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        <description><![CDATA[The Conversation is a network of not-for-profit media outlets that publish news stories written by academics and researchers.]]></description>
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            <title>African entrepreneurs operate in tough conditions: the skills they’ve honed could be useful ...</title>
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            <description><![CDATA[When people talk about entrepreneurship in Africa, the conversation usually starts with everything that’s missing. Limited funding. Weak infrastructure. Poor internet connectivity. Unreliable electricity. Bureaucracy. Corruption.  The implicit message is that African entrepreneurs succeed despite these disadvantages.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>The Conversation</category>
            <pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 10:38:00 +0200</pubDate>
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            <title>Gender‑based violence survivors need more than justice: four keys to recovery</title>
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            <description><![CDATA[Gender-based violence in Africa is often treated as a legal, social or policing problem. But these responses don’t fully address the conditions that shape the lives of women facing violence or the conditions they face in recovery. Based on their expertise in law, the criminal justice system and their relationship with social justice issues, Azwihangwisi Judith Mphidi and Debra Pheiffer reviewed 10 research papers on responses to gender-based violence. Their findings offer important lessons from South Africa on how survivors are rebuilding their lives.  What are the biggest challenges that survivors of gender-based violence face? The studies we reviewed reflected the fact that women don’t experience violence as only a legal problem, or only an economic one, or only a psychological one. They experience it across all dimensions of their lives.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>The Conversation</category>
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            <title>Shadows of past political violence shape the lives of young Africans for years – a study of ...</title>
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            <description><![CDATA[Political violence refers to the use of force by groups pursuing political goals. It can include attacks on civilians, armed clashes, riots and explosions, all of which cause obvious and immediate harm.  But the effects of political violence can continue long after the violence itself has ended.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
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            <title>Urban farming helps Johannesburg’s poorest households survive – now it needs bigger investment</title>
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            <description><![CDATA[Urban agriculture, where plants and livestock are farmed within city limits, is increasingly recognised and promoted as a solution to food insecurity and a way to green cities so that they adapt to climate change.  It includes farming plants upwards (vertical systems), on roofs (green roofs), in the garden and in communal areas.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
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            <title>Blaming migrants ignores the real causes of South Africa’s economic crisis</title>
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            <description><![CDATA[South Africa is in the midst of its most significant anti-immigrant mobilisation in years.  The emergence of the March and March movement, calls for the mass deportation of undocumented migrants by 30 June 2026, growing anti-immigrant violence, and the repatriation of foreign nationals by several African governments have pushed immigration to the centre of national debate.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>The Conversation</category>
            <pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2026 15:08:00 +0200</pubDate>
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            <description><![CDATA[Just over a third (38%) of the residents of South Africa’s commercial capital, Johannesburg, reported being satisfied with their electricity services in a survey conducted in 2023/2024. This was down from 77% in 2017/18. The decline reflected years of citizen concerns about the service. In 2026 the auditor general noted that the city had spent only 1% of its operating budget on maintenance in 2024/25, against a national treasury guideline of 8%. As part of a response to these concerns, in May ...]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
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            <title>How a basic solar grant brought cheaper electricity to one shack settlement in South Africa</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/how-a-basic-solar-grant-brought-cheaper-electricity-to-one-shack-settlement-in-south-africa-2026-06-25</link>
            <description><![CDATA[In South Africa, 47% of the national population is energy poor, meaning that they spend more than 10%-15% of their income on power and still do not have nearly enough for their basic needs.  The problem is getting worse as informal or shack settlements continue to grow. This growth has accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of households exposed to precarious energy conditions is rising.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>The Conversation</category>
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            <title>Fossil fuels still dominate in Africa’s electricity future – study tracks 3 139 power plants</title>
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            <description><![CDATA[Only about 57% of the people in Africa have access to electricity, the vast majority of them in sub-Saharan Africa. To meet the United Nations goal of everyone having access to affordable electricity by 2030, African countries will need to rapidly expand electricity generation.  However, generating more electricity will have an effect on available water resources and climate change. Power plants use water and emit greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (which causes global warming) to generate electricity. For instance, coal-fired electricity emits huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Thermal and nuclear power plants use water for cooling, hydropower needs water to move its turbines, and solar panels need water for cleaning.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
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            <title>We are mapping and monitoring Africa’s underground water supplies in preparation for a hotter ...</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/we-are-mapping-and-monitoring-africas-underground-water-supplies-in-preparation-for-a-hotter-future-scientists-2026-06-24</link>
            <description><![CDATA[As global temperatures rise, surface waters – including rivers, lakes and reservoirs – are becoming dangerously erratic. This is because in a hotter climate, there are rapid swings between intense evaporation and sudden, extreme rainfall.  Water is at the centre of the climate crisis. In Africa, around 400-million people currently lack access to basic drinking water services.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
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            <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:04:00 +0200</pubDate>
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            <title>Vaccine hesitancy can’t be boiled down to a single factor: what we learnt in South Africa and ...</title>
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            <description><![CDATA[Vaccine uptake has been declining in Brazil and South Africa over the last decade. This decline has reversed important gains in protecting children against vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, polio, diphtheria and whooping cough.  Both countries have well-established, universal and free childhood immunisation programmes. In Brazil, coverage has dropped 10-20 percentage points since 2016 and remains below the 95% target for several routine vaccines. In South Africa, vaccination coverage has steadily declined since 2015. For example, coverage for the first dose of measles-containing vaccine (MCV1), a key indicator of immunisation programme performance, decreased from 86% in 2015 to 76% in 2024.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
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