A year ago, Google faced the prospect of being dismantled. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) and a new court judgment has helped it avoid this fate. Part of the reason is that AI poses a grave threat to Google’s advertising revenues.
“Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment,” according to the decision.
Google must share certain data with “qualified competitors” as deemed by the court.
This will include parts of its search index, Google’s inventory of web content. Judge Mehta will allow Google to continue paying companies like Apple and Samsung to distribute of its search engine on devices and browsers. But he will bar Google from maintaining exclusive contracts.
The history of this decision goes back to a 2024 ruling by federal judge Amit Mehta. It found that Google maintained a monopoly in the search engine market, notably by paying billions to companies including Apple and Samsung to set Google as the default search engine on their devices.
Almost a year later, the same US judge issued his final ruling, and the tone could not be more different. Google will not be broken up. There will be no choice screen on new phones.
The nature of the search engine market, where more users generate more data, and
more data improves search quality, made it impossible for competitors to challenge
Google, the court found in 2024.
The 2024 ruling itself was controversial. While high quality data enables a dominant firm to extract more profit from consumers, it also allows it to provide a better service. Decades of research in economics has shown that determining which effect is more important is not straightforward.
At the time, the US Department of Justice deemed the issue so serious that it
considered breaking up Google as the only viable solution. For instance, it
suggested forcing the company to sell its web browser, Google Chrome.
The government also proposed forcing device manufacturers to offer users a choice of
search engines during set up, and compelling Google to share most of its data on
user behaviour and ad bidding, where advertisers compete in auctions to get their ads shown to users for a specific search query or audience. These so-called “remedies”, measures Google would be required to implement to end its monopoly, aimed to restore competition.
AI has proven to be a game changer for search engines. Tada Images
Limited sharing
So, what has changed in a year to so radically change the perception of Google’s
market dominance? The main answer is AI – and specifically, large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s own Gemini. As users increasingly turn to LLMs for web searches, Google responded by placing AI-generated summaries at the top of its search results.
The way people navigate the internet is quickly evolving, with one trend reshaping
the business models of online companies: the zero click search. According to a Bain & Company survey, consumers now default to accepting AI-generated answers without further interaction. The data is striking: 80% of users report being satisfied with AI responses for at least 40% of their searches, often stopping at the summary page.
Threat to ad revenue
This AI-driven shift in consumer behaviour threatens not only Google’s business
model but also that of most internet based companies. Advertising accounts for
roughly 80% of Google’s revenue, earned by charging companies for prominent placement in search results and by leveraging its vast amount of user data to sell ad space across the web. If users stop clicking links, this revenue stream evaporates.
More importantly for this ruling, the market Google once monopolised may no longer
be the relevant one. Today, Google’s primary potential competitors in search are not Microsoft Bing, but AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. In the global race for AI dominance, the outcome is far from certain.
From an antitrust standpoint, there is little justification for penalising Google now or forcing it to cede advantages to competitors. What would be the benefit for consumers of forcing Google to accept the £24.6 billion offer from Jeff Bezos’ Perplexity AI to buy the Chrome browser?
In essence, the judge acknowledges that Google monopolised the search engine market for a decade but concludes that the issue may resolve itself in the years ahead.
This situation echoes the first major monopolisation case: Internet Explorer. For
years, European and US regulators battled Microsoft to dismantle the dominance of
its web browser, which was bundled with the then-dominant Windows 95 operating
system.
By the time all appeals were exhausted, however, the monopoly had vanished. Internet Explorer was partly a victim of the rise of smartphones, which did not rely on Windows. The new king in town was a newcomer: a certain Google Chrome.
How you view the economic and political power of tech giants will shape which lesson you draw from this story. An optimistic view I suggested (with the economist Jana Friedrichsen) is that winner-takes-all markets can intensify competition through innovation. In such markets, incremental investment is not enough; to challenge Google, a competitor must offer a vastly superior product to capture the entire market.
Precisely because they ruthlessly defend their monopoly positions, tech
giants show competitors that the potential gains from radical innovations are
massive. The pessimistic view, however, is that years of dominance have left these firms largely unaccountable, which could embolden them in future.
Renaud Foucart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Miriam was 13 when we met her. One day, she asked Eve: “How can we help my mum? She really struggles. I worry that we don’t have enough money for food and stuff.”
Miriam went on to explain that her mother would often skip meals to make sure the children could eat. “Normally we don’t have enough food. So, if there’s a little bit, she’ll give it to me and my brothers, and then she just has tea or something.” Later, Miriam’s younger brother Luke, 11, told us that the children also missed meals.
The family of four lived in a small, two-bedroom flat owned by a private landlord in London. As they took us on a video tour, we heard that the heat was intermittent and large holes were visible in the plaster behind a heater next to the toilet. Miriam explained that the heater had broken but the landlord had not replaced it, despite the cold and damp London winters.
Other signs of disrepair were evident around the flat. The lights in the older children’s room had burnt out over a year ago. The children used the torch on the family’s mobile phone to see when it was dark.
The kitchen sink was blocked and had to be drained manually. Any time the family washed dishes or prepared food, Miriam and her mother Serwah would have to run between the sink and toilet with a bucket, emptying it before the flat flooded. Even the smallest of everyday tasks became large and arduous responsibilities.
The family had lived there for three years, and in London for over ten, but they had limited options to improve their circumstances.
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Serwah had come to the UK from Ghana with the hope of making a better life. After arriving, she realised that she had been made false promises and life was “not good like that”. She found herself struggling in a difficult relationship with a man who was a “liar” and had “destroyed everything”. Serwah ended up being undocumented, but had recently been granted “limited leave to remain” with “no recourse to public funds” (NRPF).
No Recourse to Public Funds
NRPF is an immigration condition contained in the UK’s Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. It states that migrants “subject to immigration control” are not allowed to access most welfare benefits, social housing, or other support, such as extended childcare services.
According to figures analysed by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford in 2019, around 1.376 million people with time-limited “leave to remain” (including students, people with work visas, and those on family visas) are subject to NRPF in the UK. A further approximately 674,000 undocumented people have NRPF imposed by default. Research shows that NRPF particularly affects families who are already economically and socially marginalised, such as single mother households and racially minoritised families from Britain’s former colonies.
Charities suggest that at least 382,000 children in Britain are forced into deep immiseration by NRPF, just like Miriam and Luke. For families like Serwah’s, it means that no matter how impoverished the family is, next to no social support is available, and other options for getting by are also heavily restricted.
NRPF is a less visible and spectacular display of the way various UK governments have approached “controlling immigration”. It has not caused the same controversy as the “Rwanda scheme” or plans to house asylum seekers on a decommissioned barge (what migrants justice groups called a floating prison for people seeking sanctuary).
The Bibby Stockholm barge which housed asylum seekers in Portland Port, Dorset, England, in 2023. Shutterstock/Zeynep Demir Aslim
Over the past six years, we have worked closely with 25 single-mother families living in the shadow of this policy. We have participated in families’ daily lives, conducted interviews, and invited children and adults to take photos, journal, and lead us on video tours. Our research has been in-person and online (especially during the pandemic). We asked participants to choose pseudonyms. Confidentiality is important in all research but crucial for their families given their precarious status.
Hopes for a better life
There was never a single reason within a family, or even for individuals, as to why they had come to the UK. Many of the children were born in the UK while others were brought by their parents at a young age. Some mothers had come attempting to flee abuse while others hoped to make better lives, describing conditions of extreme poverty in their own childhoods. Some had come on visitor visas for short trips to see friends and family but had ended up staying as their situations changed (for example, unexpectedly starting a family or having a child who suddenly needed specialist medical treatment).
