MIL Africa Engine

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ekta Patel, Scientist, International Livestock Research Institute

Pastoralist communities, their livestock and diverse wildlife species coexist within a biodiversity-rich landscape stretching along the Kenya–Tanzania border.

However, at this wildlife-livestock interface, local communities face mounting challenges. Shifts in land use, prolonged droughts, erratic rainfall patterns and increasing land degradation are placing growing pressure on the landscape. In addition, conflict between people and wildlife is on the rise, and many households rely on wild animals for food.

Communities in the region eat a wide range of wild animals, from rodents, elephant shrews and birds to small antelopes and larger ungulates like bushbuck. This meat (“bush meat” as it is also popularly known in Africa) provides a valuable source of animal protein and minerals, especially where alternative domestic protein sources are scarce.

Although hunting and consuming wild animals is illegal in Kenya, this is not the case in Tanzania, where certain forms of hunting for wild animals are permitted. Yet in both countries, many people eat wild meat regularly, often without awareness of the risks. These risks include zoonotic disease transmission and potential impacts on wildlife populations.

Wild meat is a known source of zoonotic infections and disease spillover to humans. In fact, as many as three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases originate from wildlife. Illnesses such as anthrax, mpox, Ebola, and HIV have all been linked to close interactions between humans and wild animals.

Despite these risks, wild meat consumption remains widespread, with some households eating it daily or weekly. Preventing future disease outbreaks requires a clear understanding of these health risks, as well as the underlying social, cultural and economic reasons that drive people to rely on wild meat.

We set out to understand why people were eating wild meat along the Kenya-Tanzania border and whether they understood the risks of zoonotic diseases. Cases of anthrax have already been reported in this area.

Our study involved interviews in border communities during the COVID pandemic – the most famous case of zoonotic disease transmission in recent times. We wanted to know whether communities understood the pandemic’s link to wild meat and if this affected their consumption of it.

What stood out was that people at the border settlements kept eating wild meat or even ate more of it. This shows that economic necessity, cultural preferences and limited alternatives remain key drivers even when the world is in crisis.

Though this research was done during COVID-19, it gives us insights into how people react when things get tough, especially when it comes to food and health.

What’s driving wild meat consumption

We found that several factors drove wild meat consumption, despite growing awareness of the health risks.

Poverty

Economic factors, particularly household income and limited financial means, strongly influenced wild meat consumption, particularly in communities with limited alternative protein sources. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic had a severe impact on local economies. Tourism, a key source of income for border communities, experienced sharp declines. As household revenues fell, reliance on wild meat as an affordable protein source increased.

Economic stability plays a crucial role in shaping consumption behaviours: 81% of those surveyed at the border settlements indicated they would stop eating wild meat if cheaper alternatives were available.

The type of animal

Perceptions of disease risks varied depending on the species consumed.

Approximately 79% of respondents believed that certain animals posed a higher risks of zoonotic disease transmission. Hyenas were perceived as the most dangerous, followed by primates and snakes. These findings suggest that while economic necessity influences wild meat consumption, risk perception also shapes dietary choices.

Gender plays a role

Men expressed more concern over conservation and health risks than women. Men were also more likely to advocate against selling wild meat. Women exhibited lower concern regarding zoonotic disease risks, including COVID-19. These insights highlight the need for gender-sensitive interventions to address wild meat consumption.

Education levels

Education levels also influenced risk perception. Respondents with formal education displayed a stronger awareness of zoonotic transmission pathways. They were also more receptive to conservation and public health messaging. This highlights the importance of education in promoting safer and more sustainable practices within communities.

National policies

Despite sharing ecosystems and wildlife populations, Kenya and Tanzania have adopted fundamentally different governance approaches to wild meat. This in turn shapes outcomes for conservation, biodiversity and public health.

Kenya follows a centralised and protectionist model. Hunting and consumption of wild animals are prohibited under the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act. This zero-tolerance policy is rooted in strong conservation principles aimed at protecting biodiversity.

However, in practice, it has driven the activity underground, creating a thriving black market. This undermines conservation and enforcement efforts. It also increases the risk of zoonotic disease transmission due to unregulated handling and consumption of wild animals.

Tanzania, by contrast, uses a decentralised, regulated slaughterhouse model. Licensed wild meat hunting and consumption is legal under regulation, particularly through game-controlled areas and permits introduced in 2020. This approach is meant to enable communities to benefit economically from wildlife and reduce incentives for illegal hunting.

The existence of two divergent systems across a porous border creates challenges. These include illegal cross-border trade, conflicting conservation objectives, and uneven protection of biodiversity. There are also difficulties in implementing coordinated surveillance or public health interventions.

The contrasting regulations in Kenya and Tanzania significantly influence wild meat consumption choices.

In Kenya, where wild meat is strictly prohibited, consumption appears to be through informal and unregulated channels. This increases health risks and limits consumer awareness. In contrast, Tanzania’s regulated licensing system provides a legal pathway for access. This makes wild meat consumption more visible and, in some cases, perceived as safer. These differing policies shape how communities access, justify and engage with wild meat, often driving cross-border trade and complicating enforcement and risk communication efforts.

What’s next?

Addressing the risks associated with wild meat trade requires a multifaceted strategy that balances health, equity and sustainability.

We suggest an intervention that prioritises economic stability and ensuring affordable alternative protein sources are accessible, especially in food-insecure settings.

Public health education is also essential. An increasing awareness of zoonotic disease risks can help shift consumption behaviour.

Because men and women perceived the dangers of wild meat consumption differently, gender-sensitive approaches should be integrated. It should also be noted that, although women are rarely the primary hunters, they are often prosecuted for possession or sale of wild meat. Gender disparities on how laws are applied must be addressed.

Legal frameworks and enforcement mechanisms must be strengthened to address cross-border wildlife trade, particularly in regions with differing policies like Kenya and Tanzania. They should also reduce the risks faced by individuals who may unknowingly engage in illegal practices due to a lack of clarity.

We continue to work with national and regional stakeholders. This includes government bodies and technical partners who are actively engaging with us to co-develop One Health solutions. These solutions integrate public health, environmental sustainability and community well-being.

Finally, community engagement and participation should be at the core of any intervention. This will ensure that policies are locally relevant, culturally sensitive and supported by those directly affected to reduce the risks of zoonotic disease spillover.

