The Conversation – Africa – Page 4

January 18, 2026

AI can make the dead talk – why this doesn’t comfort us

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Tom Divon, Researcher , Hebrew University of Jerusalem

For as long as humans have buried their dead, they’ve dreamed of keeping them close. The ancient Fayum portraits – those stunningly lifelike images wrapped in Egyptian mummies – captured faces meant to remain present even after life had left the body.

Effigies across cultures served the same purpose: to make the absent present, to keep the dead around in some form.

But these attempts shared a fundamental limitation. They were vivid, yet they could not respond. The dead remained dead.

Across time, another idea emerged: the active dead. Ghosts who slipped back into the world to settle unfinished business, like spirits bound to old houses. Whenever they did speak, however, they needed a human medium – a living body to lend them voice and presence.

Media evolved to amplify this ancient longing to summon what is absent. Photography, film, audio recordings, holograms. Each technique added new layers of detail and new modes of calling the past into the present.

Now, generative AI promises something unprecedented: interactive resurrection.

It offers an entity that converses, answers and adapts. A dead celebrity digitally forced to perform songs that never belonged to them. A woman murdered in a domestic-violence case reanimated to “speak” about her own death. Online profiles resurrecting victims of tragedy, “reliving” their trauma through narration framed as warning or education.

We are researchers who have spent many years studying the intersection of memory, nostalgia and technology. We particularly focus on how people make meaning and remember, and how accessible technologies shape these processes.

In a recent paper, we examined how generative AI is used to reanimate the dead across everyday contexts. The easy circulation of these digital ghosts raises urgent questions: who authorises these afterlives, who speaks through them, and who decides how the dead are put to work?

What gives these audiovisual ghosts their force is not only technological spectacle, but the sadness they reveal. The dead are turned into performers for purposes they never consented to, whether entertainment, consolation or political messaging.

This display of AI’s power also exposes how easily loss, memory and absence can be adapted to achieve various goals.

And this is where a quieter emotion enters: melancholy. By this we mean the unease that arises when something appears alive and responsive, yet lacks agency of its own.

These AI figures move and speak, but they remain puppets, animated at the direction of someone else’s will. They remind us that what looks like presence is ultimately a carefully staged performance.

They are brought back to life to serve, not to live. These resurrected figures do not comfort. They trouble us into awareness, inviting a deeper contemplation of what it means to live under the shadow of mortality.

What ‘resurrection’ looks like

In our study, we collected more than 70 cases of AI-powered resurrections. They are especially common on video-heavy platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

Given their current proliferation, the first thing we did was to compare all cases and look for similarities in their purposes and application. We also noted the data and AI tools used, as well as the people or institutions employing them.

A prominent use of generative AI involves the digital resurrection of iconic figures whose commercial, cultural and symbolic value often intensifies after death. These include:

Whitney Houston – resurrected to perform both her own songs and those of others, circulating online as a malleable relic of the past.
Queen Elizabeth II – brought back as a rap sis from the hood to perform with a swagger drawn from Black urban culture. This transformation illustrates how nationally significant figures, once held at an ivory-tower distance, become a form of public property after death.

These algorithmic afterlives reduce the dead to entertainment assets, summoned on command, stripped of context, and remade according to contemporary whims. But AI resurrection also moves along a darker register.

A woman who was raped and murdered in Tanzania has reappeared in AI-generated videos, where she is made to warn others not to travel alone, transforming her death into a cautionary message.
A woman is summoned through AI to relive the most tragic day of her life, digitally reanimated to tell the story of how her husband killed her, embedding a warning about domestic violence.

Here, AI ghosts function as admonitions – reminders of injustice, war and unresolved collective wounds. In this process, grief becomes content and trauma a teaching device. AI does not merely revive the deceased. It rewrites and redistributes them according to the needs of the living.

While such interventions may initially astonish, their ethical weight lies in the asymmetry they expose – where those unable to refuse are summoned to serve purposes to which they never consented. And it is always marked by a triangle of sadness: the tragedy itself, its resurrection and the forceful reliving of the tragedy.

The melancholy

We suggest thinking in terms of two distinct registers of melancholy to locate where our unease resides and to show how readily that feeling can disarm us.

The first register concerns the melancholy attached to the dead. In this mode, resurrected celebrities or victims are summoned back to entertain, instruct or re-enact the very traumas that marked their deaths. The fascination of seeing them perform on demand dulls our capacity to register the exploitation involved, and the unease, cringe, and sadness embedded in these performances.

The second register is the melancholy attached to us, the living revivalists. Here, the unease emerges not from exploitation but from confrontation. In gazing at these digital spectres, we are reminded of the inevitability of death, even as life appears extended on our screens. However sophisticated these systems may be, they cannot re-present the fullness of a person. Instead, they quietly re-inscribe the gap between the living and the deceased.

Death is inevitable. AI resurrections will not spare us from mourning; instead, they deepen our encounter with the inescapable reality of a world shaped by those who are no longer here.

Even more troubling is the spectacular power of technology itself. As with every new medium, the enchantment of technological “performance” captivates us, diverting attention from harder structural questions about data, labour, ownership and profit, and about who is brought back, how and for whose benefit.

Unease, not empathy

The closer a resurrection gets to looking and sounding human, the more clearly we notice what is missing. This effect is captured by the concept known as the uncanny valley, first introduced by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970. It describes how nearly-but-not-quite-human figures tend to evoke unease rather than empathy in viewers.

This is not solely a matter of technical defects in resurrections, imperfections may be reduced with better models and higher-resolution data. What remains is a deeper threshold, an anthropological constant that separates the living from the dead. It is the same boundary that cultures and spiritual traditions have grappled with for millennia. Technology, in its boldness, tries again. And like its predecessors, it fails.

The melancholy of AI lies precisely here: in its ambition to collapse the distance between presence and absence, and in its inability to do so.

The dead don’t return. They only shimmer through our machines, appearing briefly as flickers that register our longing, and just as clearly, the limits of what technology can’t repair.

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. AI can make the dead talk – why this doesn’t comfort us – https://theconversation.com/ai-can-make-the-dead-talk-why-this-doesnt-comfort-us-272944

January 18, 2026

Ransomware: what it is and why it’s your problem

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Thembekile Olivia Mayayise, Senior Lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that makes a victim’s data, system or device inaccessible. It locks the target or encrypts it (converting text into an unreadable form) until the victim pays a ransom to the attacker.

It’s one of the most widespread and damaging forms of cyberattacks affecting organisations around the world. An Interpol report identified ransomware as one of the most widespread cyber threats across Africa in 2024. South Africa reported 12,281 detections and Egypt reported 17,849.

Despite global efforts to curb it, ransomware continues to thrive, driven by cybercriminals seeking quick financial gain. In its first-quarter 2025 report, global cybersecurity company Sophos revealed that 71% of the South African organisations hit by ransomware paid the ransom and recovered their data. But the full cost of a ransomware attack is difficult to quantify. It extends beyond the ransom payment to include revenue losses during the system downtime and potential reputational damage.

Cybercriminals often select organisations where service disruption can cause significant public or operational effects, increasing the pressure to pay the ransom. Power grids, healthcare systems, transport networks and financial systems are examples. When victims refuse to pay the ransom, attackers frequently threaten to leak sensitive or confidential information.

One reason ransomware has become so pervasive in Africa is the continent’s cybersecurity gap. Many organisations lack dedicated cybersecurity resources, along with the skills, awareness, tools and infrastructure to defend against cyberattacks.

