China is stepping into a soft power vacuum created by the new US administration. Since Donald Trump was elected president, the country has eschewed soft power.
Africa has recorded a tremendous growth in its output of academic engineering research over the past 20 years. Greater collaboration can increase this growth even more.
Governments must understand that the factors making cities convenient and productive also make their residents prone to obesity. They must confront this challenge with intelligent, focused policies.
Social ties between Lake Victoria’s fisherfolk are critical for gaining access to credit, employment, maintaining reliable and skilled labour and access to markets.
New South African research supports evidence that urbanisation has a positive impact on people’s lives and must be managed appropriately for development.
Creating more opportunities for young women and girls to work and earn money is a possible solution to early marriages. Subsidising secondary education to keep poorer girls in school is another.
Policy needs to focus on making the teaching profession stable and more appealing. South Africa must ensure its locally trained teachers have more reason to stay in the country.
The protracted political crisis in Zimbabwe has worsened since President Mugabe fired vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa. Now the military has entered the fray, raising fears a coup is imminent.
Andrea Freidus, University of North Carolina – Charlotte
Voluntourists’ ability to change systems, alleviate poverty or provide support for vulnerable children is limited. They don’t have the skills and can perpetuate patronising and unhelpful ideas.
Activists often face intransigent regimes and ruthless warlords. But women can use traditional insights into femininity and motherhood for political mobilisation and resistance.
The rapid penetration of internet technologies in Africa provides hope for e-commerce’s continued growth. Potential online stores need to understand what draws or pushes customers away.
Malawi’s government wants schools to promote democratic principles. But there’s a contradiction between what students are taught and how they’re expected to behave.
For real integration to happen, the Pan African Parliament needs to be imbued with supranational law-making powers. But national sovereignty is something that many states are reluctant to give up.
Professor in Practice on Environmental Innovation, School of Social and Environmental Sustainability, University of Glasgow, UK, National University of Singapore