By Jeffrey Silverman – New Eastern Outlook – September 26, 2026
Ukraine is already providing an early glimpse of what may become a much larger post-war phenomenon: highly trained combat personnel, particularly special-forces and other specialists, carrying their battlefield skills beyond the borders of the countries, in which they acquired them, with many of them NATO trained.
History offers plenty of warnings. Africa has spent decades wrestling with the problem of demobilized combatants, soldiers and guerrillas, whose military skills suddenly have little obvious place in civilian economies.
South Africa and Georgia both provide instructive case studies. After apartheid, using the South African example, the labor force had to absorb, integrate or demobilize personnel from competing military and paramilitary structures. Thousands of former combatants faced unemployment and uncertain futures, while the new South African National Defence Force itself eventually had to undergo substantial downsizing, and not only among white troops.
So what happens when the largest European land war in generations finally winds down? What will the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian servicemen do when the battlefield no longer needs them, and the economy cannot reintegrate them?
Many will also have significant trauma, both mental and physical, the former being far harder to identify, it is an unfortunate fact that many former combatants will have developed a taste for killing.
And that is where the story becomes considerably more uncomfortable.
In 2024, UNODC and international organized-crime specialists were already examining the possibility that Ukraine’s enormous post-war veteran population could become a source of organized-crime risk—not because veterans were inherently criminal, but because demobilization, weapons proliferation, inadequate reintegration and the availability of trained manpower could create conditions attractive to criminal networks.
Have Gun, Will Travel is an old American expression, but it may acquire a new geopolitical meaning in the aftermath of the Ukraine war. The world already has a market for soldiers, military trainers, private security personnel and combat veterans. Africa, the Middle East and other conflict zones have repeatedly demonstrated the demand for experienced men with battlefield skills.
Will wealthy states, such as the Gulf monarchies, Western governments, private military companies and international security organizations see this enormous reservoir of experience as a manpower pool to be exploited? Almost certainly in fact, it is already happening in Africa, where Ukrainian “specialists” are aiding terrorist groups, particularly in the Sahel, aiming to overthrow governments that have been causing the French problems.
It is doubtful that so many of these veterans be recruited for legitimate security and peacekeeping missions but rather for the less visible wars conducted through proxies, contractors and allied forces as US Flag Draped in Dover Delaware is not politically expedient.
The next major Ukrainian export may not be agricultural products, weapons, or drones. But battlefield tested military experience.
There is a particularly interesting precedent in Africa. War on the Rocks warned several years ago that the eventual end of the Ukraine war could produce an influx of experienced personnel into African conflicts. And we can now see the reverse phenomenon too: Russia has recruited tens of thousands of foreign nationals into its war, including substantial numbers from Africa.
The fact that Ukrainian personnel or Ukrainian-trained capabilities are already appearing in African theaters would suggest that the post-war question isn’t simply what happens to Ukrainian veterans inside Ukraine? It is also who will recruit their expertise internationally?
The broader literature is already warning about exactly this transition: the Global Initiative has specifically examined organized-crime risks surrounding Ukraine’s eventual veteran population.
Demand for armed warm bodies
That does not require those governments to deliberately create a “mercenary army.” Governments already have incentives to use contractors, partner forces, local auxiliaries and allied personnel when they don’t want to commit their own regular forces.
The postwar Ukrainian veteran question is potentially a major international-security story in its own right.
“The postwar disposition of Ukraine’s enormous veteran population could become one of the most important security questions of the post-war period. History shows that when large numbers of highly trained combatants are simultaneously demobilized, economically marginalized and connected to international illicit markets, some will inevitably find employment in private warfare, political militias, transnational security networks and organized crime.”
Africa provides some very strong precedents
This has happened repeatedly in Africa. Research on Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe found that poorly designed demobilization and reintegration programs could themselves create later security problems.
And the phenomenon isn’t limited to Africa. Research on Colombia found that demobilization of armed groups could increase some forms of crime—particularly robbery—where former combatants were not successfully reintegrated.
Ukraine could produce a much larger version of the problem
This is where the argument becomes interesting.
Ukraine is potentially different in scale, technological sophistication and international connectivity. A future Ukrainian demobilization could involve enormous numbers of veterans. One recent analysis by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime estimates that Ukraine could eventually have up to nine million veterans, alongside millions of displaced people and refugees.
Obviously, nine million does not mean nine million armed or unemployed men. Most veterans will simply return to civilian life. But even a tiny percentage becoming involved in illicit activity could constitute a significant population.
The Financial Times reported that Colombian criminals have sought to send people into Ukraine to acquire advanced drone expertise and bring that knowledge back to criminal organizations in Colombia, and it is now becoming apparent the Mexican cartels are following suit.
The post-Soviet precedent is important too
There is another historical analogy that may be even more relevant than Africa: the breakup of the Soviet Union.
When the USSR collapsed, large numbers of trained military personnel suddenly found themselves outside a functioning Soviet military system. Some went into private security and legitimate military contracting; others became involved in mercenary activity. Former Soviet military personnel subsequently appeared in conflicts in Africa and elsewhere.
Ukraine is producing veterans with skills that did not exist at anything like today’s scale in previous wars—particularly FPV/drone warfare, electronic warfare and battlefield intelligence.
But there is another elephant in the room. The combat in Ukraine has been brutal, well beyond anything else seen in recent decades. Combined with the violently racist nationalist indoctrination by the Ukrainian government, this has created a large number of emotionally traumatised young men and women, for whom killing comes natural.
If enough of these individuals are recruited into the worlds conflict zones, either by state actors or the underworld and terrorists, the results will be absolutely horrific in terms of war crimes and brutality, as evidenced by the massacre of civilians during the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk, and now in Africa.
Those hoping to profit from the monster they have created may well find its teeth searching for them.
Jeffrey K. Silverman is a freelance journalist and international development specialist, BSc, MSc, based for 30 years in Georgia and the former Soviet Union
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By Samyar Rostami – New Eastern Outlook – September 26, 2026
The persistence of current geopolitical alignments, the attention of Eastern actors to the region, the strengthening of Sanaa’s position in the Red Sea, and the expansion of regional opposition to the UAE’s role will diminish Abu Dhabi’s role in the region.
For the past ten years, the Southern Red Sea has been a pivotal factor in the UAE’s foreign policy. Over the past decade, the UAE has built a layered maritime, air, and commercial infrastructure network, including military bases, in the Red Sea or near Yemen, Somaliland, Somalia and Sudan, starting from 2015.
According to some estimates, the value of UAE investments along Africa’s coastal regions and the Arabian Peninsula amounts to $60 billion.
In September 2015, the UAE established its first military base in Africa, in Eritrea. These bases possessed strategic advantages: the ‘protection of interests’ and control over the security and economic architecture of international maritime routes.
With the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, cooperation between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi in the Red Sea intensified.
The UAE’s approach—channeled through companies such as DP World and Abu Dhabi Ports—is centered on controlling ports, strategic waterways, military bases, and key trade and energy routes in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, in coordination with the United States and its allies. Abu Dhabi’s approach also included engagement with non-state armed actors and separatist movements in Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia.
Factors Behind the UAE’s Diminishing Role
Over the past decade, the UAE emerged as a party to the conflicts in the southern Red Sea. However, geopolitical developments over the past year signal a gradual decline in the UAE’s role in the southern Red Sea.
Several factors are also significant, stemming from US and Israeli military strikes against Iran, the war between Sanaa and Saudi Arabia, Saudi-Emirati rivalry in the region, and disputes among African states.
Sudan’s value lies in its geopolitics. With 853 kilometres of coastline and several key ports, Sudan constitutes a vital link in the Red Sea.
The Sudan war since April 2023 has created conditions for the expansion of the UAE’s role. The UAE faces accusations of providing training and logistical support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Human rights and political demands against the UAE has increased.
The UAE also maintains bases inside Sudanese territory. However, the ongoing war in Sudan and the support of allies for the Sudanese government have led to increased pressure on the UAE.
Riyadh regards the Red Sea as part of its strategic interests and its exclusive backyard. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh each view the other as a direct threat to their position and interests in parts of the southern Red Sea. Thus, the reduction of the UAE’s footprint in the southern Red Sea constitutes a strategic gain for Riyadh. Riyadh has effectively sought to weaken Abu Dhabi’s role.
In late 2025, Saudi Arabia’s support for Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) resulted in pressure being brought to bear on UAE-backed forces.
In July 2026, Saudi Arabia hosted talks among 14 countries—including Egypt, Djibouti, Sudan, and Somalia—which established a multinational maritime defence alliance. The UAE and Ethiopia were excluded from the list.
The formation of a Riyadh-led Red Sea maritime task force—with the participation of Turkey, Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, and Eritrea—without coordination with the UAE amounts to a further constriction of the UAE’s role in the region.