In this environment, hackers can operate with relative ease. Every business leader, particularly those overseeing information and communication technology (ICT) or managing sensitive data, should be asking a critical question. Can our organisation survive a ransomware attack?

This is not just a technical issue; it is also a governance matter. Board members and executive teams are increasingly accountable for risk management and cyber resilience.

As a researcher and expert in the governance of information technology and cybersecurity, I see the African region emerging as a hotspot for cyberattacks. Organisations must be aware of the risks and take steps to mitigate them.

Ransomware attacks can be extremely costly, and an organisation may struggle or fail to recover after an incident.

Weaknesses that increase ransomware risk

Telecommunication company Verizon’s data breach report for 2025 revealed that the number of organisations hit by ransomware attacks had increased by 37% from the previous year. This exposes how unprepared many organisations are to prevent an attack.

A business continuity plan details how a business would continue its operations in the event of a business disruption. An ICT disaster recovery plan is part of the continuity plan. These plans are critical in ensuring continuity of operations after the attack, as affected businesses often experience prolonged downtime, loss of access to systems and data, and severe operational disruptions.

Professional hackers actually sell ransomware tools, making it easier and more profitable for cybercriminals to launch attacks without regard for their consequences.

Hackers can infiltrate systems in various ways:

weak security controls such as weak passwords or authentication mechanisms
unmonitored networks, where there is a lack of intrusion detection systems that can report any suspicious network activity
human error, where employees can mistakenly click on e-mail links which contain ransomware.

Poor network monitoring can allow hackers to remain undetected long enough to collect data on vulnerabilities and identify key systems to target. In many cases, employees unknowingly introduce malicious software, links or downloading attachments from phishing emails. Phishing is a social engineering attack that uses various manipulation techniques to deceive a user into disclosing sensitive details, such as payment or login details, or to trick them into clicking on malicious links.

Paying up

Attackers commonly demand payment in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies because the payments will be quite difficult to trace. Paying the ransom offers no guarantee of full data recovery or protection against future attacks. According to global cybersecurity company Check Point, notorious ransomware groups like Medusa have popularised double extortion tactics.

These groups demand payment and threaten to publish stolen data online. They often use social media platforms and the dark web – part of the internet which is only accessible by means of special software – allowing them to remain anonymous or untraceable. Their goal is to publicly shame victims or leak sensitive information, pressuring organisations to comply.

These breaches also contribute to phishing scams, as exposed email addresses and credentials circulate across the internet, which leads to more data breaches. Websites such as Have I Been Pwned can assist in checking whether your email has been compromised in any previous data breach.

Organisational resilience against ransomware

Organisations should strengthen their cybersecurity in several ways.

Put strong technical and administrative measures in place to keep data safe. They include effective access controls, network monitoring tools and regular system and data backups.
Use tools that block malware attacks early and provide alerts when suspicious activities occur. This includes using strong endpoint protection ensuring that any device which connects to the network has intrusion detection systems that help spot unusual network activity.
Equip staff with the knowledge and vigilance to detect and prevent potential threats.
Develop, document and communicate a clear incident response plan.
Bring in external cybersecurity experts or managed security services when the organisation does not have skills or capacity to handle security on its own.
Develop, maintain and regularly test business continuity and ICT disaster recovery plans.
Obtain cyber-insurance to cover the risks that can’t be completely prevented.

Ransomware attacks are a serious and growing threat to individuals and organisations. They can cause data loss, financial losses, operational disruptions and reputational damage. There are no security measures that can fully guarantee complete protection from such attacks. But the steps outlined here might help.

Thembekile Olivia Mayayise 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. Ransomware: what it is and why it’s your problem – https://theconversation.com/ransomware-what-it-is-and-why-its-your-problem-269430

January 15, 2026

Student teachers in South Africa choose comfort over challenge in practical placements: but there’s a hidden cost

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Clive Jimmy William Brown, Teaching Practice Coordinator, Lecturer & Faculty of Education Transformation Chairperson , Cape Peninsula University of Technology

South Africa’s schools still carry the imprint of apartheid, where resources, language and geography were deliberately divided according to “race”. Many communities today remain deeply unequal in terms of school infrastructure and resources.

For student teachers, this means that placement for practical experience in one school can feel worlds apart from a placement just a few kilometres away.

One school may offer smaller classes and well-resourced classrooms with access to textbooks and digital tools. Another contends with overcrowded classes, limited teaching materials and little to no digital infrastructure.

These disparities are not abstract. They shape daily teaching decisions, classroom management strategies and professional confidence. This makes one placement feel like a supported apprenticeship, and another an exercise in endurance and improvisation.

My doctoral research in education studies shows that many final-year student teachers actively avoid schools that differ from their own schooling backgrounds. Instead, they select placements that feel comfortable and familiar, even if this limits their professional growth and reinforces historical divides in education.

My research, drawing on in-depth interviews and institutional documents, reveals why this happens, and why it matters for equity, learning and justice in education.

Understanding student teachers’ choices matters for any country grappling with inequality and diversity in teacher preparation. Countries need teachers who can work confidently across different school contexts.

The quiet pull of comfort

In the programmes I oversee as a teacher educator, student teachers are placed in schools twice a year for teaching practice blocks of four weeks at a time. This amounts to about 32 weeks over a four-year degree. Placements are formally coordinated by universities. However, operational pressures and the growing number of student teachers mean that, in practice, many students find the placements themselves. The options are often shaped, too, by whether schools are willing to host students from particular universities.

A policy framework that took effect in 2016 sought to standardise teacher qualifications nationally and provide learning across diverse schooling contexts. But when student teachers select schools for their compulsory teaching practice, they are able to fine-tune the placement programme to suit their own needs rather than its broader transformative purpose.

Their choice appears simple: go where you feel you will “fit in”, be supported and pass.

The students I followed over several years consistently chose schools that:

resembled their former schools
matched their language and cultural norms
felt socially “safe”, meaning that these environments aligned closely with their own ethnic, class and racial backgrounds, and offered predictability, familiarity and reduced emotional risk during an already demanding practicum period
promised minimum disruption to completing the four-year degree quickly.

Many framed their decisions in terms of pragmatism:

I just want to finish and qualify.

Others spoke honestly about their fears, including fear of failing, not belonging or being judged in communities unlike their own. As one student confessed,

Teaching is already stressful. Why add discomfort?

A sense of comfort reduced anxiety and helped them “get through” their degrees. But it also meant that many avoided the kinds of classrooms where they might have learned how to work across differences, the very classrooms they might encounter later in their careers.

My future research aims to examine how early teaching practice placements shape graduates’ later career choices.

Expedience over authenticity

Many students themselves came from historically marginalised and economically impoverished communities. But they still worried that more challenging placements might expose them to failure, conflict or unsupportive mentors. Some feared that schools with limited resources would make it harder for them to demonstrate their teaching competence, manage classrooms effectively and access the kinds of support needed to learn how to teach well.

Only two chose placements in unfamiliar contexts. For most others, the comfort of familiarity mattered more than challenge.

In effect, the practicum became a credential-seeking exercise rather than a transformative professional learning experience.

This is not a moral failing on the part of the students. It reflects:

pressure to complete degrees quickly
fears about employability
uneven support systems across schools
deeply embedded memories of their own unequal schooling experiences.

Why this matters beyond the university

If teaching practice reinforces comfort rather than courage, it might narrow, rather than widen, what education can do.

My research and that of others suggests there could be three consequences.

Persistent inequity in teacher confidence: in “unfamiliar” kinds of schools, teachers may feel unprepared, anxious and sometimes resistant.
Reproduction of historical divides: placements could signal that some teachers “belong” in certain communities and not in others.
Lost opportunities for professional growth: discomfort can encourage reflective learning.