What was similar for our participants was that leaving the UK was not really an option. In most cases, this was because their children were British and mothers did not want to uproot their lives. The mothers we met had also been in the UK for over a decade, and despite the hardships they faced, felt that it was home. In some cases, the abuse, extreme poverty, or violence which had compelled their immigration in the first place had not diminished. In others, debts incurred to enable immigration or to survive in the UK would be insurmountable in their countries of origin.
Regardless of how and why families were in the UK, their experiences raise questions about how the UK treats them – and that is the focus of our research.
We found that NRPF is forcing some single mothers into a state of hyper-exploitation where they are forced to carry out cleaning or childcare for little or no pay, and subjected to verbal and physical abuse. Many families wind up homeless or dependent on the kindness of friends or strangers who are often in similarly precarious situations.
NRPF is even imposed on British citizens: children who get dragged into it because of their parent’s immigration status.
Serwah, Miriam and Luke: ‘constantly feeling hungry’
Serwah had “limited leave to remain” and was legally able to work. But without access to affordable childcare, Serwah had to depend on friends or acquaintances to care for her children. She is not alone – according to a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research, tens of thousands of children in migrant and refugee families are being denied access to government-funded childcare because of NRPF linked to their parents’ immigration status. Serwah’s friends were often in equally precarious positions.
As a result, they were reliant solely on Serwah’s wages from twice weekly night shifts in a small residential facility assisting people with dementia while her friend cared for the children. The family found themselves deep in debt. Months of rent arrears due to their destitution had left the family with limited legal options to ensure that the private landlord provided adequate heating, water and other necessary utilities.
For children like Miriam and Luke, who have never lived anywhere except the UK, NRPF means a life of destitution – constantly feeling hungry, trapped in uninhabitable accommodation and without necessities. Yet, they are typically expected to participate and perform in school the same as other children and even punished when they don’t. For example, children have been threatened with missing important school activities if their parents owe money for school meals, while others have been sent to detention for failing to wear the proper uniform because the family cannot afford it.
During another visit, Miriam explained that she usually did homework on the family’s shared mobile phone in the crowded flat. “I don’t really talk to people about my problems. I just keep it to myself”, she said. She explained how hard it was to talk about the family’s situation and that she felt unable to seek assistance from teachers.
Boris Johnson’s surprise
There was a rare furore around NRPF in 2020. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, then prime minister, Boris Johnson, revealed his own surprise at the policy’s existence. Responding to questions about how a family with the legal right to remain in the country would survive without furlough pay and with no right to benefits, Johnson commented:
I’m going to have to come back to you on that because clearly people who have worked hard for this country, who live and work here, should have support of one kind or another. You’ve raised a very important point … If the condition of their leave to remain is they should have no recourse to public funds, I will find out how many there are in that position and we will see what we can do to help them.
Johnson’s political gaffe (not being aware of his government’s own policy) was largely interpreted as an example of his own incompetence. But his initial reaction indicates how little is known about this policy – a visa condition which puts Britain’s “universal” welfare system out of reach of so many.
In public debates, NRPF is often presented as a rational and reasonable way of “controlling migration”. In 2011, when Home Secretary Teresa May expanded NRPF to include migrant families who had had been granted “limited leave to remain” on the basis of Article 8 (rights to private and family life), she stated:
What we don’t want is a situation where people think that they can come here and overstay because they’re able to access everything they need.
Article 8 rights had previously accorded migrant families the right to both stay and access social support alongside other UK residents. As a result of May’s changes, migrant families were placed on the ten-year-route to settlement with NRPF for the duration. The ten-year-route requires four separate applications for temporary status to be made, before applicants can apply for permanent residence. Every two and a half years, applicants must pay £1,321 (per family member) plus a £2,587.50 surcharge – again, per person.
The language of “securing borders” against “spurious” family claims echoes in the government’s current White Paper on immigration. Yet, this is a “problem that does not really exist”, according to barrister Jamie Burton who says the burden of proof is already very high in Article 8 cases.
The policy also doesn’t seem to make financial sense. A social cost benefit analysis conducted at the London School of Economics suggested that removing NRPF for households with limited leave to remain on their work-related visa would result in net gains for Britain of £428 million over a ten-year period, due to reduced costs for the NHS, local authorities and increases in tax revenue. This increases to £872 million if applied to families with children.
While this study shows the financial feasibility of jettisoning NRPF, the logic of a cost-benefit analysis roots Britain’s cost-of-living crisis with destitute migrants, rather than asking why wealth is so concentrated or discussing the ethical principles of a policy which leaves children in fear of starvation.
Destiny and Isaac: fear of starvation and homelessness
Isaac is just one example. He was 13 when we met him and was born in London. He lived with his mother Destiny in a shared room. The room was under sloping eaves and packed with their two single beds and a protruding wardrobe containing all their possessions. Filled with their drying laundry, it felt particularly small and claustrophobic.
Destiny, originally from Nigeria, had limited leave to remain in the UK with NRPF. Isaac was a British citizen, yet the NRPF restriction on his mother’s visa also affected him – a clear example that the policy doesn’t achieve its own logic of protecting “British resources” for British citizens.
Isaac felt keenly that a “universal” welfare system that is not “for all” is discriminatory. He explained:
England is a multicultural country [but NRPF is] basically screwing over those people who came from different backgrounds … as it only favours a certain type of people … It doesn’t favour the whole of Britain.
The fact that NRPF was “basically screwing over” racially minoritised people was not just an abstract idea for Isaac. It was both a hard physical reality and a cause of deep anxiety. “I was worried that we didn’t really have food, if I was going to eat the right amount of food or if I was going to starve,” he told us.
Many of the children we spoke with, like Miriam, worried that if they spoke to anyone about the family’s situation they would be stigmatised or their mothers might be blamed for their destitution. Unusually, Isaac decided to reach out to his teacher for help. His fear of the family starving trumped any concerns he might have had about speaking out.
He described his relief when his head of year helped the family access food banks that were not limited by immigration status, so they didn’t “have to stress about food”. Yet even that relief was only partial, he explained.
Worrying, that puts like dark scenarios in my mind … And I thought like the worst-case scenario would be living on the streets, and I wouldn’t really go to school …
Isaac’s insights about the persistent and grinding effects of NRPF, even when a little bit of relief was available, were echoed by many of our participants.
Samantha and Sam: ‘It destroys you mentally’
Samantha was sitting on the sofa during one of our first meetings, wearing a grey wool hat. She called her eight-year-old son Sam over. He looked excited when his mum said he could “choose a secret name” if he took part in the research. After some whispering and laughter, the two settled on Samantha and Sam.
Eighteen years before we met her, Samantha had come to the UK from Nigeria, joining her parents as a young teenager (around 13). She only discovered as an adult that she had no legal status in the UK and therefore was subject to NRPF. Describing the long-term affects, she said:
It destroys you mentally. And if you’re looking after children, who are depending on you to be a pillar of strength and depending on you to guide them, look after them, and everything, you can’t afford to lose yourself. And that’s what no recourse to public funds does to people. You lose yourself. You lose your sense of identity.