– Eating wild meat carries serious health risks – why it still happens along the Kenya-Tanzania border
– https://theconversation.com/eating-wild-meat-carries-serious-health-risks-why-it-still-happens-along-the-kenya-tanzania-border-252947

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Hung Nguyen-Viet, Program Leader (ai), HEALTH at ILRI / CGIAR, International Livestock Research Institute

The world is facing daunting health challenges with the rise of zoonotic diseases – infections that are transmissible from animals to humans. These diseases – which include Ebola, avian flu, COVID-19 and HIV – show how the health and wellbeing of humans, animals and ecosystems are closely connected.

Zoonotic diseases have become more and more common due to factors such as urbanisation, deforestation, climate change and wildlife exploitation. These dangers are not limited by borders: they are global and demand a coordinated response.

By looking at health holistically, countries can address the full spectrum of disease control – from prevention to detection, preparedness, response and management – and contribute to global health security.

The World Health Organization has a basis for such an approach: One Health. This recognises the interdependence of the health of people, animals and the environment and integrates these fields, rather than keeping them separate.

I lead the health programme at the International Livestock Research Institute, where we are looking for ways to effectively manage or eliminate livestock-related diseases, zoonotic infections and foodborne illnesses that disproportionately affect impoverished communities.

My work focuses on the link between health and agriculture, food safety, and infectious and zoonotic diseases.

For example in Kenya we are part of an initiative of the One Health Centre in Africa to roll out canine vaccination and have so far vaccinated 146,000 animals in Machakos county.

In Ethiopia and Vietnam we worked in a programme to improve the hygiene practices of butchers in traditional markets.

In another project we work in 11 countries to strengthen One Health curricula in universities.

The lessons from the One Health projects implemented with partners across Asia and Africa are that there’s an urgent need for action on three fronts. These are: stronger cross-sectoral collaboration; greater engagement with policymakers to translate research findings into actionable strategies; and the development of adaptable and context-specific interventions.

But, having been active in this area for the last decade, I am impatient with the slow pace of investment. We know that prevention is better than cure. The cost of prevention is significantly lower than that of managing pandemics once they occur. Urgent steps, including much higher levels of investment, need to be taken.

What’s in place

In 2022 the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Organisation for Animal Health developed a joint One Health plan of action. They identified key areas to respond more efficiently to health threats. These included:

• Reducing risks from emerging and re-emerging zoonotic epidemics. Actions include, for example, tightening regulations around farming and trade in wildlife and wild animal products.

• Controlling and eliminating endemic, zoonotic, neglected tropical and vector-borne diseases by understanding the attitudes and knowledge of communities bearing the greatest burdens of these diseases. And boosting their capacity to fight them.

• Strengthening action against food safety risks by monitoring new and emerging foodborne infections.

• Curbing the silent pandemic of antimicrobial resistance, one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity.

Other collaborations include the Prezode (Preventing Zoonotic Disease Emergence) initiative to research all aspects of diseases of animal origin. This was launched in 2021 by French president Emmanuel Macron.

The Africa One Health University Network operates in ten African countries to address One Health workforce strengthening in Africa.

One Health has gained traction globally. But there’s still a great deal to be done.

The cost of inaction

According to a 2022 World Bank estimate, preventing a pandemic would cost approximately US$11 billion per year, while managing a pandemic can run up to US$31 billion annually. So the investment return of 3:1 is an important reason to call for investment in One Health.

The Pandemic Fund was launched in November 2022 by leaders of the Group of 20 nations and hosted by the World Bank Group to help low- and middle-income countries prepare better for emerging pandemic threats. US$885 million has been awarded to 47 projects to date through the two rounds in the last three years.

However, relative to the US$11 billion per year required for prevention, this investment is modest. Urgent investment in One Health needs to be made by countries themselves, in particular low- and middle-income countries.

The last two World One Health congresses (in Singapore in 2022, and in Cape Town in 2024) called for investment in One Health. There were also calls for investment in One Health at regional level to prevent zoonotic diseases and the next pandemic.

At the 78th World Health Assembly in Geneva, member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) formally adopted by consensus the world’s first Pandemic Agreement. The landmark decision culminates more than three years of intensive negotiations launched by governments in response to the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is major global progress in One Health and disease prevention.

But the lessons of COVID-19 have shown us that the cost of inaction is incalculable in terms of lives lost, economic turmoil and societal disruption. To date, there have been over 777 million cases of COVID-19, including more than 7 million deaths worldwide.

According to estimates by the International Monetary Fund, COVID will have caused a cumulative production loss of US$13.8 trillion by 2024.

The choice is clear: invest today to prevent tomorrow’s pandemics, or pay a heavy price in the future.

– Preventing the next pandemic: One Health researcher calls for urgent action
– https://theconversation.com/preventing-the-next-pandemic-one-health-researcher-calls-for-urgent-action-255229

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Christa Kuljian, Research Associate, WiSER, University of the Witwatersrand

Seven women were part of a trailblazing network of feminist scientists in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in the Boston area in the US. Christa Kuljian is a science writer and historian of science who focuses much of her research on issues of science and society, gender and race. She is the author of two previous books of narrative nonfiction – Sanctuary and Darwin’s Hunch. In her new book Our Science, Ourselves she focuses on the life stories of the seven women. We asked her about her book.

How did you choose the scientists you focused on in the book?

I grew up in the Boston area in the 1970s, and in high school, my parents gave me a copy of the revolutionary guide to women’s health, Our Bodies, Ourselves, which was published by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. In the early 1980s, I studied the history of science at Harvard and took a course with Ruth Hubbard called Bio 109: Biology and Women’s Issues.

Hubbard, in 1974, was the first woman to achieve tenure in biology at Harvard, and she features in the book. Her course taught about how scientists, including Charles Darwin, promoted stereotypes and myths about women’s biology. The idea for Our Science, Ourselves grew from that formative experience in Hubbard’s course.

But it also had roots in another, more recent experience. In 2016, I published Darwin’s Hunch: Science, Race and the Search for Human Origins, about the history of palaeoanthropology in South Africa. The book explores questions that some of my history of science professors might have asked. What influence did the social and political context of colonialism and apartheid have on the search for human origins?

After it was published, I was struck by several stories that brought science and sexism into the popular media. In July 2017, James Damore at Google wrote that “the gender gap in tech” likely existed because of biological differences between men and women, and he received support from popular psychologist Jordan Peterson.

