The Conversation – Africa – Page 13

November 16, 2025

Guinea-Bissau’s presidential poll has already failed the credibility test

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Jonathan Powell, Visiting assistant professor, University of Kentucky

Guinea-Bissau heads into its November elections against the backdrop of a deepening crisis of electoral legitimacy across Africa. In recent months, a string of elections has reinforced the perception that incumbency, not competition, remains the standard.

In Cameroon, 92-year-old Paul Biya claimed an eighth consecutive term after officially winning 53.7% of a vote widely denounced as fraudulent and met with protests.

In Tanzania, President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared the victor with an implausible 98% of ballots cast in her favour following a poll marred by numerous irregularities and followed by protests and a crackdown unprecedented in the country’s history.

And in Côte d’Ivoire, President Alassane Ouattara comfortably secured a fourth term with nearly 90% of the vote, extending his hold on power despite the constitution’s two-term limit.

Across the continent, including west Africa, these outcomes have fuelled public cynicism and highlighted a worrying erosion of democratic norms, as leaders manipulate constitutions, neutralise opponents, and hollow out institutions meant to safeguard accountability.

It is within this climate of regional disillusionment that Bissau-Guineans will head to the polls on 23 November.

The west African country’s upcoming election once offered the potential to demonstrate a growing electoral resilience, a deepening of institutional strength that would help the country break from past legacies of instability. Instead, the process has been repeatedly undermined by President Umar Sissoco Embaló.

As social scientists who have written extensively on political instability in Africa, we believe that such dynamics all but guarantee another entry to the roster of failed elections across the region.

At stake is more than Guinea-Bissau’s democratic credibility. Its unravelling speaks to a wider regional crisis in which incumbents erode legitimacy not by abolishing elections, but by emptying them of real competition.

A legacy of instability

In contrast to long-tenured leaders like Biya or Ouattara, or enduring parties such as Tanzania’s Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), Guinea-Bissau’s voters navigate an electoral system defined by unpredictability and instability, especially during election season.

The country’s modern electoral turbulence can be traced back decades. João Bernardo “Nino” Vieira returned to power in 2005 for a second stint, nearly a quarter-century after first seizing control via a 1980 coup.

His rule was marred by conflict, including an 11-month civil war triggered by a rebellion from former army chief of staff Ansumane Mané. Vieira’s long first tenure ended in a second coup in May 1999, and his second term was cut short in 2009 when he was murdered by members of the armed forces.

Malam Bacai Sanhá emerged as Vieira’s elected successor but passed away in January 2012, leaving Raimundo Pereira as interim president. Within months, Pereira would be removed in yet another military coup.

The 2012 upheaval halted a runoff election between Carlos Domingos Gomes Júnior and Kumba Ialá.

The 2014 election brought José Mário Vaz to the presidency, defeating a candidate with close ties to the military. When Vaz completed his term in 2020, he became Guinea-Bissau’s first president to finish a constitutionally defined tenure.

Undermining the process

Questions arose even before Vaz’s exit. After Umar Sissoco Embaló was declared the winner over Pereira in the 29 December runoff, Pereira challenged the results. Ignoring the ongoing legal process, Embaló arranged an inauguration ceremony for himself in February 2020.

The African Party for Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) accused Embaló of orchestrating a coup and appointed Cipriano Cassamá as an interim president.

Embaló then ordered the deployment of the military to state institutions, including the National Assembly. Cassamá stepped down on his second day, citing death threats.

The supreme court ultimately declined to rule on the dispute after its chief judge fled the country, also citing death threats. The crisis was effectively resolved by the Economic Community of West African States’ (Ecowas) recognition of the Embaló government. Uncertainty, however, would continue to plague the new government.

In May 2022, three months after an attempted coup, Embaló dissolved and suspended parliament.

The main opposition party, the PAIGC, formally regained parliamentary control in the June 2023 elections, setting the stage for continued confrontation between the presidency and the legislative majority. Embaló again pursued the dissolution of parliament in December 2023.

Although Embaló’s term officially expired in February 2025, the supreme court later ruled he could remain in office until 4 September.

Even after that date, Embaló remained in office. These manoeuvres have heightened concerns about the erosion of constitutional norms.

Concerns over the broader electoral environment have also come to the fore. Legislative elections initially scheduled for late November 2024 were indefinitely postponed due to alleged funding and logistical challenges. Earlier, Embaló had declared he would not seek reelection, only to reverse course in March 2025.

A mediation team deployed by the Economic Community of West African States, tasked with helping the sides agree to and honour an election timeline, abruptly withdrew following threats of expulsion from the Embaló government.

More recently, the PAIGC’s chosen presidential candidate, Domingos Simões Pereira, was barred from contesting the November election after the supreme court rejected his candidacy over the late submission of documents.

For the first time in Guinea-Bissau’s history, the country’s oldest and most influential party will be excluded from the presidential race.

The country has fallen in the Electoral Democracy Index, provided by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). As shown in the graph below, the decline even outpaces the drop witnessed after military coups in 2003, 2012, and the assassination of Vieira in 2009.

The V-Dem data end in 2024, and thus do not yet capture the 2025 election cycle.

Performative elections, entrenched power

What is unfolding in Guinea-Bissau is not an isolated crisis. It is part of a wider regional pattern in which leaders recognise that elections can be held, even celebrated, while hollowing out nearly everything that once made them meaningful. Critically, the recent coups in the region have been linked, in part, to popular frustration with flawed electoral processes.

Embaló has not entrenched himself with the personal longevity of Cameroon’s Biya or the institutional dominance of Tanzania’s CCM, but the mechanisms he has used to tilt the field look strikingly similar.

The removal of viable opponents, the manipulation of constitutional timelines, the coercive use of the security sector, and the corrosion of judicial independence all signal a shift away from accountability.

Guinea-Bissau was for the first time in decades poised to demonstrate that democratic resilience could be strengthened. Instead, the 2025 election cycle risks becoming another example of how fragile gains can be reversed with impunity.

The authors 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.

– ref. Guinea-Bissau’s presidential poll has already failed the credibility test – https://theconversation.com/guinea-bissaus-presidential-poll-has-already-failed-the-credibility-test-269461

November 16, 2025

Violence is a normal part of life for many young children: study traces the mental health impacts

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Kirsten A Donald, Professor of Paediatric Neurology and Development, University of Cape Town

By Teresa – Scan on Xerox DocuColor 2240, CC BY-SA 3.0, CC BY

Children in many countries are growing up surrounded by violence. It may happen at home, in their neighbourhoods, or both. Some children are directly harmed, while others witness violence between caregivers or in their communities. Either way, the impact can be profound.

Evidence shows that the relationship between violence exposure and poor mental health can be seen even before a child is old enough to go to school. Researchers are learning that early adversities can have lifelong consequences.