For Samantha, Serwah, and other mothers we spoke with, virtually the only sources of support lie with people in equally precarious positions. Like their children, many mothers find it difficult to ask for help and any help is fragile at best. Asking for help has “always come back to bite me in the backside,” Samantha explained, “So I’ve just soldiered on.” She added: “I had no one to fall back on, I had no one to rely on.”
indefinite leave to remain visa cards issued in the UK – but application costs can be high for people with income. Shutterstock/Ascannio
On one occasion, Samantha mentioned trying to keep costs down when she was working cash-in-hand by asking an acquaintance to help her with childcare and paying the woman what she could afford. The arrangement ended traumatically when she found scratches all over Sam’s body when he returned home one day.
Unable to access government support forced her, and many of the other women we spent time with, to endure relationships and situations that were harmful and painful for them and their children.
By the time we met Samantha, she described having a small feeling of relief. Things had been very difficult for many years, but had recently eased up a bit. They were still undocumented but had recently been able to secure local authority support which included the provision of a small, two-bedroom house.
Though not originally intended for the purpose, local authorities can provide accommodation and financial support to some families with NRPF under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989. Data from the NRPF Network shows that at least 1,650 families (comprising 2,903 dependants) were supported by 72 local authorities across the UK, as of March 31, 2022..
In practice, Section 17 support is minimal, challenging to access, and is often conditional on accepting difficult requirements, such as moving far away from carefully nurtured social networks or to inappropriate, or even hazardous, accommodation.
Although Samantha and Sam showed us the house with evident pleasure, they had initially been reluctant to accept it because it was outside London where they had been living and where Sam had been going to school.
Samantha was so worried about maintaining continuity for Sam that even after moving, they continued to make long journeys back to his school. “That was costing a lot of money. It was physically and mentally draining,” Samantha said. She eventually moved Sam to a new school closer to the new home.
For other families with NRPF, trying to access Section 17 assistance can be a punishing experience.
Martha and Mobo: racism and disrespect
Martha, who had come to the UK from Nigeria as an adult, was staying with her uncle and cousin when we first met her. She shared one room in their two-bedroom house with her three sons, Kevin, 18, Mobo, 16, and Tayo, 14. The small room was filled with a double bed, a folded cot, and a wardrobe. There was little room to move. The “whole family is just cramped up in there”, Kevin said, describing how the family of four shared the space, meaning someone always had to sleep on the floor.
The family got by on a patchwork of support. An auntie paid for a telephone and lunch fees for the children. Members of their church provided them with food and friends from back home sent Martha clothes.
Martha had considerable caring responsibilities for her youngest son, Tayo, who was visually impaired. On this basis, she had recently approached the council for Section 17 support. As she was explaining Tayo’s highly specific needs (the subject of the child-in-need assessment), the social worker just hung up on her, she explained.
Reflecting on his mother’s experiences with social services, Mobo used the word “disrespect” repeatedly. He explained that his mother was treated as though she was “stupid”, but at the same time as if she was “suspicious” because of “stereotypes of what a needy person should look like”.
The entire experience of seeking child-in-need support from the local authority was “hurtful”, “mean”, and deeply racialised, Mobo said. His mother was subjected to “negative stereotypes”, he told us, linking this to the way that “African countries and black nations as a whole” were depicted. “… It’s usually just the bad stuff that makes the news,” he said. Such sentiments were echoed by other children.
Tanya: abused and exploited
Meanwhile, being subject to NRPF for a long time can also make people vulnerable to threats and exploitation, as Tanya told us. Tanya answered the phone with a friendly and open tone when Eve first reached out to her. She was in her early twenties and had come to the UK from Jamaica as an 11-year-old to join her parents. Just like Samantha, she only discovered that she did not have legal immigration status in the UK when she was an adult.
Tanya was making what is often called a “half-life application” because she was between 18 and 24 and had lived in the UK continuously for more than half her life. Yet even if her half-life application was successful, she and her two small children (aged six months and two-years-old) would face another decade subjected to NRPF on the ten-year route to settlement. She told us: “It’s not an easy thing when you don’t have papers in this country for so many years; it’s a struggle.”
“It’s so frustrating that I’ve been here for so long. I went to school here.” Tanya did not know why her mother had not sorted out her immigration status when her own was settled and this subsequently made their relationship fraught.
She described how she was staying with a “friend” rent-free, but that came with strings attached.
Tanya was expected to do all the housework and childcare for both families, even when she was exhausted and heavily pregnant. “I take her kids to school. I clean the house every single day, seven days a week, never get a break to myself when I was pregnant with my daughter.”
It wasn’t simply that NRPF meant she couldn’t afford accommodation of her own. But being undocumented affected every single aspect of her life. “There are limited things that you can do,” she said. “Like, you want to go and get a bank card? You can’t. The first thing: have you got any form of ID? … No, you don’t have it. Oh, you can’t get this.”
Used and abused: some people are left with no option but to stay in abusive situations. Shutterstock/y.s.graphicart
The woman she was staying with would often abuse Tanya verbally, telling her that she should not have come to Britain and that she should be “locked down” because she didn’t have her papers. Tanya felt hurt and taken advantage of, but she had nowhere else to go and feared being told to leave. “I would take the abuse, like take it, take it, take it”.
This was a common experience for mothers in our research. They told us repeatedly that asking for help was not something to be undertaken lightly because it always ran the risk of opening them up to hyper-exploitation. Some told us there were expectations of repayment through sexual favours, or punitive and paternalistic demands for gratitude.
Like Tanya, mothers and children often had to stay in situations that were clearly painful, deeply exhausting, and dangerous because they had been effectively abandoned by the state. Many faced these situations over extended periods of time, regardless of how long they had been in the country and whether they had legal immigration status or even citizenship like Isaac.
It wasn’t simply the material reality of NRPF that stung Tanya. It was having “people look down on you a lot”.
She told us about the constant struggle of growing up in Britain yet constantly being made to feel as though she did not belong. “People look at you: ‘so what are you doing in my country then?’ As if you’re just taking up space …”
This sense of “just taking up space” echoes the tabloid rhetoric that was used to rationalise NRPF and call for its extension. Yet in listening to our participant’s stories of their lives, we are struck by how far this is from their reality.
The enforced destitution caused by NRPF required extensive labour simply to survive day-to-day – from Miriam and Serwah’s continual emptying of the sink that would not drain, to Tanya’s backbreaking housework in exchange for a bed, to Samantha and Sam’s long journeys to get to school.
But this idea of “just taking up space” is almost absurd when we think about the tiny spaces families with NRPF are forced to occupy due to their impoverishment. It was not uncommon to hear about families of four sharing a single room or living room floor, entirely dependent on the hospitality of friends or strangers.
For example, Shanice, 16, had never slept apart from her mother and rarely in a bed of her own. She told us longingly about her dream of having a space of her own:
If you’re constantly sharing a room with someone, you can’t get time to always be yourself and just do what you want to do. We’re both different people and we both move at different paces … Being by myself just means a lot. Like, it means a lot to me just to have my own time to reflect…
Yet the feeling that Tanya described as being seen as “just taking up space”, combined with a complete absence of social support, served as a constant reminder to these families that they were not wanted in the UK.
Our participants repeatedly conveyed the sense of a persistent wearing of body and soul – what Samantha referred to as “losing yourself”.
Abiola and Akin: hope in a shoebox
But despite the hardships and the rejection, many refused to give up hope. People like Abiola. It was a cloudy January afternoon when Eve first met Abiola in person. Abiola was from Nigeria and had been in the UK for 12 years. She was undocumented and subject to NRPF. As a result, her ten-year-old son Akin, who was born in the UK and was a British citizen, was affected as well.