In September 2018, an Italian physicist, Alessandro Strumia, said that the low number of women in physics was proof that women were innately less capable than men. He suggested that male scientists were being discriminated against to give opportunities to women.

These statements reminded me of what former Harvard president Larry Summers had said back in 2005. Drawing on the work of psychologist and popular writer Steven Pinker, Summers spoke of women having a “different availability of aptitude” in science and math.

Why were these myths about women’s biology still having an impact in the 21st century? I decided to go back to my class notes and look more closely at Hubbard’s research. Who had she worked with at the time? What were other scientists with a feminist awareness saying in the 1970s and 1980s?

As a result of many interviews, and research in the archives, I discovered a fascinating network of women, all of whom contributed to feminist critiques of science, and ultimately to the field of feminist science studies.

Our Science, Ourselves follows the lives of Ruth Hubbard, Rita Arditti, Evelyn Fox Keller, Evelynn Hammonds, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Banu Subramaniam and Nancy Hopkins.

None of these women scientists were born in Boston, but they all moved there to study, take a job, conduct research, or network with other scientists. Part of what made Boston interesting to me was the critical mass of colleges, universities and scientists, but also the presence of social movements that influenced these women, including Science for the People, the Combahee River Collective and others.

Could you tell us about one or two of these women’s stories?

One of them is Rita Arditti. An Argentinian geneticist at Harvard Medical School, she led a protest in December 1969 at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. Along with 12 colleagues carrying posters and pamphlets, she arrived unannounced at a special luncheon for women scientists, calling for an end to discrimination against women in science. Most of the women ignored Arditti, but Hubbard was in the audience and paid attention. The protest did have a ripple effect on the association.

Over time, Arditti and Hubbard became friends, became active in a new organisation called Science for the People, and began to write not only about discrimination against women scientists, but also about how science portrayed women’s biology in stereotypical ways.

Another is Evelynn Hammonds, who studied physics at Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta. In 1976, she read an important report, The Double Bind: The Price of Being a Minority Woman in Science, co-authored by Shirley Malcom and published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

With Malcom’s encouragement, Hammonds applied to and was accepted at MIT in the Boston area. Over time, she joined a growing network of women who were critiquing their science. She became a teaching assistant for Hubbard and rented an apartment from Arditti, and became a foundational influence in gender, race and the history of science.

Hammonds emphasised that when speaking out against scientific sexism it was important to speak out against scientific racism as well, and that it was critical to address both.

How do the current US administration policies on science and diversity relate to your book?

Sudip Parikh, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said in testimony before the US Senate appropriations committee on 30 April 2025:

The scientific community is in paralysis right now.

The current attack on science has had a major impact, ending funding for important scientific research. Young scientists and science students are concerned for their future. The US administration’s policy of cutting funds to any programmes related to diversity or equity is an onslaught on decades of progress in this area, and will have a grave impact on the scientific research agenda.

There is a growing list of words that have been scrubbed from US government websites and documents, including “women”, “race”, “racism”, “feminism”, “activist” and “bias”. The use of any of these words in scientific research proposals can result in federal funding being cut. For example, the US Food and Drug Administration published an announcement in mid-2024 that discussed the importance of diversity in clinical trials. That document is no longer available on the website.

The women in Our Science, Ourselves made important contributions by highlighting how scientific institutions historically have been exclusionary. They also shone a light on how scientific research questions and analysis can be biased (rather than always neutral or objective), thereby affecting the knowledge they produce.

The tools that feminist science studies has developed are critical to the sciences because they ask new questions, and develop new methodologies that help science account for gender and racial bias. Who is doing science? Who decides on the research questions? Who offers analysis and who benefits?

The US administration’s actions are a major setback for science and scientific research, as well as gender, race and sexuality studies, which have made vital contributions to science, medicine and technology. The history of these fields and the life stories of some of the dynamic women in them, can offer readers inspiration for the present moment.

Our Science, Ourselves is available from University of Massachusetts Press and Amazon in the US, on Kindle, and from Love Books in Johannesburg, South Africa.

– Sexism in science: 7 women whose trailblazing work shattered stereotypes
– https://theconversation.com/sexism-in-science-7-women-whose-trailblazing-work-shattered-stereotypes-257265

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Oluwaseyi Dolapo Somefun, Research associate, University of the Western Cape

Vaccines have proved to be one of the most effective tools in fighting infectious diseases, but convincing people to get vaccinated can be tough. Especially young people.

During the global COVID-19 pandemic, declared by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020, many countries reported high levels of vaccine hesitancy among younger population groups. Negative healthcare experiences and general distrust of government have cultivated vaccine hesitancy across Africa. Misleading information about vaccine side-effects on social media adds to this challenge.

This hesitancy continues today. A 2024 study on adolescents and young adults (aged 10 to 35) in sub-Saharan Africa found a vaccine acceptance rate of just 38.7%.

These concerns were echoed in a recent study we carried out among 165 young adults in Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia, looking at attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccine. We wanted to know what could be done to help improve future vaccine acceptance, inform campaigns and prepare for future public health responses.

Participants were hesitant to be vaccinated, for various reasons, and suggested what policymakers could do to improve vaccine uptake.

Understanding young people’s perspectives on vaccine hesitancy and what can be done to address this is crucial for improving vaccine acceptance in the future.

What young adults told us

Our research gathered data through focus groups and interviews.

The participants described a fear of injections, uncertainty about side effects, distrust in healthcare systems and rude healthcare workers.

Some participants were worried about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine, particularly how it might affect those with pre-existing health conditions.

Many believed that the vaccine was developed too quickly without sufficient testing and a lack of accessible information.

Many expressed a strong fear of needles. A young South African woman aged 19 commented:

I am afraid of injections, so for me, it would be better if there was something that could be taken orally, something you can drink.

Getting over the hurdle

We found young people often felt left out of vaccine conversations. They wanted to be part of the solution and make informed choices but needed the right tools and support to do so.

Participants suggested practical ideas to help boost vaccine acceptance among their peers.

Several highlighted the importance of assessing individual health status before administering vaccines, to avoid adverse interactions with existing medical conditions and treatments. They believed that situations where vaccines were mistakenly blamed for pre-existing illnesses or ongoing treatments could be avoided.