Despite ongoing Egyptian–Emirati consultations on guaranteeing maritime navigation security in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab, Egypt’s foreign policy is not aligned with the UAE’s interests in Sudan and the Red Sea. Additionally, the alignment and coordination among Israel, India, the UAE, and Ethiopia are not particularly consonant with Egypt’s interests in Ethiopia and the Red Sea.
Until last September, the UAE played a significant role in the southern Yemeni islands of the Red Sea and in southwestern Yemen. However, Sanaa’s advance in the eastern Red Sea—the port of Mokha, Mayun Island, and other archipelagos north of the Bab al-Mandab Strait—in September 2026 inflicted negative and fundamental consequences on the UAE’s regional role.
Sanaa’s advance amounts to the nullification of the presence of Emirati actors in Yemen’s future political sphere. Sanaa is seeking to consolidate itself as a strategic “node” within the Iran-led Axis of Resistance.
Despite Cairo’s opposition to Sanaa’s proposal for maritime navigation coordination in the Red Sea, Sanaa—having secured control over the most important islands and cities overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Strait on the Yemeni side—is calling for the formulation of new rules to ensure security and navigation in the region. Ansar Allah’s control over Bab al-Mandab could put the UAE under pressure. Any expansion of Sanaa’s role in Sudan could likewise prove detrimental to the UAE.
Amid tensions between the United States and Iran, Abu Dhabi finds itself facing a more constrained strategic space.
The UAE’s alignment with the United States is, in a sense, also an intensification of Abu Dhabi’s tensions with Iran in areas such as the Red Sea. Unlike the UAE, Iran is seeking better relations with the Sudanese government. Many in Iran believe that Israel and the UAE are devising an economic and geopolitical plan to control the vital routes of the Red Sea and Yemen’s ports.
With Israel’s formal recognition of Somaliland in December 2025, many in the countries of the southern Red Sea have linked it to the UAE.
After years, Eritrea revoked the UAE’s access to its military infrastructure. Eritrean officials have recently made sharp statements about the UAE and Israel—particularly regarding Tel Aviv’s recognition of Somaliland.
Eritrea is providing frontline support to the Sudanese Armed Forces. Any deeper alliance between Eritrea and Sudan, Iran, Russia, China, and Sanaa could diminish the UAE’s regional role in the Red Sea. Additionally, some countries and actors near the Red Sea also hold a negative view of the UAE’s regional role.
The Somali government’s decision in January 2026 to sever relations with the UAE is, in a sense, a counter to the UAE’s role in the Somaliland and Puntland regions. Somalia has revoked all agreements with the UAE, including cooperation as well as security and defence arrangements. This move has negative implications for the UAE’s role in the southern Red Sea.
Moreover, the southern Red Sea plays a pivotal role in the regional strategy of Russia and Beijing. For example, apart from China’s role in Djibouti, Beijing is Eritrea’s principal creditor and has expanded its influence in Sudan.
The developments of the past year have also contributed to a decline in the standing of the UAE’s allies in the region.
Outlook
The US presence in the Red Sea’s African states is rooted in counter-terrorism and anti-piracy operations.
The European Union’s presence in the region, via Operation ASPIDES, is limited to commercial shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Despite the UAE’s formal withdrawal from some bases, its economic and security influence, as well as its soft-power instruments, remain strong.
A decrease in UAE military deployments in the region could negatively impact its support for allies in Yemen, Libya, and Sudan.
The UAE continues to have significant economic potential, secure partnerships, and influence in the southern Red Sea. In a way, this is considered a threat and a risk to certain African nations in the Red Sea region.
Certainly, a more extensive Sanaa presence over Bab al-Mandab, strategic coasts, and islands could confront Abu Dhabi’s maneuver and role in the southern Red Sea with a structural challenge.
The UAE’s approach in ports, logistics, energy, and other strategic infrastructure—along with deeper defense and security coordination with the West in the southern Red Sea—is likely to continue. However, the expansion of the UAE’s role also requires an extensive US presence in the Red Sea.
Moreover, the persistence of current geopolitical alignments, the attention of Eastern actors to the region, the strengthening of Sanaa’s position in the Red Sea, and the expansion of regional opposition to the UAE’s role will diminish Abu Dhabi’s role in the region.
Samyar Rostami is а political observer and senior researcher in international relations.
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Fear and anger are growing in South Africa after the bodies of nine women were discovered across the Ekurhuleni municipality, east of Johannesburg, over the past two months, with police investigating whether the deaths are connected, a 10th body was confirmed this week. Three suspects have been arrested, and police have acknowledged a possible connection between some of the killings. What is not in dispute is the scale of the crisis the discovery has exposed, and the outrage it has provoked, protests against femicide have been held in the country in the weeks since.
Four of the nine women have so far been publicly identified, Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo, 38, a mother who vanished during her regular afternoon run and was found days later behind a hotel in Rhodesfield; Itumeleng Kekana, 32, missing since July and found in August with multiple stab wounds; Dineo Evelyn Motapane, 38, found in KwaThema; and Gracious Nkomo, 28, a lodge worker in Kempton Park missing for more than two weeks before she was found.
The deaths have triggered protests and renewed criticism of the country’s response to gender-based violence. Residents and women’s rights campaigners have questioned why women are repeatedly advised to change their behavior, avoid isolated areas, walking alone or running alone, rather than placing greater emphasis on preventing perpetrators from committing violence.
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has been among the sharpest voices responding to the killings. In a statement condemning the deaths, the union insisted the killings should not be treated as a “crime wave” or a mystery, describing them instead as femicide and, more precisely, a war being waged against women. NUMSA’s argument is that this is not an aberration but the visible edge of something structural. The union points to police figures showing at least 569 women murdered nationally between April and June 2026 alone, by the verified count, with an unverified estimate closer to 892, roughly six women killed every day. Against this, nine deaths in one metro over two months is, in the union’s words, closer to the ordinary condition of the country, made visible only because the fear of a serial killer has made it a story the wider public can imagine touching them.
The statement also pushes back on the instinct to treat this primarily as a street-level danger. Of thousands of rape cases registered by police in the same quarter, the majority occurred in a residence, not a public place. The killings that draw headlines, a body beside a highway, represent a fraction of a type of violence whose center of gravity is the home.
NUMSA also refuses to treat gender-based violence as an individual pathology alone. It traces a line from the colonial and apartheid-era migrant labor system, which depended on women’s unpaid domestic and reproductive labor to keep wages artificially low through to the present, where South African women remain disproportionately unemployed (an official rate near 37.5%, against 44.9% for men) and disproportionately head of household. Over four in ten nationally, and closer to half in rural areas. Close to two million employed women work informally, without pensions, medical aid, or written contracts. When a woman who is also a breadwinner is killed, the union argues, it is not only a life lost but a household’s income and caregiving capacity lost with her.
Gender-based violence and femicide were declared a national disaster in South Africa in November 2025. Nearly a year on, the killings in Ekurhuleni are evidence, in the union’s reading, that the declaration has not translated into protection.
NUMSA has rejected the idea of policing alone and the state’s response so far has leaned on a security “lockdown” of Kempton Park to answer a crisis this size. Its demands include full funding of the national plan on gender-based violence and femicide, functioning forensic and mortuary capacity so victims can be identified quickly, safe transport for workers on early and late shifts, and the implementation of the ILO Convention 190 on violence and harassment in the workplace, which South Africa has ratified but not fully enforced. Alongside state accountability, the union is calling for community-based structures, street and area committees, explicitly modeled on the civic organizing of the anti-apartheid period to accompany women, support survivors, and track cases through the courts.
Investigations continue, but the fear, concern and anger surrounding the killings remain. The deaths of the women in Ekurhuleni have already forced a public reckoning with the scale of violence against women in South Africa and the urgent need for stronger action to protect women and hold perpetrators accountable.
Over the past two weeks, Moroccan authorities have intensified their crackdown on political activists calling for a boycott of the September 23 legislative elections.
Opposition parties, including left-wing Workers’ Democratic Way Party and islamist Justice and Charity Association, have announced that they are boycotting the upcoming elections, urging Moroccan people to join the boycott campaign.
The Workers’ Democratic Way Party believes that the existing political system falls short of meeting the basic standards of a genuine democracy, and therefore would not “allow for fair and competitive elections capable of bringing about real change.”
Meanwhile, the Justice and Charity Association argues that the reason for boycotting the electoral process is the lack of “conditions for free and fair political competition.”
In the lead up to the September 23 elections, the Workers’ Democratic Way Party has organized field campaigns across multiple cities, including Tangier, Al Hoceima, Kenitra, Casablanca, Beni Mellal, Salé, Rabat, Khenifra and Fez, urging citizens to boycott the legislative elections.