Abiola was waiting for her immigration application for limited leave to remain as a parent of a British child to be decided by the Home Office. But she had been aware of the high cost of regularising their status in the UK since Akin was young.
Despite their destitution, Abiola realised that she had to begin to save for Akin’s citizenship application. “Bit by bit, I opened a box. A shoebox. I made into something like a safe. And I started dropping money inside that place for four, five years,” she said.
She described how any support from her ex-boyfriend would go into the box as well as little bits of money she earned from her jobs: “The least I’m dropping is £5. Because I didn’t want to drop pennies in it. But there will be times in a whole month where I might not even put anything in that box.”
The shoebox with her savings was not just a safe; it symbolised her hope and dreams. Abiola continued:
Everywhere I go, I take that box with me. I didn’t touch it. I kept it. Even if I’m starving, I didn’t touch that money. Even if I was desperate, I didn’t touch that money.
She believed the money would “save her”, adding: “… I was hoping. This is where the future is lying. You have to save for it and get out of this condition, and live a better life.” She said:
I’m just living here. It’s hard … If you look at the way I’m living. There is no bathroom door there. If we are showering, the water is always on the floor. We have to be mopping it … Even if my son is eating, he sits down on the floor and he bends his head to the ground. I cannot even afford anything to make him comfortable. He reads or writes … lying down on the floor. It’s not an easy life.
Her resolve to save in the face of such extreme impoverishment was more than just an act of survival; it was a refusal to “lose herself”.
We heard similar stories from other families. Miriam spoke about the children doing all they could to make her mother “proud”. Speaking about Serwah, she said: “Because she’s struggled a lot for us, so when she gets old, we, all three of us, wanna make her proud”.
Meanwhile, Isaac nurtured hope by imagining a future where he could help others who were in the same situation that he was in.
No recourse is no solution
Our research shows that the no recourse to public funds policy makes life impossible for those who are subjected to it.
It is not a spectacular display of immigration control and rarely makes sensationalised headlines. Instead, the hardship produced by this policy is often experienced in the shadows.
The results of this bureaucratic immigration category are endured in the routine of everyday life, year after year. It often remains invisible – even to teachers, healthcare providers and co-workers.
Yet the stories of these families show that the imposition of this draconian immigration rule has done nothing to meet the government’s stated aim of protecting “the economic wellbeing” of the UK – at least for the most marginalised.
In 2022, 1 million children and 2.8 million adults in the UK were living in destitution. These figures include families with no recourse to public funds who typically experience the most extreme levels of deprivation of all.
If NRPF is not a “solution” and simply penalises and punishes those who are subjected to it, then the question must be asked, why do we have it at all?
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Rachel Rosen receives funding from British Academy, ESRC, ISRF, and Nordforsk.
Eve Dickson receives funding from British Academy, ESRC, and Nordforsk.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Catherine Norton, Associate Professor Sport & Exercise Nutrition, University of Limerick
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has stirred debate by calling the familiar five-a-day message “a lie”. Speaking to the Times, he argued that the real health benefits of fruit and vegetables only start to add up at seven, eight or even 11 portions a day.
He’s not wrong that more is better. Research shows us that the more servings of fruit and veg we eat per day, the more benefits we see to our health. But the story of how five servings became the standard recommendation is one of science meeting pragmatism.
When the five-a-day campaign was launched in the UK and Ireland more than 20 years ago, it was never meant to be the “perfect” target. Instead, it was a compromise – a number that struck a balance between the nutritional evidence and what public health experts thought people might realistically manage. Five portions was judged by researchers and marketeers to be a simple, memorable and achievable slogan – one that wouldn’t scare people off.
But it may be time for this messaging to change, as a growing body of research shows that higher fruit and vegetable intakes are associated with lower risk of chronic diseases.
A meta-analysis of over 2 million people found that while five portions lowered risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, the greatest benefits were seen at around ten portions of fruit and veg daily. Another UK study found that people eating seven or more portions of fruit and veg each day had a 42% lower risk of death compared to those eating less than one portion.
Excellence rarely comes from doing the bare minimum – and the evidence suggests we should be aiming higher.
It’s clear that eating more fruit and veg daily has health benefits. leonori/ Shutterstock
Japan has long recommended ten (and more) portions of fruit and vegetables a day. Mediterranean countries, too, traditionally eat diets rich in fresh produce, beans, and legumes. Research suggests that populations that follow these dietary patterns tend to have lower rates of heart disease and longer life expectancy. Similar associations between higher intakes of fruit and vegetables and lower risk of death from any cause are reported in Japan, too.
The research is clear: higher intake of fruits and vegetables everyday brings tangible health benefits. So while five portions is a good starting point, aiming to include more fruits and vegetables into your daily diet will bring even greater health benefits.
What counts as a portion?
But some confusion lies in what a “portion” really means. The World Health Organization defines one portion as about 80g – roughly a handful. That could be an apple, two broccoli spears, three heaped tablespoons of peas or half a tin of beans. When you break it down like this, eight to 11 portions across three meals and snacks becomes less intimidating.
There are also many easy ways to add more fruit and veg every day. For breakfast, try adding berries to your cereal, a banana to your porridge or spinach in your omelette. For lunch, add salad to sandwiches, beans to your soup or extra veg into wraps.
Double up portions at dinner by eating two or three sides of veg, or bulk up sauces and curries with lentils, peppers or mushrooms. Snack smart by reaching for fruit, veggie sticks with hummus or roasted chickpeas instead of crisps.
You should also aim to eat a rainbow of different fruits and vegetables across the week, as variety is associated with even greater health benefits.
There’s a common myth that only fresh fruit and vegetables count. In reality, frozen, tinned (in water or natural juice) and dried all have a place. They can be cheaper, last longer and often retain just as many nutrients as fresh produce.
Juices and smoothies count too – but only as one portion a day because of their sugar content.
The five-a-day message is a starting point, but not the finish line. Anything is better than nothing – and if you’re eating just one or two portions now, getting to three or four is progress.
But the science is clear: more really is better. Jamie Oliver may be ambitious in suggesting 11 portions, but he’s right that aiming higher could bring big health gains.
Catherine Norton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The federal government’s recent use of Section 107 of the Canadian Labour Code to end the Air Canada flight attendant strike is a troubling development for Canadian workers and unions.
Patty Hajdu invoked Section 107 to order the attendants back to work, and directed their union and Air Canada to binding arbitration — a process in which a neutral third party decides on the terms of a collective agreement after considering each party’s position.
Section 107 provides the jobs minister with the general power to “maintain or secure industrial peace” and to direct the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB), which adjudicates workplace disputes, to also take similar actions.
The ability to strike is the most powerful tool workers have when collectively bargaining with their employers. When the government intervenes and pre-emptively ends a strike, it undermines the legal purpose and use of strikes in Canadian labour law. It also likely violates workers’ constitutional right to strike under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The purpose of strikes in Canadian labour law
In defending its use of Section 107, the federal government has repeatedly argued its intervention is necessary because the parties were at an impasse. This undermines the very purpose of a strike.
Under Canadian labour law, workers can only strike during collective bargaining with their employer and when certain conditions have been met. Strikes are intended to move collective bargaining forward when the parties reach an impasse in negotiations. They work by exerting economic pressure on an employer and incentivizing them to return to the bargaining table and reach an agreement.
Often, as during last year’s Air Canada pilots labour dispute illustrates, the threat of a strike alone is enough to spur the parties to reach an agreement.