Participants suggested innovative strategies to make vaccines more accessibile. Mobile vaccination sites and community-based outreach programmes were some of the suggestions.

They must introduce mobile clinics, so that people don’t find themselves having to travel long distances to vaccinate. – 18-year-old male, South Africa

Young people also suggested household visits to people who were immobile because of age, illness or disability.

Many advocated for non-injectable vaccine options, such as oral medications or microneedle patches, which could improve accessibility and reduce anxiety.

The oral polio vaccine, which has been widely used in global polio eradication efforts, is an example of a non-injectable vaccine.

COVID-19 microneedle patch prototypes are being explored for clinical testing.

The youth urged public figures, including politicians, celebrities and influencers, to publicly endorse the vaccine.

It would be nice if the president could be shown on television receiving a vaccine so that we can see for ourselves whether he is given the same thing that everyone else receives. – 20-year-old male, South Africa

More engaging videos, interactive interviews and testimonials from vaccinated individuals could be shared across social media platforms.

The young people also emphasised the importance of comprehensive training for healthcare providers. They highlighted the need for healthcare professionals to provide respectful and empathetic care. They suggested that, by fostering respectful communication, healthcare providers could create a more welcoming and comfortable environment for their clients.

In addition, providing vaccine education in schools could educate pupils so that they could make decisions on their own.

Way forward

Engaging young people as active participants in shaping public health strategies can help increase vaccine acceptance and ensure a healthier future for all.

We believe that our findings can be applied in two ways.

First, to inform the design of tailored interventions that better resonate with young people’s desires and needs, paving the way for increased vaccine uptake and acceptability.

Second, to highlight areas where young people may need further information and engagement, to better understand some of the broader issues and why some of their recommendations might not be feasible in the short or longer term.

– Vaccines: why these young Africans are hesitant about them and what might change their minds
– https://theconversation.com/vaccines-why-these-young-africans-are-hesitant-about-them-and-what-might-change-their-minds-249629

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Charles MacRobert, Associate Professor, Stellenbosch University

Mining is essential to modern lifestyles. Copper, iron and other mined products are vital to the products many people take for granted, like electronic devices. Being able to buy these goods quite easily may give a person a false sense of how difficult it is to extract the elements they’re made of.

Mining involves the removal of mineral-rich rock from the ground and processing it to extract the high-value minerals. Depending on the mineral, this quantity can be as low as a few grams in a tonne of rock.

For example, removing a tiny quantity of platinum from rock requires finely grinding the rock. The fine material that remains once the platinum is removed is known as tailings.

Every mining operation produces tailings. This can be coarse, like instant coffee granules, or fine, like cocoa powder. Tailings are typically mixed with water to form a liquid slurry that can be pumped and transported easily.

Slurry is kept in specially designed tailings dams. The designs are unique and depend on what is being mined and the local area.

Unfortunately, the history of mining is stained with examples of poorly managed dams that collapse, spilling the slurry, which is sometimes toxic. This can cause serious environmental, social and economic damage.

One such mine disaster happened in February 2025 in Zambia at the Sino-Metals Leach Zambia copper mine. Over 50 million litres of toxic waste flowed over the dam’s wall into the Mwambashi River. From there it flowed into one of the largest and longest Zambian rivers, the Kafue.

The pollution travelled further than 100km from the dam, contaminating the river, and killing fish and livestock on nearby farms. The Zambian government had to shut down municipal water to the city of Kitwe to protect residents from consuming the polluted water.

This should not have happened, because steps have been taken to ensure proactive management of dams. In 2020, the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management introduced a new set of safety measures and standards.

Many mines are proactively embracing these standards. This enhances community trust in tailings dams. But other mines are not engaging with communities that might be affected by dams. Or communities may feel unsure what to ask the mines.

We are geotechnical engineers who have studied tailings dam collapses. Here, we outline six questions people living near mines should ask mine management to ensure they understand the key hazards and risks in their communities.

1. How far will the slurry flow?

Each tailings dam has a zone of influence. This is determined by analysing what would happen if the slurry breached the dam walls and started to flow out. It is an estimate of the area which would be swamped by tailings if the dam failed.

Generally, tailings disasters have caused significant damage up to a distance of 5km from the dam. If the tailings slurry gets into a river, it can flow hundreds of kilometres downstream.

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Read more: Burst mining dam in South Africa: what must be done to prevent another disaster

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Zones of influence are often determined for extreme events, like once in a lifetime storms or large earthquakes. But zones of influence could also include places affected by dust or water pollution from the mine.

If you can see a tailings dam from where you live or work you should consider yourself within the zone of influence.

2. Who is responsible for the dam?

Clearly defined roles and responsibilities for day-to-day operation should be in place in every mine. There should be suitably qualified engineers appointed to carry out monitoring and maintenance of the dam. There need to be enough qualified people to cope with the size of the dam.

The management structure should set out how day-to-day issues related to the tailings dam are discussed between workers on the ground in mines and top management, and how solutions are found. Mines should also keep audit and inspection reports on their tailings dams, and records should be kept over the long term (because tailings dams are often operational for several decades).

3. What about the environment?

Mines should have plans to reduce the impact that tailings dams have on the environment. These would have been informed by public participation. The plans must state what monitoring is in place to measure the impacts of dust and water (groundwater and surface water).

The true extent of impacts only becomes apparent once the mine starts operating. So, the public should hold mines accountable for commitments made. Mines should satisfy communities that monitoring is continuing to identify and track the dam’s environmental impacts.

Closure plans should also be continuously communicated to mining-affected communities. This will assure the community that when the miners leave, they won’t be left with a dangerous dam near their homes, with no one to look after it.

4. Will the tailings dam be safe when it rains?

A common way that tailings dams fail is when water or slurry washes over the dam sidewalls. This washes away the support. It is known as overtopping, and can happen in storms or if too much tailing is pumped into the dam.

Overtopping is best managed by keeping the water a certain distance below the dam wall. Mine management must measure this regularly and control how much tailing they pump to the dam. Their task is to make sure that even in a severe storm the level will stay well below the top of the dam wall.

5. Has the dam always behaved as expected?

Small failure incidents such as sloughs, slides and bulges where dam walls move but no slurry is released can occur. Mines should investigate and report these, detailing likely causes and mitigation measures implemented.

