Category: The Conversation – Africa

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Caroline Southey, Founding Editor, Africa, The Conversation

How much we pay for the debt that we incur determines a great deal in our lives. This is true of countries too. In the world of sovereign debt – money raised or borrowed by governments – the cost of debt is dependent on, among other factors, how rating agencies “grade” a country.

It’s a sensitive issue. Three agencies dominate the rating business. A criticism often meted out is that they judge African countries more harshly than others, which pushes up borrowing rates. These tensions lie behind the acrimonious fall-out between one of the big three – Fitch – and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).

On 28 January 2026 Fitch announced it had downgraded the bank’s credit rating to junk status, and that it was ending its relationship with the bank.

Fitch’s decision was preceded by Afreximbank announcing that it was severing all ties with the rating agency. A few days later the African Union weighed in, issuing a statement from its watchdog, the African Peer Review Mechanism, backing the bank’s decision, and warning Fitch not to issue any credit assessments of the bank. The rating agency clearly chose to ignore the warning.

Below you can find articles from our archives that examine various dimensions of Africa’s debt challenges.

---

Africa’s development banks are being undermined: the continent will pay the price

African countries need strong development banks: how they can push back against narratives to weaken them

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

Eurobonds issued by African countries are popular with investors: why this isn’t good news

African countries are bad at issuing bonds, so debt costs more than it should: what needs to change

African finance ministers shouldn’t be making bond deals: how to hand over the job to experts

Senegal’s rating downgrade: credit agencies are punishing countries that don’t check their numbers

South Africa’s debt has skyrocketed – new rules are needed to manage it

– ref. Africa, rating agencies and the cost of debt – https://theconversation.com/africa-rating-agencies-and-the-cost-of-debt-274676

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Maarten Wynants, Marie Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow, Ghent University

Across large parts of northern Tanzania, gully erosion – soil erosion caused by flowing water – is cutting deep scars through fertile farmland, grazing areas, roads and even villages. These gullies grow faster every year and what was once a slow environmental process has accelerated into a humanitarian threat. It has serious consequences for food and livelihood security, infrastructure and biodiversity.

Soil erosion is a natural process. Rainfall breaks soil into particles, and flowing water transports them downslope into rivers and lakes. In Tanzania, however, erosion has intensified dramatically over the past 120 years.

The region’s steep terrain, highly variable rainfall and fragile volcanic soils make it naturally vulnerable. What has turned this into a crisis is the change in how people interact with the land.

The Jali Ardhi (Swahili for “Care for the Land”) programme is an international collaboration of scientists from several universities. We use interdisciplinary tools to investigate what’s causing increased soil erosion and how communities can restore the land. Results from multiple projects over a decade point to runaway gully erosion as a key driver of land degradation in Tanzania. Urgent and widespread restoration programmes are needed.

---

Read more:
Soil erosion is tearing DRC cities apart: what’s causing urban gullies, and how to prevent them

---

From fertile volcanic soils to runaway gully erosion

The Tanzanian highlands are blanketed by soils formed from volcanic basalt erupted over millions of years as the East African Rift opened. These volcanic soils are rich in fine clay minerals with high levels of exchangeable sodium and calcium. Contact with water after a dry period can cause them to rapidly disperse into fine particles in the water.

Normally, these soils are covered by a stable topsoil layer protected by plant cover, roots and soil organic carbon. But land clearing – the removal of natural vegetation for agricultural purposes – and overgrazing remove the natural protection of these soils and increase runoff. When intense rainfall follows, water rapidly flows downhill, concentrating in valleys and carving out gullies.

Indigenous land conservation practices such as seasonal grazing and shifting cultivation recognised this vulnerability by allowing the vegetation and soil to recover. However, these were gradually eroded by colonial and postcolonial governance, which prioritised formal land tenure and permanent settlement but paid little attention to soil productivity and protection from erosion. In the meantime, Tanzania’s population has been growing fast, doubling roughly every 25 years for the past century, and is now exceeding 70 million.

Large areas of natural forests and savannahs have been cleared for agriculture. Pastoralist groups, such as the Maasai, were forced into permanent settlements, replacing their traditional practice of moving livestock seasonally to follow rainfall and fresh pasture. Livestock densities have tripled over the past half century and areas that were once allowed to recover are now farmed and grazed year-round, leaving soils permanently exposed to the elements.

Rainfall in these regions is naturally erratic, alternating between dry spells and wet years. We have not observed a long-term change in rainfall but wet conditions following drought can trigger massive erosion events.

Together, these pressures pushed the landscape past a critical threshold. Once gullies form in these volcanic soils, they are difficult to stop. Like a boulder pushed downhill, erosion accelerates once it starts. Gullies can continue growing even if the original trigger, such as deforestation or overgrazing, has ended. They form highly connected channels that quickly remove rainfall, nutrient-rich topsoil, and seeds away from the land. This makes it difficult for vegetation to recover and the landscape to stabilise.

The cost of losing land

We calculated that the erosion rates in Tanzania are about 20 times higher than they were a century ago. Over 50% of the total area of Tanzania is experiencing rapid land degradation. It is one of the fastest degrading areas in the world.

When land is lost to erosion, so too is food and income. Since roughly 70% of Tanzanians are smallholder farmers and they produce most of the country’s food intake, over 50% of the population has already experienced moderate to severe food insecurity. The consequences are potentially disastrous.

To make matters worse, we saw from repeat visits and photographs that these mega gullies undercut roads and bridges as quickly as a decade after construction. This is an enormous loss in a country working to develop basic services. Farmers tell us that they are cut off from market access and are forced to grow less-perishable or subsistence crops such as maize and beans, instead of higher-value agricultural production. This reinforces low-income and low-investment cycles.

The effects do not stop here, though.

Eroded sediments fill reservoirs and lakes, threatening water availability, fisheries, biodiversity and tourism. We found that Lake Manyara National Park, a Unesco Man and Biosphere Reserve, is filling up due to the enormous amounts of sediment coming from its catchment. This places pressure on an ecosystem that supports more than 350 bird species as well as iconic wildlife such as elephants and lions.

Working together to join the cracks

Despite the scale of the problem, solutions do exist. Across east Africa, communities have long used indigenous techniques such as earth bunds (banks), stepwise terraces, leaky dams, and re-establishment of grasses and trees. These work with natural processes and materials to slow water flow and capture soil.