The swiftness with which the government has intervened — for example, less than 17 hours into the CN/CPKC strike and less than 12 hours into the most recent Air Canada strike — undercuts the ability of those strikes to achieve their purpose of moving past deadlocks.
Government intervention also creates an expectation for employers. Air Canada, for instance, asked for federal intervention due to an impasse several days before the flight attendants’ strike began. Such requests undermine the purpose of strikes and, in turn, the collective bargaining process itself.
The federal government has repeatedly pointed to economic hardship as justification for using Section 107. Harm to the economy was cited as a basis to order the CN/CPKC railway workers back-to-work last summer, and again when the federal government intervened in labour disputes at the Montréal, Québec and Vancouver ports in November 2024.
Yet economic hardship is not a justifiable basis for removing workers’ right to strike. Canadian labour law recognizes that only workers who provide essential services may be prohibited from striking — where withdrawal or interruption of services would cause a serious and immediate threat to public safety or security, such as police officers or fire fighters.
Notably, both the Montréal port workers and the CN/CPKC railway workers have been subject to attempts by their employers to have their work designated as essential. However, the CIRB declined to make such a designation in either case.
The constitutional right to strike
The government’s use of Section 107 is likely unconstitutional. Since the right to strike was recognized as protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in a 2015 Supreme Court of Canada decision, laws that remove workers’ ability to strike risk violating the guarantee of freedom of association.
Restrictions on the right to strike may sometimes be justified under Section 1 of the Charter, which allows for reasonable limits on Charter rights and freedoms where the government can show the limit is justifiable, such as in the case of essential service workers.
However, the government’s use of Section 107 so far — swiftly, and with reference to economic hardship as the primary reason for doing so — seems unlikely to be justified.
The importance of the constitutional right to strike has already stymied the federal government’s use of Section 107. In the West Jet mechanics labour dispute, it was determined by the CIRB that the government’s order for binding arbitration had not suspended the mechanics’ constitutional right to strike, which allowed them to proceed with their planned strike.
In all subsequent orders, the federal government has avoided this outcome by specifically ordering the end of the strike.
The significance of a constitutionally protected right to strike was underscored during the recent Air Canada dispute when flight attendants and their union defied the government’s back-to-work order, risking jail time and hefty fines by continuing to strike.
Troubling development for labour rights
The Canadian government’s willingness to intervene in labour disputes, and the manner in which it has done so, undermines the collective bargaining process central to Canadian labour law and industrial relations.
The constitutionality of the government’s actions will soon be ruled on by the courts. Unions representing the port workers, the railroad workers and the Air Canada flight attendants have all filed constitutional challenges against the government’s use of Section 107.
However, a final decision by the courts could still be years away. In the meantime, workers and unions in major federal sectors will remain vulnerable to government intervention, and — as in the recent Air Canada dispute — may have to risk fines and jail time to assert their constitutional right to strike.
Bethany Hastie receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is a member of the BC Employment Standards Coalition.
Keegan Nicol does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
With Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un among 26 world leaders watching, China’s president Xi Jinping made a muscular address to 50,000 people in Tiananmen Square marking 80 years since the end of the second world war. China is “never intimidated by bullies” and would “stand by the right side of history”, Xi said, adding that “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation was unstoppable”.
Absent from the ceremony was Taiwan’s leader, Lai Ching-te, who instead took to Facebook, writing that Taiwan does not “commemorate peace with the barrel of a gun”. Taiwan had barred public officials from attending the event.
China and Taiwan both claim their forces bore the true burden of Chinese resistance against Japan during the second world war, and use this contested history to lay claim to power and territory. Now China is weaponising this history, pushing for a “correct” perspective of the war as it seeks to reshape the world order and assert its ambitions over Taiwan.
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, Meredith Oyen, a historian and expert in China-Taiwan relations, explains how disagreements between China and Taiwan over who fought the Japanese more than 80 years ago are still raging and why China’s military parade raised tensions with Taiwan up another notch.
“The second world war has this very long shadow in all of east Asia because there’s a lot of unfinished business,” says Oyen, an associate professor of history and Asian studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
When Japan officially surrendered on September 9 at a ceremony in Nanjing, it was to the Republic of China, then ruled by Chiang Kai-shek. With the war against Japan over, Chiang’s nationalist Kuomintang resumed their civil war against the Chinese Communist Party. In 1949, Chiang and the Kuomintang were pushed to Taiwan as Mao Zedong declared the People’s Republic of China.
As a result, persistent questions about whether China and Taiwan are two separate entities or a divided nation with Taiwan a part of China are a “really significant geopolitical flashpoint” says Oyen, “something that stems directly out of the second world war”.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware with assistance from Katie Flood. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl.
Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Meredith Oyen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sambit Bhattacharyya, Professor of Economics, University of Sussex Business School, University of Sussex
Donald Trump’s tariff policy seems to have morphed into as much of a tool of foreign policy as an economic strategy. But the administration’s decision to impose a 50% tariff on India, a key US ally as part of the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) along with the US, Australia and Japan, could have significant repercussions – not just for international trade, but for global geopolitics.
The US rationale for the tariff hike is primarily political. The White House argues that India has been profiteering from buying and reselling Russian oil, in defiance of sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This has helped Russia weather the effects of the sanctions and continue to fund its war in Ukraine.
Needless to say, the tariff policy and subsequent statements from both Washington and New Delhi have ruined a burgeoning bilateral relationship to the extent that the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been refusing to take Trump’s phone calls. For his part, Trump is no longer planning to visit India for the Quad summit later in the year.
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin, China, from August 31 to September 1, along with the Russian president Vladimir Putin. The three leaders were photographed together in cordial discussion and Modi met separately with both Xi and Putin on the sidelines of the summit, which was billed as presenting an alternative to the US-led hegemonic order.
It now seems clear that raised US tariffs won’t deter India from buying Russian oil. On the contrary, Modi has reaffirmed India’s commitment to not only continue buying Russian oil but to increase volumes.
This is unsurprising. India’s stance on Russia as a net crude oil importer is not driven by any grandiose geopolitical objective but the mundane economic reality of controlling inflation.
When it comes to energy, India is heavily dependent on imports and its consumers, the overwhelming majority of whom are poor and vulnerable, depend on stable and affordable energy prices. No amount of pressure from the US or its G7 allies would change that simple economic reality.
America’s loss is Russia’s gain
One consequence of the US tariffs is that Indian exports of clothing and footwear to the US could decline as big western brands seek to substitute their Indian suppliers with cheaper suppliers from other countries. This will push up prices for consumers in the US.
But it’s unlikely to be that damaging for Indian suppliers as there’s considerable global demand for clothing and footwear. It wouldn’t be difficult for Indian suppliers to find alternative markets.
Another of India’s big exports is gemstones, in which it has a dominant position in the global market. US tariff pressure is unlikely to change that as India exports gemstones to a range of different countries (although the US is a big buyer).
Closer trade ties between India and Russia will open up new opportunities for mutual investment. Russia’s economic position, meanwhile, is likely to improve overall as a result of the tariffs. Not only has India signalled it is likely to increase its oil imports, but Russia is also likely to get the benefit of importing clothing and footwear from Indian suppliers at a favourable price, as Indian suppliers look to redirect their US exports elsewhere.
Closer economic ties with India with the aim to increase bilateral trade to US$100 billion (£74.5 billion) by 2030 will give Russia another large market outside of China to sell its products. Russia will also get access to another major supplier of the sort of consumer goods that it typically imports to keep local prices low for Russian consumers.