We are researchers in paediatric neuroscience and psychology who set out to understand how early experiences of violence are shaping young children’s cognitive and emotional health in low- and middle-income countries. Here we discuss our findings from a review of studies from 20 countries and new data from a large cohort of children in South Africa.

We found that violence exposure is extremely common in all the countries we looked at and that its effects on mental health are already visible in childhood.

The response will require action at all levels – families, communities, health systems and governments.

Gaps in the research

Early childhood (birth to 8 years) is a critical period for emotional, social and cognitive development. Mental health or cognitive difficulties that begin in the preschool years can shape children’s relationships, learning and wellbeing well into adolescence and adulthood. Yet, little is known about how violence affects children in the early years in low – and middle-income countries, where violence rates can be high. Most research focuses on school-age children or adolescents, missing the window when prevention may be most effective, in early childhood.

We aimed to fill that gap by collating existing knowledge and generating new evidence from South African children. This formed the basis of co-author Lucinda’s PhD thesis.

First, we reviewed 17 published studies from 20 low- and middle-income countries, examining how violence exposure affects children’s cognitive functioning. Second, we used data from almost 1,000 children in the Drakenstein Child Health Study, a long-running birth cohort in a peri-urban community outside Cape Town. We examined these children’s exposure to different types of violence by age four-and-a-half and assessed their mental health at age five.

What we found

Sadly, our findings revealed that violence exposure is extremely common.

The review found that over 70% of the studies drawing from 27,643 children from 20 countries, aged up to 11, across four continents, reported poor cognitive outcomes associated with experiencing maltreatment, intimate partner violence and war.

In our South African cohort, by age 4.5 years, 83% of children were exposed to some form of violence. This included witnessing community violence (74%), witnessing domestic violence (32%), and being direct victims in the community (13%) or at home (31%). Nearly half (45%) experienced more than one type of violence.

In many countries, early exposure to violence is not exceptional. It is a normal part of growing up for many children.

Regarding how violence affects mental health in early childhood, the South African data showed that preschool children exposed to more violence displayed more internalising symptoms, such as anxiety, fear, or sadness, and externalising symptoms, such as aggression, hyperactivity, and rule-breaking. Experiencing violence at home and witnessing violence in the community were particularly linked with these difficulties.

One of the clearest findings was that multiple exposures compounded the risk. Children who experienced both domestic and community violence were at particularly high risk of mental health difficulties, especially experiencing externalising symptoms.

Public health challenge

These results highlight a major public health challenge, which starts early. These patterns appear before school entry, suggesting that violence exposure can alter developmental pathways well before formal education begins.

Since the risks from mental health difficulties linked to violence were visible by age five, waiting to intervene until school-age misses a crucial opportunity.

Impacts to wellbeing in early childhood can cause some children to internalise distress and others to act out, but both can disrupt learning, relationships and future mental health.

It is a stark reality that in some communities, most children are affected by violence. Individual therapy alone cannot fix a problem this widespread. It is a population-level issue. Broader community and policy responses are needed, such as the INSPIRE strategies developed by the World Health Organization.

Where to from here

The reality is grim and calls for quick and informed action at all levels: families, communities, health systems, and governments. A successful response will include:

Early identification: Health and community services should routinely ask about violence exposure, including witnessing violence, during early childhood visits.
Support for families: Interventions that reduce domestic violence, strengthen parenting skills, and provide mental health and social support can protect both children and adults.
Addressing community violence: Safer neighbourhoods, violence prevention efforts and policing reforms should be implemented and also clearly linked with child mental health strategies in policy wording.
Policy that prioritises early childhood: Governments and NGOs should embed early violence prevention and child mental health promotion into national health and education strategies.
Monitoring and revising strategies: Improving data collection and data quality will help track progress and inform improvements to further interventions.

Violence exposure in early childhood is widespread in low- and middle-income countries and has clear impacts on young children’s mental health. These effects emerge early, grow with multiple exposures, and require early intervention at every level. Protection and support are essential to build healthier and safer communities for the future.

There is hope as some organisations in South Africa are working to prevent violence against women and children, and intervening for those affected.

Lucinda Tsunga received funding from the University of Bristol’s (i) Pro Vice-Chancellor (PVC)-Research and Enterprise Strategic Research Fund and (ii) The Quality-related Research Global Challenges Research Fund (QRGCRF) Strategy funded by Research England during the course of her Dctoral studies.

Kirsten A Donald 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.

– ref. Violence is a normal part of life for many young children: study traces the mental health impacts – https://theconversation.com/violence-is-a-normal-part-of-life-for-many-young-children-study-traces-the-mental-health-impacts-268512

November 14, 2025

Nigeria’s new terror threat: JNIM is spreading but it’s not too late to act

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Folahanmi Aina, Lecturer in Political Economy of Violence, Conflict and Development, SOAS, University of London

The Sahel region, south of the Sahara, is notorious for being the global epicentre of terrorism. With a combined population of 75 million people, the region has accounted for more fatalities than any other on the African continent since 2021.

In 2024, deaths from terrorism across the region stood at 11,200: more than half of Africa’s toll that year.

The situation has deteriorated following the coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The three countries are among the most affected in the troubled region. As of June 2025, these countries contributed to the more than 2.9 million people who have been displaced across the region, more than half of them being children.

As a political scientist with over 10 years of expertise on terrorism, insurgencies and extremism in west Africa, I have closely monitored the emergence, evolution and endurance of armed non-state actors.

Violent extremist groups operating across the region, affiliated to the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaida, have used tactics like kidnappings for ransom, ambushes, cattle rustling, and attacks on military formations.

Recent attacks have reflected the changing character of this hybrid warfare. Low-cost commercial drones have been weaponised and artificial intelligence has been adopted as part of a broader propaganda strategy. There have been forays into the world of cryptocurrency to diversify revenue sources.

These violent extremist groups have leveraged local grievances which have their roots in worsening socio-economic conditions, poor governance, weak institutions, and environmental degradation.

I have been tracking the rapid spread of one of the most powerful extremist groups in Africa: Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM). JNIM seeks to expand beyond kidnappings for ransom, cattle rustling, human trafficking and taxes on local communities. It has its eyes set on gaining access to gold fields. Control of artisanal gold mines in parts of the Sahel region is a central part of its financial and strategic operations.

Given JNIM’s strength and capabilities, the group now poses an existential threat to Nigeria, which already faces multiple security threats. But the group can be quickly repelled with the right measures in place.

Who is JNIM?

JNIM was formed in 2017 and has up to 6,000 fighters. It is an al-Qaida affiliated group representing a coalition of armed groups driven by similar political ideologies. Al-Qaida is a terrorist organisation formed in the 1980s with the goal of establishing a global Islamic caliphate governed by sharia law.