These campaigns faced intensified repressive measures by the authorities such as physical assaults, the confiscation of leaflets, and the detention of over a dozen party members, including leaders.
However, the repressive acts also drew widespread solidarity from civil figures and citizens. Party leaders also emphasised their resolve, stating: “We will continue the struggle for our country, because it is worth sacrificing for.”
It is worth noting that the party has boycotted the elections in the country since its establishment in 1995, considering them as a “democratic smokescreen” for the Makhzen (the local name for the Moroccan political regime).
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At least 82 bodies had been recovered, according to local officials and activists, while dozens of other miners were feared trapped or missing. The latest figure represents an increase from the 67 deaths earlier reported by the Sudan Doctors Network as rescue operations continued.
The collapse occurred in an area controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been fighting Sudan’s military since April 2023. The continuing war has severely weakened state institutions and access to basic services across large parts of the country.
In a statement, the Sudan Doctors Network said they lacked basic safety and protective measures required at mining sites. It said search and rescue operations were continuing to locate survivors and people trapped beneath the rubble, warning that the death toll could rise.
The network called out the negligence that had exposed miners to grave risks and called on the authorities controlling the area to protect mining workers, provide medical and logistical support, and prevent unregulated mining activities from continuing without adequate safety measures.
Rescue operations have themselves been severely constrained. Murtada Ahmed, spokesman for the Kordofan Human Rights Observatory, told Radio Dabanga that the operation was progressing slowly because almost no specialized equipment was available. Local residents and miners have largely been forced to rely on their own efforts and basic machinery to recover bodies and search for people trapped underground.
The disaster in Sudan comes only weeks after another major artisanal mining tragedy in the Central African Republic, where more than 100 people were killed when an artisanal gold mine collapsed following a landslide in the western part of the country.
Informal and small-scale mining provides a livelihood for millions of people and remains an important source of income in communities where formal employment opportunities are limited. At the same time, miners frequently work in dangerous conditions, with limited regulations, protective equipment, geological assessments, and emergency rescue capacity.
In Sudan, gold mining has become particularly important following the country’s economic collapse and war. The sector includes thousands of small-scale and informal operations, while gold-producing areas have also become economically and strategically important to the rival forces fighting for control of the country.
The mine collapse is taking place as the war that has devastated Sudan since 2023 continues, producing widespread displacement, hunger, and the breakdown of essential services.
West Kordofan is among the areas affected by the conflict between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces. The control of mining areas by armed actors has added another layer of vulnerability for workers and surrounding communities.
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La semana pasada, el 4 de septiembre, la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas aprobó una propuesta africana para un nuevo mapa mundial, que muestra el tamaño real de los países en relación con los demás. Su objetivo es corregir la visión del mundo moldeada por el mapa mundial ampliamente utilizado basado en la proyección de Mercator, creada por Gerardus Mercator, un cartógrafo flamenco del siglo XVI. El problema con el mapa de Mercator es bien conocido; por ejemplo, muestra a la isla de Groenlandia con el mismo tamaño que el continente africano, ¡a pesar de que África es 14 veces más grande que Groenlandia! En pocas palabras, los mapas de Mercator exageran enormemente el norte del mundo —los Estados Unidos y Europa— mientras que reducen África y la mayor parte de Asia. Tampoco trata con benevolencia al resto del hemisferio sur. Sudamérica, que tiene casi tres veces el tamaño de Europa, parece comparable a esta en un mapa típico de Mercator.
Aunque no existe ninguna razón geográfica por la que el hemisferio sur deba ser más pequeño que el hemisferio norte, los cartógrafos lo hicieron significativamente más pequeño porque tenía muy poca masa continental más allá de los 40 grados y, por lo tanto, se recortó. Esto significó que, en la mayoría de los mapas de Mercator, debido a que los cartógrafos occidentales recortaron gran parte del hemisferio sur, el ecuador quedó significativamente desplazado hacia abajo. El doble efecto de comprimir las zonas ecuatoriales, donde se encuentra gran parte de África, y desplazar el ecuador hacia abajo hizo que el norte del mundo, particularmente Europa y América del Norte, parecieran mucho más grandes de lo que realmente son. Por lo general, en la mayoría de los mapas de Mercator, el hemisferio norte parece el doble del tamaño del hemisferio sur, aunque ambos hemisferios son idénticos en tamaño.
Cualquier mapa, ya sea de Mercator o de cualquier otra proyección, presenta el problema de que se puede ser fiel al tamaño o a la forma, pero no a ambos. Se trata de un problema fundamental que surge al proyectar una superficie tridimensional sobre una hoja de papel bidimensional. No hay forma de hacerlo sin distorsiones. Solo un globo terráqueo puede representar fielmente la Tierra tridimensional. Pero entonces, ¿qué hacemos cuando queremos reproducir detalles geográficos para nuestros lectores en libros o artículos?
Las distorsiones evidentes de la proyección de Mercator y su enfoque eurocéntrico dieron lugar a varias alternativas, particularmente entre los cartógrafos de la izquierda amplia o progresista. Otros, especialmente en los Estados Unidos y Europa, se han opuesto a ella, argumentando que el tamaño no importa y que no les molesta que se les muestre mucho más grandes de lo que realmente son. Sin embargo, muchos discreparon e intentaron desarrollar proyecciones alternativas. La proyección de Gall-Peterson, que contó con el respaldo del gobierno socialdemócrata alemán de Willy Brandt, es una de esas proyecciones. La proyección de Hobo Dyer, que se encuentra en el dominio público global —lo que significa que cualquiera puede usarla sin pagar regalías—, es otra. Finalmente, las Naciones Unidas han puesto fin a las guerras de los mapas, con una victoria rotunda a favor de la moción presentada por las naciones africanas para utilizar mapas de área igual. La votación fue de 164 a favor de la moción, con los Estados Unidos como único voto en contra.
El objetivo del mapa de Mercator era facilitar la navegación de los barcos en mar abierto, donde ya no es posible orientarse reconociendo diversas características topológicas, como ríos, colinas, aldeas, pueblos, etc. En mar abierto, si identificamos nuestra ubicación en un mapa de Mercator y el destino al que deseamos llegar, podemos viajar en línea recta, tal como se muestra en el mapa. Conserva la dirección, lo que significa que, si trazamos un rumbo en un mapa de Mercator, podemos fijar nuestro rumbo según él. Es por eso que los países marítimos utilizaban proyecciones de Mercator para la navegación cuando contaban con pocos instrumentos, más allá de la brújula y el sextante, para determinar su ubicación con respecto a su destino.
Es importante señalar que la dirección que se muestra en el mapa no es la ruta más corta entre el punto de partida y el destino.
El camino más corto entre dos puntos en la superficie del globo terráqueo es el arco del gran círculo que va desde su ubicación hasta su destino. Una línea recta en un mapa bidimensional puede parecer la distancia más corta, pero no lo es, ya que no toma en cuenta la curvatura de la Tierra. En pocas palabras, el precio que pagamos por convertir una superficie curva en una plana y bidimensional es que distorsionamos la forma de la superficie. Estiramos ciertas áreas y encogemos otras. En una Tierra plana, la distancia más corta sería la que indica su brújula, pero no así en una esfera.
Anteriormente, los barcos utilizaban las estrellas y el sol del mediodía para estimar dónde se encontraban y hacia dónde debían dirigirse. Fijar un rumbo hacia su destino utilizando un mapa de Mercator y una brújula resultaba mucho más sencillo que tratar de adivinar dónde se encontraba en un océano desierto, sin puntos de referencia, y cambiar constantemente de rumbo en busca de una ruta más corta. La línea constante en el mapa se denominaba “línea de rumbo”, y seguirla ayudaba enormemente a los navegantes. Los mapas de Mercator eran populares en Europa, particularmente en Europa occidental, ya que, aparte de los árabes, eran las principales naciones marítimas.
Mientras que los árabes se enfocaban en el comercio, particularmente en el Océano Índico, los europeos occidentales se dedicaban no solo a la pesca, sino también, fuera de temporada, a la piratería, las incursiones y el saqueo de otras naciones. Los vikingos, importantes figuras románticas en Hollywood, eran particularmente brutales, ya que combinaban el saqueo con el comercio de esclavos. Por supuesto, como todos los piratas, una vez que se alcanza el poder, se puede convertir ese poder marítimo en conquista. Los hombres del norte, o nórdicos, conquistaron Francia y más tarde Inglaterra, y son conocidos por nosotros como normandos. No muy diferentes de las Compañías Holandesa y Británica de las Indias Orientales, que comenzaron con el comercio y la piratería y más tarde establecieron imperios coloniales.
