrated with battery electric vehicles using vehicle-to-grid devices. These are systems that allow batteries from electric vehicles to be integrated with electrical devices in a home (fridges, geysers and heaters) and with the national grid. In other words, electric vehicle owners would use their vehicle-to-grid device to sell power to the national grid.

This would benefit the grid and the vehicle owners, but most importantly would reduce the yearly costs of running an electric vehicle (the combined cost of the electricity the vehicle needs to run, the cost of the vehicle itself and the annual operating costs).

In practice, this would need electric car owners to charge their cars between 10am and 4pm every day when solar power generation is at its peak. This would mean that the car owners could subsidise their travel costs using “free” excess solar energy.

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Read more: Electric vehicles in Africa: what’s needed to grow the sector

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This would be ideal for people who worked from home or used their vehicles for transport to and from work or school in the early morning and late afternoon. Charging stations at workplaces would also achieve this.

The vehicle battery (typically 40–100 kWh) could then be used by people to power their homes during peak night periods or sell energy back to the grid, while leaving sufficient energy in the battery for the morning travel. Again, this would offset the yearly costs of owning an electric vehicle and boost the national grid by peak shaving.

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Read more: Battery swapping stations powered by solar and wind: we show how this could work for electric vehicles in South Africa

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If homeowners managed this well, by generating enough green energy and avoiding the use of energy from the grid, home and vehicle owners should be able to pay no more than they would if they were driving internal combustion engine vehicles that run on petrol, and using electricity from the national power utility, Eskom. In other words, switching to a renewable energy option would be possible without additional cost.

What needs to happen next

Net Zero by 2050 is not an aspiration of a small group of environmental activists; it is a legal obligation under South Africa’s Climate Change Act. Despite what climate change denialists may claim, it is not a preferred option – it is the only option.

Bidirectional meters and vehicle-to-grid charging stations would help the country reach this goal.

However, the question of who pays for home bidirectional meters, their installation and having them certified has become highly contested. I argue that the state-owned electricity provider, Eskom, and the municipalities should cover the cost of both registration and metering. It shouldn’t be paid by the homeowners.

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Read more: Satellite images reveal the dark side of household solar power – South Africa’s green transition is only for a few

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This is because the benefit for electricity distributors is at least five times the cost of the meter itself. Distributors get cheap energy and sell it to other customers. The grid also benefits from having more renewable energy being fed into it.

Without technology like this, the cost of transitioning to a green energy future remains too high for individual households. But with the technology, the transition becomes economically competitive.

– Connecting home solar and electric vehicle batteries to the grid could boost South Africa’s clean energy and strengthen the electricity system
– https://theconversation.com/connecting-home-solar-and-electric-vehicle-batteries-to-the-grid-could-boost-south-africas-clean-energy-and-strengthen-the-electricity-system-274990

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ricardo Jorge Moreira Goulão Santos, Research Fellow, World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), United Nations University

When floods submerged parts of Mozambique after heavy rains in 2000, a baby girl was born in a tree, where her mother clung as the Limpopo river waters rose. The baby was nicknamed Rosita in the press. Her survival became a symbol of the country’s grit.

But her story, once a symbol of hope, now frames a harder truth.

Sadly, Rosita’s life was cut short on 12 January 2026. She reportedly died of anaemia in a provincial health centre. This condition might have been treatable in a stronger, better-resourced health system.

Her death coincided with a new wave of severe flooding. Southern Mozambique was under water again in late January 2026. Weeks of heavy rain affected more than 600,000 people. Residual flooding persists in low-lying areas because of upstream inflows and high dam discharges. Towns such as Xai-Xai and Chókwè have faced repeated inundation as the Limpopo swells.

We work for Inclusive Growth, a longstanding research and capacity development initiative in Mozambique. Our work is designed to support evidence-based policymaking to foster inclusive and sustainable economic growth in the country.

Rosita’s story mirrors what our research on Mozambique’s socio-economic development shows at scale: vulnerability persists where poverty, weak public services and deep-rooted inequalities intersect.

The same communities that experience the highest levels of multidimensional poverty, stagnant progress and widening inequalities are also the ones repeatedly exposed to shocks, with limited access to the health, education and infrastructure needed to recover. When floods strike, these disadvantages compound: incomes collapse, assets are lost. Already poor households fall even further behind, making each shock harder to escape and reinforcing long-term deprivation.

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Read more: The three big reasons why Mozambique is not adapting to climate change and what needs to be done

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As Mozambique faces more frequent and more severe disasters, cycles of vulnerability will be exacerbated. To break this vicious cycle – and prevent future stories like Rosita’s – Mozambique must invest in rapid, well targeted post-shock support, swift livelihood restoration, and sustained, equitable public investment that builds long term resilience.