But discomfort must not become harm

My findings also caution against romanticising discomfort.

A small minority of students chose unfamiliar placements in poorer, more diverse or conflict-affected school contexts. This was driven by personal convictions and a desire to challenge themselves. In interviews, reflective journals and post-placement discussions, they reported feeling more confident and adaptable as teachers and classroom managers. They had a deeper sense of professional purpose.

These positive outcomes were closely tied to strong mentoring and consistent university support. Without that, they reported feelings of panic, isolation and emotional exhaustion.

Exposure to diversity must be intentional, scaffolded and humane. When unsupported student teachers are faced with large class sizes, multilingual classrooms, limited resources, long and costly commutes, or concerns about personal safety, it could be a risk rather than a growth opportunity.

What universities and policymakers can change

The research suggests several levers for re-designing teaching practice.

Structured placement pathways: ensure that every student rotates through at least one context that differs meaningfully from their own, with a clear rationale and adequate preparation.
Mentor development: invest in mentor-teachers who understand how to support novices across cultural and socioeconomic divides.
Shared responsibility for placements: universities, schools and education departments must collaborate to distribute opportunities equitably.
Reflective supervision: create guided reflective spaces where students make sense of discomfort rather than flee from it.
Transparent expectations: frame teaching practice not as a hurdle to clear, but as an ethical apprenticeship into public-serving professionalism.

South Africa’s education system still reflects deep structural inequality. If future teachers primarily work in schools that resemble their own histories, those divides could be cemented into the next generation.

Clive Jimmy William Brown 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. Student teachers in South Africa choose comfort over challenge in practical placements: but there’s a hidden cost – https://theconversation.com/student-teachers-in-south-africa-choose-comfort-over-challenge-in-practical-placements-but-theres-a-hidden-cost-272938

January 15, 2026

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland is about political alliances, not legal principles

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Alemayehu Weldemariam, Ph.D. Fellow, Center for Constitutional Democracy, Indiana University

Israel’s decision to recognise Somaliland as an independent nation has been described as historic by Somaliland’s president, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi. He framed the December 2025 declaration as the first decisive breach in the wall of diplomatic isolation that has surrounded Somaliland for more than three decades.

Somaliland has operated as a fully functional de facto state with defined territory, population and government since declaring independence from Somalia in 1991. But it lacks international recognition. This would allow it full participation in the global community, such as membership in the United Nations, as well as boosting its economic opportunities.

I am a scholar of peace and conflict resolution, constitutional design and constitutional law, with a regional focus on the Horn of Africa. My work includes examining regional peace and security.

Based on this deep knowledge of the region, I would argue that Tel Aviv’s decision is indeed consequential. But not because it resolves anything.

Its significance lies in the fact that it has elevated a question of legal status into a strategic contest unfolding within the world’s most volatile geopolitical corridor.

Over the last decade the Red Sea – which links the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean – has become the frontline of a new multipolar order. The region has been transformed into a dense arena of overlapping crises. These include state collapses in Sudan, Yemen and Somalia, and Ethiopia’s destabilising quest for maritime access. There is also the intensification of Gulf rivalry and great power competition, which includes China’s consolidation of a coastal arc of influence.

The Red Sea region now hosts the highest concentration of foreign military bases on earth. It also sits astride critical global trade routes.

Against this backdrop, Israel’s recognition unsettles an already fragile equilibrium. While the decision alters the board, it doesn’t end the game. It increases Somaliland’s strategic value while increasing its geopolitical toxicity in a region already under strain.

The African Union and the fear of precedent

The African Union viewed the Somaliland question as a dangerous exception that must not be entertained. Its position rests on a single overriding fear: that recognition would weaken the postcolonial settlement built on inherited borders.

Somaliland’s claim is that it merely reasserts the boundaries of the former British protectorate. But the AU’s doctrine is rigid by design. It does not distinguish between border revisionism and constitutional secession within colonial lines. For the AU, the precedent is intolerable.

If African politics were governed by doctrine alone, the matter would end there. But it doesn’t.

For Ethiopia, the Somaliland question is inseparable from the Red Sea itself. Landlocked, populous and strategically exposed, Ethiopia treats maritime access as a condition of state survival. Recognising Somaliland would not automatically grant Ethiopia access to the sea. But it would fundamentally change the bargaining structure through which such access could be secured. Recognition would convert what is currently an informal, reversible commercial arrangement into a sovereignty-linked exchange.

With nearly all its trade flowing through Djibouti at enormous cost, Addis Ababa’s anxiety is real – and destabilising.

Here the wider Red Sea crisis intrudes directly. Ethiopia’s quest for access unfolds amid collapsing neighbours, proliferating militias, drone warfare supplied by Gulf states and external powers, and an increasingly militarised coastline.

It is not yet clear which direction Ethiopia has decided to take in its relations with Somaliland. Last year, prime minister Abiy Ahmed quietly retreated from the memorandum of understanding signed in 2024 with Somaliland. This was after it became clear that the move would provoke severe African Union repercussions.

For the present, therefore, any meaningful external support for Somaliland recognition comes only from Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

What is emerging in the region is an increasingly polarised alignment. On one side are Egypt, the Sudanese Armed Forces, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia. On the other are the UAE, the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, Libya, Somaliland, Israel – and Ethiopia, despite its efforts to conceal the extent of its involvement.

Some states continue to hedge. South Sudan, Uganda and Kenya have sought to avoid choosing sides.

Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia

In Israel’s recognition announcement, the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, explicitly situated Somaliland within the logic of the Abraham Accords. Signed in 2020, the accords are a set of US-brokered agreements that normalised relations between Israel and several Arab states. They link diplomatic recognition to security cooperation, economic integration and regional realignment.

By invoking the accords, Netanyahu is seeking to pull Somaliland into the gravitational field of the Gulf. And, above all, to signal the influence of the United Arab Emirates. The UAE’s imprint in the Horn of Africa in recent years is evident in ports, bases, logistics corridors, and paramilitary finance across the region.

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, therefore, is a strategic move that aligns it with the UAE’s economic and security architecture in the Red Sea. It is not that Israel has suddenly developed an interest in Somaliland’s legal merits, nor that it is simply acting at the UAE’s behest. Rather, recognition makes sense because Israel is choosing to embed itself within an Emirati-centred political economy of the Red Sea.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, condemned Israel’s decision on the grounds that it entrenched unilateral secession and violates international law. In doing so, it aligned itself with the African Union’s position while asserting independent leadership in the Red Sea arena.

China

Beijing’s resistance to Somaliland’s recognition is not about Africa alone. It is about precedent in a maritime corridor central to China’s global strategy to develop an unbroken arc of influence from the Horn to the Suez. It already has a military base in Djibouti and is expanding naval diplomacy along the African coast.

Recognition of Somaliland by major powers would validate a dangerous idea from Beijing’s perspective: that durable quasi-states can eventually overcome diplomatic isolation through persistence.

The outcome is ambiguity, but not necessarily failure

Seen whole, the Somaliland question is not a recognition cascade but a coordination failure unfolding in the world’s most dangerous maritime corridor. Multiple enforcers – the African Union, China, Saudi Arabia and others in the Middle East – raise the cost of recognition. Multiple bargainers – Ethiopia above all – demand compensation commensurate with those costs.

As a consequence, recognition has developed into a scarce and risky currency, spent only when the return justifies the danger.