No es de extrañar que los reinos marítimos de Europa occidental, para quienes la guerra, la pesca para alimentarse y la caza de focas, morsas, etc., con el fin de obtener grasa y pieles, constituían las principales fuentes de riqueza, se centraran mucho más en la navegación y la construcción naval. Esto significaba que los barcos construidos para el agitado Océano Atlántico contaban con ciertos avances de los que carecían los barcos árabes e indios, aunque la brújula, el astrolabio, los mapas astronómicos y otros instrumentos náuticos procedían todos de Asia.
Los barcos de Europa occidental contaban con cañones montados en cubierta, lo que les permitía disparar “andanadas”, es decir, disparar múltiples cañones simultáneamente, a diferencia de los cañones montados en la proa y la popa. Esa es una de las principales razones por las que un puñado de países de Europa occidental pudo aprovechar los océanos para, primero, hacerse con el comercio marítimo y, más tarde, construir sus imperios coloniales. A diferencia de los fuertes fijos, los barcos actuaban como fuertes flotantes, lo que proporcionaba a los europeos una movilidad en las guerras navales de la que carecían las fortificaciones terrestres estáticas.
Como muestra la monumental obra de Needham sobre la ciencia y la tecnología chinas, muchos avances náuticos en la construcción naval y la navegación procedían de China. Los siete viajes de los barcos de Zheng He en el siglo XV (1405-1443), que partieron de China, el sudeste asiático y la India, y recorrieron la costa árabe hasta África, demostraron que los chinos habían construido enormes barcos y una poderosa armada. En aquella época, se encontraban muy por delante de Europa y de los árabes, tanto en la construcción naval como en los buques de guerra. Las diferencias internas entre la aristocracia terrateniente y los comandantes navales condujeron a la destrucción de la armada y a la prohibición de construir cualquier buque de alta mar.
Aunque la India suministraba a los árabes la madera necesaria para la construcción naval y en algún momento contó con una poderosa armada, cedió el comercio de alta mar a los comerciantes árabes. Ni China, ni la India, ni los árabes consideraban que la armada tuviera importancia militar. Como dijo un emperador mogol: “Los océanos son para los comerciantes, no para nosotros, los guerreros”. Las divisiones de castas en la India también llevaron, en un momento dado, a prohibir a las castas superiores emprender viajes oceánicos. La travesía del Kala Pani, siempre prohibida por los brahmanes, no se respetó de manera estricta. La India experimentó una gran expansión marítima en el período budista, no a través de la guerra, sino mediante el comercio y la labor de proselitismo de los monjes budistas. Tras el resurgimiento del hinduismo en el sur, el tabú que prohibía a las castas superiores viajar a través de los océanos se aplicó de manera más estricta, dejando los océanos en manos de comerciantes y mercenarios. Por ejemplo, las principales flotas de los reyes indios – ya fuera el rey de Calicut, también conocido como Samundri o Zamorin, o Shivaji – dependían de comandantes navales y buques mercenarios, muchos de ellos al mando de árabes.
Como demuestra la historia, los mapas, el comercio marítimo y la guerra están íntimamente relacionados. Los viajes marítimos y las guerras navales confieren a los mapas una importancia estratégica. No es simplemente la ubicación de las fronteras de cada país lo que importa, sino también su visión estratégica del mundo. Podemos observar cómo esto se está manifestando actualmente en Bab el Mandeb y en el Golfo Pérsico. Un vistazo rápido a un mapa habría convencido a los líderes estadounidenses de que Irán cuenta con una clara ventaja estratégica en el Estrecho de Ormuz, al igual que los hutíes en el Mar Rojo y el paso hacia el Canal de Suez. Descuidar los océanos repite los errores que cometió Asia en una época diferente, errores de los que ha aprendido. Debemos tener esto presente también hoy en día.
Prabir Purkayastha es el editor fundador de Newsclick.in, una plataforma de medios digitales. Es activista en favor de la ciencia y del software libre.
Este artículo fue elaborado por Globetrotter.
Lee en español aquí
On September 4, the United Nations General Assembly adopted an African proposal for a new world map, which shows countries’ true size relative to one another. It aims to correct the view of the world shaped by the widely used world map based on the Mercator Projection, created by Gerardus Mercator, a 16th-century Flemish cartographer. The problem with the Mercator Map is well known; for example, it shows the island of Greenland as the same size as the African continent, even though Africa is 14 times the size of Greenland! Simply put, Mercator maps greatly exaggerate the global north – the US and Europe – while shrinking Africa and most of Asia. Nor does it treat the rest of the Southern Hemisphere kindly. South America, nearly three times the size of Europe, looks comparable to it on a typical Mercator map.
Though there is no geographical reason the Southern Hemisphere should be smaller than the Northern Hemisphere, mapmakers made it significantly smaller because it had very little landmass beyond 40 degrees and was therefore cropped out. This meant that on most Mercator maps, because Western mapmakers cropped out much of the Southern Hemisphere, the equator was significantly displaced downward. The double whammy of squeezing the equatorial areas, where much of Africa lies, and shifting the equator down made the global north, particularly Europe and North America, seem much larger than they actually are. Typically, on most Mercator maps, the Northern Hemisphere looks twice the size of the Southern Hemisphere, though the two hemispheres are identical in size.
Any map, whether Mercator or any other projection, has the problem that you can be true to either size or shape, but not both. The problem is a fundamental one of projecting a three-dimensional surface to a two-dimensional piece of paper. There is no way of doing this without distortions. Only a globe can truly represent the three-dimensional earth faithfully. But then what do we do when we want to reproduce geographical details for our readers in books or articles?
The blatant distortions of the Mercator projection and its Eurocentric approach gave rise to several alternatives, particularly among broad-left or progressive cartographers. Others, particularly in the US and Europe have opposed it, arguing that size does not matter and that they were comfortable being shown much bigger than they actually are. But many dissented and tried to work out alternate projections. The Gall-Peterson projection, which was backed by the German social democratic government of Willy Brandt, is one such projection. The Hobo Dyer projection, which is in the global commons, meaning anybody can use it without paying royalties, is another one. Finally, the United Nations has ended the map wars, with a resounding victory for the motion moved by the African nations for using equal area maps. The voting was 164 in favor of the motion with the US casting the only nay vote.
The objective of Mercator map was for ships navigating in open seas, where we can no longer navigate recognizing various topological features, rivers, hills, villages, towns, etc. On the open ocean, if we identify where we are on a Mercator map and the destination we want to reach, we can travel in a straight line, as shown on the map. It conserves direction, meaning if we plot a course on a Mercator map, we can set our course by it. That is why ocean-going countries used Mercator projections for navigation when they had few instruments beyond the compass and the sextant to determine where they were relative to their destination.
It is important to note that the direction shown on the map is not the shortest path between where you start from and your destination. The shortest path on two points on the surface of the globe is the arc of the great circle from where you are to your destination. A straight line on a 2-dimensional map may look like the shortest distance, but it is not as it does not account for the Earth’s curvature. Simply put, the price we pay for converting a curved surface to a flat 2-dimensional one is that we distort the shape of the surface. We stretch certain areas and shrink others. On a flat earth, the shortest distance would be what your compass shows, but not on a sphere.
Earlier, ships used stars and the midday sun to estimate where they were and where they needed to go. Setting a course to your destination using a Mercator map and a compass was much easier than trying to guess where you were on an empty ocean with no landmarks and constantly changing course for a shorter route. The constant line on the map was called the thumb line, and following it greatly helped the seafarers. Mercator maps were popular in Europe, particularly in Western Europe, because, apart from the Arabs, they were the major ocean-going nations.
While the Arabs focused on trade, particularly in the Indian Ocean, Western Europeans focused not only on fishing but, in the off-season, on piracy, raiding, and looting other nations. The Vikings, major romantic figures in Hollywood, were particularly brutal, combining loot with slave trade. Of course, like all pirates, once you become powerful, you can convert that ocean power into conquest. The northern men, or Norsemen, conquered France and later England, and are known to us as Normans. Not very different from the Dutch and the British East India Companies, starting with trade and piracy and later establishing colonial empires.
Not surprisingly, the ocean-going kingdoms of Western Europe, for whom war and fishing for food and hunting seals, walrus, etc., for blubber and skins were major sources of wealth, focused much more on seafaring and shipbuilding. This meant ships built for the rougher Atlantic Ocean had certain advances that Arab and Indian ships did not, though the compass, astrolabe, astronomical maps, and other nautical instruments all came from Asia.
Western European ships had deck-mounted cannons, which allowed them to fire “broadside,” meaning multiple cannons firing simultaneously, unlike the front- and rear-mounted cannons. That is one of the major reasons a handful of West European countries could use the oceans to first capture the ocean trade and later build their colonial empires. Unlike fixed forts, ships acted as floating ones, giving Europeans mobility in naval wars that static ground fortifications lacked.