NGOs such as the LEAD foundation and Justdiggit are revitalising these community-led approaches. We set up a soil and gully monitoring network combining scientific sampling and sensor technology with citizen science approaches to evaluate the evolution of gullies and success of restoration approaches.

In some cases, collective community action has successfully stabilised small gullies and improved soil quality. But many mega gullies are now too large for resource-poor communities to address alone. While the Tanzanian government has committed to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification’s Land Degradation Neutrality initiative, long‑term investment and action plans are lacking. This is partly due to the mismatch between national politics and local action needs.

---

Read more:
Key insights into land degradation from seven African countries

---

Ultimately, erosion control cannot be treated as a solely environmental problem. Halting this crisis will require coordinated and large-scale land restoration investment, while simultaneously addressing socio-economic issues linked to poverty, corruption, education and economic development. More than half of Tanzanians are under 18, growing up on landscapes already under strain. Whether these systems can continue to support a growing population will require action before the cracks in the earth widen any further.

Maarten Wynants receives funding from the European Union Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellowship – AsFoRESEEN – 101109315, and from the VLIR-UOS short initiative ‘From Monitoring to Managing Soil and Water Degradation in Tanzanian Gullies’.

– ref. Tanzania is losing fertile land to soil erosion: what’s happening and what can be done – https://theconversation.com/tanzania-is-losing-fertile-land-to-soil-erosion-whats-happening-and-what-can-be-done-273283

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Timothy G. Bromage, Professor, New York University

Blood tests are useful tools for doctors and scientific researchers: they can reveal a lot about a body’s health. Usually, a blood sample is taken to get a picture of the large molecules that are present, such as cholesterols, lipids and proteins. This is called a metabolic profile.

For more specific information, another kind of blood test looks at the tiny traces of chemical processes taking place at tissue, organ, and even cellular levels. This fine-scale kind of test, metabolomics, studies metabolites – the by-products of metabolism (the body’s way of producing energy and recycling chemicals).

You’d never think this kind of test could be done for animals that lived millions of years ago. But what was very recently science fiction is now reality: it’s called “palaeometabolomics”.

Why would anyone want to know about the metabolites of long-dead creatures?

Metabolites are a way for scientists like me (a biological anthropologist) to learn more about the health, diet, environment and evolution of those creatures – including early humans.

What makes this possible is the way bones are formed: by special cells secreting a soft matrix – mainly collagen – that later crystallises and hardens into a porous material.

Metabolites in the blood that leak from blood vessels during bone formation are so tiny that they become trapped inside the bone matrix (the material that makes up bone) as it hardens. The spaces where they are trapped are so small (nanometre in scale) that bacteria and fungi, which are much bigger, can’t always get in there. Not even in a million years. And because bone mineral structures at these fine scales contain minute traces of water, metabolites are preserved there in fossils.

Studying the metabolites in animal fossils has given us a new way to discover more about the environment at sites where early humans evolved.

My colleagues and I looked at rodent fossils from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania (about 1.8 million to 1.7 million years old); elephant tooth fossil material from the Chiwondo Beds in Malawi (2.4 million years old); and an antelope bone fossil from Makapansgat in South Africa (about 3 million years old). Fossils of ancient relatives of humans (species of Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and early Homo) have also been found at these sites.

For 100 years, scientists have devised methods for reconstructing the environment that early humans lived in and adapted to. Until now, these methods depended mainly upon geological clues and the kinds of animal and plant fossils found at a site. Now, by performing palaeometabolomics – especially by analysing the chemical traces left in animal bones by the plants that the animals ate – we have established a “molecular ecological” approach for describing ancient habitats.

This new method can add very specific information to other kinds of reconstructions. The metabolites allow us to describe soil pH, minimum and maximum rainfall and temperature, the type of tree cover, and elevations above sea level of plants.

We also made a surprising finding about the relationship between soil and living things.

How to give a fossil a blood test

To perform palaeometabolomics, we established a method to dissolve bits of bone no larger than a pea in a tube containing weak acid. The acid is strong enough to slowly pass the mineral into a solution, but weak enough not to degrade the metabolites. This take several days. We then let the large proteins sink to the bottom of the tube and spin it at high speed in a centrifuge, which leaves the smallest and lightest molecules at the top. We inject the metabolite “soup” into a mass spectrometer, a piece of equipment designed to measure the weights of all small molecule compounds, and refer these to a library of known masses. That’s how we identify the metabolites.

The ones generated within the body – “endogenous” metabolites – offer clues about the health and well-being of an animal. That’s interesting enough, but it’s not the full picture.

All living organisms produce metabolites, including plants. Plants also have metabolisms reflecting their physiological adaptations to the environment. If an animal eats a plant, metabolites of that plant circulate through the animal’s bloodstream and are also trapped at developing bone surfaces. These are called “exogenous” metabolites, and they tell us about the diet of the animal.

What was just interesting now becomes remarkable, because if we can identify the plant that a metabolite came from, we should also be able to reconstruct the environment the plant was adapted to.

What the body says about the bigger picture

The endogenous metabolites we identified from our fossils depict a variety of normal mammalian biological functions and disease states. The exogenous metabolites provide evidence of the environment in the distant past.

For instance, some of our fossil samples had a metabolite derived from the parasite that causes sleeping sickness in humans after a bite from an infected tsetse fly. Wild animals are tsetse fly reservoirs for the parasite. Tsetse flies have very specific environmental conditions, so that helped our reconstructions.

---

Read more:
Tooth enamel provides clues on tsetse flies and the spread of herding in ancient Africa

---

We also identified plant metabolites which implied that the Tanzanian and South African sites were wetter than they are now. Minimum temperatures were warmer, and the landscape contained more forest shade. It seems to have been a mixed, seasonally dry and wet tropical habitat. The reconstructed conditions of the Malawi site indicate a wetter environment, also with wet and dry seasons.

Reading the soil

There was one particularly interesting surprise.

Going into this study, we assumed that metabolites from ancient soils surrounding the fossils – known as palaeosols – should be considered contaminants and be disregarded from our analyses. But when we analysed metabolites of modern animals of the same fossil species living near the sites, whose bones never touched the soil, we found that both the modern and fossil animals shared large percentages of the palaeosol metabolites.

This means that the palaeosol reflects the lives of all the organisms living there. Once plants and animals live on that soil, their metabolites become a part of the soil matrix. The animals and the soil are completely connected by shared metabolites, which represent the flow of materials that sustain the habitat. They are not contaminants to be disregarded.