Publicly available satellite imagery can easily show where mine tailings dams are becoming unstable. Mines should be transparent and provide explanations for these to avoid any speculation over whether the dam is stable or not.

6. What alterations have been made?

Sometimes dams must be changed to accommodate changes in mining or the extraction process. These changes could include how fast the dam is being built, moving the position of the dam wall, or placing material at the base of the wall to stabilise it.

The unexpected consequences of alterations to a tailings dam could be water seeping out and creating damp spots, leading to dam walls sagging or cracking. If left unchecked this can lead to structural failure.

When substantial changes are made to a dam’s design, mines need to demonstrate that sufficient consideration has gone into making these changes.

– Do you live near a dam holding mine waste? 6 questions to ask
– https://theconversation.com/do-you-live-near-a-dam-holding-mine-waste-6-questions-to-ask-256517

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Kevin Kirkman, Professor of Grassland Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal

South Africa’s rangelands have always had great value for the country. These areas offer more than just grazing for livestock. They provide services like purifying water, storing carbon and conserving biodiversity.

The grassland biome (28%), along with the savanna (32.5%) and the Nama-Karoo (19.5%), are collectively referred to as rangelands. They make up almost 80% of the land area of South Africa.

Their ecological services haven’t always been fully appreciated. Research into rangelands has evolved in response to environmental changes, human needs and scientific discoveries.

Commercial livestock production was the main concern when academics, researchers and practitioners met for the first congress of the Grassland Society of Southern Africa in 1966. Less than 15% of South Africa’s land surface area is arable. The only agricultural production possible on the balance of the land is livestock production from natural rangeland. Livestock production is thus a cornerstone of agriculture and food production in South Africa.

Six decades on, the Grassland Society has reflected – through a special issue of its journal, the African Journal of Range and Forage Science – on how it has tackled research challenges and adapted to shifting perceptions of rangelands.

Research has explored aspects of global change, bush encroachment and other changes in rangeland composition and function. Land transformation is another research area. Peri-urban sprawl, open-cast mining, timber plantations and other developments reduce and fragment rangeland. The result is increased pressure on the remaining, intact rangelands.

Widening scope

A review of research over the 60 years shows that early efforts focused mainly on forage production to support livestock industries. Research topics included rotational grazing and burning, as well as reinforcing rangelands by adding nutrients, forage grasses and legumes.

By the 1980s, it became clear that rangelands offered more than just grazing – they were vital ecosystems.

In the early 1990s, around the onset of democracy in South Africa, local researchers became part of global conversations around rangeland ecology. In doing so, they started to use the international terminology, instead of the old Dutch-derived word “veld”.

This shift was not just about geography, but about scope. Rangelands were increasingly seen as multifaceted ecosystems critical in the fight against climate change. Increasing temperatures, increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and changing rainfall patterns pose a threat to all ecosystems. Understanding the response of rangelands is increasingly important in devising management strategies to adapt to these changes.

Scientists expanded their attention to preserving soil health, restoring degraded landscapes, and maintaining biodiversity. Issues like overgrazing, soil erosion and invasive species gained recognition in southern Africa. Degradation of rangelands in South Africa was first highlighted in the mid 1700s, and became a “mainstream” issue in the 1930s. Replacing a diverse group of wild animals with a single species of grazer, such as cattle, is the reason generally given for degradation. Fire has also been linked to it (often unfairly).

The Grassland Society responded by promoting ideas like adaptive grazing management (making decisions in response to conditions, rather than following a recipe approach). It also encouraged integrating indigenous knowledge with scientific research to create more sustainable and resilient land-use systems. This has helped shape land management practices across the region.

Many southern African rangelands face the challenge of balancing grazing with biodiversity conservation. Research on conservation agriculture and integrating livestock and wildlife systems is helping farmers and conservationists to find common ground. Wildlife, both in the conservation and the game production contexts, plays a critical role in South Africa’s economy. Tourism is one of the major contributors.

Land management is particularly important in the Mediterranean-climate regions of South Africa, where poor crop farming practices have damaged soil health. The research is guiding the development of more sustainable farming systems focused on soil regeneration and biodiversity.

A key indicator of ecosystem degradation is a decline in grassland forbs (herbaceous plants that are not grasses). They are highly sensitive to grazing pressure. So the role of wildflowers in ecosystem health and animal wellbeing has also become an important research area.

Climate change, fire suppression and overgrazing drive woody plant encroachment, where grasslands are turning into shrublands. This calls for integrated management approaches that consider fire, grazing and even controlled rewilding.

Fire is a natural element in many grassland ecosystems, and research has helped advance understanding of how it can be monitored and controlled to reduce risks while promoting healthy rangelands.

People and grasslands

Rangeland management has important social dimensions. Research is addressing issues such as land tenure, governance, community management systems on communal rangelands and indigenous knowledge in management decisions. These topics are essential for creating sustainable solutions that account for people’s livelihoods and needs.

In addition to these ecological, social and management advances, the Grassland Society of Southern Africa has worked to develop the next generation of rangeland scientists and practitioners. Through its congresses, workshops and journal publications, the society continues to foster dialogue across disciplines and communities. Its 60th congress will be held in July 2025.

– Southern Africa’s rangelands do many jobs, from feeding cattle to storing carbon: a review of 60 years of research
– https://theconversation.com/southern-africas-rangelands-do-many-jobs-from-feeding-cattle-to-storing-carbon-a-review-of-60-years-of-research-254736

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Stephen Appiah Takyi, Senior Lecturer, Department of Planning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST)

Urban flooding is a major problem in the global south. In west and central Africa, more than 4 million people were affected by flooding in 2024. In Ghana, cities suffer damage from flooding every year.

Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama, has established a task force to find ways of improving flood resilience in the country. This is partly driven by an increase in flooding incidents in cities such as Accra and Kumasi in the last decade.

We are urban planning and sustainability scholars. In a recent paper we analysed whether flooding in Accra, Ghana’s capital, was caused by climate change or poor land use planning.

We conclude from our analysis that flooding is caused by poor and uncoordinated land use planning rather than climate change. We recommend that the physical planning department and other regulatory agencies are equipped to ensure the effective enforcement the relevant land use regulations.

Mixed push factors

The Accra metropolitan area is one of the 29 administrative units of Ghana’s Greater Accra region. It is the most populous region in Ghana, with over five million residents, according to the 2021 Housing and Population Census.