History suggests that unresolved questions of sovereignty rarely disappear. They linger, reshaped by power and circumstance, until either violence settles them or institutions adapt. In the Red Sea today, institutions lag behind reality. What emerges is not resolution, but managed contradiction.

This may disappoint advocates of clarity. It should not surprise students of history. International order has never been sustained by justice alone. It endures through arrangements that most actors find tolerable and none find ideal. In the Red Sea – now the frontline of a new global order – ambiguity is not failure. It is the price paid for avoiding something worse.

In the absence of a power willing to bear the full costs of finality, ambiguity will persist – not as a failure of will, but as the international system’s preferred substitute for resolution.

Alemayehu Weldemariam 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. Israel’s recognition of Somaliland is about political alliances, not legal principles – https://theconversation.com/israels-recognition-of-somaliland-is-about-political-alliances-not-legal-principles-273488

January 14, 2026

Human-wildlife conflict in Zimbabwe is a crisis: who is in danger, where and why?

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Blessing Kavhu, Research Fellow, Remote Sensing & GIS Data Scientist I Conservationist I Transboundary Water Modeler I Technical Advisory Board Member I UCSC Climate Justice Fellow I UCSC Coastal Climate Resilience Fellow, University of California, Santa Cruz

In the fishing villages along Lake Kariba in northern Zimbabwe, near the border with Zambia, everyday routines that should be ordinary – like collecting water, walking to the fields or casting a fishing net – now carry a quiet, ever-present fear. A new national analysis shows that human-wildlife conflict in rural Zimbabwe has intensified to the point where it has become a public safety crisis, rather than simply an environmental challenge.

Between 2016 and 2022, 322 people died in wildlife encounters. Annual fatalities climbed from 17 to 67: a fourfold increase in just seven years. These fatal encounters are concentrated in communities that live closest to protected areas and water bodies. Here, people and wildlife compete for space and survival.

Protected areas and rivers provide water, forage and shelter for wildlife. Rural households rely on the same landscapes for farming, fishing and domestic water. The study shows that this overlap between human activity and wildlife movement sharply increases the risk of fatal encounters.

Historically, human-wildlife conflict research and policy in southern Africa focused on economic losses such as destroyed crops, livestock predation and damaged infrastructure. Fatal attacks on people were often treated as rare or incidental. This study shifts that perspective by showing that human deaths are not isolated events, but a growing and measurable pattern that demands urgent attention.

I am a US-based Zimbabwean scientist working with Zimbabwean conservationists. We analysed national wildlife-related fatality records from the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority. The central questions were: how many people are dying from wildlife encounters, where are these deaths occurring and which species are responsible?

The findings were stark. Fatal encounters are rising rapidly, are geographically clustered in the north and western districts, and are driven primarily by two species: crocodiles and elephants (not lions, as people might expect). The implications extend beyond conservation to include trauma, fear, retaliatory killings of wildlife and the need for targeted, locally specific interventions.

Patterns in the data

The study reveals that more than 80% of recorded deaths involved only two species, elephants and crocodiles. Crocodiles alone were responsible for slightly more than half of all fatalities. Many of these incidents happened during activities people cannot avoid: fishing, crossing rivers, bathing, or washing clothes in rivers and lakes. These encounters are sudden and often impossible to anticipate, especially in places where visibility is poor and safe water access is limited.

Elephants were responsible for nearly a third of the deaths. These happened mainly during crop-raiding incidents or when communities attempted to chase elephants from fields and homesteads, or when people were walking to school and work. These confrontations often occur at night or in the early morning when visibility is low. Lions, hyenas, hippos and buffalo contributed only 17% of fatal incidents during the study period.

The rise in lethal encounters appears to be driven by several overlapping forces. Zimbabwe still holds one of Africa’s largest elephant populations, estimated at over 80,000 animals. This is second only to Botswana. In dry years elephants move over long distances in search of water and forage, increasing their presence in communal lands. Shrinking natural habitats and growing rural populations mean that human populations are expanding into wildlife corridors. Climate change, particularly recurring droughts, intensifies the competition for water and space.

The geography of the fatalities reveals a clear pattern. Most deaths occurred in Kariba, Binga and Hwange. These are districts along the country’s northern and western frontier, with a combined population of about 343,264 people. They have large water bodies that support abundant crocodile populations; they are close to protected areas with high elephant numbers; and people there depend heavily on farming, fishing and natural resource use.

How people feel

These encounters leave people with fear. Parents become anxious about children walking to school, farmers worry about tending crops at dawn and communities may avoid crossing rivers.

But people aren’t getting mental health support. So grief and fear can turn into anger, often resulting in killings of wildlife. A destructive cycle undermines conservation and damages trust between communities and authorities.

What to do about it

Different places face different dangers, and solutions should reflect that.

Areas near crocodile-prone rivers need safe water access and crossing points and redesigned community washing areas. Districts where elephants are responsible for most fatalities require better early-warning systems, community-based monitoring networks and low-cost methods to deter elephants from crop fields. These measures must be paired with community education and consistent follow-up support.

The findings highlight that coexistence will not be possible without recognising the emotional and psychological dimensions of living alongside wildlife. The responsibility lies with government agencies working with communities. These must be supported by conservation organisations and health services. Counselling, community healing processes and long-term engagement can help break the retaliatory cycle.

Research from other African settings shows that targeted solutions grounded in community involvement and local risk patterns are key to reducing conflicts. In northern Kenya, community-based early warning systems that alert villagers to elephant movements have significantly reduced fatal encounters. Beehive fences and chili-based barriers have helped protect crops without harming wildlife.

In Uganda’s Murchison Falls area, surveys found that local people preferred physical exclusion measures and the relocation of specific crocodiles as ways to lower the risk of attacks. In South Sudan’s Sudd wetlands, communities identified crocodile sanctuaries as one way to reduce dangerous interactions. In Zambia’s lower Zambezi valley, villagers highlighted the need for more alternative water access points (such as boreholes).

These examples show that fatal encounters are not inevitable. When interventions are matched to the species involved and the daily realities of local communities, both human deaths and retaliatory killings of wildlife can be reduced.

Zimbabwe’s wildlife remains a source of national pride and a cornerstone of tourism. But conservation cannot succeed if the people who live closest to wildlife feel unprotected or unheard. A future where people and wildlife thrive together depends on acknowledging that human wellbeing is inseparable from the wellbeing of the ecosystems they share.

Blessing Kavhu 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. Human-wildlife conflict in Zimbabwe is a crisis: who is in danger, where and why? – https://theconversation.com/human-wildlife-conflict-in-zimbabwe-is-a-crisis-who-is-in-danger-where-and-why-271117

January 14, 2026

Early humans relied on simple stone tools for 300,000 years in a changing east African landscape

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Niguss Gitaw Baraki, Postdoctoral scientist, George Washington University

Our prehistoric human ancestors relied on deliberately modified and sharpened stone tools as early as 3.3 million years ago. The selection of rock type depended on how easily the material could be flaked to the desired shape and form.

The resulting product proved invaluable for everyday tasks. Sharp-edged rock fragments were manufactured to suit various needs, including hunting and food processing.

The Stone Age period lasted from about 3.3 million years ago until the emergence of metalworking technologies. Throughout this time, diverse tool-making traditions flourished. Among them is the Oldowan tradition, one of the earliest technological systems created by our early ancestors. The tools are not shaped to have “fancy looks”. Still, they represent a huge step in human evolution. They show that our ancestors had begun modifying nature intentionally, creating tools with a purpose rather than just relying on naturally sharp stones.