The Islamic State (IS), though also inspired by Al-Qaeda, has become a rival. It is a Sunni jihadist organisation that also seeks the establishment of a self-governing Islamic caliphate under strict sharia law.

JNIM continues to expand. The group has previously been mostly active in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. In May 2025, the group launched an attack in the town of Djibo, in Burkina Faso, which resulted in the deaths of 200 soldiers. In more recent times, it has carried out attacks in Benin, Togo and Côte d’Ivoire.

On 29 October 2025, JNIM recorded its first attack on Nigerian soil, which resulted in one fatality. The attack was on soldiers who were on patrol, in the north central state of Kwara, near the border with Benin, in the early hours of the day.

JNIM had indicated in June that it intended to set up a Katiba (a brigade) in Nigeria, thereby signalling an interest in establishing a presence in west Africa’s largest country.

Why Kwara State?

The choice of Kwara is significant and strategic, given its location at the centre of Nigeria and its proximity to the Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria’s seat of power.

Nigeria’s porous borders have been a major issue of national security concern which violent extremist groups like JNIM are keen to exploit. By establishing a footprint in Kwara State, the group could expand across other neighbouring states, including Niger State, close to the Federal Capital Territory. Another al-Qaida linked Boko Haram cell has already established a presence there, in Shiroro, in recent times.

This leaves other states, particularly Osun, vulnerable, given its proximity to Kwara.

In January this year, Nigeria’s Department of State Services dismantled an Islamic State cell in Osun state. The state has significant gold deposits.

Over the past two months, JNIM has enforced a fuel blockade in Mali’s Kayes region, which accounts for over 70% of Mali’s gold production.

With the recent rise in gold prices, the terror group has a greater incentive to tighten its grip on the region.

Nigeria’s response

Nigeria has made gains in its counterterrorism efforts, which have included military and non-military approaches. But a lot still needs to be done to avert threats such as those from terror groups.

A first step would be to strengthen border security and management by using advanced technologies, including facial recognition technology and unmanned aerial vehicles, to complement human intelligence on the ground.

The establishment of temporary military positions across Nigeria’s north central region for rapid deployment would provide useful offensive bulwarks against the advancement and expansion of armed groups into the north central region.

The sub-national states within the region must also get and use tactical early warning mechanisms.

Implications for the region

Insecurity in the Sahel region is worsening. Violent extremist groups are entering new territories such as Nigeria and parts of coastal west African states, including Benin, Togo, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.

The implications for regional peace, security and stability are dire. In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, despite the juntas’ promises to bring an end to insecurity, a more realistic solution to the problem entails the restoration of democratic rule. That would pave the way to strengthening institutions that could address the root causes of the crisis.

Folahanmi Aina 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.

– ref. Nigeria’s new terror threat: JNIM is spreading but it’s not too late to act – https://theconversation.com/nigerias-new-terror-threat-jnim-is-spreading-but-its-not-too-late-to-act-269562

November 13, 2025

We studied the walking habits of young men in Cape Town and London – and debunked a myth

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Bradley Rink, Associate Professor of Human Geography, University of the Western Cape

Being mobile means people can get access to opportunities and take part in economic and social life. Mobility, in all its forms, is critical for cities to thrive.

Recent studies highlight what most African city dwellers already know: walking is the main way of getting around, and essential for daily life. This is true for people who live in low-income neighbourhoods across the world. When people lack money for taxi, bus or train fares, walking becomes the only option even if the distances are great.

Yet, most African cities and many low-income neighbourhoods globally lack spaces for walking that are safe and appropriate.

While researchers place a lot of emphasis on road traffic, public transport and infrastructure, little attention has been paid to the importance of walking as a daily mobility strategy for low-income communities.

Even less is known about the walking experiences of young men. There often seems to be an assumption they are free to travel wherever and whenever they choose, that they’re invulnerable. But what are the realities they face on the street, and what we can learn from them?

We’re a team of human geographers and anthropologists working in collaboration with an international non-governmental organisation and a group of 12 peer researchers who are walkers: six from Cape Town and six from London. Our study aimed to learn more about the experiences of men like this, aged 18-35, in low-income urban neighbourhoods in South Africa and the UK.

We wanted to better understand issues of access and opportunity for communities that rely on walking. We also wanted to explore the potential of community-based research for improving lives.

Our findings revealed what expected cultural and gender norms often mask: young men in these communities often walk with great fear and trepidation.

The study

Our focus on young men was influenced by findings from an earlier study of young women in Cape Town. That study emphasised the particular concerns women have for the safety of their male counterparts who had to walk back home after accompanying the women to transit points.

We not only set out to foreground the walking experiences of young men; we also wanted to do research differently and with maximum potential impact for those involved. Peer research provides living knowledge, and also a chance to make meaningful change in transforming policy and practice. Peer researchers are, after all, experts in their own lives.

Through a five-day workshop we trained peer researchers in research methods, ethics and data collection. We gained an understanding of their communities through shared mapping exercises. The young men then set out to collect data independently, using mobility diaries. Each of them also interviewed at least 10 other young men in their community.

Although their specific neighbourhoods aren’t named for ethical reasons, the study areas were two township neigbhourhoods in Cape Town and various boroughs in the east end of London. They were strikingly similar when it came to a sense of everyday dangers from high rates of crime, violence and deprivation.

What we found

Young men in our study helped to undermine this myth of male invulnerability. They revealed how fear shapes their daily walking experiences and has an impact on their lives. As one participant said:

I’ve been a victim of crime: at that time I felt useless, weak and vulnerable.

More than this, their stories revealed how they use various tactics and strategies to stay safe. They walk with trusted others. They pay attention to their appearance and avoid displaying things like mobile phones and jewellery. They adjust their routes depending on the weather, darkness and the presence of criminal gangs.

As one participant put it:

I walk in the afternoon to the bus (to get to a job in a distant neighbourhood). It takes 10 minutes. It’s not safe … If I see criminals I pretend I’m tying my shoelace.

Other peer researchers confirmed that even the simple act of appearing to tie a shoelace allows you to survey the street while not looking scared and protecting masculine dignity. If it looks dangerous, they said, you can pretend you’ve forgotten something and run back the way you’ve come.

Our findings illustrate the complexity of daily walks. While mediating danger on the streets and navigating the precarities of urban life, our peer researchers also reflected on the pleasures of walking. They sometimes found joy and relief in walking:

I get to breathe fresh air instead of just sitting in the house … thinking about being unemployed and stuff. I get to see people and be healed.

Encountering the city on foot has benefits for physical and mental health.

Why this matters

Safe, reliable mobility is essential for lives and livelihoods in the city. Our study identified ways that community stakeholders can support safe walking and therefore help with access to economic and social opportunities.