We interviewed 100 households living in areas such as Kaneshie, Adabraka and Kwame Nkrumah Circle. These areas experience a high incidence of floods. Representatives of agencies such as the Physical Planning Department of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, the National Disaster Management Organisation and the Environmental Protection Agency were interviewed too, about:

• the nature and areas most prone to flooding in the study area

• the frequency of flooding

• land use planning and regulations and their influence on flooding.

About 40% of the people we interviewed attributed flooding to both weak enforcement of land use regulation and changes in rainfall patterns. Most of the households (52%) said floods in Accra were the result of weak enforcement of land use regulations, while 8% blamed changes in land use regulations.

We also analysed recorded data on flood incidence and rainfall. We found no correlation between increased rainfall and flooding. For example in 2017 there was a decrease in rainfall, but an increase in flooding.

This finding points to the fact that rainfall isn’t the only factor contributing to flooding in the city.

The agencies and city residents reported that between 2008 and 2018, they could see that more people were encroaching on the city’s wetlands by building homes and commercial infrastructure. This has changed the natural flow of water bodies. The Greater Accra Metropolitan and its environs has major wetlands such as Densu Delta, Sakumo Lagoon and Songor Lagoon.

Interview respondents noted that the siting of unauthorised buildings and the encroachment on buffer zones of water bodies in the city could have been averted. They blamed political interference in the enforcement of land use regulation. The government makes the situation worse in two ways, they said:

• planning standards and regulations are neglected in the development process. The processes involved in acquiring development permits are cumbersome and expensive, so people go ahead and develop without permits.

• regulatory institutions and authorities are ineffective. This is clear from the fact that planning happens chaotically. No attention is given to the ecological infrastructure that’s needed.

The way forward

We conclude that land use malpractices remain the dominant causes of flooding in Accra. They include:

• poor disposal of solid waste, which eventually blocks drains and results in water overflow during heavy rains

• building on wetlands as a result of non-compliance or non-enforcement of land use regulations.

There is an urgent need for Ghana’s cities to adopt best practices in waste management. These include recycling of plastic waste and composting for urban agriculture. An environmental excise tax was introduced in 2011 to fund plastic waste recycling and support waste management agencies.

The increasing encroachment on wetlands should be addressed through the strict enforcement of buffer regulations. Planning authorities and the judiciary can collaborate on this. The city must also encourage green infrastructure, like rain gardens, green roofs, permeable pavement, street trees and rain harvesting systems. Research has shown these to be environmentally sustainable and cost-effective approaches to managing storm water.

Another suggested approach is the introduction of the polluter pays principle in city management. This is a system where city residents who are involved in the pollution of the environment are made to pay for the cost of mitigating the impact. Residents who dispose of waste indiscriminately and encroach on wetlands would be made to pay for the cost of the environmental degradation. Cities such as Barcelona and Helsinki have applied this principle in the management of their industrial discharge and contaminated waste.

Finally, there should be incentives for city residents to promote environmental sustainability. For example, a deposit refund system has been introduced in several states in the US and Australia. In this system, consumers are made to pay a deposit after purchasing items that can be recycled, such as plastic bottles, and the deposit is reimbursed to the consumer after the return of the empty bottles to a retail store.

– Flooding incidents in Ghana’s capital are on the rise. Researchers chase the cause
– https://theconversation.com/flooding-incidents-in-ghanas-capital-are-on-the-rise-researchers-chase-the-cause-254000

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Gode Bola, Lecturer in Hydrology, University of Kinshasa

The April 2025 flooding disaster in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, wasn’t just about intense rainfall. It was a symptom of recent land use change which has occurred rapidly in the city, turning it into a sprawling urban settlement without the necessary drainage infrastructure.

Local rains combined with runoff from torrential rains coming from neighbouring Congo Central Province quickly overwhelmed the city’s small urban tributaries. The Ndjili River and its tributary (Lukaya), which run through the city, overflowed and flooded homes on either side.

This led to the deaths of at least 70 people, 150 injured and the temporary displacement of more than 21,000 people. Floods affected the running of 73 healthcare facilities. Access to water and transport services were disrupted in large parts of the city. People could only move around by dugout canoe or by swimming in flooded avenues.

Floods have become recurrent in the DRC. The last quarter of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 saw the most devastating floods there and in neighbouring countries since the 1960s.

According to UN World Urbanisation Prospects (2025), the reason the floods have become this devastating is the growth of Kinshasa. The city is the most densely populated city in the DRC, the most populous city and third-largest metropolitan area in Africa.

Kinshasa’s 2025 population is estimated at 17,778,500. Back in 1950, it was 201,905. In the past year alone, the city’s population has grown by 746,200, a 4.38% annual change. At least 2% of the population live in areas prone to flooding. Urban infrastructure, especially flood-related, is non-existent or inadequate. Where it exists, drainage systems are blocked by solid waste, itself another sign of the city whose public services such as waste collection have become dysfunctional.

We have been studying the characteristics of flooding and the prediction of risk linked to it in the Congo Basin for five years as part of our work at the Congo Basin Water Resources Research Center in Kinshasa. We study the movement of water in natural and modified environments and its interactions with infrastructure over a range of geographical scales. We argue in this article that understanding why Kinshasa floods means recognising two very different water systems at play – and how urban growth has made the city more vulnerable to both.

Kinshasa faces two distinct flood hazards: first, flooding from the Congo River, which typically peaks around December and January; and, second, urban flood events driven by local rainfall and runoff from the hills south of the city around April and December.

Most of Kinshasa’s flood disasters have come from the second type. And as Kinshasa has urbanised, expanding into the floodplains, but without the necessary urban infrastructure, the impact of urban flood events has become worse.

With more sealed surfaces – because of more urban settlements – and less natural water absorption, more rainwater runs off, and faster. This overwhelms the city’s small urban tributaries and the Ndjili river.

Growth of Kinshasa and flood

As the city has expanded, so has its flood exposure. The city’s tributaries drain steep, densely populated urban slopes and are highly responsive to rainfall.

Of Kinshasa’s two flood risks, the impact of Congo River flooding can be observed in large cities located along major rivers, and typically peaks around January. These are seasonal floods driven by rainfall across the whole Congo Basin.