An end to US dollar primacy?
There’s a danger for the west that if the tariff situation escalates into harsher financial sanctions, it could divert Indian investment away from the US and G7 countries towards Russia and China. Indian investors have significant presence in the automotive, pharmaceutical, and IT and telecom sectors in the west, which could be directed elsewhere.
But there are growing signs of increasing cohesion, not only from the SCO, but from an expanding Brics group of trading nations. This is now made up of original members, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, plus recent joiners Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates.
These growing economies are already working towards setting up technical mechanisms for mutual investments and trade settlements in their local currencies rather than the US dollar.
The global trade shocks prompted by US imposition of tariffs have led to a short-term decline in the value of the US dollar. While not drastic from a historical trend perspective, these short-term trends mask a broader long-term risk.
Not from trade transactions – trade accounts for only a fraction of dollar transactions. The long-term risks are from a potentially reduced role of the dollar in transactions associated with asset management, investment, finance and international reserves.
In particular, the dollar’s near exclusive status as a reserve currency for Brics and global south nations is at risk.
Any policy that puts that status at risk would compromise US prosperity and security. The concern is that any financial and trade policies that drive the US’s big trading partners closer to Russia and China will do just that.
Sambit Bhattacharyya receives funding from UK Research and Innovation, Economic and Social Research Council, Australian Research Council, and European Research Council.
Summer 2025 was the UK’s hottest on record, the Met Office announced this week. The news somehow felt both inevitable and surprising. There may have been four separate heatwaves, but for many this summer felt pretty normal.
This is because of “shifting baseline syndrome” and the way humans notice – or fail to notice – temperature change.
Academics have been warning about shifting baselines for decades: the idea that each generation takes the climate and ecosystems of its youth as the baseline or “normality”.
“Even my parents”, she writes, “recall clouds of insects while they learned to drive, regular snowfall each winter and now rare bird species filling their back gardens.”
For people struggling to put environmental changes in context, local anecdotes like these can be more useful than news stories. “Older people hold a rich library of knowledge about the past,” says Jones, “and how their corner of the world has changed over the course of their lives.”
As time passes, losses accumulate or temperatures creep up. But because we reset our expectations every generation, the change feels ordinary. This is shifting baseline syndrome, and Jones says it leads us to “underestimate how much the environment has changed”.
She particularly focuses on wildlife changes:
“Whatever you or your generation grew up with is considered normal, but as species continue to go extinct and wild habitats are erased, your children will inherit a degraded environment and accept that as normal, and their children will normalise an even more impoverished natural world.”
My own grandparents were born near Newcastle more than a century ago. Back then, red squirrels still dominated that part of the world but grey squirrels introduced from America were fast taking over. Skip forward two generations, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a red squirrel in the wild. My baseline is that squirrels are grey.
There’s something similar going on with birds in the UK. I grew up in west London and vividly remember as a teenager my first sighting of a bright green parakeet in Richmond Park. My friend Oscar told me a small colony had established themselves in the city’s suburbs. These days, I see these invasive parakeets (originally from the Himalayan foothills, say scientists) more than any bird aside from pigeons. They’re loud and annoying and keep taking food from native songbirds.
My children will never know a London without parakeets: that’s their baseline.
The new baseline. NorthSky Films / shutterstock
Altered perceptions
But it’s easy to spot when a chunky colourful parrot has muscled a tiny blue tit out of its usual feeding spot. It’s a lot harder to notice that the hottest summer day might now be 35°C rather than 31°C.
In part, that’s because climate change isn’t just altering the weather – it’s altering our perceptions.
Matthew Patterson is a climate scientist at the University of Reading. Writing in June last year, after supposedly cold and miserable weather still hadn’t moved the month much below the long-term temperature average, he noted that the UK has warmed so fast that: “We have come to normalise extreme heat, while relatively cold or even average conditions feel unusual and thus newsworthy.”
We’re also prone to very human biases here. Our collective memory of the weather in any given summer is hugely influenced by conditions during the daytime on perhaps ten weekends. Few people notice whether it was abnormally hot or cold at 3am on a Tuesday, but that’s part of the average too.
This may explain why the UK’s record hot summer still came as a surprise: we pay attention to outliers and recent events (August was cooler than July this year), not to the relentless upward creep of average temperatures.
History offers a sobering lesson in averages and outliers. During the little ice age between the 14th and 19th centuries, average global temperatures cooled by a few tenths of a degree. But that had a huge impact, especially in Europe: failed harvests, frozen rivers, famines and storms.
For climate historian Dagomar Degroot of Georgetown University in the US, this was a case of small global trends masking bigger local consequences. “The comparatively modest climate changes of the little ice age,” he says, “likely had profound local impacts.”
And if less than half a degree can do all that, what might two degrees of warming do in the near future?
Degroot does note that: “People who lived through the little ice age lacked perhaps the most important resource available today: the ability to learn from the long global history of human responses to climate change.”
The little ice age teaches us how vulnerable we are to climate shifts, but we can reimagine the natural world rather than simply mourn its loss.
Back in 2018, Jones (the conservation psychologist), together with her colleagues Christopher Sandom and Owen Middleton of the University of Sussex, asked young people to imagine what a thriving natural world would look like:
“What they expressed was a desire to see ecosystems with not just more of the wildlife that’s currently there, but the return of species which have disappeared. There was also an undercurrent of sadness about litter and the present absence of wildlife, and hopes for more sustainable lifestyles in the future.”
This is why the authors say we should not simply accept shifting baseline syndrome, as it would mean “progressive damage to the natural world, even with our best efforts”.
Instead, they write, “By broadening our imagination and what we can expect from the environment, we can raise our ambitions for the natural world we leave to future generations.”
While memory loss hides decline, imagination can help reverse it.
These stories help explain the paradox of the low-key record-breaking summer. Shifting baselines make us forget the past. Human biases mean we notice cool rainy days more than creeping warmth. And history warns us that even small global changes have huge local effects.
Post-carbon
Lots of responses to our question about air conditioning last week.
Dave Pearson says: “When we were younger my wife and I lived in Chad without air conditioning for 10 years. In the hot season our living room would drop to 40 °C just before dawn, then the sun would rise…” He now has an AC unit in his living room: “We see it as a source of convenient comfort at this point, but potentially life-saving as we get older (and therefore more vulnerable) and heatwaves get hotter”
Marolin Watson says her “brick-built South-facing terrace house” tends to stay fairly cool. “However, with people increasingly being forced to live in flats that often rise a considerable distance into the air and may, depending on their orientation, catch the full sun for most or all of the day, I can see that air conditioners will be a necessity.”
Helen Wood says: “if you want air-conditioning, it should be only operated by battery powered by solar panels and not draw on the national grid”
Anne Heath Mennell grew up in Yorkshire and now lives in Australia. She points out “it is an efficient way to cool down, especially if powered by renewables”, but that people once “dreamed of balmy summers. Be careful what you wish for…”
An obvious question this week: what are some climate or environmental changes you have noticed in your lifetime? Don’t give me data: I want anecdotes.
Standing before the Inquisition in Lisbon, Portugal in 1556, Mónica Fernandes, a woman from the coast of modern-day Ghana, was accused of casting malevolent spells and making pacts with demons. Her crime? Seeking a traditional Akan remedy for a simple cat bite.