Evidence from Homa Peninsula on the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria and Koobi Fora, Kenya’s Lake Turkana, places the origins of the Oldowan between 2.6 million and 2.9 million years ago at these sites. For nearly a million years, this technology stayed within Africa, becoming a key part of how early humans survived.

Over time, the knowledge of how to produce and use stone tools spread. By about 2 million years ago, Oldowan toolmaking had spread across north Africa and southern Africa. It eventually extended into Europe and Asia as our ancestors expanded their geographic range.

Although these tools appear basic, their manufacture required skill, planning, and a thorough understanding of stone fracture mechanics. Hominins made sharp flakes by striking rocks against other rocks to break them. The resulting sharp edges could then be used for butchering animals, processing plants, and breaking bones for marrow.

Until recently, the oldest known evidence of tool use found on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana, in Kenya, was dated to around 2 million years ago. The region is one of the world’s richest areas for early human fossils and archaeological remains, yet it lacked a secure, long-term sequence of early Oldowan occupation.

That picture has now changed dramatically.

We are researchers who study ancient life and landscapes, and we have now documented some of the oldest evidence yet of Oldowan tools. They are 2.75 million years old and come from East Turkana, at a site called Namorotukunan in Kenya. They are nearly 700,000 years older than other Oldowan sites from this part of Lake Turkana (and older than Oldowan tools from the Afar, Ethiopia, by about 150,000 years).

Namorotukunan: 300,000 Years of Innovation and Survival in Kenya.

At this site, there were three distinct archaeological horizons (layers of sediment that record separate events of tool making activities), spanning 300,000 years. But throughout this long period, during which the climate and landscape changed, our hominin ancestors continued to make and use the same kind of tools. Our findings tell us something about their ability to make choices that enabled them to adapt, survive and evolve.

A landscape in constant transition

Today, the Turkana Basin experiences hot, arid to semi-arid conditions with daily average temperature of around 35°C. The vegetation cover is heterogeneous and includes bushland, shrubland and sparse grasslands with distribution influenced by seasonal drainage systems and groundwater.

Between 3 million and 2 million years ago, the region experienced major landscape transformations due to strong climatic fluctuations. Evidence from Namorotukunan shows that it shifted from a lakeshore setting to a dry semidesert, then to open savannah, and eventually became submerged again as the lake expanded. Along its banks, early human ancestors gathered stones, striking them with precision to make stone fragments, sharp enough to use as implements that allowed them to access different types of foods.

Before approximately 2.8 million years ago, the Turkana Basin had lush floodplains with abundant standing water, palm trees, and wetland vegetation. Approximately 2.75 million years ago, the region began to dry out as grasslands expanded and subsequently replaced forests. Despite this increasing aridity, early toolmakers remained in the landscape. Our ancestors took advantage of river gravels that provided good-quality stone (especially chalcedony) for manufacturing sharp-edged stone tools.

By approximately 2.58 million years ago, the climate had become even drier and more variable. Nevertheless, early humans continued to produce the same style of tools, demonstrating technological persistence despite fluctuating environmental conditions.

At about 2.44 million years ago, semi-arid conditions persisted, followed by flooding of the lake, eventually submerging the region again. However, as landscapes changed once again, toolmakers continued to return to this same region, producing Oldowan tools that remained unchanged in form.

This persistence suggests that these early humans had developed a successful survival strategy that worked across a wide range of ecological settings.

Selecting and using the best rocks

The stone tools at Namorotukunan were not made from just any rock. Nearby outcrops offered a variety of raw materials, but early humans selected the most suitable types of rock for their needs. They chose high-quality stones that break easily to produce sharper edges.

This kind of selectivity suggests an understanding of how different rocks behaved during breakage and reflects the cognitive capabilities of the early humans who made and used these stone tools.

Understanding the functional importance of these stone tools from this site is crucial to evaluating their evolutionary significance.

One clue comes from a fossilised animal bone found at the site, bearing cut marks made by sharp-edged stone tools. These marks reveal that the toolmakers were cutting animal tissues and likely accessing meat or marrow from animal carcasses.
Such evidence supports previous studies that early humans were beginning to rely more heavily on meat and marrow, a dietary shift that played a major role in human evolution. Eating meat may have provided critical calories and nutrients that fuelled the growth of larger brains. The tools might also have been used to dig for underground plant parts or process other foods.

This suggests that early hominins were experimenting with various ways of surviving in the ever-changing environment around them.

Adapting to instability

The technological continuity at the site shows that Oldowan toolmaking was more than a simple craft. It was a dependable survival strategy, one that likely became essential during dry periods, when plant foods were scarce and it was vital to eat meat and marrow.

The ability of the early toolmakers to select high-quality stone, produce sharp flakes, and return to familiar raw-material sources suggests a deep understanding of their landscapes. It allowed early hominins to survive ecological uncertainty over hundreds of generations.

This research would not have been possible without the continued support of the Daasanach community of Ileret, who welcome researchers onto their land each year, and the National Museums of Kenya, whose leadership and collaboration underpin archaeological and geological work across the Turkana Basin.

Niguss Gitaw Baraki receives funding from the Leakey Foundation and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Dan V. Palcu Rolier’s work was supported by NWO Veni grant 212.136, FAPESP grants 2018/20733-6 and 2024/21420-2, and the PNRR C9-I8 grant 760115/23.05.2023.

David R. Braun receives funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, The Leakey Foundation, and The PAST Foundation.

Emmanuel K. Ndiema and Rahab N. Kinyanjui 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. Early humans relied on simple stone tools for 300,000 years in a changing east African landscape – https://theconversation.com/early-humans-relied-on-simple-stone-tools-for-300-000-years-in-a-changing-east-african-landscape-271433

January 14, 2026

Uganda’s autocratic political system is failing its people – and threatens the region

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Evelyn Namakula Mayanja, Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies, Carleton University

When he was first sworn in as Uganda’s president in 1986, Yoweri Museveni declared that his victory represented a “fundamental change”. He promised that Ugandans would no longer die at the hands of fellow citizens. He also criticised African leaders who sought international prestige while their people lacked food, healthcare and dignity.

In his books Sowing the Mustard Seed (published in 1997) and What Is Africa’s Problem? (2000), Museveni condemned leaders who overstayed in power.

Now nearly four decades into his rule, Uganda’s promised democratic renewal has been replaced by increasingly autocratic governance. Once the liberator, Museveni has become the strongman, overseeing a deeply repressive system. Political opposition, civil society and ordinary citizens have faced growing human rights violations, violence and intimidation. This is particularly targeted at young people and political dissidents.

In the run-up to Uganda’s 2026 elections, political repression has intensified. Young people, under the leadership of opposition figure Robert Kyagulanyi (popularly known as Bobi Wine), are at the centre of a growing struggle for freedom and democracy. And they are increasingly the targets of state violence.

I teach and research political repression and human rights. My work emphasises the importance of strengthening ethical and democratic leadership and governance. This enables sustainable peace, justice, development and human security to take root.

I have also argued that young people around the world can help save democracy – if they are supported. This is particularly the case in Uganda, which has one of the youngest populations in the world.

This support should come from the African Union (AU) in the first instance. Its peace and security council should make it clear to Museveni that he has obligations to respect people’s rights and freedoms. There is also a need for a standby military force from the AU and/or the UN to protect Ugandans against bloodshed.

The international community can also play a role by ending its supply of weapons and ensuring the implementation of international laws. This includes a commitment to arrest and prosecute those who commit crimes against humanity.

It is also urgent that Bobi Wine be granted special protection during and after the elections. The opposition leader has warned that the regime has plans to assassinate him.

What’s ailing Uganda

Museveni’s Uganda is marked by five key characteristics.