Our biomolecular approach – using metabolites from fossil bones and teeth as a way to reconstruct ancient environments – is a new one. It might one day make it possible to describe past habitats as precisely as we can describe modern ones.

Timothy G. Bromage receives funding from The Leakey Foundation.

– ref. Life in fossil bones: what we can learn from tiny traces of ancient blood chemicals – https://theconversation.com/life-in-fossil-bones-what-we-can-learn-from-tiny-traces-of-ancient-blood-chemicals-273906

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Haruna Inuwa, DPhil Candidate, Energy Systems, University of Oxford

Energy systems are coming under attack globally because disrupting power or fuel supplies offers strategic, economic or political leverage. This can be in local conflicts or large-scale geopolitical confrontations.

Nigeria illustrates this clearly: militants in the Niger Delta sabotage pipelines to assert control and tap into oil revenues, while the extremist group Boko Haram and armed bandits in the north hit power lines to weaken state presence.

These incidents reveal how conflict actors weaponise energy systems.

We recently published a study assessing how militancy, insurgency and armed banditry undermine Nigeria’s energy systems by disrupting oil, gas and power infrastructure. We compiled novel datasets of energy related incidents, mapping their timing, location and cost from 2009 to 2025.

Our findings show that more than 2,300 separate attacks were recorded. We see a widening pattern of energy insecurity that drains national revenue, drives away investment, and worsens environmental injustice.

This explains why Nigeria’s energy insecurity has become one of its most serious development and security challenges.

We recommend investment in decentralised systems, community engagement in oil regions, and policies supporting industrial decarbonisation to strengthen resilience and advance climate goals.

The price

According to our estimates, between 2009 and 2024, approximately US$20 billion was lost as a result of attacks. During the 2013-2016 surge in militancy, losses peaked at roughly US$17 billion.

We found that the South-South (Niger Delta) region remains the epicentre of oil sabotage, with peak revenue losses of US$8.62 trillion (2009-2012) and sustained environmental damage.

Attacks and oil theft along the Trans-Niger Pipeline were particularly devastating. This pipeline moves 450,000 barrels of crude oil daily from oil-producing fields in Niger Delta region to export terminals. Each disruption not only shuts down production but also deprives the government of huge revenues.

Since 2021, tactics have shifted. Over 40 attacks have targeted transmission lines in the North-East and North-Central, largely linked to Boko Haram and armed bandits.

Case studies of the 2016 Shell Forcados terminal bombing and the 2024 Shiroro transmission line attack show reliance on backup generators increased electricity costs by 3.2-6.0 times.

Beyond the financial toll, communities suffer respiratory illnesses, unsafe drinking water and food insecurity.

Disruptions have made Nigeria’s grid more unstable and pose risks to critical infrastructure projects nearing completion, including gas pipelines.

Attacks threaten regional energy trade and integration projects, such as the West African Power Pool, West African Gas Pipeline, Nigeria-Morocco Gas Pipeline, and the proposed Nigeria-Algeria-Gas-Pipeline, which rely on secure cross-border energy infrastructure.

Foreign investors view these risks as prohibitive. Due to attacks on energy infrastructure, in 2020, Nigeria lost around US$40 billion in foreign direct investment.

Oil theft and sabotage have also left a toxic legacy in the Niger Delta. Each pipeline rupture spills crude into rivers and farmland, wiping out livelihoods.

We find that clean-up costs from oil spills on the Trans-Niger Pipeline alone ranged from US$150 million to US$290 million per period (2009-2012, 2013-2016, 2017-2020, 2021-2024), highlighting continuous environmental degradation in the Niger Delta area.

In line with this, the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that a US$1 billion 30-year clean-up is needed in Ogoniland, while Reuters reported that addressing oil pollution in Bayelsa State alone might require US$12 billion over 12 years. When compared to Nigeria’s GDP of US$375 billion in 2024, these figures underscore the substantial financial strain that this attack-induced environmental crisis places on national resources.

Our analysis indicates that insurgents and bandits have shifted tactics since 2021. We see increased disruption and attacks on power infrastructure in the northern part of the country.

More than 40 incidents targeting high-voltage transmission lines have been recorded in just four years, a 20-fold increase from the previous decade. Two major examples show the consequences: the 2016 Forcados terminal bombing cut national power generation by 3,132MW, while the 2024 Shiroro transmission-line attack left the north-western part of the country in darkness for two weeks.

During attack-induced outages, businesses and households switch to diesel or petrol generators. We find that this backup electricity costs three to six times more than grid power, with the North-East and North-West experiencing the highest cost increase.

Each attack also carries an invisible environmental cost. Backup generators release far more carbon dioxide than grid electricity. During the 2016 and 2024 outages, we estimated sharp spikes in CO₂ across the South-West and South-South, Nigeria’s most energy-hungry regions.

This trend undermines Nigeria’s commitments under the National Climate Change Policy 2021-2030, which aims to cut emissions and expand energy access using renewable energy. Insecurity, therefore, is not just an economic or social problem – it is an obstacle to climate progress.

How Nigeria can respond

Our research points to several steps that could make the energy systems more resilient:

1. Invest in decentralised and modular power systems: Smaller, locally managed plants – such as the 52-megawatt Maiduguri Emergency Power Plant – are harder to sabotage and quicker to repair.

2. Rebuild trust with host communities: Environmental remediation and transparent benefit-sharing can reduce grievances that drive sabotage. Local participation in energy projects must move beyond tokenism.

3. Adopt technology for early warning and monitoring: Pressure sensors, drones and predictive analytics can detect tampering and leaks in real-time. Government contracts with former militants to guard pipelines must be coupled with strict accountability.

4. Accelerate innovative clean-energy deployment: In the light of Nigeria’s commitment to achieve climate goals, it is important to explore emerging decarbonisation pathways, including clean hydrogen.

Nigeria’s energy wealth has long promised prosperity, but persistent insecurity has made it a liability. The financial losses, pollution and emissions caused by repeated attacks erode resilience and deter investment. This challenge is not unique to Nigeria; it reflects a broader global reality in which energy transitions depend on secure infrastructure.

Achieving a stable, decentralised and low-carbon system will require protecting the assets that make it possible.

Haruna Inuwa receives funding from Petroleum Trust Development Fund, Nigeria. However, the views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the Nigeria government’s official policies.

Stephanie Hirmer receives funding from the Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) Programme which is funded by UK aid from the UK government. The views expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies.

