Green skills to help nature repair itself are scarce: what we’re doing to train more experts in South Africa and Senegal

| Insights & Views

Africas population is growing. This means more landscape change and development of supporting infrastructure. Ecosystems are under pressure, made worse by natural disasters induced by climate change. In response,...

Goma is threatened by conflict and a volcano: we’ve created a handbook to help hotspots like these

| Insights & Views

The city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was taken over by the M23 rebel group in January 2025. This was a tragic escalation of a decades-long conflict thats led to mass displacement and deaths. Goma, a...

Deeply religious African countries (surprisingly) provide little state support to religion – unlike countries in Europe

| Insights & Views

In most of the world, countries with religious populations are more likely to have governments that support religion through laws and policies. These laws might include religious education, funding for religious...

Murder of gay South African imam Muhsin Hendricks reignites queer Muslim debate

| Insights & Views

Dubbed the worlds first openly gay Imam, South African religious leader Muhsin Hendricks was gunned down on 15 February 2025 in an attack that many believe was targeted. Tributes have poured in across the world, but so...

A new theory explains how water first arrived on Earth

| Insights & Views

How did Earth become a blue planet? NASA, CC BY When Earth first formed, it was too hot to retain ice. This means all the water on our planet must have originated from extraterrestrial sources. Studies of ancient...

EU consumers don’t trust US goods: a look into Trump’s trade deficit claims

| Insights & Views

ltummy/Shutterstock The US-EU trade war is gathering pace. Following the imposition of 25% US import tariffs on steel and aluminium from March 12, President Trump has announced further plans to introduce reciprocal tariffs...

Remembering the Poly-1: what NZ’s forgotten homegrown school computer can teach us about state-led innovation

| Insights & Views

The Poly-1. MOTAT , CC BY-NC Some 45 years ago, a team of staff and students at Wellington Polytechnic designed and built a desktop computer with an operating system customised for the needs of New Zealand schools. The...