The fault lines beneath the floodwaters

Research produced under the Inclusive Growth in Mozambique programme shows clearly that the geography of deprivation matters.

Our paper, Evolution of multidimensional poverty in crisis-ridden Mozambique, shows that progress in addressing multidimensional poverty stalled after 2015. Since then the absolute number of poor people has increased, especially in rural areas and in the country’s central provinces.

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Read more: Extreme weather is disrupting lives in southern Africa: new policies are needed to keep the peace

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Inequality trends tell a similar story. Real consumption rose for all groups until 2014/15. But it rose much faster for richer households. Relative gaps widened further from 2015 onwards.

There has also been an increase in between‑group, or “horizontal”, inequalities. These include:

• a widening of the wealth gaps tied to province, ethnolinguistic identity, and the urban-rural divide between 1997 and 2017

• an increasing disconnect between how cities and rural areas develop: average living conditions in urban areas have improved much faster, while, relatively, improvements have stalled in rural areas

• limited internal migration, preventing convergence.

These widening spatial and socioeconomic divides mean that floods don’t strike evenly. They fall hardest on the communities already facing the steepest disadvantages, shaping who is exposed, who loses the most, and who struggles longest to rebuild.

At the household level, Baez, Caruso and Niu (2020) show how quickly welfare collapses when flooding strikes. Cyclones, floods and droughts reduced per capita food consumption by 25%-30%. Consequently, the percentage of people in poverty increased.

Our study on Mozambique’s vulnerability to natural shocks found that affected households saw short-term consumption losses between 11% and 17%. Rural poor households were hit hardest.

This corresponded, at the time, to a 6 percentage points increase in the poverty rate, as a result of the flooding.

These findings show that once incomes fall and assets are depleted, households slip further from access to adequate health, education, or nutrition – the very gaps that contributed to Rosita’s death.

Acting on the evidence

First, protecting consumption in the aftermath of a shock is essential to prevent structural poverty traps. Once emergency support has been provided, temporary, well-targeted, timely and predictable cash support for flood-affected households must be delivered. Recent evidence uncovered that extended delays in transfer payments have materially weakened households’ resilience.

Second, livelihood recovery depends on restoring earning capacity quickly. Evidence from Cyclone Idai in 2019 in Mozambique shows that small enterprises recover more rapidly when the most affected receive immediate liquidity tied loosely to damage severity and sector.

In flood-prone districts, the same logic applies. Families dependent on informal production or trade cannot wait for long bureaucratic procedures. Their resilience depends on rapid access to the means of restoring work.

Third, building resilience before the next flood requires confronting structural inequalities. Patterns of poverty and inequality show that the areas repeatedly suffering the most damage are also those where public investment in health, education, water and local infrastructure lags behind.

Rosita’s life began in a moment of national tragedy and solidarity. Her death reminds us that resilience cannot rely on courage alone. It must be built through sustained, inclusive development and public investment, so that when the Limpopo rises again, more Mozambicans stand ready – with secure livelihoods, functioning clinics, and the possibility of a different outcome.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or the United Nations University, nor the programme/project donors.

– Mozambique floods: why the most vulnerable keep paying the highest price
– https://theconversation.com/mozambique-floods-why-the-most-vulnerable-keep-paying-the-highest-price-274759

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Wycliffe W. Njororai Simiyu, Professor and Chair of Allied Health Studies, Stephen F. Austin State University

East Africa loves football. From the streets of Nairobi and the markets of Kampala to the beaches of Dar es Salaam, the passion for soccer is an undeniable current running through the region. Yet, despite fan support, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania haven’t translated this enthusiasm into sustained international success.

A new book that draws on the career-long research of Wycliffe W. Njororai Simiyu explores the deep roots of the game in the region. It also examines the structural and gender challenges and the immense opportunities that lie ahead. We asked him about it.

How was the modern game introduced?

The sport is linked to the region’s colonial past. Britain established the East Africa Protectorate (which became Kenya) in 1895 and formally declared it a colony in 1920. Germany colonised mainland Tanzania (as German East Africa) in the 1880s, and control shifted to Britain after the first world war. Uganda became a protectorate in 1894 when Britain consolidated its control after a treaty with the Kingdom of Buganda.

So the game took root in the early 1900s, introduced by British settlers. Missionaries apparently introduced football to Uganda in 1897. At first it was a leisure activity for colonials and a tool for social control of the local population. It took up spare time and instilled British values and ideals.