Alycia Leonard 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. Attacks on Nigeria’s energy systems weaken the country – research unpacks costs, risks and ways forward – https://theconversation.com/attacks-on-nigerias-energy-systems-weaken-the-country-research-unpacks-costs-risks-and-ways-forward-271366

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Giorgio Miescher, Associate Researcher University of Basel and University of Namibia, University of Basel

Donkeys are an unassuming yet ubiquitous presence in northern Namibia. They traverse sandy village roads, pull carts stacked with firewood, and graze freely along the northern edge of the Etosha National Park.

The story of how they came to occupy such a central role in rural life – and in such large numbers – is a fascinating one that’s linked to the country’s colonial history, the management of wildlife versus domestic animals, and the role of migrant workers.

We are historians who specialise in Namibia and Southern Africa. Our research focuses on colonial legacies in nature conservation and land. In a research paper we retraced the routes of the domesticated donkey through a conservation landscape.

We found that donkeys occupy a contradictory status in communities in northern Namibia. They are indispensable, yet undervalued. For example, they remain central to tasks such as ploughing, hauling water and transporting logs. Yet their social status remains curiously low. They are rarely used in ceremonies, have little monetary value, and are strongly associated with those who cannot afford tractors or cars.

We conclude that this ambiguity has arisen from the long histories of colonial rule, labour migration, conservation and veterinary control that shaped northern Namibia.

The great trek north

We traced donkeys’ ability to move across one of the country’s most significant borders: the veterinary cordon fence known as the Red Line. The Red Line is an inner-Namibian border, over 1,000 kilometres long, running from west to east and separating the country into two distinct parts. It originated under German colonial rule (1884-1915) and was fully implemented under South African rule (1915-1990).

It still exists today.

The Red Line separated the more densely populated northern parts of the country from the settler-colonial heartland, the so-called Police Zone in central and southern Namibia. The Etosha Game Reserve served as a buffer zone between the Police Zone and the Owambo region in the central north, conceptualised as a migrant labour reservoir.

Donkeys entered Namibia’s central north relatively late, and only became common in the 1920s and 1930s. Their presence across the region was driven largely by migrant labourers working on contract. As thousands of men travelled between the Police Zone and Owambo, many returned home with equines – especially donkeys – purchased in the south.

Cheap, hardy, and resistant to many diseases, donkeys became essential companions on the workers’ long journeys. Donkeys carried heavy loads of clothes, tools and other goods, including gramophones and radios, earned through contract labour.

Since they were associated with commodities, donkeys also became a symbol of modernity expanding from the thriving settler economy in the south.

Today, people still recount how returning labour migrants used donkeys to haul luggage through predator-rich landscapes within Etosha, or how villagers took their carts to meet these men halfway. Donkeys also served as ambulances during emergencies in the Namibian Liberation War (1966-1989).

Their presence has also been entangled with colonial border regimes and conservation policies.

The tensions

During the rinderpest epidemic of 1896-97, in a failed attempt to stop the disease from entering the colony, German colonial authorities established a cordon of military outposts along the southern edge of the Etosha Pan. Although intended to control the movement of cattle, this cordon would later become the Red Line.

The devastation of rinderpest prompted German forces to import donkeys and mules as disease-resistant alternatives to oxen. These animals gradually filtered into civilian hands in the Police Zone, the heartland of settler colonialism in central and southern Namibia, and became increasingly common by the 1910s.

The establishment of Game Reserve 2, comprising today’s Etosha National Park and the areas north-west of the Etosha Pan, was part of a policy to seal off Owambo from the Police Zone. Hunting and human movement in the reserve became highly regulated.

In 1915 South Africa defeated the German forces and took over Namibia. The new colonial power maintained the inner border and formalised it as the Red Line in the 1920s and 1930s. They banned cattle movement across the Red Line but allowed equines, provided they carried veterinary certificates.

Donkeys thus became one of the few domestic animals permitted to cross the border legally.

As migrant labour expanded, so too did the flow of donkeys northward. By the late 1920s and 1930s, hundreds of donkeys passed through Etosha each year. In Owambo, they were quickly adopted for local agriculture and transport. Even as motorised lorries and buses began to dominate long-distance travel from the 1930s onward, many migrant workers still preferred to buy donkeys as durable companions.

By the 1940s, however, administrators in Owambo began to worry about the donkeys’ impact on grazing. Restrictions were introduced, but donkeys continued to slip into the north through unofficial routes.

From the 1950s onward, the situation changed dramatically as the Etosha National Park was transformed into a fenced conservation area. Residents and livestock were expelled, and by 1961 the southern boundary was fully fenced. Donkey traffic through Etosha came to an end.

Meanwhile, the northern boundary of Etosha became a flashpoint. The government of the pseudo-independent new Ovamboland homeland resisted efforts to fence this border and insisted on continued movement of wildlife out of Etosha – especially zebra, an important local food source. Conservation officials accused communities of using donkeys to disguise poaching tracks and allowing their animals to stray into the park.

New rules

With Namibia’s independence in 1990, new animal-movement regulations emerged, but donkeys retained their special status. Unlike cattle, they were still permitted to cross the Red Line.

Their symbolic and practical importance has changed. Migrant workers no longer return with donkeys from the south, and motorised transport dominates even in rural areas.

But donkeys remain deeply woven into the fabric of northern Namibian life. They continue to support poorer households, endure harsh environments, and live in proximity to wildlife. Their presence evokes conflicting memories – of difficult journeys and colonial border regimes, but also of development and modernity.

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. Donkeys are a common sight in northern Namibia – what colonial history has to do with it – https://theconversation.com/donkeys-are-a-common-sight-in-northern-namibia-what-colonial-history-has-to-do-with-it-273058

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Alan Hirsch, Senior Research Fellow New South Institute, Emeritus Professor at The Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town

South Africa has a new draft white paper on immigration, citizenship and refugees. This, the fourth in three decades, represents a step change from the previous efforts. It is a genuine attempt to develop an efficient but humane set of policies.

Based on my work on migration over two decades, I am convinced that the policies in this new paper are far more ambitious than previous reforms. They represent a genuine attempt to address a complex and sensitive set of challenges in a comprehensive way, using state-of-the-art technological tools. The key question is: are the reforms practically and politically feasible?

The first post-apartheid immigration white paper, published in 1997, led to the new Immigration Act of 2002. This was the second significant reform to immigration policy in the post-apartheid era. The first was the Refugee Act of 1998. The Refugee Act represented a bold realignment. In it South Africa acceded to global and African refugee treaties. It also placed human rights at the centre of the policy.