The Portuguese Inquisition was a powerful institution tasked with identifying, investigating and punishing any belief or practice that deviated from official Catholic doctrine. The Inquisition was established in 1536 during the expansion of the Portuguese empire, one of the world’s first global maritime powers.
Fernandes’ trial, recorded in meticulous detail by the Inquisitor, Jerónimo de Azambuja, offers a rare and powerful window into a 16th-century clash of cultures. It reveals how a colonial power systematically misunderstood and criminalised local customs, rebranding Indigenous knowledge as dangerous sorcery.
As a historian, I spend my time searching for connections between people across the early modern world, especially the lives of women and children within the vast Portuguese empire. While I was researching the trials of Indigenous women in colonial Brazil, a question began to form: were women in other parts of the empire, like west Africa, also being targeted for their traditional knowledge? This question led me to the archives of the Portuguese Inquisition and to a remarkable case file from 1556.
The file detailed the trial of Mónica Fernandes, an Akan woman from what’s now Ghana. Her story opens a rare window onto the personal, human impact of colonisation. It shows how a vast imperial power operated on the ground: by misunderstanding, criminalising, and attempting to erase Indigenous ways of knowing.
Recovering stories like this helps us understand a legacy of cultural suppression that continues to resonate today.
A life between two worlds
Mónica was born to Akan parents. The Akan are a collection of related peoples, primarily living in modern-day Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Organised into matrilineal states, they had established sophisticated societies with rich cultural, religious and social knowledge systems long before the arrival of Europeans.
The Portuguese first arrived on the west African coast in the late 15th century, driven by a desire for gold. They established their authority by constructing fortified trading posts like São Jorge da Mina (now Elmina Castle) that imposed their laws and religion on the surrounding communities.
Mónica lived and worked in and around São Jorge da Mina, a place of intense cultural collision. Baptised into the Catholic faith, she existed between two worlds: the rigid, hierarchical society of the European fortress and the vibrant Akan village of Edina that surrounded it.
Like others, she moved between these spaces to socialise, shop and, crucially, seek medical care. It was this last activity that brought her to the attention of the Inquisition. Instead of visiting the Portuguese apothecary at the fortress, Mónica consulted a local Akan healer, an ɔkɔmfoɔ or odunsinni, to treat a cat bite. She procured an ointment, a common practice she saw as rudimentary healthcare.
To the Inquisitor, however, this was proof of heterodoxy, or a belief, opinion, or practice that went against the officially established doctrines of Catholicism. Mónica’s choice to trust her community’s medical expertise over that of the Portuguese was seen not just as a rejection of European authority, but as evidence of a pact with the devil.
Custom vs. crime
The accusations against Mónica were dramatic and personal. The initial charge stemmed from a quarrel with another African woman, Ana Fernandes, who was visiting São Jorge da Mina from Lisbon. Witnesses claimed that after an argument, Mónica cast a spell on Ana. Weeks later, after returning to Portugal, Ana succumbed to a mysterious illness that allegedly caused the skin to peel from her face. This rumour, spread by a single witness, became the centrepiece of the case.
The rumour of Mónica’s curse spread, prompting a formal inquiry by the Portuguese captain at São Jorge da Mina. It was only after this local investigation, which took months, that Mónica was officially detained and transported as a prisoner to face the main tribunal in Lisbon.
The Inquisitor’s interest went beyond this single event, expanding to include other, more everyday practices. Witnesses interviewed at São Jorge da Mina also claimed Mónica conducted spells using chickens and yams. While these details were recorded as evidence of sinister rituals, they were in fact staple elements of Akan cultural life. Yams, a starchy, edible tuber, similar to a potato, were a vital food source and central to ceremonies honouring ancestors, while animal sacrifice was a common preparation for deities.
What the Portuguese Inquisitor labelled feitiços (witchcraft or charms) was, for Mónica and her community, simply aduro (medicine) and amammerɛ (custom). The trial documents painstakingly list her heterodoxical activities, but in doing so, they inadvertently preserve a record of the very cultural knowledge the Inquisition sought to destroy. Mónica’s case becomes a catalogue of everyday Akan practices, seen through a distorted colonial lens.
A defiant accused
Throughout months of imprisonment and interrogation, Mónica was pressed to confess to witchcraft. She consistently refused. In Akan culture, the concept of bayie is sometimes translated as “witchcraft”, but it specifically refers to acts of acute spiritual wickedness or illness. Mónica’s actions did not fit this category. She was treating a physical ailment, a cat bite.
Mónica’s refusal to accept the label of “witch” was therefore not simple denial. Her defence was based on a clear cultural distinction, one she clung to despite her limited Portuguese. When she insisted that she had committed no crime because “all the black men and women of Mina did it too”, she was not admitting to collective guilt. She was trying to explain that her actions were customary medicine, not malevolent spiritual work.
She understood the difference between her own system of knowledge and the crime of which she was accused, and she refused to conflate them.
The verdict and legacy
Ultimately, Mónica was found guilty of witchcraft, but the Inquisitors deemed her actions “minor”. She was given the light sentence of a period of religious re-education in Lisbon to study Christian doctrine. Mónica secured her release by demonstrating good Christian behaviour, but was forbidden from returning to her homeland.
Mónica’s light sentence was relatively uncommon but unlikely to have been the first instance of re-education. It is possible that women from other Portuguese colonial territories also suffered similar fates, but many records have been lost due to the Lisbon Earthquake (1755) and the deliberate destruction of the Goa Inquisition cases which also took in east Africa.
We don’t know what happened to her after her release. But her story, buried in the archives for over 450 years, remains deeply relevant. It is a powerful, personal account of how colonialism operated not just through military force, but through displacement and the deliberate suppression of local knowledge. Mónica’s trial is a stark reminder that the branding of Indigenous practices as “magic” or “superstition” was a tool used to assert dominance and erase entire ways of knowing the world.
Jessica O’Leary works for Monash University, a partner of The Conversation.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) established its first radio transmitter sites in Africa in the 1930s, to reach the British colonies and beyond. It became a model for radio in Africa and later a model for TV news.
But, almost a century on, what is the BBC’s colonial legacy and how does the public broadcaster serve a post-colonial media space? We asked the editors of a new book, called The BBC’s Legacy in Africa: Continuities and Change, about their study.
What was the BBC’s colonial operation all about?
The BBC was established in 1922. Within a few years, it became a colonial platform. This began with the British Colonial Office’s decision to set up radio broadcasting in its colonies. The goal was to enhance communication between the governors and the governed. The BBC was engaged to help with the project.
Between the late 1920s and 1930, the BBC tried broadcasting in most parts of the empire, including Africa. At the 1930 Imperial Conference, it was agreed to set up the Empire Service, a broadcast network to advance administration of the colonies. By 1932, the Empire Service was in full operation and many countries were getting connected to the broadcasting grid. Kenya was connected in 1928 and Ghana in 1935. In central Africa, Zambia was connected in 1945 to cover Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe.
At the time, private radio stations were thriving in other parts of the continent, particularly in South Africa, Angola and Mozambique. The unique approach of the BBC was to establish public service radio.
By 1971, there were 43 national radio services in sub-Saharan Africa. This is attributed mainly to the BBC’s expertise in developing broadcasting services and programming models, and training African broadcasters.
This was more than just communication; it was a form of cultural imperialism and soft power. It embedded British values through English-language dominance and news formats that reflected British norms.
This remains the BBC broadcasting model today, as well as that of former British colonies. At independence, newly established African states adopted these norms to establish national broadcasters.