As Needham’s monumental work on Chinese science and technology shows, many nautical advances in shipbuilding and navigation came from China. Seven voyages by Zheng He’s ships in the 15th century (1405-1443), which traveled from China, Southeast Asia, India, and down the Arab coast to Africa, showed that the Chinese had built huge ships and a powerful navy. At that time, they were well ahead of Europe and the Arabs, in both shipbuilding and warships. Internal differences between the landed aristocracy and the naval commanders led to the navy’s destruction and a ban on building any oceangoing ships.
Although India supplied the timber necessary for shipbuilding to the Arabs, and once had a powerful navy, it ceded the oceangoing trade to Arab merchants. Neither China, India, nor the Arabs saw the navy as militarily important. As one Mughal Emperor said, Oceans are for traders, not us, the warriors. Caste divisions in India also led, at one point, to barring upper castes from undertaking ocean voyages. Crossing Kala Pani, always forbidden by the Brahmins, was not strictly followed. India saw major maritime expansion in the Buddhist period, not by war but through trade and proselytizing Buddhist monks. After the revival of Hinduism in the South, the taboo against upper-caste travel across oceans was enforced more strictly, leaving the oceans to traders and mercenaries. For example, the major fleets of the Indian kings, whether the King of Calicut, also known as Samundri or Zamorin, or Shivaji, relied on mercenary naval commanders and ships, many commanded by the Arabs.
As history shows, maps, ocean trade, and war are intimately connected. Ocean voyages and naval wars make maps strategically important. It is not simply where each country’s borders lie that is important, but also how it strategically views the world. We can see this currently playing out in the Bab-al-Mandeb and the Persian Gulf. A quick look at a map would have convinced US leaders that Iran has a clear strategic edge in the Strait of Hormuz, just as Ansar Allah do in the Red Sea and the passage to the Suez Canal. Neglecting the oceans repeats the mistakes Asia made in a different age, mistakes from which it has learned. We need to bear this in mind today as well.
Prabir Purkayastha is the founding editor of Newsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and free software.
This article was produced by Globetrotter.
Protests rocked the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, September 15, as opposition supporters took to the streets in Kinshasa and several other cities to oppose proposed constitutional changes that they say could allow President Félix Tshisekedi to seek a third term.
The demonstrations were called by the opposition coalition C64 (Coalition Article 64), which has campaigned against changes to the Constitution and what it considers an attempt to remove the existing two-term presidential limit.
The demonstrations were also reported in several cities. In Kinshasa, hundreds of protesters gathered around the Limete area before the march was disrupted by clashes involving demonstrators and people identified as members of the Force du Progrès, a group affiliated with Tshisekedi’s ruling UDPS party. Police used tear gas and warning shots to disperse the crowd. At least 10 people were arrested in Kinshasa.
Martin Fayulu, leader of the Engagement for Citizenship and Development (ECiDé) and a leading C64 figure, accused authorities of deliberately allowing pro-government militants to attack the opposition march.
In a post following the confrontation, Fayulu said the C64 had agreed on its route with Kinshasa’s city authorities before the march. He alleged that protesters were then confronted in Limete by armed members of the Force du Progrès while police used tear gas against the marchers.
Fayulu wrote that the C64 had been “the victim of an ambush” and accused the authorities of using a political militia alongside security forces. He called on Kinshasa’s city authorities and the national government to explain what happened.
The confrontation prevented the C64 march from reaching its planned destination and from delivering its memorandum to the authorities at the People’s Palace.
Tuesday’s demonstrations were the latest escalation in an opposition campaign that has been building since June, when there were protests after Congo’s parliament approved legislation allowing constitutional amendments to be submitted to a referendum.
The National Assembly and Senate have both backed the referendum legislation. Critics argue that the process could eventually open the way for amendments to the presidential term-limit provisions.
Tshisekedi was first elected president in 2018 and re-elected in 2023. Under the current Constitution, the president serves a maximum of two five-year terms. His current term runs until 2028.
The proposed constitutional changes have therefore become a major point of confrontation between the government and opposition. The C64 says it is defending the existing constitutional order and has rejected any change that could enable Tshisekedi to seek another term.
The protests and the crisis is happening as the government faces other major challenges, including conflict in eastern Congo and an Ebola outbreak.
At the end of August, at the Silverbird Cinema in the Accra Mall in Ghana, two Israeli feature films were screened alongside Ghanaian student productions.
For the second year running, the seats for this Israeli film festival were empty. Ordinary Ghanaians declined the Israeli Embassy’s films, and a peaceful demonstration outside held placards for Palestine and against the continued killing of civilians in Gaza.
There is another screen Ghanaians must refuse to look away from, protestors asserted. The screens on which we have watched Gaza reduced to rubble, families displaced again and again, hospitals and schools destroyed, and children carried from the wreckage of a war that, despite the ceasefire announced in October 2025, has not stopped killing them.
However, something else walked through the doors of the film festival: schoolchildren. In uniform. On a Sunday.
Students from Achimota School and Accra Girls Senior High School, two of Ghana’s most prominent public secondary schools, were brought into an embassy-sponsored event at the center of a serious political controversy. Those of us who were there saw them. We have photographs and videos. The question Ghana must now answer is not about cinema. It is about who sent our children, and why.
Last year, the Embassy staged a week-long Israeli Film Festival at the same venue and called it an exercise in “dialogue and mutual understanding.” Nearly 400 Ghanaian organizations, student movements, trade unions, faith communities, civil-society groups, signed one statement calling for a boycott. Protesters gathered outside. Sponsors pulled out. The Embassy still declared the event a success.
The veteran editor Kwesi Pratt Jnr., who joined the picket, recalled what that “success” looked like a year ago for the “Alhaji and Alhaji” program:
“This is the first time in my life that I’ve seen 400 organizations come together to sign one statement calling for a boycott of the film festival. I joined the picket at the Silverbird Cinema, and a few, very, very few, prominent Ghanaians, including Afenyo-Markin, attended in spite of the protest. But it was a fiasco. The room was empty. Ghanaians rejected the film festival completely.”
So the Embassy returned smaller: two Israeli films on a single Sunday, free entry, free popcorn, raffle prizes, and an invitation aimed squarely at young people. When adults again refused to fill the room, uniformed students appeared. If Ghanaian adults will not lend legitimacy to this event, should Ghanaian children be made to supply it?
The timing makes it harder to dismiss as a routine outing.
President John Dramani Mahama has publicly described what is happening in Gaza as genocide. The Israeli Ambassador to Ghana has publicly rejected that position and defended his government’s conduct. He is entitled to make his case, but he is a guest of a sovereign state, not the author of its policy.
Against that backdrop, the presence of uniformed students inside an embassy program, days after this very public disagreement, demands an accounting. Pratt put the question bluntly:
“At the time that the ambassador was attacking our president, some authorities in our secondary schools decided to side with [the embassy]. What judgment was exercised by the school authorities when they agreed to bus their students to this film festival? What were they expecting? What checks did they do on the quality of the films?”
Those are the right questions, and they are not rhetorical. They have not yet been answered and there has been no investigation.
None of this is an accusation against the children. They may have had little understanding of the political purpose around the event. The responsibility belongs to the adults who placed them there.
Ghana rejected the Israeli film festival not because cinema or cultural exchange is evil. Not because Israeli artists have no right to make films. The rejection is not an attack on Jewish people. Antisemitism is hatred and must also be rejected.
The problem is that this festival is not an example of artists meeting freely across borders. It is an Israeli Embassy-backed initiative staged while the Palestinian people continue to pay with their lives. Amid the killing of civilians and the destruction of Palestinian life, the use of state diplomacy to manufacture an appearance of normality while those questions remain unresolved is nothing less than political soft power.
Ghanaian children are not diplomatic props, and Ghanaian schools must never become extensions of a foreign embassy. Teach them, yes. Teach them the Holocaust, the Nakba, occupation and international law, and give them the evidence to think critically. That is education. Busing uniformed children into a controversial embassy function, and letting their presence become evidence of Ghanaian acceptance, is the opposite.
That is why the demand is simple, and now directed at the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service: did you know? If yes, explain. If not, investigate. And if any official bypassed procedure or abused authority to place schoolchildren inside a foreign government’s public-relations exercise, hold them accountable.
There is a longer tradition at stake. Ghana is the country from which Kwame Nkrumah declared that our independence was meaningless unless linked with the total liberation of Africa. Africa understands what cultural normalization is for: domination has rarely arrived only with rifles. It seeks respectability, the reception, the festival, the partnership, until oppression becomes a disagreement to be discussed politely while business continues.
Palestine poses that old question to the African conscience once more. And a small part of the answer is being written by who walks into a cinema in Accra Mall, and who is made to walk in.