Lifting the veil on men’s vulnerabilities allows community members and policy makers to understand the challenges across the gender spectrum.

But our research also matters because of how we went about it. The potential for change comes in the form of ongoing stakeholder engagement. Findings from the research were presented by the peer researchers themselves to community stakeholders and local government officials, people who have the capacity to improve infrastructure and safety.

Sam Clark and Caroline Barber from Transaid UK and Bulelani Maskiti, an independent South African researcher, contributed to this article.

Bradley Rink receives funding from Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF)

Gina Porter receives funding from Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF)

– ref. We studied the walking habits of young men in Cape Town and London – and debunked a myth – https://theconversation.com/we-studied-the-walking-habits-of-young-men-in-cape-town-and-london-and-debunked-a-myth-268131

November 13, 2025

Darker Shade of Pale: why I wrote a book about my grandfather and how it changed my view of him

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Leslie Swartz, Professor, Stellenbosch University

Deborah Posel, the founding director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, an interdisciplinary research institute in the humanities and social sciences in South Africa, has published a new book, Darker Shade of Pale: Shtetl to Colony. Using a combination of personal memoir and historical inquiry, it retraces the early 20th century migration of Jewish people from the Russian Empire to colonial South Africa through one man’s life.

The book uncovers the hidden story of global migration at the turn of the 20th century from the Jewish territories of the Russian Empire, The Pale of Settlement, to the British colony of South Africa. It follows the author’s grandfather, Maurice Posel, whose struggles and disappointments mirror those of countless others, using the intimacy of a single story to illuminate a much broader set of issues.

Leslie Swartz, a psychology scholar and the editor-in-chief of the South African Journal of Science, talks to Posel about the book.

Leslie Swartz: A key feature for me is the vibrance and joy with which the book, though often dealing with painful issues, is written. I was interested to know how you came to write the book.

Deborah Posel: I had been working for years on a book – entitled Racial Material – on the politics of race and consumption. I had tons of material for the book, and I had absolutely loved researching it, including spending a year in the British Library. During that year, I was not looking for material on Jews, but Jews and Jewish issues kept crossing my page. I took note, but moved on.

I got back to South Africa, intending to write this hefty book. I began as did the COVID-19 lockdown. I started writing the first chapter of Racial Material as all our lives changed – in theory, an entirely free and unfettered time to write, but it was an unexpectedly joyless process.

At that moment, the conventions of academic writing were entirely alienating: nailing everything down in copious detail, reading all the available literature to find out what every single person had said about something in order to be able to make an argument, making sure that I had painstakingly chased after everything that could possibly be relevant, and very cautiously claiming only what this accumulation of evidence would tolerate. No doubt not every academic writes like that, but my academic writing is risk averse. I can and do make bold claims but only on the strength of this kind of effort.

Leslie Swartz: Which, may I say, distinguishes you from many social scientists in South Africa. This is part of why I love your work.

Deborah Posel: The other thing that I do when I write academically is that I make an argument – that’s at the core of academic writing, in my mind – and I sustain an argument that ties everything tightly together.

So I hauled myself through the first chapter but couldn’t face doing it again for the second one. I then decided to embrace the spirit of lockdown: do whatever you feel like doing, these are not normal times; here is an interregnum, so break out, cut loose. That’s when and how I started writing the Darker Shade of Pale book, having no clue where I was going, having no plan, no structure – a 180 degrees different approach from the way I would tackle academic writing.

The second big change for me was I wanted to write in a much more fluid way, more lyrically, more speculatively, more imaginatively, in ways that I thought would be inappropriate in academic writing. I started exploring literary devices that I probably would not use if I was writing what I would call an academic book.

Locked down and locked in, I broke out of my old way of writing. It was joyful. But it was also difficult, with new challenges. I now had two voices: as an historian, but also as a granddaughter. Initially I wasn’t sure how to speak in unison. Also, I had so little material about my grandfather’s life that I would call evidence – no letters, no diaries, very few people alive who could remember him, few photos. I decided early on that I didn’t want to fictionalise and make things up.

I wanted to create a narrative, however patchy and porous, that I knew to be reasonably accurate. That gave me my space. In fact, it required me to produce a story with gaps and shadows. Which is very explicit in the text. I make it clear that I’m giving my take on the possibilities that presented themselves to me.

I tried as far as possible to substantiate them, but I gave myself much more freedom to interpret and imagine. And along with that, writing about my grandfather‘s life became more emotional for me than would have been appropriate in an academic text. In this book, my feelings, though not the central concern, were current and live.

Leslie Swartz: I am glad that you “cut loose”. I view Darker Shade of Pale first and foremost as a cracking good read – a book I have earmarked to give to family members who are not academics but who are interested in migration, families, racial politics, marginalisation. For me it is also scholarly, painstakingly researched, important for any scholar of race and racialisation to read as well. In what way do you think it offers an understanding specifically of Jewish issues?

Deborah Posel: When I started writing this book I was so ignorant about Jewish history. I often asked myself: why, as a Jewish scholar of South Africa, had I paid absolutely no attention to Jews? Why had my intellectual peers also not done so? I had never considered questions about how you write Jews into South African history.

So I had a steep learning curve too, reading as much as I could find, and spending lots of time in South African archives, to produce a social history intertwined with my grandfather’s story. I tried to make sense of him, and his individual Jewishness, as made and unmade by his wider society.

It started with life in the shtetl (the name for a small town with a predominantly Jewish population in eastern Europe). I deliberately started there because most migration stories start when people get off the ship, as day one of the new life. But what did they come with? What was the headspace? What were the psyches that landed, and how well equipped or not were they psychologically to cope?

And I must say that I found the world of the shtetl staggeringly unexpected. Even the smallest shtetl was status-obsessed; failure was deeply shameful, even there.

The people who hadn’t made it in the shtetl were among those who left and tried to start new lives, another chance to make something of themselves. My great-grandfather was one of them, and he failed again. A shameful trajectory. It gave me an entirely different perspective on my grandfather, and his ill-fated son, unlikely, given his life in the shtetl, to realise the hopes and ambitions of his emigration. I had judged him all too readily and ignorantly. I started to feel sorry for him, which no doubt seeped into the writing.

Leslie: For me, the emotions have seeped into the writing and that is why this book is so good – disciplined and emotional at the same time. And an important read, I think, in world, Jewish and South African history.

– ref. Darker Shade of Pale: why I wrote a book about my grandfather and how it changed my view of him – https://theconversation.com/darker-shade-of-pale-why-i-wrote-a-book-about-my-grandfather-and-how-it-changed-my-view-of-him-268582

November 13, 2025

South Africa needs to rethink its community media policy – 4 ways to close the gaps

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Franz Krüger, Associate researcher, University of the Witwatersrand

Community media have received support for around three decades, and yet South Africa’s information landscape remains deeply unequal.