Firstly, authoritarianism and institutional control. To entrench his power, Museveni has rigged votes in every political election.

Authoritarianism is reinforced by personal and family control of institutions, particularly the military, police, the judiciary, the legislature and the electoral commission. The president’s son Muhoozi Kainerugaba is Uganda’s chief of defence forces. Museveni’s wife Janet is the minister of education and a member of parliament. All institutions are headed and monopolised by people from the president’s ethnic group.

Secondly, corruption. Uganda is estimated to lose more than Sh10 trillion (US$2.8 billion) to corruption annually. Senior officials have amassed wealth through corruption.

Museveni’s recent political messaging has centred on protecting the gains of those in power. The president has referred to a national resource like oil, estimated at 6.65 billion barrels, as his.

For their part, the UK and US governments have sanctioned Ugandan officials for corruption.

Third, poverty. As of June 2025, Uganda ranked 157th out of 193 countries on a UN global development index. This index measures standards of living. Children still study under trees and hospitals are dilapidated. According to the World Bank, nearly 60% of the population lives on less than US$3 a day.

Fourth, human rights abuses, with perpetrators going unpunished. Supporters of Bobi Wine have faced beatings, torture, arrests, disappearances, military trials and extrajudicial killings. In 2020, security forces killed dozens of opposition supporters. Bobi Wine himself has survived several assassination attempts. His campaigns are frequently blocked. He has been pepper-sprayed, tear-gassed and denied accommodation.

Lastly, digital repression. The government has suspended internet access, and blocked platforms to prevent citizens from sharing evidence of state violence. This digital clampdown is a central tool of political control.

Opposition remains defiant

Despite repression, Bobi Wine, aged 43, has vowed to proceed with his campaign to unseat Museveni, 81. The opposition leader presents his movement as a fight to restore democracy, constitutionalism and civilian rule.

His political programme focuses on ending corruption and youth employment, healing national divisions, and improving access to public services. His manifesto talks about creating jobs, strengthening education, and restoring respect for human rights and the rule of law.

The youth-led struggle for democracy in Uganda reflects a broader continental reality: young Africans are demanding accountable leadership that reflects national potential rather than elite survival.

Why Uganda’s future matters

Reversing authoritarianism is essential if Uganda’s going to deal with its myriad social and political ills.

The biggest immediate threat is a real risk of mass violence. The president’s son, who is also the military chief, has publicly threatened Bobi Wine. The opposition leader has warned of reports suggesting preparations for mass killings.

A reversal of the current state of affairs would contribute to peace and stability in Uganda, and across the Great Lakes region, one of Africa’s most conflict-affected zones. All six of Uganda’s neighbours (Burundi, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya) face instability of one form or another.

The region has experienced cycles of violence dating back to the 1980s. Museveni’s bush war (1980-1986) was followed by the 1994 Rwanda genocide. In 1996, Uganda and Rwanda invaded the DR Congo, triggering a wave of violence that persists to date. The violence is heightened by Museveni’s militarisation of the DRC and Kagame’s support for militias in the country, including the March 23 Movement (M23).

In addition, some neighbouring countries are experiencing increased internal political tension. For example Tanzania, long seen as relatively peaceful, has experienced lethal crackdowns against political opponents and protesters.

For its part, Kenya’s young people’s protests against government corruption and police brutality have been met with violence and abductions.

In Uganda itself, ethnic and regional tensions are rising. Museveni has said every soldier will have 120 bullets to silence protesters in the January 2026 election. Civilians have previously been kidnapped, tortured, disappeared and killed.

What’s needed

The youth-led struggle for democracy in Uganda reflects a broader continental reality: young Africans are demanding accountable leadership that reflects national potential rather than elite survival.

In Burkina Faso, the people rallied in support of President Ibrahim Traore’s emancipatory leadership. In Kenya, young people have not stopped demanding democratic rule and accountable leadership.

For the wider international community, supporting democratic transitions is not only a moral responsibility. It is also central to long-term peace, security, development and reducing forced migration.

History shows that early international action can prevent atrocities – and its absence can enable catastrophe.

Evelyn Namakula Mayanja 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. Uganda’s autocratic political system is failing its people – and threatens the region – https://theconversation.com/ugandas-autocratic-political-system-is-failing-its-people-and-threatens-the-region-273404

January 14, 2026

Nigeria’s 2027 election can set a model for disability inclusion. Here’s how

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Temitayo Isaac Odeyemi, Research fellow, International Development Department, University of Birmingham

Nigeria has built an impressive legal framework for disability rights. The challenge now is turning these commitments into consistent, lived realities for voters with disabilities. With elections in 2027, the country has an opportunity to show others what full electoral inclusion looks like.

Across Africa, citizens with disabilities continue to face barriers to voting, from high staircases and narrow doorways to uninformed officials and ballot papers they cannot read. Yet democratic participation is not a privilege. It is a right guaranteed under Article 29 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy, has taken bold steps to protect that right. This includes its Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (Prohibition) Act 2018.

Our research examined the experiences of people with disabilities during the 2019 elections. We found that challenges of braille ballot papers, transport restrictions and stigmatisation adversely affected their voting participation.

Since that election the government has enacted the Electoral Act 2022. This establishes some of the continent’s strongest guarantees for equal political participation.

Our follow-up research, which examined Nigeria’s 2023 elections, shows that new legal and institutional frameworks improved disability accessibility and participation. Gaps in implementation, staff training and polling-unit accessibility persist, however. The study outlines some ways to fill those gaps.

Put together, our research shows that Nigeria’s problem is not the absence of policy but the gap between commitment and execution. Laws must be translated into daily practice.

With credible data, structured training and genuine collaboration between the Independent National Electoral Commission and key actors, Nigeria can transform the 2027 elections for disabled people.

This article offers recommendations for enhanced inclusion of disabled people and for closing the disability gap in future elections.

What our research shows

Our research found both progress and gaps.

Since 2018, the Independent National Electoral Commission has become more proactive. It created a Framework on Access and Participation for Persons with Disabilities, produced braille ballot guides, provided magnifying lenses and sign-language materials, and worked closely with disability organisations such as the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities.

Field interviews and focus-group discussions confirmed that assistive devices reached more polling units and that voters with disabilities were often given priority in queues.

Our follow-up research on the 2023 elections shows further improvement. The electoral commission’s engagement with disability groups became more systematic, priority voting was more consistently applied, and assistive tools were distributed more widely than in 2019. These changes helped more disabled voters participate.

Yet inclusion remains uneven. Our research shows that many polling units in both the 2019 and 2023 elections were inaccessible to wheelchair users. Some officials did not understand how to deploy assistive tools. Blind voters frequently reported receiving braille guides without prior orientation. And, most critically, the commission still does not maintain a reliable database of where voters with disabilities live. So materials are mis-allocated, and needs go unmet.

How other African democracies compare

Nigeria’s experience mirrors a broader continental challenge.

South Africa has gone furthest in implementing inclusive voting. The Independent Electoral Commission uses a universal ballot template that enables blind and low-vision voters to cast a secret ballot. It also allows advance voting for people with mobility impairments.

But challenges were still evident. These included getting information, staff training, physical access to polling stations, privacy, and availability of the ballot template.

Ghana follows closely. The Electoral Commission and partners such as Sightsavers and the Ghana Federation of Disability Organisations have institutionalised the Tactile Ballot Jacket, which embeds accessible voting into routine electoral administration rather than treating it as an ad-hoc arrangement.

They have also trained thousands of visually impaired voters and polling officials. Observation reports from the 2020 and 2024 elections found most centres accessible and procedures orderly.