Research at Congo Basin Water Resources Research Center shows that while Congo River high water levels can cause “backwater effects” – the upstream rise in water level caused by reduced flow downstream – most damaging floods result from intense local rainfall overwhelming the city’s small river catchments. The flood risk analysis indicates that 38 territories are the hotspot of flooding in the Congo basin. Kinshasa is a hotspot due to its double risk sources and extensive urbanisation.

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Read more: Kenya’s devastating floods expose decades of poor urban planning and bad land management

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The urban flood events are more challenging. They can happen with less rainfall and cause major destruction. They are driven by local rainfall and rapid growth of informal settlements.

Other cities face similar risks. In 2024, Nairobi suffered deadly floods after prolonged rain overwhelmed informal neighbourhoods and infrastructure.

Across Africa, cities are growing faster than their infrastructure can keep up with. Kinshasa has unique exposure, but also strong local research capacity.

The Congo River’s seasonal peaks are relatively well understood and monitored. But urban tributaries are harder to predict.

DRC’s meteorological agency Mettelsat and its partners are building capacity for real-time monitoring. But the April 2025 floods showed that community-level warning systems did not work.

Climate change is expected to intensify extreme rainfall in central Africa. While annual totals may not increase, short, intense storms could become more frequent.

This increases pressure on cities already struggling with today’s rains. In Kinshasa, the case for climate-resilient planning and infrastructure is urgent.

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Read more: Local knowledge adds value to mapping flood risk in South Africa’s informal settlements

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What needs to change?

Forecasting rainfall is not enough. Government agencies in collaboration with universities must also forecast flood impact – and ensure people can act on the warnings. There is a need to put in place systems to achieve this under a catchment integrated flood management plan.

The main elements of such a plan include:

• Improved early warning systems: Use advanced technologies (such as satellites) to gather real-time data on environmental conditions.

• Upgraded drainage infrastructure: Identify weaknesses and areas prone to flooding, to manage storm water better.

• Enforcement of land use planning: Establish clear regulations that define flood-prone areas; outline permissible land uses.

• Define safety perimeters around areas at risk of flooding: Use historical data, flood maps, and hydrological studies to pinpoint areas that are at risk. Regulate development and activities there.

• Local engagement in flood preparedness: Educate residents about flood risks, preparedness measures, and emergency response.

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Read more: Nigeria and Ghana are prone to devastating floods – they could achieve a lot by working together

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Institutions such as the Congo Basin Water Resources Research Center play a critical role, not just in research but in turning knowledge into action. Rainfall may trigger the flood, but urban systems decide whether it becomes a disaster. And those systems can change.

– Why Kinshasa keeps flooding – and why it’s not just about the rain
– https://theconversation.com/why-kinshasa-keeps-flooding-and-why-its-not-just-about-the-rain-254411

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Seth Asare Okyere, Visiting lecturer, University of Pittsburg and Adjunct Associate Professor, Osaka University, University of Pittsburgh

Humans are walking beings. Walking is intrinsically linked to our physical development from childhood and enables our connections with people and places. We can say it is essential to our physical and mental well-being.

Walking can also help create inclusive and sustainable cities. Most western cities incorporate this need in their spatial planning.

In African countries like Ghana, however, the fact that most people walk doesn’t always mean they prefer to. They need to walk because it’s cheaper than using motor vehicles. But many African cities are not friendly to pedestrians.

More than 70% of the urban population in Africa walk daily for various purposes. To deal with the challenges pedestrians encounter, some African cities have incorporated policies and strategies for walking into their motorised transport policies. For instance, in Nigeria, the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority has developed a policy that aims to create a safe and pleasant network of footpaths, greenways and other facilities that serve everyone in the city.

In Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), a similar policy was developed. Its objective is to increase the number of people who walk by investing in walking facilities and improving connectivity to public transport.

The strategies in these documents are commendable, but they have met practical challenges like funding, public perception and technical capacity.

Ghana also has several transport and local development planning policies. Yet most urban areas in Ghana don’t have walking infrastructure and a safe walking environment.

As scholars interested in sustainable urban development planning and policy, we reviewed some of these policies to explore how they treat walking as a way of getting around. The research also assessed institutional perspectives and residents’ everyday lived experiences of walkability in Accra, the capital city. We found that both policies and urban plans paid little attention to making the walking experience enjoyable.

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Read more: City streets: why South Africa should design more people-friendly spaces

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The study

The Ghana Transport Survey Report indicates that over three-quarters (75.3%) of the country’s population make up to ten daily trips on foot, and most urban areas lack walking infrastructure. Pedestrians account for about 42% of road deaths in Ghana.

We chose two study sites in Accra, the capital, where many come to find work. The sites represented inner-city and suburban areas. The research used in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 80 people to capture the perspectives of institutional representatives and community residents. We explored walking experiences in terms of accessibility, safety and enjoyment.

Findings

Accessibility: The national transport policy seeks to provide dedicated, safe, reliable and appropriate facilities for users across all transport modes. What we found, however, was an absence of infrastructure to enhance pedestrian access to facilities and services.

One resident commented:

The roads are not only in poor condition but they have no sidewalks. It is not hard to assume that these were built for car owners, not pedestrians’ everyday use.

Safety: The research revealed a chasm between policy ambitions for walking and realities at the community level. Municipal development plans don’t say how they will address the frequent crashes that result from commuters, vendors and motorists competing for space. The most at risk are pedestrians, who represent 42% of transport-related fatalities. This is because of noncompliance with bylaws that regulate activities on the roads and pedestrian pathways.

One municipal official said:

Look at the streets: Motorists, street vendors, school children on the same street space. There is encroachment, reckless driving, illegally parked cars on road shoulders. School children and the disabled face constant risks. But the plan aims to make the neighborhoods walkable. Just words as always.

Enjoyment: Enjoyment was the least considered aspect of walkability in both national policy and municipal development plans. The absence of facilities and infrastructure that offer comfort, aesthetics and other pleasures for pedestrians provides a clear indication of this.

A community leader complained:

Flooding and poor sanitation create an unpleasant walking environment. Clogged waste, poor drains, and rubbish along streets and alleyways are a problem. There is nothing pleasant about walking: the smell, the dust, the noise and the heat. You walk because you have no choice.

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Read more: New forms of urban planning are emerging in Africa

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Towards cities that are walkable

The deep gulf between what the policies say and everyday experiences in our study calls for new ways of thinking and implementation within the urban transport in Ghana’s development planning regime.

