June 25
Africa: The International Legal Order Is Broken - 2 Key Shifts Needed to Fix It
The international legal order that was created after the second world war is no longer fit for purpose. Its response to urgent global problems like climate, poverty and pandemics… Read more »
June 24
South Africa: How a Basic Solar Grant Brought Cheaper Electricity to One Shack Settlement in South Africa
In South Africa, 47% of the national population is energy poor, meaning that they spend more than 10%-15% of their income on power and still do not have nearly enough for their… Read more »
June 23
Africa: Fossil Fuels Still Dominate in Africa's Electricity Future - Study Tracks 3,139 Power Plants
Only about 57% of the people in Africa have access to electricity, the vast majority of them in sub-Saharan Africa. To meet the United Nations goal of everyone having access to… Read more »
South Africa: Johannesburg Has Taken a Big New Loan to Help Fix Its Electricity Problems, but the Results Will Take Time
Just over a third (38%) of the residents of South Africa's commercial capital, Johannesburg, reported being satisfied with their electricity services in a survey conducted in… Read more »
Kenya: Did Kenya's Gen Z Protests Achieve Anything? an Economist Weighs Up What's Changed and What's Stayed the Same
Kenya's Gen Z-led protests of 2024 drew global headlines. For weeks, young people mobilised against proposed tax increases, the rising cost of living, unemployment, corruption and… Read more »
June 22
South Africa: Funding Boosts Postgraduate Student Success - South African Study Measures How
Postgraduate education is good for a country. Thriving economies need people with advanced academic degrees to enhance research productivity. Research and innovation capability… Read more »
June 18
Africa: People Are Marrying Holograms and Making Friends With Chatbots. but Can AiIBring True Happiness?
Can technology really replace human relationships? As philosophy scholars who focus on human happiness and on artificial intelligence (AI), we tackle this question in a recent… Read more »
June 16
Zimbabwe: Great Zimbabwe - Debunking the Myth of Tyrants and Forced Labour
For more than a century, Great Zimbabwe has stood at the centre of a powerful story about the Zimbabwe culture. This remarkable African civilization flourished in southern Africa… Read more »
June 11
West Africa: Forced Labour in West African Cybercrime Academies - How Fear Traps Young Men
Forced labour in cybercrime might call to mind scam compounds in south-east Asia. A growing body of scholarship, journalism and policy attention has entrenched that stereotype.… Read more »
Africa: Appolonia - the Story of an African Kingdom That Resisted the Atlantic Slave Trade
The transatlantic slave trade was a multilayered, highly commercialised global enterprise that lasted from the early 1500s to the mid 1800s. Read more »
June 10
South Africa: South Africa's Jobs Crisis - What 10 Years of Tax Data Tells Us
It's time South Africa faced up to an honest question: what if the formal economy can't deliver the jobs that are needed? Read more »
Africa: AI Regulation in Africa - Why Copying the European Model Won't Work
Mauritius set out its national AI strategy in 2018, the first by an African country. Since then over a dozen African states have adopted national AI policies of some sort or… Read more »
Nigeria: Nigeria Raised Electricity Prices to Improve Supply. Why It Hasn't Worked
Nigeria's electricity regulator triggered a big tariff shock in April 2024. It increased rates for some consumers by over 240%, citing the cost of producing and delivering power. Read more »
June 09
Africa: AI in Nature Conservation - Powerful Tool or Dangerous Shortcut?
Conservationists analyse overwhelming volumes of ecological data in their work. For example, they might need to process decades of weather data or the movements of millions of… Read more »
June 07
South Africa: Internet Access Is Unequal in South Africa's Economic Powerhouse - Survey Shows Race and Income Mark the Digital Divide
Digital technologies create great opportunities, but the transformation they offer isn't equally within reach of everyone. Access is determined by a vast digital divide. Read more »
June 05
Africa: When Global Trade Becomes a Weapon, How Can African Economies Protect Themselves?
"Today, everyone recognises that trade is as much a security issue as an economic one." Read more »
June 04
Ghana: Poison or Poverty - the Impossible Economic Choices Facing Ghana's E-Waste Workers
Agbogbloshie, in Ghana's capital city, Accra, is a sprawling, open-air scrapyard located next to a lagoon and a growing informal settlement. Roughly 6,000 people dismantle, recycle… Read more »
June 03
Africa: AI Offers Promise for Agriculture, but Smallholder Farmers Risk Being Left Behind
Globally, agriculture faces mounting pressures. These are driven by climate change, land degradation, labour shortages, supply chain disruptions and the demand for food from a… Read more »
Africa: Tax Data Can Be Mined to Shape Better Policies. South Africa, Uganda and Zambia Show How
Bilateral aid to Africa fell by nearly a quarter in 2025, the largest annual decline in the history of official development assistance. Meanwhile, sovereign debt interest payments… Read more »
June 02
Africa: Global Supply Chains Keep Workers Poor - Three Case Studies Show How the Cycle Can Be Broken
Globally, about one in five people in jobs live in poverty. A key reason lies in how global supply chains are organised. From agriculture to tourism, many jobs are embedded in… Read more »
May 29
Somalia: Somali Piracy Is Back - Fuelled By Political Turmoil, Aid Cuts and the Iran War
On the evening of April 26, the Egyptian merchant vessel Sward was hijacked by armed men a few miles off the Somali coast. It was steered towards an anchorage near the port of… Read more »
May 28
South Africa: South Africa's Fuel Supply and the Iran War - Data Black Holes and Low Strategic Stock Put the Country At Risk
The supply of crude oil to the world had been reduced by about 7.5% to 10.1% by March 2026 in what the World Bank described as the largest oil market disruption in history. The… Read more »
May 25
Africa: Shifting From Fossil Fuels Will Fail Without Funding for African Industry and Energy Infrastructure
Moving to renewable energy will fail unless wealthy nations help finance cleaner energy systems, industrialisation and local mineral processing across the African continent. This… Read more »
May 23
South Africa: Iran War Is Exposing South Africa's Dependency On Diesel - What Went Wrong
It is forgivable to think that an oil shock mainly hurts at the petrol pump. After all, that is where households feel it first. But when my colleagues and I at the Bureau for… Read more »
May 21
South Africa: What Are Misfluencers and What Can Be Done About False Information Online?
Misleading information online is often treated as a technical glitch, something that better algorithms or stricter moderation can fix. But research points to a more complex… Read more »