The 2002 Immigration Act was reformist rather than revolutionary. It was rightly criticised for not getting to grips with the legacy of migration patterns in southern Africa.

The white paper represents a far more coherent and systematic rethink than previous South African piecemeal reforms or similar attempts elsewhere in Africa.

The changes are being driven by Home Affairs minister Leon Schreiber. Schreiber is unusual among politicians. He is a real political scientist with real expertise in public policy. He is ambitious and seems determined to accomplish as much as he can in the current term of government. The impression I get is that his senior officials buy into the reforms – indeed, they devised many of them.

The generational change is essentially digitisation. All civil records about citizens, migrants, prospective migrants, visitors, asylum seekers and refugees will be digitised and integrated. If it works, it could result in a watertight management system for immigration, citizenship and refugee protection. This would be a huge step up from the current jumble of paper-based and incomplete datasets.

If completely successful it would eliminate both the massive inefficiency of the Department of Home Affairs, and the fraud and general confusion which still plague the governance of migrants and refugees in South Africa.

Fit for the 21st century

Digitisation and integration of information systems was recommended by the Lubisi enquiry into documentation fraud commissioned by the previous minister.

In my own work on South Africa’s migration policies, I made similar recommendations, with the benefit of the evidence in the Lubisi report and other sources.

At the heart of the system being proposed in the new white paper is an Intelligent Population Register. This is a modern, digitised system to manage and use comprehensive population data. Countries like Estonia and Denmark have pioneered such systems, and India has shown how a digital ID system can be extended to its massive population. Botswana already has an integrated civil registration system similar to the one South Africa is planning.

As the minister of Home Affairs put it, an intelligent population register

uses advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, biometrics, interoperability and real-time data integration, to improve governance, integrated service delivery, and national planning.

The new system will require mandatory birth and death registration, and biometric data not only for citizens but also for foreigners, regular and irregular, who reside in the country. This would provide data that enables far more effective social and economic policies than the current incomplete population register.

Irregular foreigners, including asylum seekers and others whose status is yet to be determined, will be:

• counted

• allowed to use the banking system irrespective of their status

• expected to pay tax.

Other improvements are that it will be:

• more difficult for unethical visa applicants to game the system

• easier to keep track of refugees and asylum seekers

• more difficult to carry out identity theft.

The other major change is that the new system will introduce a “merit-based path” to naturalisation, in contrast to the existing “mechanical and compliance-based” pathway.

Merit is preferred to years served. After five years of permanent residence, naturalisation will be acquired according to a set of accomplishments that are yet to be detailed. This will be available to immigrants who have come in through a points-based system as well as to current citizens of Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Angola holding exemption permits. The yet to be finalised points system will include assessments of educational qualifications, acquired skills, and some measure of social impact.

The points-based system for skilled immigrants will replace or, for now, complement the critical skills list.

Other immigration reforms include a new start-up visa for tech firms, a subset of an investment visa which replaces the business visa, and new age and income requirements for retiree immigrants. The recently introduced Trusted Employer Scheme, Trusted Tour Operator Scheme and the remote work visa are endorsed in the white paper.

Reforms are proposed to speed up the asylum applications process, including a dedicated immigration court. Even those who obtain refugee status may be returned to the “first safe country” that they passed through when exiting their perilous country.

Countries which are safe for returnees would be designated by government – those which do not have raging civil wars or extreme repression or similar hazards for their citizens. South Africa would have to get agreement from the designated safe countries that they would accept returnees without prejudice.

Caveats and concerns

None of these reforms will be easy. Some, like the various points-based systems for entry, permanent residence and citizenship, and the establishment of dedicated refugee courts, are complex proposals not yet fully explained.

Other concerns include the privacy implications of the intelligent population register and the willingness of other countries to agree to being designated first safe country. Both issues are vulnerable to court challenges. Prospective first safe countries may require some incentive to cooperate, and South Africa might have to offer to accept a considerable share of the refugees.

There are also some issues covered in previous white papers not addressed here. Whether and how to draw on the financial and networking resources of the South African diaspora is not discussed. Nor is the issue of proactive policies to promote the social integration of foreigners.

Also not covered is the issue of lower-skilled migrants. However, migrant labour, mostly low-skilled, is the focus of the White Paper on National Labour Migration Policy republished by the Department of Employment and Labour last year.

The ambition signalled in the new policy paper is impressive. Whether it is doable, and whether the project will be completed, depends on many things, political, technical and judicial.

Alan Hirsch 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. South Africa’s new immigration policy takes a digital direction – will it succeed? – https://theconversation.com/south-africas-new-immigration-policy-takes-a-digital-direction-will-it-succeed-274038

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Chuka Onwumechili, Professor of Communications, Howard University

The 35th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations, hosted by Morocco, produced thrills and several story lines, some good and others not so good. It ended in a victory for Senegal – their second Afcon championship. While the 1-0 victory over Morocco was deserved, the championship game ended on a sour note as fans invaded the field and the winning country abandoned the game for 16 minutes.

I’m a sports communications scholar and an author of multiple books on football as it relates to Africa.

The top four positives of the tournament were:

• quality matches played on impeccable surfaces

• expanded media coverage

• increased global interest

• higher attendance figures.

On the downside, however, we had the Senegalese team walkout during the final, bad refereeing decisions, especially in games involving Morocco, and ticketing challenges.

This 2026 Afcon provided examples of quality pitches and marketing that future hosts should learn from. However, providing better security around the field and better trained match officials are lessons that CAF (the Confederation of African Football) must learn from this tournament.

What went well

The infrastructure at Afcon showed Morocco’s readiness to host the World Cup later in the year. On six stadiums alone, the country spent US$1.4 billion. As much as US$10 billion was spent on allied public infrastructure for transport. The matches were of high quality on excellent surfaces.

The fans who watched the spectacular football on the field were transported by a high-speed rail system and seamless other transportation means.

The quality of the surfaces may have contributed to the fact that there were fewer surprises or upsets. All four teams that reached the semi-final stage – Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria and Senegal – were top ranked in their groups.

Eventually, the championship game was contested by the two top ranked African teams. The game was outstanding as the well-known names produced memorable football throughout the tournament.

---

Read more:
African football won the 34th Afcon, with Côte d’Ivoire a close second

---

Expanded media coverage

The decision to expand to additional markets led to expanded media coverage in China, Brazil and key European markets. With several well-known players from European clubs participating, a global audience was assured. Teams like Real Madrid, PSG, Bayern Munich, Manchester United and Liverpool had players participating.