The distribution of media closely matches the country’s socio-economic inequality. People in middle-class suburbs have access to an ever-growing range of information sources. Poorer areas and the countryside are often news deserts.

Sustained support for community media has undoubtedly led to growth in media in marginalised areas. Around 230 community radio stations are currently licensed, according to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa. The Association of Independent Publishers lists around 190 print and online members.

However, many are enterprises battling simply to survive. The distribution of media outlets skews strongly to cities, provincial capitals, and other political and economic centres.

In a new policy paper, South African media scholars Sarah Chiumbu, Jayshree Pather and I set out to understand how the post-apartheid project to create room in the media for marginalised voices played out. We studied what it has delivered and what adjustments might be suggested.

Our report, Levelling the media playing field: Lessons from South Africa, examined the development and implementation of policy over the last 30 years. We found that it has been marred by confusion, blind spots and politicisation. We argue that it is time for a fresh look at what can be done to improve access to media in a rapidly shifting technical environment.

What we found

We analysed 30 years of policymaking and identified several weaknesses. The initial impetus for media reform came from a strong desire to make South Africa’s democracy more inclusive. The idea was to create room for previously suppressed and marginalised voices.

Over time, however, political dynamics and growing tensions between the ruling African National Congress and mainstream media shaped the government’s attitude towards community media. At the same time, weaknesses and recurrent crises in key state institutions, like the Media Development and Diversity Agency, limited their ability to make a positive contribution.

Community television has been particularly hard-hit by the policy muddle. Given the higher costs of the medium, there was extensive confusion as to whether a non-profit model was viable, or if commercial or regional public service models should be adopted. And community TV operators have complained that the much-delayed and poorly managed move to digital terrestrial television has failed to consider their needs. They have warned that its design threatens their future.

More fundamentally, a failure to deal with the economic realities of poor communities has encouraged operators to adopt a commercial model and logic. This moves away from the idealised notion of community media.

Though regarded as insufficient, advertising by various government entities has become a key source of income. This has created a vulnerability to capture by local powerholders.

We came across the story of a newspaper in a mining town in the Northwest province whose mayor tried to buy out the publisher. When he was turned away, he tried to start a rival newspaper. The effort was unsuccessful, so he stopped municipal advertising with the paper. It had to close for some years. It is now back in business after a change in local political leadership.

Community media policymaking has also become subsumed into considerations of new media technologies. The current draft White Paper on Audio and Audio-visual Media Services and Online Safety, issued in July 2025, continues this trend.

It declares its aim as being to ensure that

all South Africans, regardless of geography or economic status, can access a wide range of high-quality, relevant and responsible content.

But it pays little attention to the practical and economic constraints operating on the margins of the information ecosystem.

Undoubtedly, the speed and complexity of technical innovation creates a challenging policy environment. However, we argue that taking citizens’ right to information as a starting point – while recognising the reality and importance of unequal access – should be at the centre of discussions.

Our recommendations

Our top-line recommendation is for a policy focused on information inequality. We propose four concrete measures to improve the environment for small, independent media in marginalised areas.

The full set of existing policies, practices and institutions should be examined to see how well they serve the needs of those still on the margins of the information ecosystem. Relevant institutions, like the state-owned Media Development and Diversity Agency, need an overhaul to ensure they are fit for purpose.
Opportunities in the market and the state should be identified for better support of independent local media. Examples include more sustained access to government skills development funds. There are also new funding streams available from Internet giants like Google and initiatives like the Digital News Transformation Fund.
Government communication spending should benefit independent local media. However, we argue strongly that there is need for a new framework to ensure it is fairly and transparently used by all levels and arms of government, as is the practice in some other countries.
We suggest a basic income grant for media on the furthest edges of the information ecosystem. Local economies in marginal areas are not able to sustain local media. The call for news providers in these communities to stand on their own feet is simply unrealistic. Some form of ongoing subsidy will be necessary to ensure citizens in these areas are served. The design of such a scheme, however, would need considerable further discussion.

The Wits Centre for Journalism will present a public webinar on the paper, Levelling the media playing field: Lessons from South Africa, on 17 November 2025 at 13:00 (SAST). Register here.

Research for the study was funded by the Center of International Media Assistance.

– ref. South Africa needs to rethink its community media policy – 4 ways to close the gaps – https://theconversation.com/south-africa-needs-to-rethink-its-community-media-policy-4-ways-to-close-the-gaps-268926

November 12, 2025

How a Sudanese university kept learning alive during war

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Gihad Ibrahim, Assistant Professor and E-learning Department Head, Mashreq University

The civil war in Sudan began in April 2023, causing death, hunger, displacement and destruction on a huge scale. Gihad Ibrahim, head of e-learning and senior manager at Mashreq University in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, spoke with The Conversation Africa about how his institution continued to educate thousands of students despite the destruction of its campuses during the ongoing conflict.

What was Mashreq University like before the war?

Mashreq University (established in 2003) was a thriving academic community of over 10,000 students across 10 faculties, including healthcare, engineering, information technology and business. We were known for innovation, being the first in Sudan to offer degrees in fields like artificial intelligence and mechatronics engineering. We ranked highly in both global and national rankings.

Our status as a private university allowed us agility in decision-making and investing in digital infrastructure early, a crucial factor in our later survival. However, our success was also rooted in operating within a national system that, before the war, permitted and accredited such innovation. This highlights a vital policy lesson: governments can foster resilience not by micromanaging, but by creating a regulatory environment that allows universities the autonomy to adapt and invest in their own futures.

Our main campus was in Khartoum North, a hub of student life.

While teaching was primarily in-person, we had already begun integrating online elements for some courses. This digital foundation, though modest, would later become our lifeline.

We established a learning management system back in 2013. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, we were among the few Sudanese universities that could transition seamlessly online.

That crisis was a dress rehearsal; it forced us to build a system for blended learning that saved us when a far greater crisis emerged.

What happened when the fighting broke out in April 2023?

The war began on a Saturday morning – a normal teaching day. Students were already commuting. I remember I had a morning meeting with three female students working on their graduation project. I called one of them immediately and told her to warn the others and return home. Unfortunately, one didn’t get the message and was trapped near campus for two weeks – a harrowing reminder of the immediate human cost.

Our first priority was evacuation. But in those first chaotic hours, our information technology team performed a critical act: an emergency cloud backup of all academic records. It was a decision born of foresight, and it preserved the academic history of thousands.

Within weeks, our main campus was occupied by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). They looted laboratories and burned lecture halls. Because of the buildings’ height, they used them as military positions. Our campus was not just damaged; it was weaponised.