For the second year, the empty seats have spoken. Now Ghana’s own institutions must speak. Our children deserve education, not enlistment. And a sovereign state deserves to decide, in the light of its own conscience, what its schools lend themselves to.
Stay away. Let the empty seats speak, for the Palestinian child who will never again enter a classroom, and for the proposition that human life is worth more than diplomatic image-building.
Abahlali baseMjondolo has secured another court order preventing the forced relocation of residents of an informal settlement in Shaka’s Head, KwaZulu-Natal, until the Municipality complies with the conditions previously set by the Pietermaritzburg High Court.
On Friday, September 11, the Pietermaritzburg High Court issued a consent order directing the KwaDukuza Municipality to comply with an October 2025 court order before it can relocate residents in Shaka’s Head, on the Dolphin Coast.
The latest order was agreed to by both parties and effectively maintains the conditions imposed by the court last year. Residents will remain in the occupation until the municipality provides the basic services and meets the other requirements ordered by the court.
“This is no doubt another victory for Abahlali bakwaDukuza and all people facing evictions in South Africa,” Abahlali baseMjondolo said following the court proceedings.
The movement has opposed attempts to evict residents from the settlement since the municipality initiated the process. The dispute has also involved the Dolphin Coast Residents’ Association, representing affluent homeowners in the area.
The latest development follows a landmark ruling by the Pietermaritzburg High Court in October 2025, when the court halted the municipality’s attempt to forcibly evict hundreds of residents from Erf 1410.
The court found that the municipality could not proceed with the relocation unless it first met a number of conditions designed to ensure that residents would not be moved to an area without adequate services and facilities.
Among the requirements was that the municipality provide basic services, including roads, sanitation, waste removal, water, and temporary electricity.
The municipality was also required to demarcate individual stands for households and ensure that the relocation site had access to essential facilities, including schools, healthcare, and public transport.
The court ultimately adopted a draft order prepared by Abahlali’s legal team rather than the municipality’s proposed order, effectively preventing the eviction until the conditions had been fulfilled.
According to Abahlali baseMjondolo Secretary-General Thapelo Mohapi, speaking to BreakThrough News, the municipality had not fulfilled the requirements imposed by the October 2025 judgment.
Thapelo said the municipality had instead sought to proceed with eviction proceedings despite not providing the basic services required at the proposed relocation site.
“Only when they have provided those basic services, only then the people of Shaka’s Head will be relocated to the new piece of land,” Thapelo said.
He said that because the municipality had not yet provided the required services, residents would remain in the occupation.
The organization has long framed the dispute as part of a broader struggle over access to urban land and housing, particularly for working-class and Black residents living alongside more affluent communities.
Thapelo accused the municipality and sections of the area’s affluent residents of seeking to remove working-class people from areas close to economic opportunities and relocate them to the urban periphery.
The September order follows an earlier setback for the municipality in March 2025, when another attempt to advance the eviction process was blocked.
For now, the position established through the court proceedings is that residents cannot be relocated until KwaDukuza Municipality complies with the requirements contained in the October 2025 order.
Tanzanian small-scale farmers’ organizations and civil society groups are raising concerns over the proposed East African Community (EAC) Seed and Plant Varieties Bill of 2025, warning that the legislation could marginalize farmer-managed seed systems unless specific protections and exemptions are introduced.
In a submission to public hearings on the proposed bill, the Mtandao wa Vikundi vya Wakulima (MVIWATA) called for the legislation to explicitly recognize and protect farmer-managed seed systems (FMSS), arguing that the current draft is largely designed around commercial and certified seed systems.
MVIWATA, established in 1993, which has more than 500,000 smallholder farmer members across Tanzania, has previously participated in discussions on seed legislation and harmonization at both national and regional levels, including the earlier draft EAC Seed and Plant Varieties Bill of 2018.
The organization says the 2025 draft is an improvement over the 2018 version, but argues that gaps remain, particularly regarding the recognition of farmer-managed seed systems and the rights of farmers to save, use, exchange, share, and sell their own seed.
According to MVIWATA, the draft bill is primarily oriented towards commercial seed, with requirements such as registration, certification, variety release, and quality assurance. The organization warns that applying these requirements broadly could inadvertently place farmer-managed seed systems under the same regulatory framework as commercial seed.
MVIWATA says this is particularly problematic because farmer-managed seed systems are a major source of seed for farmers in Tanzania and across East Africa.
The organization maintains that farmer seed systems should instead be explicitly excluded from commercial seed regulations, including formal registration, certification, variety release, and other requirements designed for commercial seed. It proposes the development of alternative, farmer-centered, and community-led mechanisms at the national level.
Sabrina Masinjila, senior program officer at the Society for International Development (SID), told BreakThrough News the concerns raised by MVIWATA were driven by the continued lack of policy recognition of farmer-managed seed systems at both national and regional levels.
She said the concern was also heightened by the possibility that legislation regulating commercial seed systems could contain provisions that inadvertently affect farmers’ traditional practices, including the sale and exchange of seed.
“The aim for seeking changes was to ensure that farmer seed and systems are exempted from any regulation including registration, certification and variety release that apply to commercial seed,” Masinjila said.
But she stressed that simply exempting farmer seed from regulation would not be enough.
“Exemptions are not sufficient as farmer seed systems still need enough support for their continued development, maintenance, conservation and protection,” she said.
According to Masinjila, the push is therefore for the bill to go beyond exemptions and create policy space for an alternative framework that can support farmer seed systems.
“We sought to establish not just clauses that exempt small-scale farmers from the Bill but also clauses that will start to provide opportunities to develop an alternative framework for farmer seed systems which will ensure they are conserved, maintained, protected and even supported for multiplication and distribution,” she said.
Such a framework, she argued, would have wider implications for agroecology, agricultural biodiversity, climate resilience, dietary diversity and nutrition.
MVIWATA makes a similar argument in its submission, saying farmer-managed seed systems play an important role in food security, nutrition, biodiversity conservation, and farmers’ livelihoods. The organization says recognition should not mean forcing farmer seed into the same regulatory system as commercial seed, but should acknowledge the contribution of farmers to the conservation and development of genetic resources.
The debate is also closely linked to farmers’ rights under international agreements. MVIWATA points to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), particularly Article 9, which addresses Farmers’ Rights. Its submission also cites the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), including provisions relating to farmers’ rights to seed.
MVIWATA argues that the EAC Bill should therefore be aligned with these commitments and explicitly recognize farmers’ rights to save, use, reuse, conserve, multiply, develop, exchange, share, and sell farmer-managed seed.
The organization has proposed that the bill state explicitly that it applies to commercial seed systems and does not prohibit or restrict the saving, use, exchange, sharing, or reuse of farmer seed and non-commercial varieties.
Masinjila said the protection of farmers’ rights was inseparable from the wider discussion around seed regulation.
Adding that clauses should be included to protect farmers’ rights as recognized under the ITPGRFA and UNDROP, where access to and control over seed is connected to broader human rights.
“Without these changes, small-scale farmers and their seed system will continue to be neglected, marginalized and criminalized. And this is why we needed to intervene,” she said.
The current debate is not entirely new. MVIWATA says it was strongly involved in discussions around the 2018 draft EAC Seed and Plant Varieties Bill, raising concerns about several provisions. The organization says its review of the 2025 version found improvements compared with the earlier draft.
Masinjila said one difference is that the previous bill contained provisions that were compliant with the 1991 Act of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), a plant variety protection regime that civil society and farmer organizations have criticized for being restrictive of farmers’ rights.
“The previous bill contained clauses that were compliant to UPOV 1991. A restrictive Plant Variety Protection regime which has been rejected by CSOs and farmer organizations globally as it undermines farmers rights,” she said.
However, she said concerns around regional harmonization remain under the current EAC Bill, particularly because legislation at EAC level is legally binding on partner states.
MVIWATA also warns that a binding regional framework could reduce the ability of individual countries to develop alternative approaches for farmer seed systems.
The organization is calling for the explicit recognition of farmer-managed seed systems, it has also proposed that farmer varieties should not be subjected to mandatory commercial registration or certification, while alternative mechanisms should be developed in consultation with smallholder farmers, pastoralists, and farming communities.
On seed marketing, MVIWATA wants the bill to make clear that farmers can sell and exchange farmer varieties at the national level and facilitate limited cross-border seed exchange among farmers within the EAC.
The organization is also seeking safeguards against the appropriation of farmers’ genetic resources, including requirements for the disclosure of origin, as well as free, prior, and informed consent from communities. Lastly, they want benefit-sharing agreements where genetic resources are acquired from farming communities.
The enlargement of BRICS presents Africa with a wider field of economic possibilities by bringing the continent into closer relationship with some of the world’s largest markets, important sources of development finance and countries possessing substantial capabilities in manufacturing, energy, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and advanced technologies. At a time when international economic relations are becoming increasingly fragmented, this wider range of relationships gives African countries greater room for maneuver.