Beyond those were recent world renowned players such as Sadio Mane, Riyad Mahrez and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Those names were certain to attract media audiences across the world.

Viewership rose overall, with remarkable increases in Europe. France recorded 3.4 million viewers and the UK had 1.7 million viewers.

Increased global interest

CAF announced a 90% increase in revenue. This year’s revenue was US$192.6 million (US$114 million profit) compared to US$105.6 million and US$72 million profit in the previous Afcon. This shows the steady rise from just nine partners in the 2021 tournament to 17 in the 2023 tournament and 23 in this one. Greater media reach resulted in commercial interest.

Attendance figures have also risen remarkably. Figures announced at the end of the competition showed 1.34 million attended the games. The number of attendees in 2023 in Côte d’Ivoire was 1.1 million.

This clearly shows increased interest in the tournament. Morocco’s proximity to Europe was also a critical factor. More attendees travelled from the continent and elsewhere.

The prizes awarded to teams at the tournament also set records, with Senegal taking home US$11.6 million. Teams eliminated at the group stage received US$1.3 million each.

---

Read more:
Nigeria wins its 10th Wafcon title – but women’s football has never been more competitive

---

Errors

Angry scenes: The championship game was marred by a Senegalese walkout following protest over a penalty kick awarded to Morocco during the extra time. The game was delayed for 16 minutes. Senegal was angered by the cancellation of its goal late in regulation time. Its protest over the penalty awarded to Morocco lasted until one of its famous faces, Sadio Mane, asked his teammates to continue the game.

By then angry Senegalese fans had torn seats in the stands and multiple fights broke out. In the end, Morocco could not convert the penalty award and Senegal scored a memorable goal to emerge winner.

Umpiring questions: Throughout the tournament, Morocco appeared to be favoured by several refereeing decisions and non-decisions. CAF should consider match official exchange programmes with other confederations as a way of improving officiating. This would not only help Afcon but expose officials to other continental events.

Also of concern, Moroccan ball boys were seen seizing the goalkeepers’ towels for opposing teams in both Nigeria v Morocco and Senegal v Morocco.

Ticketing challenges: There were ticketing challenges also. While tickets were sold out, several stadiums during the group games were deserted. This may be attributed to hiccups where secondary sellers may have bought more tickets than they could re-sell. Nonetheless, an average 21,167 attended each game. Media attendance also rose during the tournament. Reports indicated over 3,800 journalists covered the event from Morocco.

Looking ahead

The competition demonstrated Morocco’s readiness to host World Cup games in 2030. Morocco, along with Spain and Portugal, will host the games, featuring 48 teams. All six cities used for the 2025 Afcon will host the world in 2030. Portugal will have only two host cities and Spain will provide nine venues.

It will be difficult for the host nations for the 2027 Afcon to match Morocco’s accomplishment.

The three hosts for 2027 – Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda – should at least measure up to what Côte d’Ivoire accomplished hosting the 2023 event.

They can look to improve the ticketing system, at the least. Further improving security around stadiums and educating the ball boys would help in protecting visiting teams.

But the on-field disturbances should not take away from this tournament’s numerous accomplishments off the field and the available facilities.

Chuka Onwumechili 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. Afcon drama: what went wrong and what went right at the continent’s biggest football cup in Morocco – https://theconversation.com/afcon-drama-what-went-wrong-and-what-went-right-at-the-continents-biggest-football-cup-in-morocco-273819

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Rich Mallett, Research Associate and Independent Researcher, ODI Global

Digital labour platforms – like fast food delivery and cab hailing services – are having a dramatic impact on people’s labour rights and working conditions around the world.

In western countries like the UK and the US, their rise has intensified a process of labour casualisation already several decades in the making. Under the guise of “flexibility”, platforms have heralded a return to insecure, temporary forms of employment that offer few rights or benefits to workers.

But in “less developed” countries like Uganda, the growth of the digital gig economy is often considered a boon. Across the global south, it has been claimed that platforms are not only creating millions of new jobs, but they are actually helping to formalise an informal economy so vast it accounts for an estimated 70% of total employment in low- and middle-income countries.

Existing research suggests that by guiding informal workers towards compliance with registration and licensing requirements or making them more visible to state authorities, digital labour platforms are capable of “counteracting informal economic activity”.

But is it all as straightforward as it seems?

In a new research paper I put this claim to the test through a case study of moto-taxi work in the Ugandan capital city, Kampala.

Moto-taxi (or boda boda) work is a hugely important source of income in Uganda, providing livelihoods for an estimated 350,000 people in the capital alone. Over the past decade, ride-hail platforms have descended upon this vast industry, claiming to offer safer, better paid work and a step towards formality.

Drawing on 112 interviews, 370 driver surveys and scans of relevant media, my research reaches a different conclusion. Despite shifting online, digital moto-taxi drivers remain as they always were – informal workers in an unprotected labour market.

This raises fundamental questions about the capacity of digital labour platforms to bring about positive transformations in the global informal economy.

Fallacies of ‘plat-formalisation’

As the new paper shows, moto-taxi workers’ inclusion within the new platform economy brings them no closer to formal labour status in any meaningful way.

This is illustrated by three key insights from my findings.

First, despite early collaborative engagement with state actors, Uganda’s ride-hail companies have tended to operate in unilateral, platform-specific ways that undermine prospects for sectoral standardisation. Each platform enforces its own rules over drivers, and these do not always line up with government legislation.

Take driver licensing, for example. While some companies insist that drivers must have a valid driving permit before working through their apps, others bypass this requirement completely. Market leader SafeBoda, for instance, instead chooses to enrol new drivers in road safety training at a purpose-built “academy”. Though a positive step towards safer driving standards, this is not the same as formalisation.

Second, Uganda’s ride-hail platforms accept zero legal responsibility for the welfare and safety of those using their apps, including cases of “bodily injuries, death, and emotional distress and discomfort”. Despite claiming to help regulate the industry, these companies’ designation of informal moto-taxi workers as independent “gig workers” keeps drivers distanced from state labour regulation.

And third, my findings indicate corporate reluctance to share data with government. According to one city planner I talked with, while the platforms tended to talk positively about public-private collaboration, when push came to shove they would often “withhold their data”. Recent evidence suggests this is continuing to happen, further highlighting the limits of private data ownership and non-binding agreements around data sharing. Without access to this information, it is difficult for governments to register workers, tax them effectively and extend labour protections.