Limitations were also reported, from polling station access to voter education and training of election officials.

Kenya has strong constitutional and legal frameworks but inconsistent delivery. Accessibility remains concentrated in urban areas, and data relating to disability is scarce.

Compared with these countries, Nigeria ranks high on legal ambition but low on operational consistency. The lesson from South Africa and Ghana is clear: sustained training, accurate data management, and collaboration with disability organisations are what works.

Bridging Nigeria’s inclusion gap before 2027

Nigeria should make six key reforms:

Map and publish disability data
Audit accessibility well before election day
Train every official
Standardise assistive tools and make them available in all states
Include people with disabilities as polling officials, party agents and accredited observers to normalise participation
Expand accessibility across the entire electoral cycle, from campaign materials and party manifestoes to voting and post-election information.

These measures are feasible within Nigeria’s existing electoral structure, and the ongoing overhaul of the Electoral Act offers a timely opportunity to strengthen alignment.

Changing attitudes: from charity to citizenship

Our research further showed that many Nigerians still interpret assistance to voters with disabilities as an act of kindness rather than a constitutional obligation.

Some polling officials described priority voting as a gesture of sympathy. Such attitudes reinforce the outdated charity model of disability and undercut the human-rights model embedded in Nigeria’s laws.

True inclusion means recognising persons with disabilities as equal citizens whose participation strengthens democracy itself. When accessible ballots, ramps and trained staff are in place, the message is powerful: every citizen counts.

Dr Afeez Kolawole Shittu, Political Science lecturer at the Federal College of Education (Special), Oyo, Nigeria is co-author of research underpinning this article and the article.

Temitayo Isaac Odeyemi 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 2027 election can set a model for disability inclusion. Here’s how – https://theconversation.com/nigerias-2027-election-can-set-a-model-for-disability-inclusion-heres-how-270661

January 13, 2026

The making and breaking of Uganda: an interview with scholar Mahmood Mamdani

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University

In his latest book, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State, anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani explains the factors and characters – Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni – that shaped post-independence Uganda.

As he explains to The Conversation Africa, there are striking differences between the two men.

Museveni has been in office for almost four decades. Amin lasted eight years. What explains Museveni’s endurance?

I try to explain in the book some of the most important reasons Museveni has lasted for more than four decades. I think these reasons are both internal and external.

The internal reason is that he has tried to perfect what the British introduced as “divide and rule”, which is to undermine the basis of a unified citizenship in the country. Not just as the British did, taking existing ethnic groups and politicising them into political structures we call tribes. But more than that, taking some sub-ethnic groups and turning them into tribes. So from fewer than 20 tribes, he has created more than 100. It’s an endless process.

And then there is the external. Unlike Amin, who was the sworn enemy of big powers in the west, Museveni is the sworn protégé and the sworn friend of the big powers in the west.

Some analysts seem to suggest that it’s only now, particularly after his son has started making sort of political pronouncements, that Ugandan politics is being militarised. But a theme that comes out clearly in your book is that under both Amin and Museveni, the army has always been a substitute for political organisation in Uganda.

I think that’s a correct reading of the book. Now, within that very broad comparison, there are some important differences in the route taken by Amin.

Amin was recruited as a child soldier by the British at the age of 14 or so. He was trained in what they call the arts of counter insurgency, which is really a polite term for state terrorism. He used to publicly demonstrate, particularly to African heads of state, for example, at their meeting in Morocco, how he could suffocate with a handkerchief.

And Amin went through some kind of a transformation in the first year after he had gained power.

He gained power through the direct assistance of the British and the Israelis. The Israelis, in particular, advised Amin that he could not just overthrow Uganda’s first post-independence president Milton Obote and think that that was the end of the story. He would have to deal with his cohorts, the people he had brought to key positions, and the reckoning would be around the corner.

So the only way he could avoid the reckoning was to annihilate them. And his first year in power was brutal. I mean, he killed hundreds of people in different army barracks. These were massacres. There’s no other word to describe it.

And then, after that, he went to Israel and to Britain with sort of a list of what he wanted. He thought he had gone forward for the Israelis and the British, and now it was time for them to do him a favour. And they were amused, and he was humiliated. He looked for an alternative, and that is how he, through the then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, met Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and that is how, through Gaddafi, he met Sudanese leader Gaafar Muhammad Nimeiry. Amin, along with Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, played a key role in the Addis Ababa agreement of 1972 which brought the first civil war in Sudan to an end.

After the second year of his coming to power, I don’t know of any massacres. He still killed opponents, but he did not generalise the killing to either family or friends or clans or just groups that the person was identified with or associated with. His killing was much more that of a dictator who uses violence to deal with his opposition.

It’s very different in Museveni’s case. Museveni came to power with the sense that violence is critical to politics, and especially critical to liberation politics. Museveni is an avid devotee of Frantz Fanon, particularly The Wretched of the Earth. And the key lesson he takes from Fanon is the essentiality of violence in any emancipatory politics.

And so I try to trace the path whereby Museveni begins by thinking of violence as central to dismantling an oppressive state and ends up with the notion that violence is central to building a state. He arrives at exactly the opposite conclusion. And this is long before his son comes into the picture.

There’s a whole chapter I have in the book on the first few decades after 1986 when Museveni comes to power in his operations in the north and in successive massacres and killings, claiming that what he was fighting in the north was a continuation of the war on terror, which had begun after the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US.

And these claims were just accepted at face value by the international community, which is the name we give to western powers.

So would you say the war on terror was a godsend for Museveni in helping him advance his agenda?

Definitely. Ever since the structural adjustment programme of the late 1980s, he understood that if he was going to stifle opposition at home, he would need support overseas, and this support would come to him if he claimed to be central to waging the war on terror.

Museveni was smart enough to realise that American foreign policy, American military involvement, had political limitations. And those limitations were: how many Americans could be killed? And when these killings took place in Somalia, the Black Hawk Down incident, Museveni offered his services.

He took his soldiers to Somalia. You remember that slogan, African solutions for African problems. Museveni offered that African solution in South Sudan, in Rwanda, in eastern Congo. The African solution was just a fancy name for Africans massacring Africans in the service of imperial powers. And that’s what happened at the end.

You recommend a federation as the most likely to succeed in post Museveni Uganda. Is there a political base for it at the moment? Or would something need to happen for the proposed federation to succeed?

Those of us who are militant nationalists and independents understood federation as a British project. We understood that it was the right wing, it was those who were interested in creating tribal fiefdoms, who used federation as a fig leaf to describe their agenda. We understood that this was their way of undercutting any attempt to build a strong nationalist state.

But since then, with a strong state having been built, we have understood the conditions have changed and the times have changed. Local organisation, local autonomy, has come to have a very different significance.

It is a way of resisting a development of autocracy in the centre and I think people are beginning to draw lessons from this.

Now, the thing is what kind of federation, because Museveni has also promoted something resembling a federation. But he has, as in Ethiopia, promoted what you can call an ethnic federalism. So in each single unit, he has divided the majority from the minority, the majority belonging to the ethnic group living in the country, and the minority having descended from other ethnic groups, even though living in the country, even though born in that place, still deprived of rights.

This is what’s happened in Ethiopia. If you look at Ethiopia, if you look at Sudan, you will see that the British politicised ethnic groups and turned them into tribes. And then after colonialism, what we have done is to militarise these tribes. So we have created tribal militias. That’s what they have done in Ethiopia. That’s the fighting between different tribal militias. That’s what they did in Sudan. They created tribal militias, starting in Darfur and then in other places. It is the state military which led the systems in creating these tribal militias. Then it is the tribal militias which have begun to swallow the state.