Our book argues that the end of colonisation did not dismantle the BBC’s colonial legacy. That’s because the style was already embedded in the broadcasting system. We used evidence from different countries, including Malawi, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Nigeria, to demonstrate this.
How did this shape African media?
Post-independence broadcasters inherited BBC-style structures, formats and journalistic ethics. Over time, these elements were blended with local languages, music and storytelling traditions.
The BBC has remained in these countries through the BBC World Service and programmes like Focus on Africa. It recruits African correspondents who influence local journalists to write news in the same ways.
We argue that the failure of African media to decolonise has something to do with the BBC’s efforts to keep influencing broadcasting worldwide.
Many national broadcasters in Africa still operate under public service broadcasting principles inspired by the BBC. In some countries – like Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe – these are public broadcasters on paper, but in practice they are state media, operating in the interest of the state. They are abused and used for state propaganda. So, the influence of the BBC, in some instances, is not successful in practice.
At first, the BBC was promoting English only. Later on, it started to invest in African languages. The BBC’s World Service programming has incorporated Hausa, Igbo, Somali, Swahili, Afaan Oromo, Amharic and Tigrinya.
As the book discusses, BBC programmes like Focus on Africa and political interview styles like HARDtalk have influenced talk shows and political debate programmes in African media. These hybrids often continue to reproduce western-centric norms and biases.
What can we learn from some of the countries discussed?
In Uganda, radio continues to reflect the influence of the BBC in programming content, ownership patterns and journalist training.
The BBC’s reliance on Ugandan correspondents reinforces its authority and shapes professional norms, making BBC-trained journalists aspirational figures. The BBC sustains many local outlets by providing international and sports content.
Its enduring presence has also been facilitated by government goodwill, including the allocation of scarce frequencies, as part of maintaining diplomatic ties.
The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation initially embraced the BBC’s public service broadcasting ideals. But later it became a propaganda arm for the ruling party.
What are some of the problems with the BBC in Africa today?
Its perceived neutrality as a public service broadcaster is questioned in the book because the BBC’s editorial choices often mirror British foreign policy priorities. The discussions in the book mirror some of the public backlash the BBC has faced in cases like its coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The dominance of BBC-trained journalists and formats has the potential to marginalise other storytelling traditions. Most African cultures are rich in storytelling but BBC correspondents tend to control the storytelling through an insistence on quick questions and answers and limited time.
Although African languages are included, news framing often perpetuates Eurocentric narratives.
What needs to change?
BBC should be commended for setting up what became a model of broadcasting not only in Africa but also beyond. This model has fostered quality broadcasting and the watchdog role of the press.
Moving forward, in its African programming and operations, the BBC needs to go beyond tokenism. Representation should encompass more than language. It should include agenda-setting, framing and adopting African storytelling techniques.
African broadcasters should uphold and embrace local knowledge and approaches by incorporating local cultural logic into their programming. They should strive to be creative and innovative.
Partnerships that empower African broadcasters instead of relying on BBC resources can promote genuine media sovereignty.
The future depends on hybridisation on African terms, upholding high production and ethical standards while anchoring media systems in African socio-political realities, rather than copying and reproducing colonial frameworks.
The book argues that decolonisation in African broadcasting is an ongoing process and requires creating more spaces for open conversations.
Albert Sharra receives funding from University of Witwatersrand and University of Edinburgh. The book is part of my funded research work under these institutions.
Anthony Mavuto Gunde and Jimmy Kainja do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Robin Steedman, Lecturer of Creative Industries, School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow
African filmmakers have long faced challenges in securing wide-scale distribution for their films. In this context, digital platforms such as Netflix and YouTube have been hailed as bringing huge new opportunities.
This optimism in filmmaking resonates with the hype digital technologies more generally have had in Africa. They have been seen to offer almost unlimited opportunities for African entrepreneurs to transform and grow their businesses. Ghana’s communication minister, for example, declared in 2017 “it’s Digitime in Ghana”.
We are researchers in film studies, theatre studies, sociology and geography, and in this study, we set out to understand how platforms were being used and thought about in the Ghanaian film industry. We wanted to look beyond the techno-optimistic hype – the idea that technological progress can solve every problem known to humans.
We held interviews and focus groups with 50 filmmakers in Ghana to understand the experience of platform entrepreneurship in filmmaking across the country. We found that while filmmakers were very optimistic about technology, they were also deeply sceptical of what existing platforms could do for them in Ghana. Creating local platforms was an important alternative.
Enthusiastic but short on know-how
Ghana’s film industry dates back to its colonial roots when the Gold Coast Film Unit was established by the British in the 1940s. Although it has achieved remarkable successes, they haven’t been consistent. In the sub-region the industry is dwarfed by Nigeria’s Nollywood.
Film distribution in Ghana is in a transitional moment, driven in large part by technological change. For a long time, Ghanaian movies reached their audiences on CDs and DVDs. With the rise of digital television and internet streaming, this once lucrative model collapsed. Ghanaian filmmakers are now experimenting with platforms in their businesses.
We found that they used and thought about platforms in three principal ways.
First, many filmmakers enthusiastically embraced platforms and believed they had the power to create global reach and dramatic business growth. Many felt, like prominent Accra filmmaker Isaac, that “opportunities are endless in the industry” because of new technologies.
Some Ghanaian filmmakers distribute their films on major global platforms such as Netflix, but it was only a very small minority. They did not feel that working with platforms had revolutionised their businesses, but rather that being on Netflix enhanced their status, and they hoped this would help them attract financing for future projects.
Second, filmmakers were also well aware of the limits of platform distribution. Those with films on Netflix were the most affluent and well connected. Others struggled to access some global platforms. They also found it very difficult to make money on easy-to-access platforms such as YouTube. They struggle to make the large volume of content needed to get high viewing numbers and thus monetise their content. It was almost impossible to make enough to justify the cost of production.
Some filmmakers felt that they did not know enough about how to use platforms. Emerging filmmaker Esther expressed a common view when she said:
We need more education in filmmaking. Those of us here, we have the talent, we want to do movies, we are doing our best, but most of us have not been to film school to learn.
Some felt they were not benefiting from the potential of platforms yet, but could in the future. Thus, they were motivated to continually experiment and develop new strategies for making and distributing their movies online and offline.
Third, some filmmakers experimented with creating Ghanaian platforms.
John, a leading figure in a national association, said:
In five years, the industry will be better, far, far better than ten years ago. … if we are able to move with time, build a platform like Netflix.
He wanted to create something that would focus on Ghanaian film and support the local industry.
John was not alone. Selwyn, a film and TV entrepreneur, for example, had created an app specifically for local language film.
Ghanaian filmmakers could see that the business models of global tech giants did not favour them, and that Netflix and other American platforms would not transform film distribution in Ghana or fulfil their dreams of global audiences and business growth.
Local solutions
Film makers did not give up in the face of these challenges. Rather they worked hard to devise their own solutions to the challenge of film distribution – solutions that were tailored to their circumstances and put Ghanaian filmmakers at centre stage. Local Ghanaian platforms were one such solution.
The idea that technology can change the world emanates powerfully from Silicon Valley in the US and has been exported globally. Yet Ghana is starkly different from Silicon Valley and thus the experience of technological entrepreneurship is likely to be different too.
Ana Alacovska received funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark for this research
Rashida Resario has received funding from DANIDA for this research.
Thilde Langevang receives funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, grant number 18-05-CBS (Advancing Creative Industries for Development in Ghana).
Robin Steedman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