But a wider choice of trading partners, financiers, and technological partners will mean considerably less if Africa continues to export raw materials, import sophisticated technologies, and occupy the lower reaches of global value chains, because the destination of our commodities may become more diversified without fundamentally altering our position in the international division of labor. It is not the direction of extraction that has ever been the problem, but its structure.
This should therefore be the central African question about BRICS as it enters its third decade: how do we use this changing configuration of economic relationships to build productive power on the continent? The measure of Africa’s engagement with BRICS cannot simply be the increase in trade, investment or infrastructure finance, but must increasingly be whether these relationships enable African economies to convert their minerals, energy resources, labor, knowledge and expanding continental market into greater productive, technological and institutional capability.
Africa’s experience gives this question particular historical significance. The continent has been deeply integrated into the world economy for centuries, but largely through an economic structure in which minerals and agricultural commodities traveled enormous distances while much of the processing, manufacturing, technology, and financial value associated with them accumulated elsewhere. That structure remains recognizable in economies that export crude oil while importing refined petroleum products, export mineral ores while importing machinery and manufactured components and export agricultural commodities while importing processed goods derived from the same productive base.
The post-colonial challenge has therefore never been to trade more but to build the productive capabilities that allow African economies to retain more value from what they produce. Yet this has become more difficult as several economies have experienced premature deindustrialization before manufacturing reached the scale needed to absorb large numbers of workers and sustain productivity growth. Domestic firms are frequently small, supplier networks remain shallow, and the relationship between universities, technical institutions and industry is often weak. Infrastructure still too often reflects the historical logic of moving commodities from sites of extraction to ports rather than connecting African centers of production.
The African Continental Free Trade Area creates the possibility of changing the scale at which we approach some of these problems. A continental market can support forms of industrial specialization that smaller national markets cannot, but the agreement will acquire its full developmental significance only when African firms possess the productive capacity to supply that market. Lowering tariffs creates trade opportunities; it does not by itself produce the firms, electricity, logistics, finance, skills and technical standards required to take advantage of those opportunities.
The emergence of BRICS creates new possibilities within this African project, but it does not guarantee the outcome. Consider the minerals required for the global energy transition. African countries possess significant deposits of manganese, platinum-group metals, cobalt, lithium, and other minerals required for batteries, electric mobility, renewable-energy systems and the wider low-carbon economy. Several BRICS economies already represent substantial sources of demand for these minerals, and their industrial and technological ambitions are likely to further increase that demand. The question is whether it can be structured to support African processing, refining and manufacturing rather than simply accelerating the export of unprocessed ore. For South Africa, this means asking whether its mineral endowments, established industrial base, scientific institutions and engineering capabilities can support new activities in batteries, fuel cells, electric mobility, and renewable-energy equipment. Elsewhere on the continent, mineral extraction can be progressively connected to refining, processing, component manufacturing, engineering services, and technical skills.
Regional integration consequently must become as much an industrial project as a trade project. A viable African battery value chain need not be reproduced inside the borders of a single country. Minerals extracted in one economy can be processed in another, components can be manufactured where industrial capabilities already exist, with assembly occurring close to sufficiently large markets. The strategic objective should be to connect these capabilities across the continent so that regional integration progressively expands the number of African firms, workers, and economies participating in higher-value activities. Regional institutions have recognized this opening. Both SADC and SACU have recently developed strategies to leverage their members’ critical mineral endowments for industrial development rather than raw export, embedding the beneficiation agenda within regional frameworks rather than leaving it to individual countries to negotiate alone. The question for BRICS partners is whether their infrastructure finance can connect regional production rather than reinforcing the extractive economic geography that routes everything to ports.
The experience of Indonesia is instructive in this respect. By restricting the export of unprocessed nickel ore, Indonesia used its resource endowment as an instrument of industrial policy, compelling downstream investment in domestic refining and processing and generating a measurable expansion of manufacturing activity around the minerals sector. The conditions in Indonesia differ from those across African mineral-producing economies, and no single approach transfers without adaptation, but the underlying logic, that a country with significant mineral endowments can use its position in global supply chains to anchor productive capability rather than to service demand, is directly relevant to the African debate. SADC and SACU frameworks enable the collective pursuit of that logic rather than individually, which considerably strengthens the negotiating position of member states.
BRICS cooperation can be brought directly into this developmental space. Its members collectively possess capabilities that African economies require industrial finance, advanced manufacturing, energy technologies, digital systems, agricultural technologies, pharmaceuticals, logistics expertise and large consumer markets. The strategic African objective should therefore be to use these relationships to close specific productive gaps, rather than to approach BRICS principally as another destination for commodities. The test of each partnership is whether it leaves firms stronger, engineers more capable, supplier networks deeper, and regulatory institutions better equipped than before.
This requires developmental statecraft, understood not as a rhetorical commitment to the state’s role in development but as the organized capacity of public institutions to identify productive opportunities, direct finance towards them, negotiate technology partnerships on terms that leave capabilities behind, coordinate the different policy instruments that productive transformation requires, and sustain that effort through the inevitable difficulties of implementation. State capability, in this sense, is the operational form of sovereignty in practice. A government may possess all the formal attributes of sovereign authority whilst systematically lacking the institutional capacity to negotiate effectively with international capital, enforce agreements, direct finance towards developmental ends or build the regulatory knowledge that separates a beneficial technology partnership from another form of dependency.
The infrastructure and technology challenges illustrate the practical implications. Much of Africa’s transport network still reflects an extractive economic geography. The next generation of infrastructure must connect African economies and link transport corridors to processing facilities, industrial parks, energy systems, universities, cities, and regional markets rather than simply moving commodities more efficiently to ports. When an African country acquires sophisticated technology, the relevant question is what remains after the transaction: whether our engineers understand it, whether our universities can teach and improve it, whether domestic firms can enter its supply chains and whether we can progressively adapt it to local circumstances. The developmental value of technology partnerships lies ultimately in the capabilities they leave behind, and state capability is what determines whether those conditions are written into agreements and enforced when partners resist them.
Finance is an equally pressing matter in the African context. Large infrastructure projects can attract BRICS capital, but smaller domestic manufacturers and regional suppliers frequently lack the patient finance required to expand production, meet technical standards, and enter value chains. BRICS financing mechanisms, including the New Development Bank, could make a particularly consequential African contribution by complementing large infrastructure investment with financing for productive enterprises, supplier networks, and industrial projects.
For Africa, these possibilities will not materialize automatically. The continent possesses many of the minerals upon which emerging industries will depend, the youngest population of any continent, enormous renewable-energy potential and a continental market whose importance will grow considerably during this century. But history provides ample evidence that endowments do not, by themselves, produce development, and the responsibilities that follow from this understanding fall primarily on African states rather than on any external partner. BRICS cannot perform these functions on Africa’s behalf, nor should it. What it can do is enlarge the range of instruments available to countries pursuing productive transformation.
Africa, therefore, confronts BRICS with both an opportunity and a test: the opportunity is a wider range of markets, finance, technologies, industrial partners, and development experiences, while the test is whether the continent uses this greater room for maneuver to change its productive structure or merely to diversify the destinations to which its commodities are exported. BRICS can enlarge Africa’s field of possibilities, but it cannot determine what Africa builds within it. The changing international order can give Africa greater room to act, while productive power will determine what we can do with that room.
Busani Ngcaweni is Director of the Centre for Public Policy and African Studies at the Johannesburg Business School, University of Johannesburg.
This article was produced by Globetrotter.
After a 43-day nationwide strike, nurses in Kenya returned to work on Thursday, September 10. Their union finally secured an agreement from the government on September 9, a day after thousands of nurses and midwives from all of Kenya’s 47 counties converged at the Greenpark in the national capital, Nairobi.
From there, they marched to Delta House, headquarters of the Council of Governors (CoG), demanding the implementation of an agreement the government signed nearly a decade ago.
The nearly five-month-long strike in 2017 had ended with both the national and county governments signing a return-to-work agreement, committing to finalize the draft of the agreed Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and implement it within a month.
It was to incorporate measures to address the nurses’ grievances, including, among other things, increases in nursing service allowance, uniform allowance, and risk allowance. The increases were to be staggered annually and completed by 2021.
The nurses returned to work after this agreement. However, almost nine years later, the commitments contained in the return-to-work agreement remain unfulfilled, while the CBA it was meant to underpin has never been concluded.
The government refused to increase the risk allowance even when the COVID pandemic was declared in early 2020, by the end of which it had claimed the lives of scores of nurses in Kenya. Those who survived infections in the line of duty had to spend long periods isolated from their families, estranged from their young children and suffering enormous anxiety and stress. But the increased risk allowance promised to them in 2017 remains unfulfilled, even in 2026.