So this current civil war we have going on is between the state army and the tribal militias. It’s the same process you see in Uganda. We have not gone to the point of creating tribal militias, but we have been manufacturing tribe after tribe after tribe in order to fragment the country.

Some of these trends that you describe about Uganda can be found in most African countries. What are the lessons about the way forward for the rest of the African continent?

Broadly, we can see these trends in many African countries. The British model of colonialism became the general colonial model. Even the French, known for their assimilationist preferences, adopted indirect rule when they moved from assimilation to what they called association in the 1930s. And the Portuguese followed the French.

South Africans were the last ones in – they called it apartheid. But it was the same thing, the creation of homelands, the tribalisation of local differences. So that’s one trend in much of the thinking on the continent.

The alternative to that trend has been described as centralisation, so we’ve been moving between beefing up autocratic, centralised power and then opposing with fragmented, tribal powers.

I’m proposing a third way. I’m proposing a federation which is more ethnic. I’m proposing a federation which is more based on territory, more based on where you live. So it doesn’t matter where you’re from, but just the fact that you live there means that you have cast your lot with the rest of the people there in creating a common future.

And what matters in politics, more than where you came from, is the decision to make a common future. Migration is characteristic of human society. Human society has not come into being through homelands. So homeland is a colonial fiction.

The idea that Africans did not move, that they were tied to a particular piece of territory, is absurd, because Africans moved more than anybody else. We know that humanity began in Africa and spread to the rest of the world. So where is the homeland? You can have a homeland for this generation, for the previous few generations, but all African people have a story of migration. This is, I think, central.

So the way forward: one is a federation which consolidates democracy rather than eroding it.

The second way forward is to critically think through the whole neoliberal economic model and the empowering of elites, whether they are racial or ethnic or whatever.

I think we have to find a different economic model. But as you say, the book is not dedicated to looking for solutions. The book is dedicated to the proposition that we need to understand the problem before rushing to solutions.

And each country will have its own nuances. Different to Uganda.

Mahmood Mamdani 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. The making and breaking of Uganda: an interview with scholar Mahmood Mamdani – https://theconversation.com/the-making-and-breaking-of-uganda-an-interview-with-scholar-mahmood-mamdani-272181

January 12, 2026

Mangrove loss is making the Niger Delta more vulnerable: we built a model that can track how the forests are doing

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Chinomnso Onwubiko, Consultant, University of Cape Coast

Rivers State on Nigeria’s coastline has some of Africa’s largest mangrove ecosystems. The Niger Delta itself contains the third-largest mangrove forest in the world. These trees support fisheries, biodiversity and the livelihoods of thousands of people.

The Niger Delta region is also the heart of the country’s oil and gas industry. Decades of oil exploration and production have altered its landscape. Pipeline construction, dredging (when sand is dug out of the ground), oil spills and gas flaring (burning) have degraded mangrove habitats. In addition, local communities use mangrove wood for fuel, construction and income generation.

The resulting damage to the environment – including mangrove forests – has weakened the natural coastal defences that once protected communities from flooding, erosion and storms.

Mangroves grow in shallow water. They act as biophysical barriers that dissipate wave energy, trap sediments and reduce the intensity of storm surges.

I am an environmental scientist working in coastal zone management, flood risk assessment and nature-based solutions for climate adaptation. My research focuses on how ecosystems help reduce coastal flood risk. In particular, I have looked at how natural ecosystems, particularly mangroves, contribute to coastal resilience and community protection in vulnerable coastal regions.

In my research I used ecosystem modelling tools to evaluate how changes in habitat condition influence exposure to flooding and erosion in coastal communities. The model scored and compared areas of healthy, continuous mangrove cover with areas where mangroves were degraded or cleared.

It showed that mangrove ecosystems provide a significant natural defence against flooding in the coastal communities of Rivers State. Areas with good mangrove cover scored lower for vulnerability.

This comparison confirms what local residents have long observed: that the loss of mangrove forests has led to more frequent and severe flooding events.

The study underscores the urgency of integrating nature-based solutions into local and national flood management policies.

Mangroves provide significant cover

The Niger Delta has recorded varying amounts of oil spill incidents since the 1970s. These have affected land, water and mangrove forests.

My study applied the InVEST Coastal Vulnerability model developed by the Natural Capital Project. The model uses information about a range of variables to generate exposure scores for places along the shoreline. The variables include shoreline type, wind and wave exposure, and the distribution of populations and infrastructure along the coast.

The score shows how vulnerable a place is to flooding. This allows direct comparisons between areas with intact mangroves and those that have lost mangroves.

A key insight from the modelling exercise was that the relationship between mangrove extent and flood protection is not simple. Narrow, fragmented mangrove belts offer limited protection. Wider and denser belts of mangroves have a disproportionately powerful effect. They substantially reduce wave energy and flood inundation.

This finding aligns with similar studies from south-east Asia and the Caribbean. These report that wider mangrove zones provide exponentially greater flood mitigation benefits.

The study further highlights the socio-ecological implications of mangrove degradation. The decline of mangrove cover driven by fuelwood harvesting, land conversion, oil infrastructure and pollution has eroded biodiversity and fisheries productivity. It has also reduced the resilience of human communities.

In places where mangroves have been lost, residents rely on infrastructure like sandbags or embankments. But these provide limited and temporary relief. Communities are becoming dependent on costly engineering measures rather than sustainable, ecosystem-based solutions.

What needs to be done

Restoring and protecting mangroves is a cost-effective way of reducing disaster risk. Natural coastal buffers reduce exposure to flooding and erosion. They also support livelihoods through fisheries, fuelwood and ecotourism. Mangroves also store carbon.

All these functions make them a cornerstone of climate adaptation in environments like the Niger Delta.

Urgent action is required to protect and restore mangrove ecosystems.

Rivers State could be a model for other coastal regions facing similar challenges. The model produces scenarios of “with mangroves” and “without mangroves”. This enables:

consequences of the presence or absence of mangroves to be seen
the production of maps. These can show areas where mangroves provide the most – and the least – support. So in real time, it shows areas where reforestation or afforestation efforts can be focused on.

These can be replicated in other coastal areas.

Mangrove conservation must be part of formal coastal zone management and spatial planning policies. This means recognising what mangroves can contribute to disaster risk reduction, urban development and climate adaptation strategies at state and national levels.

Large-scale mangrove restoration programmes must begin in degraded areas, especially those that have already experienced severe flooding. Restoration efforts should focus on reestablishing wide belts of trees with dense coverage, using native species and community-led approaches that ensure local participation and ownership.

Government and oil companies operating in the Niger Delta must do more to stop pollution, dredging and land-use practices that destroy mangroves. Aquaculture, eco-tourism and mangrove-friendly fisheries should be promoted to reduce dependence on unsustainable wood harvesting.

Capacity building and public awareness campaigns are essential to empower communities to manage mangrove ecosystems sustainably. By combining local knowledge with scientific evidence, policymakers, researchers and communities can develop effective, nature-based solutions that reduce flood risk while enhancing ecological and socio-economic resilience.

Chinomnso Onwubiko’s study is affiliated to the World Bank Centre of Excellence in Coastal Resilience, University of Cape Coast. She received funding from the World Bank.

– ref. Mangrove loss is making the Niger Delta more vulnerable: we built a model that can track how the forests are doing – https://theconversation.com/mangrove-loss-is-making-the-niger-delta-more-vulnerable-we-built-a-model-that-can-track-how-the-forests-are-doing-267384