The game was already popular in Britain. Institutionalised through the education system, sport was deemed to instil a sense of discipline and work ethic in young people. The competitiveness of sport in the British culture was exported to the colonised territories.

How did it change over time?

In east Africa, the game quickly took on a life of its own. Most east African societies valued physical activities like dance or wrestling. They found it easy to embrace sports. Football became a favourite.

The game transcended its colonial purpose to become a medium for regional interaction. Later it would also be a vehicle for nationalist expression as teams were formed along ethnic lines (something the British had used to divide and rule).

Fanatical support for local clubs and regional teams was replicated for national teams as they started playing in international matches. The inaugural international match between Kenya and Uganda was played in 1924. This was named the Gossage Cup in 1926 after a British soap manufacturer donated a trophy for the occasion.

Later Tanzania and Zanzibar joined to make it an east African tournament. The Gossage Cup not only fostered a sense of rivalry among the countries, it created a unique regional sporting identity that lives on today through its successor, the Cecafa Cup.

As east Africa gained independence in the early 1960s, football became fully integrated into the political and social fabric of the new nations. Football matches were even part of independence celebrations.

East African countries were quick to affiliate with the Confederation of African Football (Caf) and global football body Fifa. Before independence, clubs were already active and engaged in invitational tournaments. But after independence, national leagues were launched. These set out to identify the best players to represent each country.

Today, the sport’s deep connection to collective belonging is evident in rivalries between clubs like Kenya’s AFC Leopards and Gor Mahia, which often symbolise shared political underdog status and profound communal identity.

The football pitch is, in essence, an extension of the political landscape.

What have the challenges been in the sport’s development?

The most striking feature of football structures in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda is not their difference. It’s their shared organisational shortcomings. While each country maintains its own league and administrative body, their mediocre international performance stems from common, deep-seated issues.

The recent qualification of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania’s youth teams for the Fifa Under-17 World Cup marks a turning point for east African soccer. This is a direct result of strategic, targeted investment – mainly from Fifa’s development programmes – that’s finally bearing fruit. But the senior teams continue to struggle, even on the continental stage.

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Read more: East African footballers are a rarity on the global stage: we analysed why

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To date only Uganda has managed to reach the finals of the Afcon tournament (in 1978). No east African country has come even close to qualifying for the Fifa World Cup.

What’s gone wrong?

The challenges are a direct result of the three nations’ shared colonial and post-colonial experiences.

The main organisational issues plaguing football include:

• Poor governance and leadership. Political intrigue and corruption within football federations undermine long-term development.

• Weak financial management. Inefficient and opaque handling of funds leads to underfunding of development programmes.

• Lack of resources. These include infrastructure, facilities, equipment and trained technical personnel.

These challenges create a cycle of short-sighted planning and administrative chaos. This hinders the development of elite talent and explains the region’s perpetual failure to consistently qualify for major tournaments. Kenya, for example, had to play most of its 2026 World Cup qualifying matches away in other countries with better facilities.

Where does the women’s game find itself?

The women’s game faces the same headwinds, often magnified by gender disparities. Although women have shown the capacity to perform and compete, chronic underfunding and weak governance are typically more pronounced than in the men’s game.

However, the recent successes of teams like the Harambee Starlets (Kenya) and the Crested Cranes (Uganda) in qualifying for continental tournaments signal immense untapped potential.

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Read more: Women football players in Africa have overcome enormous barriers – new book tells the story

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The growth of women’s football is an opportunity for the region to avoid the historical baggage that weighs down the men’s leagues – if there’s dedicated investment and governance reform.

The continued support for the women’s game from Fifa is already paying dividends. East African teams have qualified for age group competitions at the global level.

How can passion be turned into future success?

The greatest opportunity lies in the very thing that makes the sport strong in the region: its passionate and popular foundation.

It requires a focus on two areas:

• Reform and professionalisation. Managing finances transparently and rooting out political interference. Focusing on long-term, merit-based leadership within federations. Professionalising the domestic leagues to keep and develop local talent.

• Investment in youth and infrastructure. Dedicated funding is needed for grassroots and youth development programmes. Building and maintaining quality training facilities must be a priority.

East Africa’s football destiny does not have to be perpetual failure. By calling on the region’s shared identity and addressing the deep-seated organisational flaws, east Africans can finally begin to translate their profound love for the game into the international success their fans deserve.

– East Africa’s dismal football record doesn’t match its passion – what needs to happen
– https://theconversation.com/east-africas-dismal-football-record-doesnt-match-its-passion-what-needs-to-happen-270479