How did you keep teaching after such devastation?

Khartoum became a ghost city. With people fleeing in all directions – to other states or across borders to neighbouring countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia – our university community scattered. The first step was to find them. We launched an online survey to locate our displaced students and staff.

Using that data, we established a network of “teaching centres” in safer locations. We created hubs in Port Sudan (after relocating from the city of Atbara), and internationally in Cairo (in Egypt), Jeddah (in Saudi Arabia), and a virtual campus in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The UAE group was smaller, but because many students there held temporary “war victim” visas that restricted travel, we offered live virtual classes instead of physical ones.

How does this new teaching model work?

We had to be strategic. We categorised every course:

Non-applied courses (like many in business or theory) moved entirely online.
Applied courses (like lab sciences) were delivered face-to-face at the teaching centres.

Advanced specialised courses were taught live online to all centres simultaneously.

Consistency was key. Each course had a “lead lecturer” who coordinated content across all locations to ensure every student received the same quality. We partnered with local hospitals and factories for practical training, turning a constraint into an opportunity for real-world learning.

Exams were held online on university tablets, but invigilated in person at the centres to ensure integrity. The system was built on flexibility, but also on rigorous standards.

What lessons has Mashreq University learned?

We learned three profound lessons:

Technology is a lifeline. Our pre-war investment in digital infrastructure was what allowed us to survive.

Flexibility and compassion must replace rigid bureaucracy. We focused on the goal – education – not on the old rules.

Crisis can fuel innovation. Many students gained deeper, more relevant experience training in real hospitals and factories than they ever would in a simulated campus lab.

The most powerful moments have been the messages from graduates. They write to thank us, often noting that their peers at other universities are still waiting, their education frozen. One message captures it all:

You gave me my future back.

This reminds us that education is not a luxury; in times of war, it is a testament to normalcy, hope, and the future.

What comes next?

We have already begun refurbishing our main campus in Khartoum North, hoping to return soon. But the old model is gone for good.

This experience has taught us that education has no borders. It can reach anyone, anywhere, if guided by compassion and strategic purpose.

For universities everywhere, our story is a stark lesson: investing in resilient, flexible systems is not just about innovation; in today’s world, it is fundamentally about survival.

Gihad Ibrahim works as the Head of E-learning department at Mashreq University

– ref. How a Sudanese university kept learning alive during war – https://theconversation.com/how-a-sudanese-university-kept-learning-alive-during-war-269325

November 12, 2025

Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings: the first lady who redefined women’s power in Ghana.

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Nancy Henaku, Lecturer, Department of English, University of Ghana

Tributes for Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings (1948-2025) have been pouring in since her death on 23 October 2025. For many Ghanaians, her broad-ranging empowerment work as leader of the 31st December Women’s Movement is deserving of full recognition. The non-governmental organisation started as a women’s political movement and is still active.

Born on 17 November 1948, she became the wife of Jerry John Rawlings, who governed Ghana from 1981 until he handed over power in 2001.

Mourners, including Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama, have referenced Agyeman-Rawlings’ social welfare interventions through her organisation as evidence of her achievements. These include the provision of credit facilities and advocacy for women’s and children’s rights. She also established daycare centres for children, adult literacy centres and edible oil extraction industries.

A dimension of Agyeman-Rawlings’ politics that has been mainly overlooked, however, is her rhetorical leadership. This refers to the various persuasive means through which she performed her roles as a public figure.

I am a scholar of English who studies how people use language and other communicative forms (such as sound and visuals) to influence public discourse. I have used rhetorical and linguistic methods to study various sources on Agyeman-Rawlings, including a personal interview I conducted with her in 2017.

Agyeman-Rawlings’ speeches and writing reveal her motivations for shifting prevailing ideas about women’s social roles, her complex responses to public anxieties about her power (real or imagined) and her attempt at disrupting the archives by narrating herself into history.

Advocating for change

Agyeman-Rawlings’ rhetorical leadership transformed the role of the first lady in Ghana. In her own words:

A first lady’s work does not end with the collection of flowers and doing some protocols … I’d rather work and be emulated than to sit down and not do anything and not change anybody’s life.

For this reason, Agyeman-Rawlings spoke and wrote extensively in national and international contexts. Her rhetoric of empowerment centred the plights of women, children and the poor. For instance, she asserted at Beijing that “for us in Africa, the girl child is a special concern.”

Agyeman-Rawlings articulated a cosmopolitan ideology shaped by multiple influences. These include UN rights discourses, the language of mothering (such as nurturing, protecting), liberal feminism with its emphasis on gender reform through legal means, and the populist rhetoric of the Rawlings regime, with its emphasis on people power.

An assessment of Agyeman-Rawlings’ legacy must recognise that speaking and writing for change involve extensive physical, mental and emotional energy. And for many years, under her husband’s military regime, she performed this role without the professional support of a communications team.

The sociologist Mansah Prah describes Agyeman-Rawlings’ tenure as the era of the “grand feminist illusion” because although her organisations were seemingly pro-woman, their activities did not result in substantial changes in the lives of women.

However, as my research suggests, discussions on the limitations of Agyeman-Rawlings’ advocacy must consider at least two factors. First, the patriarchal postcolonial state always constrains women’s mass efforts at transformation. Second, the discourses that influence Agyeman-Rawlings’ rhetoric are themselves contradictory. For instance, the term “empowerment” is a catchall phrase that means different things to different people. Its vagueness makes it a safe political term. It does not radically shift conversations on gender.

Contesting power

Agyeman-Rawlings had an intense political life. One could say that through her gendered advocacy and mass mobilisation, she politicised the first lady role. For that reason, she was highly scrutinised during her active political years. In response to efforts to restrain her power, she drew on ambiguous gendered rhetorics, moral values and familial legacy

She was variously accused of being corrupt, power drunk and ostentatious, often with sexist undertones.

People rumoured that she, as first lady, was the real power behind the presidency. When her husband was preparing to leave office, there were stories that she wanted to succeed him. One news report claims that she countered such allegations by saying: “I have never said anywhere that I want to be president” while implying that she could change her mind if her husband said so. It takes a keen rhetorical intellect to navigate the slippery political terrain Agyeman-Rawlings found herself in.

She remained politically active after her tenure as first lady ended. In 2011, she contested against John Evans Atta Mills, Ghana’s president at the time, for the candidacy of the National Democratic Congress, which she helped form. She would later defect from the party to form her own, the National Democratic Party.

In these complex political tussles, she consistently appealed to morality and truth. In one instance, she countered ten years of media “bashing” by claiming that she had been raised right. Her 2016 acceptance speech for the National Democratic Party candidacy centred on “what is right” for the “people”.