We suggest that there is a need for transport planners, urban and development planners, and policymakers to consider coproduction strategies in identifying, framing, developing, and implementing interventions. This will help harness the potential for walking as a social equaliser and its contribution to healthy, safe, equitable cities and communities.

Here, action-oriented collaborative strategies like workshops that consider communities as partners can transition African urban residents from captive walkers to walkers who enjoy it.

– Accra is a tough city to walk in: how city planners can fix the problem
– https://theconversation.com/accra-is-a-tough-city-to-walk-in-how-city-planners-can-fix-the-problem-253636

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Rachel Silver, Assistant Professor, York University, Canada

Coverage of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns on girls in Malawi emphasised the risks they faced as a result of not attending school. In particular, concerns about pregnancy garnered significant media attention.

The United Nations Children’s Fund, for example, published an article in March 2021 entitled “Schoolgirl shakes off COVID-19 regret: Lucy’s return to school”. Under a glossy photograph of a smiling girl, readers learn about 16-year-old Lucy, one of 13,000 Malawian students who became pregnant during COVID-19 school closures. The story went on to detail the dire consequences of sexual activity to Lucy’s well-being, and the redemptive power of an eventual return to school.

The Unicef piece echoed thousands of similar publications circulated after March 2020 that analysed COVID-19’s unique risk for girls in the global south and lamented lost returns to girls’ education.

In response to COVID-19 surges, Malawian schools closed for over seven months, during which the percentage of pregnancies to young women aged 10-19 did increase from 29% to 35% of total pregnancies.

Yet, our research has demonstrated that international development organisations and media outlets focused mostly on narrow, sexualised framings of risk to African girls and women rather than on the many intersecting and ongoing barriers to their well-being and school retention. These challenges both predate and extend beyond COVID-19.

As scholars of international development education who have conducted research in Malawi for over a decade, we decided to join Malawian educational activist and collaborator Stella Makhuva to research how girls themselves narrated their experiences of the COVID-19 years. What did they consider a risk to their schooling?

Together, we designed a longitudinal study from 2020 to 2023 that included multiple rounds of interviews and participatory journalling methods with 22 upper primary and secondary school girls in southern Malawi.

We found that for girls in our study, COVID-19 was less a rupture – an unusual event that threatened their education in unprecedented ways – than an added variable in the already complex calculations girls and their families made about whether and how to remain in school.

We argue that it was not pregnancy itself, but escalating resource constraints, that kept girls from school. And that interventions must do something about the real problem: inequitable systems.

The stories told by the girls illustrate this. (All the names are pseudonyms.)

Their stories

When Faith joined our study in 2020, she was attending a peri-urban primary school near her home. She lived in a mud and grass-thatched house with her parents, both subsistence farmers who supported Faith’s and her siblings’ education. During school closures, she studied with friends to keep up with academic content when she was not helping with her parents’ farm.

Yet school costs threatened Faith’s return to school upon reopening. Despite primary school being officially “free” by government mandate, students at her school were required to contribute 800 Malawi kwacha (close to US$1 at the time) per term to a school fund for infrastructure projects and upkeep. Not paying into the fund resulted in exclusion from classes.

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Read more: Does free schooling give girls a better chance in life? Burundi study shows the poorest benefited most

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When Faith eventually passed the Primary School Leaving Certificate Exam and enrolled in secondary school, the costs to schooling rose from 5,000 kwacha (about US$6.50 in early 2021) to 20,000 kwacha (about US$19 in late 2022). Faith worried about whether her parents, whose maize and tomato yields suffered from poor rains, would be able to pay.

On top of this, Faith paid other costs, from exam fees and bicycle rental fees to supplemental lessons in which she learned material never covered during school hours. She said she and her family often sacrificed eating sufficiently to save money.

Still, Faith was repeatedly pushed out of school until her fee balance was met. Before, during, and after COVID-19 school closures, girls like her were pushed out of school for a lack of regular fee payments.

Faith’s school-going was also threatened by warming temperatures and new rain patterns that left her family with diminished food and income. Added to this were volatility in government agricultural subsidies to small farmers, inflated school fees, and the increasing privatisation of public education in Malawi.

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Read more: Malawi faces a food crisis: why plans to avert hunger aren’t realistic and what can be done

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Like Faith, all of the girls in our study worked to supplement their schooling with part time lessons, holiday classes, or by repeating grades given educational quality concerns. Based in under-resourced schools with low exam pass rates, girls knew that they were provided an incomplete education.

According to Brightness,

We do not learn fully what we are supposed to cover, and some teachers tend to be absent during their lessons. This makes us lag behind … As a result during exams they ask some questions which some of us … did not learn.

Empirical evidence has shown how teacher engagement has long been influenced by the region’s high disease burden, especially due to HIV/Aids. This has left teachers both ill and caring for ill relatives.

While teacher disengagement, therefore, reflected factors such as competing care responsibilities, professional dissatisfaction and stress, girls were deeply frustrated by what felt like abandonment.

Rethinking pregnancy and parenting

Mainstream discourses that missed key barriers to girls’ school retention and performance, such as privatisation and food insecurity, misrepresented student pregnancy as an emergent “crisis”.

Prior to the pandemic, sexuality and school-going already overlapped for many girls in Malawi, where adolescent pregnancy rates were threefold the global average. Still, girls in our study countered the idea that schooling and sex were incompatible. They also challenged the idea that school was inherently safe and that it was pregnancy that kept them from school.

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Read more: Education and gender equality: focus on girls isn’t fair and isn’t enough — global study

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Many of the girls’ stories emphasised continuity with what came before the pandemic.

We have found this in past research. Schooling and sexuality are not necessarily opposed; but parents and teachers try to protect girls from sexuality; and parenting and non-parenting girls alike face significant resource-related barriers to schooling.

Conclusion

If girls’ choices, particularly around sexuality, do not represent the greatest or only source of risk for girls’ schooling, interventions must respond to this reality. They should support well-being and address the broader conditions in which girls live and learn. The problem is inequity, not pregnant girls.

– What keeps girls from school in Malawi? We asked them and it’s not just pregnancy
– https://theconversation.com/what-keeps-girls-from-school-in-malawi-we-asked-them-and-its-not-just-pregnancy-258401