Profiting from informality

Ride-hailing may not have led to better, more formalised work for Uganda’s moto-taxis. But what is has done is open up new revenue streams for the various local and international companies involved. The result: a formalisation not of drivers’ labour but of their wealth.

As detailed in the paper, some of the techniques here include:

• Commissions. Drivers regularly lose 15%-20% of their trip fares in the form of company commission fees. With digital technology, these are increasingly being captured via cashless payment systems that deduct fees and other equipment-related debts automatically.

• Equipment. Many companies operate by selling drivers the gear they need to function in the ride-hail economy. SafeBoda, for instance, regularly charges new riders somewhere in the region of US$140 for a smartphone, crash helmets and branded uniforms. Drivers often take this on as debt and pay it back incrementally over time, only to later discover that this does not, in all cases, entitle them to actual ownership. As one former employee at the company told me:

The helmet itself is a business. It’s on the side, you can’t see it. The phone is a business. It’s about business besides riders. It’s all about getting commission on things.

• Corporate tie-ins. Through a series of funding relationships and “private-private partnerships”, Uganda’s ride-hail platforms make drivers visible and accessible to a whole host of banks, insurance agencies and alternative credit lenders. These financial actors are all keen to find lucrative new markets at the “bottom of the pyramid”. Ride-hailing is simply the vehicle for this.

The formalisation agenda remains important. It is central to achieving better working conditions and stronger labour protections for hundreds of millions of workers around the world.

But for private digital platforms operating across Africa’s informal economies, the bottom line is often not about “counteracting informal economic activity” at all. It is about profiting from it.

This article draws on doctoral research, for which the author received funding from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

– ref. Uganda’s boda-boda drivers: the digital economy hasn’t been the route to formal work and better protection – research – https://theconversation.com/ugandas-boda-boda-drivers-the-digital-economy-hasnt-been-the-route-to-formal-work-and-better-protection-research-270993

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Adewumi I. Badiora, Senior Lecturer, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Olabisi Onabanjo University

Criminal activities have developed into a security crisis in Nigeria. Alongside the responses of security agencies such as the police and military, there has been a huge local response, with community groups mobilising in the face of criminal attacks.

For example, communities in Zamfara State, north-west region, repelled a bandit attack, causing the death of 37 bandits in August 2024. In Sokoto State, north-west region, residents rescued kidnapped individuals and recovered the body of the deceased village head in August 2024. In Kwara state, north-central region, community groups rescued people from their abductors in December 2025.

But how effective are these community-organised interventions?

I’m an urban and community safety researcher who has studied various aspects of insecurity in Nigeria, particularly in the country’s south-west, for more than a decade now.

In a recent paper I sought to answer this question in relation to Lagos. As Nigeria’s largest city with an estimated population exceeding 20 million, Lagos faces severe, complex crime challenges driven by rapid, poorly managed urbanisation and high unemployment rates. I surveyed 62 stakeholders in a bid to evaluate community-driven crime prevention strategies. Respondents included residents, members of the state and community groups who were playing important roles in the city’s security processes. This was qualitative research.

Many respondents expressed little or no trust in formal security agencies. Their expectations that the police could protect them were low.

A resident interviewed for the study said that while people like politicians got police protection, ordinary citizens did not:

That is why everyone has devised ways to protect themselves and family.

My research found that these commmunity-organised interventions have emerged in different forms. The commonest is community vigilante groups. These are self-appointed resident security volunteers who take it upon themselves to confront criminals in their neighbourhood. This is common in low-income neighbourhoods of Lagos because they have to deal with crime but feel they can’t rely on the police to patrol, unlike elite neighbourhoods.

A successful urban security strategy

Lagos community vigilante groups range from small groups of volunteers on streets, and informal neigbourhood watches, to well structured local community bodies. Community vigilante members are mostly men. But women are not explicitly excluded, and they are an important source of information.

The groups were using local knowledge to help the police. They compiled information on crimes, suspicious activity and criminal suspects in their area and provided it to the police as needed. In some cases, they joined the police intelligence response team to raid hideouts of criminals in their areas.

A resident interviewed for the study said:

We are local people. We know our community very well. We can easily spot strangers and suspicious movements. This local knowledge is what we have, that the police do not have. So, we complement their efforts by providing dependable intelligence for their work. Beyond that, we also escort police patrol, and our presence has helped them to penetrate streets they would not have been able to navigate by themselves.

The relationship between the police and community groups was “semi-formal”. Arrangements were made by the communities with little or no intervention by the state. The collaborations were owned, structured and sustained by residents.

Some of those involved in the groups were remunerated through financial contributions by residents. However, they “occasionally” received financial support from the local government authorities, individual local politicians and donors.

Successes

My research showed there had been some positive results. Residents confirmed that the collaborations brought safety to their community and had helped to reduce crime and insecurity, particularly where the police were lacking.

A resident interviewed for the study said:

Things are a little better. Before now, it was dreadful as criminals and hoodlums operate openly. Although there is still a long way to go, there has been a commendable level of improvements in our security in the last five years.

Some ongoing issues

Despite its success, several concerns were raised in my study.

First, community vigilante groups are a patchwork of isolated groups. Organisations are fragmented and weak. This could be dangerous because it creates unaccountable groups that can easily change from being protectors to being a threat. That can be seen in the Bakassi Boys (south-east Nigeria), Yan Sakai (north-west Nigeria) and global examples like Mungiki (Kenya) and Autodefensas (Mexico).

Second is the question of the legality of community groups in terms of the provisions of the Nigerian constitution, the Police Act and the Public Order Act. Their legal status is “complex” as they operate in a grey area. Most of them do not have the backing of the federal government, which has the constitutional authority to manage policies regarding them.

Third, while community vigilante groups fill security gaps created by an under-resourced police force, their activities sometimes lead to conflicts because they act as judge, jury and executioner.

A police officer interviewed for the study said:

The activities of vigilantes are usually unlawful in the way and manner they deal with suspected criminals … The lawful thing for them is to report suspected criminals to the police, but many times, they take law into their own hands.

Still, residents view the groups as legitimate because of their perceived effectiveness, deep local knowledge, community ties and quick action.

Fourth, relationships between community groups and the police range from amiable and collaborative to distrustful and hostile. Mutual distrust risks escalating violence rather than reducing it.