My interview with her and other primary sources point to the influence of the calm, ethical and non-ideological pragmatism of Agyeman-Rawlings’ father, J.O.T. Agyeman, in her appeal to morality. Her father was a technocrat who was connected to Ghanaians belonging to different sides of Ghana’s two main political traditions, the Nkrumahist and the Danquah-Busia traditions. According to Agyeman-Rawlings, her parents’ home was a space for “spirited” conversations shaped by her father’s emphasis on logical and ethical argumentation rather than parochial political interests. This suggests that examining African first ladies merely in relation to their husbands’ politics, however crucial, would be a limited view.

Disrupting the archive

Agyeman-Rawlings wrote a memoir, unusually for a Ghanaian woman politician. As the historian Jean Allman suggests, there is a connection between the erasure of women in Ghanaian politics and the absence of autobiographical writings by nationalist women. My studies argue that Agyeman-Rawlings’ narrative (though incomplete) should be read as a rhetorical disruption of the postcolonial archives. These archives tend to erase or subordinate women’s contributions within a dominant masculine framing of the nation-state.

Agyeman-Rawlings is not the only woman to have laboured for the nation-state. Other women like pro-independence activist Hannah Kudjoe who were involved in similar social welfare activities have been written out of Ghanaian history. Agyeman-Rawlings understood that despite her extensive work, words still mattered if she was to be remembered.

By asserting that “it takes a woman” to “birth” the strength and future of a nation, she boldly inserts a feminine voice into a postcolonial national allegory that centres men. By so doing, she demands a rereading of “great men” like Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and Jerry Rawlings. And in the absence of a Jerry Rawlings autobiography, Agyeman-Rawlings’ writing becomes doubly subversive.

Because women have been historically marginalised from the public sphere, a female politician would be scrutinised whether or not she was vocal. Agyeman-Rawlings chose to be visible and outspoken.

Nancy Henaku 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.

– ref. Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings: the first lady who redefined women’s power in Ghana. – https://theconversation.com/nana-konadu-agyeman-rawlings-the-first-lady-who-redefined-womens-power-in-ghana-269013

November 11, 2025

How Nigeria’s grazing law also shapes land divisions and violence

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Victor Onyilor Achem, Researcher, University of Ibadan

When Nigeria’s Benue State Anti‑Open Grazing Law was passed in 2017, it brought hope that pastoralist herders would move to ranches, farmers would gain peace, and violent conflict between herders and farmers would ease.

The law banned the open grazing of livestock and required herders to establish ranches instead. It introduced fines, jail terms, and a livestock-guard task force to monitor compliance, shifting livestock management from communal routes to fenced ranches.

For decades, tensions between farming and herding communities across Nigeria’s Middle Belt have erupted into deadly violence.

As farmland shrinks and grazing routes disappear, competition over land, water and survival has intensified. Thousands have been killed, and more than two million people have been displaced. These conflicts are not just about cattle or crops; they are about identity, belonging and the struggle for power in a nation where religion and ethnicity often overlap with politics.

I study these dynamics as a sociologist whose work cuts through identity-driven conflicts and local peacebuilding. In a recently published study I show that the outcome of the Benue State Anti‑Open Grazing Law has been far more complicated than envisaged.

My research involved 40 interviews and focus groups in Benue’s most affected districts. It found that while the law against open grazing reduced crop destruction, it also deepened mistrust and exclusion. Farmers saw it as protection; herders saw it as punishment.

Based on my findings, I argue that the crisis is a governance failure amplified by politicised faith narratives and elite opportunism. A local land-use dispute has been reimagined internationally as evidence that Nigeria is fracturing along religious lines. Unless policy becomes more inclusive, this perception could grow, risking new waves of division and violence.

Why the law faltered

The anti-open grazing law in Benue was intended to curb the roaming of cattle across farmlands, reduce conflict, and protect sedentary farming communities. But the design overlooked key issues: it expected herders – many of them nomadic, landless and low-capital – to invest in ranches with minimal support.

Meanwhile, the enforcement architecture exhibited weakness. Livestock guards lacked resources, and coordination between Benue state government and the federal government broke down, leading to a strained relationship between levels of government.

The challenge is that agriculture and policing fall under shared jurisdiction in Nigeria. The state could legislate but not easily enforce without federal backing. The federal government, led at the time by a Fulani president, saw the law as discriminatory, while Benue leaders viewed federal hesitation as betrayal. The standoff left the law largely unenforced.

Even when enforced, the law punished mobility but offered scant alternatives. My field data showed herders feeling criminalised, farmers feeling abandoned, and both sides interpreting the law through existential lenses. Both farmers and herders saw it as a struggle for survival, one group fighting to defend ancestral land, the other to preserve livelihood and identity.

When land becomes identity

In contexts like central Nigeria, land is more than soil: it is identity, history and power. Farmers, mostly Christian crop growers, view the grazing law as an instrument of protection. Herders, often Fulani and Muslim, perceive it as a threat to their way of life. The herders have followed transhumant grazing routes for centuries, moving with the seasons. Their mobility predates Nigeria’s borders and remains vital to their culture and economy.

When open grazing is punished, and when governance fails to bridge the divide, disputes over pasture and farmland become charged with religious and ethnic meaning.

In this terrain, the narrative of a “religious genocide” gains traction, a narrative that coincides with the US designation of Nigeria as a country that fails to protect religious freedom. US president Donald Trump threatened military action unless Nigeria “stops the killing of Christians”.

But the truth on the ground is more nuanced. Analysts point out that both Christian and Muslim communities have suffered repeated attacks across different regions. Conflict over land, pastoral mobility and weak governance often overlap with religious fault lines, but are driven by deeper forces like land scarcity, climate stress, and weak governance. Religion explains the rhetoric, not the root cause.

How grazing policy and faith conflict connect

The grazing law’s failure matters because it becomes part of the faith conflict story. When the state is seen to favour one set of communities, the other sees exclusion.

When violence between farmers and herders is portrayed in religious terms, such as “Christians under siege” and “Muslim herders as invaders”, the law meant to protect becomes a symbol of division.

In other words, the anti-grazing law was never only about cattle. It became a law about belonging, rights, who gets to claim the land, and whose identity is recognised.

The US reaction exacerbates this division by implying that one group is the victim and the other is the perpetrator. That framing may help some voices gain global attention, but it can also harden local fault lines.

What must change

If Nigeria and its states are to prevent this conflict from becoming a faith-war, several things must shift:

Inclusive policy-making: Pastoralists must be genuinely part of policy design, not just regulated. Mobility, traditional rights and modern ranching must be reconciled.
Stronger federal-state cooperation: Nigeria’s constitution splits agricultural and policing powers. States can legislate but depend on federal agencies for enforcement. Clearer coordination and funding are essential.
Narrative formation: Policymakers, media and international actors must avoid reducing complex land and livelihood struggles into simple faith wars. Accurate data, inclusive language and community voices matter.
Trust building at the local level: Mechanisms such as locally led peace committees, shared grazing agreements and conflict-sensitive land-use planning have to be empowered.