On July 29, nurses downed tools in protest. The strike has since paralyzed health services countrywide. Nonetheless, even as the strike entered its second month, the county governments did not budge. On August 31, the CoG Chairperson Ahmed Abdullahi deemed the 2017 CBA financially unviable.
He dismissed the CBA as one “signed under duress in the run-up to elections in 2017” and “never been implemented,” even as reports raised alarm about rising maternal, neonatal, and perinatal deaths across the country.
“No gun was pointed at the heads of all the signatories of our return to work agreement in 2017,” retorted KNUNM Deputy Secretary General Maurice Opetu, refuting the claim of duress. “It was signed in a very harmonious meeting out of understanding” by both the “levels of government” – the national and counties.
It is the county governors who “have made the nurses work under duress without the CBA. And then working under duress pushed us to call a strike after trying all [these] years to resolve the matter,” he insisted.
The nurses’ struggle for this CBA had begun alongside similar struggles by doctors and clinical officers. The government signed and implemented CBAs for doctors and clinical officers, but refused to do the same for nurses.
“They are saying doctors are few, and clinical officers are few, but we are many, so they do not have that budget,” explained Collin Ajwang, President of the National Nurses Association of Kenya (NNAK).
“This doesn’t make sense because our large number is exactly what has helped hospitals run effectively. We have reduced maternal mortality; we are the ones making sure theatres are running; we cannot be few. We are at dispensaries where there are no doctors. Let them tell us how few they want us to be so that they can pay us this money.”
On the 33rd day of the nurses’ strike, the aviation workers downed tools on August 30. Flights were delayed at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, while operations ground to a halt in at least three other airports. Within two days, the government signed an agreement with the aviation workers’ union, the Daily Nation reported, highlighting the contrast in the government’s handling of the two strike actions.
The “airport is a portal and exit of all serious businesses,” not only from Kenya but from East Africa and the continent as a whole, remarked the KNUNM Secretary General, Seth Panyako. “These people who are in charge of making decisions do business through the airport.” So, the government, he said, cannot afford the airports to “stop even for a minute
This business class can afford to “go to private hospitals. There is an alternative for them.” But national and county governments “really don’t care about the common” masses relying on public hospitals for healthcare, and are suffering as a result of the government’s refusal to fulfill the commitments made in the agreement it had signed, he argued.
A week later, on September 7, doctors gave the government a seven-day ultimatum, warning that they would also go on strike if it did not resolve the dispute with nurses. “Doctors cannot work without nurses. Doctors are now overburdened. We cannot continue like this,” said Davji Atellah, Secretary-General of the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists Dentists Union (KMPDU).
“In the ICU (Intensive Care Unit), in the wards, in the HDU (High Dependency Unit), only the nurses can offer that type of care,” he explained, insisting that “nursing care is very essential in healthcare.”
A day after the doctors’ warning, nurses marched on the CoG in Nairobi. Union leaders remained camped at the CoG’s headquarters.
Following a day-long closed-door meeting, the government and the union leaders signed a return-to-work agreement on September 9, with the CoG committing to pay Ksh5,000 in uniform allowance and increase the risk allowance from Ksh3,850 to Ksh8,000. The CoG also agreed to implement the pending CBA within 45 days.
“We have finally called off the 43-day strike following a breakthrough in negotiations with the Council of Governors,” Panyako announced. “We therefore call upon all our members to resume duty within the next 25 hours as we give room for the implementation of the agreements reached.”
Announcing the severing of diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday, September 10, Algeria summoned the Emirati envoy and gave him 48 hours to leave the country.
“Algeria has exercised a great deal of restraint and a high sense of responsibility,” despite the increasingly “provocative or hostile actions emanating from” the Gulf power, the North African country’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“Despite these numerous warnings, the United Arab Emirates continued to persist in these actions, which have reached limits where they can no longer be considered acceptable or tolerable within the framework of relations between two sovereign states, nor remain without a response.”
Later that day, its defense ministry announced that the UAE’s military and civilian aircraft are banned from using Algerian airspace from Friday. The only exemption is for commercial civilian planes, which can continue to fly over Algeria until the existing contract expires at the end of the year.
Algeria had already initiated the termination of the air services agreement with the UAE in February, when President Abdelmadjid Tebboune alleged attempted Emirati interference in its elections.
Multiple Algerian media outlets aligned with the state have reported that the UAE has been supporting the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK), a separatist group Algeria designated as a terrorist organization in 2021.
Algeria and the UAE also find themselves on opposing sides on several fronts of international relations.
The support for the national liberation struggle of Western Sahara, occupied by Morocco immediately after it won independence from Spanish colonialism, has been a central plank of Algeria’s foreign policy.
In 2021, Algeria severed diplomatic relations with Morocco, accusing it of supporting the MAK in retaliation for Algerian support to the Polisario Front (PF), which is fighting for Western Sahara’s national liberation. But there is no equivalence between the PF and the MAK.
The MAK, which has long had close links to Israel, largely operates from Europe and is based in France, Algeria’s former colonizer. The PF, on the other hand, is fighting for Western Sahara’s liberation, with its military operating in its liberated territory adjoining Algeria. The UN recognizes the PF as the sole representative of the people of Western Sahara, a country it lists among the last few pending decolonization.
Despite funding and arming the Moroccan occupation, the US had not officially recognized Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara until December 2020, when Morocco signed the Abraham Accords to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel.
The first Trump administration, in turn, proclaimed that the US “recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara territory” and went on to open a consulate in Dakhla, a major city in the occupied region.
The UAE was a step ahead, setting a precedent before the American move by opening its consulate on the occupied land in November 2020, a month before Morocco normalized relations with Israel. The UAE had already normalized relations with Israel that September.
In contrast, Algeria refuses to normalize relations with Israel until the Palestinians have secured their statehood. Algerian media often refers to the UAE as an “Israeli vassal”.
Algeria’s diplomatic break was foreseeable since at least July, when President Tebboune said in a thinly veiled reference to the UAE in a televised interview, “Wherever they set foot, blood flows… We want them to stay away, so that blood does not flow in our country.” He gave the example of Mali, Libya and Sudan.
A month later, in August, the UN confirmed that the USD 50 million transferred to the Al Qaeda-affiliated JNIM in the form of ransom helped fuel its attack across Mali. A Reuters investigation identified the UAE as the source of this payment to JNIM. The group has also attacked its neighbors, Burkina Faso and Niger, both of which have followed in Mali’s footsteps by expelling French troops.
The UAE’s supply of arms and mercenaries to the Libyan warlord General Khalifa Haftar, who has been fighting Libya’s UN-recognized government, is also well-documented in multiple UN reports since 2017.
Tebboune’s reference to “blood” flowing from Emirati interference is best demonstrated in war-torn Sudan, where the UAE is funding and arming the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whose depopulation campaign in El Fasher had all the “hallmarks of genocide”, according to the UN.
He added in the July interview that a “diplomatic break” with the UAE “would have happened long ago.” Algeria, he explained, had refrained only to avoid adding to the already existing divisions in the Arabic-speaking world.
When the break finally came on Thursday, the UAE’s foreign ministry said it hoped that it “will be temporary, in a manner that preserves the fraternal ties between the two brotherly peoples.”
In an apparent reference to the absence of explicitly stated reasons in Algeria’s statement, Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic advisor to the UAE’s president, Mohamed bin Zayed, said, “Diplomatic relations are managed through reason, communication, and clarity of interests, not through puzzles and signals that require decoding.”
He went on to preach that “successful diplomacy is built on clarity of positions, sound management of interests and differences.”
Gargash’s statement “is revealing above all for what it carefully conceals. Not a word about the actions of this arsonist, predatory state, which thrives on chaos wherever it sticks its nose in Yemen, Sudan, the DRC, Somaliland, and elsewhere,” retorted former Algerian diplomat, Amar Belani.
Describing the UAE as a “state that has made other nations’ instability its economic model,” Belani concluded his response, saying: “As for the lesson on ‘reason and clarity of interests’, Abu Dhabi would do better to reserve it for its partners in the Abraham Accords, with whom it shares complicity in the face of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide committed against the Palestinian people.”
This sentiment against the UAE is not limited to the government or the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN), which led Algeria’s liberation struggle against French colonialism and has ruled since, except for a few years in the 1990s.
Mass protests erupted in 2019 against corruption and increasing economic capture by the military elite, strangling an economy already suffering under neoliberal austerity. This movement, known as the Hirak, forced the then president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a veteran of the FLN, to resign.
But even in these protests against the government and the ruling FLN, “Down with the UAE” and “No to the UAE in the country of martyrs”, were among the popular placards and slogans.
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