A member of a vigilante group put it this way:

We cannot totally entrust suspects and our community to the police. We have situations where suspects were released without any investigation and prosecution. Not only that, corrupt police officers do give hints to these suspects about key vigilante members behind their arrests, and these criminals go all-out for them after their unlawful freedom from the police custody.

Moving forward

To overcome the challenges, the following steps should be taken:

• reform of Nigeria’s security governance, allowing states to create their own police forces

• formal recognition and support of community groups

• adopting policies to curb the proliferation of the groups

• working more closely with community groups to deal with some of the underlying reasons for insecurity. These include political negligence, youth unemployment, poverty and inequality.

Adewumi I. Badiora 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. Crime-fighting in Lagos: community watch groups are the preferred choice for residents, but they carry risks – https://theconversation.com/crime-fighting-in-lagos-community-watch-groups-are-the-preferred-choice-for-residents-but-they-carry-risks-273667

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Francois Questiaux, Researcher, Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen

Shea butter has become a highly sought-after ingredient in cosmetics and food manufacturing worldwide. Since the early 2000s its use as a substitute for cocoa butter has driven a dramatic rise in international demand. The shea butter industry has grown by more than 600% over the last 20 years.

The shea tree is semi-domesticated across the dry savannah region in a “shea belt” west to east from Senegal to South Sudan, and about 500km north to south. It is not planted but protected within farmland and also found in communal bushland.

An estimated 16 million women collect and process shea fruits in rural west Africa, turning them into dry kernels for sale or processing the kernels into shea butter.

Global companies, development agencies and NGOs frequently present the shea industry as a pathway to women’s economic empowerment in the region.

To explore this idea, we conducted research into how the rise in demand for shea butter has affected women collectors in Burkina Faso and Ghana. These two countries are among the lead exporters of dry shea kernels.

The study formed part of our work on agrarian change, political ecology and livelihoods. We study relationships between producers and other actors of global value chains, as well as the impacts of externally induced changes on smallholders.

We combined data from a survey of 1,046 collectors in 24 communities with data from interviews with 18 collectors.

Our results show that the shea boom has intensified competition for access to trees. Over 85% of collectors surveyed reported an increase in the number of shea nut collectors in their community over the past 10  years. We also documented how access to shea trees was becoming more restricted, especially for women who rely most heavily on shea for their livelihoods.

Our results point to widening inequality within the collector population, even as the overall value of the shea sector grows.

Global demand meets local tenure systems

Historically, access to nuts was governed by a combination of customary rules and social norms. Women could usually collect freely on communal land, and also on farmland belonging to their households or relatives. Shea was often treated as a semi–open-access resource, available to women of the community according to need.

This system has come under pressure.

Firstly, as prices have increased over the last three decades, so have the number of people collecting.

Secondly, the common land is shrinking. Expansion and mechanisation of agriculture, population growth and peri-urban development have reduced the areas that once served as shared collection spaces.

Several collectors we interviewed noted that land previously considered “bush” had been converted into fields, removing an important safety net for those without farmland.

As a result, access to shea trees is increasingly tied to access to private land. Over 55% of our survey respondents reported that collection on private fields had become more restricted, with landowners enforcing boundaries more tightly. This shift reflects a broader tendency in both countries for land rights to become more individualised as resources acquire market value.

---

Read more:
Customary land governance holds in Ghana. But times are changing and not for the better

---

Third, resource pressure has introduced new forms of conflict, like trespassing on land. Conflicts reinforce exclusion, as landowners become more reluctant to allow non-family members onto their fields.

Unequal effects across collector groups

Our research distinguishes three types of collectors:

• dedicated collectors, who derive all of their annual income from collecting and selling shea nuts

• diversified collectors, who combine shea collection with farming or other activities

• collector–traders, who not only collect nuts but also purchase them from others to sell at higher prices later in the year.

These groups experience the shea boom in different ways.

Dedicated collectors have the most limited access to private land. Only 16% of them collect from their own fields, compared to 38%-43% among the other groups. They depend on the communal bush.

Diversified collectors have better access to private fields than dedicated collectors, but still face similar challenges as bush areas shrink. And they have less time to spend collecting, limiting their ability to compensate for increasing competition.

Collector-traders maintain more secure access to private fields and receive more assistance from household members. Over half report receiving help from men, such as transporting nuts or protecting fields from trespassers. This is significantly more than dedicated or diversified collectors. The additional labour gives them a strategic advantage.

More work, but not more income

Rising prices might suggest that women would earn more from shea today than a decade ago. Yet this is not what most collectors experience. Only 48.7% reported an increase in shea income over the past 10 years, despite the international boom.

Total annual income from shea remains very low – on average only US$174 (purchasing power parity) per year, with differences between collectors.

For poorer collectors, several factors suppress income gains:

• limited access to shea trees constrains the volume of nuts they can gather

• many have to sell nuts early in the season, often at low prices, to meet immediate cash needs. Better-off collector-traders can purchase nuts cheaply, store them, and profit from higher prices later in the year.

Rethinking the ‘win-win’ narrative

The findings challenge the claim that integrating women into the global shea value chain will empower them and reduce poverty. The boom has indeed created new economic opportunities, but these are unevenly distributed. Market expansion has strengthened the position of those with greater land access and financial capital. At the same time it’s undermined the livelihoods of those who rely exclusively on the resource.

Our study does not prescribe specific policy measures, but its findings point to several possible avenues for intervention.

First, measures that strengthen women’s land and tree rights are likely to be critical. Recent work on peri-urban Ghana, for example, calls for wider rights to land and shea trees for women in policy and tenure reforms.

Second, empirical studies of female shea actors in Ghana suggest that collective organisation, better access to finance and improved infrastructure (notably storage facilities) can enhance women’s position.

Finally, evidence from northern Ghana indicates that women themselves recommend changes in farming practices to sustain the resource base.

Francois Questiaux is a Postdoc at the University of Copenhagen.
This project was funded by a grant from the Danish Independent Research Fund (Obstacles, Grant 2102-00030B) and a grant from the Innovation Fund Denmark (Sheaine, Grant 9067-00030B)

Marieve Pouliot is an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen. This project was funded by a grant from the Danish Independent Research Fund (Obstacles, Grant 2102-00030B) and a grant from the Innovation Fund Denmark (Sheaine, Grant 9067-00030B).

– ref. Global demand for shea butter is growing: but it’s not all good news for the women who collect the nuts – https://theconversation.com/global-demand-for-shea-butter-is-growing-but-its-not-all-good-news-for-the-women-who-collect-the-nuts-273242