Why it matters globally

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, a multi-faith, multi-ethnic democracy, and a test case for how modern states negotiate change, tradition and identity.

The US decision to label Nigeria a “country of particular concern” has grabbed headlines, but the core of the issue lies in how Nigerians farm, herd, travel, claim land, and build peace.

If Nigeria fails to turn its land and livelihood fault lines into inclusive governance, then the risk is not simply more violence, it is a deeper fracture in which laws become weapons of identity, and international declarations feed local fears.

Conflict won’t stop because rhetoric picks up speed; it will stop when policy, law and identity converge in a way that recognises everyone’s belonging.

In the end, the question is not simply whether more laws are passed or whether the US sanctions Nigeria. It is whether communities in Nigeria feel protected or whether laws and external pressure leave them feeling excluded.

Victor Onyilor Achem 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.

– ref. How Nigeria’s grazing law also shapes land divisions and violence – https://theconversation.com/how-nigerias-grazing-law-also-shapes-land-divisions-and-violence-268923

November 11, 2025

Who speaks for the dead? Rethinking consent in ancient DNA research

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Victoria Gibbon, Professor in Biological Anthropology, Division of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology, University of Cape Town

Would you choose to have a part of your body live on after you died? How might your choice affect your relatives – or even your entire community?

The first is a question people face when they donate organs. The second comes up when they participate in genetic research. This is because DNA from even a single individual can reveal a web of relationships, even helping law enforcement to solve crimes committed by distant relatives they have never met. And as you continue to go back in time, the web becomes ever more tangled.

DNA is the unique genetic material of every living being on the planet. It can be “immortalised” for an unforeseeably long time in digital genetic libraries which contain the genomic information not only of that person, but also their ancestors and descendants.

Ancient DNA (referred to as aDNA) involves the study of genetic material from organisms that lived long ago, including humans. Geneticists, archaeologists, anthropologists and historians are using aDNA research to gain unprecedented insights into human history, but the knowledge benefits different groups of people unevenly. Also, it can be destructive because aDNA is normally extracted from small samples of bones or teeth. And who can give permission on behalf of people who lived many generations in the past? Once spoken for, what measures can be used to ensure their wishes continue to be honoured?

Africa is the ancient origin of all humans, as evidenced by having the highest human genetic diversity of any continent or region found today. In other words, all humans carry DNA from deeply rooted shared African ancestry. This makes African DNA (ancient and modern) a rich resource to draw on to understand what makes us human. However, understanding human variation and our origins involves research embedded within living communities and communities are the solution to conservation and the future of work in our disciplines.

Once it is decoded, the genetic information can last forever, so it could be used by anyone, for any purpose, for generations to come. Companies in the pharmaceutical industry, for example, could use it. As this science advances at an astonishing pace, ethical and legal frameworks guiding it struggle to keep up. No country has standards applying specifically to the field of aDNA. Therefore, ethical guidelines appropriate for this work need to protect past, present and future generations.

Consent is not yet universally mandated nor typically obtained in aDNA research, despite growing awareness of its importance over the past two decades. What is more, the concept of “informed consent” as developed in the clinical medical world is deeply rooted in a western idea of individual autonomy. It assumes that most medical decision-making occurs by individuals, rather than communities. And there are challenges applying it to people who are no longer alive.

That’s why, in our recent paper, we argue for using “informed proxy consent” or “relational autonomy consent” in human aDNA research. This is when living people through relation and/or relationship to a deceased person or people can make decisions and provide consent on their behalf, as a proxy or stand-in. The relationship could be through gender, race, religion, sociopolitical or sociocultural identities, or biological. DNA is also susceptible to data mining, machine learning and statistical analysis to uncover patterns and other valuable information. The deceased may be represented by living people who are affected by the research.

Different social, political, cultural and economic contexts make it impossible to create a universal set of specific guidelines. But four principles can apply: honesty, accountability, professionalism, and stewardship.

In our paper, we outline a set of considerations for obtaining proxy informed consent for the long deceased. A system of consent could enrich research by using it in potent new ways, empowering people affected by research, protecting researchers from ethical breaches and building long-term, equitable partnerships.

The solution

We propose that consent for the use of human aDNA in research should be a community-driven process. Instead of individuals signing off on behalf of the deceased, living people connected to the deceased persons, whether through ancestry, geography, cultural knowledge, or custodianship, act as representatives. This recognises that people are part of communities, and that authority to consent must reflect social and cultural context, not just individual choice.

This kind of approach was applied in South Africa’s Sutherland Nine Restitution, when nine San and Khoekhoe ancestors were taken from their graves in the 1920s and sent to the University of Cape Town for medical education and research. Almost 100 years later, they were finally brought home to their community.

In the Malawi Ancient Lifeways and Peoples Project, one way archaeological research results are communicated to community members is through site visits such as the one below, which included traditional authorities, local and national government officials, academics and students. Community consultation became so normalised through this work that some traditional leaders began to ask researchers how aDNA might aid their own goals of restitution and historical reconstruction.

How it would work

One major lesson from studying the past is that things can change a lot. We do not expect that there will be clear cultural or biological continuity in every place or every time. And identifying appropriate descendant communities and determining who has the authority to consent can be complex. But local communities are often invested in research results, and they have a right to high-quality information about its consequences. Consent should be treated as a process, not a one-off event.

This begins in the planning stage, with researchers sharing a draft proposal and revising it based on community input. They must be transparent about who is funding the project, what techniques will be used and what the possible risks and benefits are. This is not only for science, but for the people connected to the deceased persons.

Clear communication is vital, and information should be provided in local languages and formats that are easy to understand. Communities should be given time to reflect without researchers present. Feedback must be taken seriously, and projects adapted accordingly. Crucially, communities need retain control over how data is stored, used and shared.

Finally, engagement should continue throughout the life of the project. Researchers should share findings before publication and return for fresh consent if using data in new ways.

We recognise that the process is demanding. It requires time and financial resources for pre-research consultation and ongoing engagement, which can be slower than academic expectations for rapid publication. But funders and research institutions need to understand that the time taken to build community partnerships with living descendant communities is an essential and enriching foundation for ethical research.

Victoria Gibbon receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation.

Jessica Thompson has received funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Leakey Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and National Geographic Society.

Sianne Alves 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.

– ref. Who speaks for the dead? Rethinking consent in ancient DNA research – https://theconversation.com/who-speaks-for-the-dead-rethinking-consent-in-ancient-dna-research-265539