Kim Harrisberg

As 2026 began, Ugandans and Iranians were plunged into digital darkness with authorities seeking to crack down on dissent by blocking internet communication.

This kind of cyber control is a growing trend. In 2025, 28 internet blackouts cost economies about $19.7 billion, a 156% increase from 2024, a new report from monitoring firm Top10VPN found. 

For 15 minutes in late November, tens of thousands of South Africans, clad in black, stopped what they were doing and lay down on the ground in parks, parking lots, fields and homes across the country.

This was part of a nationwide protest against gender-based violence and femicide to symbolise the 15 murders of women every day in South Africa.

Biometric IDs are being used to grant access to government services from medical treatment to voting registration across Africa, and those without digital identities are being left behind, a new report said.

The study by the African Digital Rights Network (ADRN), in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), analysed the spread of biometric IDs across 10 countries.

Across Africa, home-grown tech solutions are being designed to protect nature and people, from using artificial intelligence to monitor illegal logging or predict against floods, to building solar projects that power irrigation.

Tech experts say the surge of innovations faces challenges including shortages of funding and frequent power cuts, but this can also drive solutions such as greater use of solar power.

After buckling under the body blows of U.S. aid cuts this year, South African health organisations are exploring new ways to raise money through social bonds and resource pooling in a bid to recapture lost ground in the battle against HIV.

South Africa, which has the world's highest burden of HIV with about one-in-five people living with the virus, had relied on the United States for about 17% of its HIV budget until President Donald Trump's administration slashed aid early this year.

As global leaders land in Johannesburg for the first G20 summit on African soil, hundreds of climate protesters took to the streets to demand leaders give ordinary people more control over the continent's coveted critical minerals.

Several mineral experts and African leaders agree with the protesters: the G20 global leaders summit is an opportunity to call for these minerals like lithium and cobalt to benefit the continent where they are found.

Satellite images of Earth show much of the planet glittering with electrification, while most of Africa is still cloaked in darkness despite having the world's greatest solar power potential.

Energy poverty, which means a lack of stable and affordable access to electricity, impacts roughly 58% of Africa's population, or some 626 million people, according to the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) think tank.

As global powers scramble for critical minerals, African countries are pushing for new investment to process more of their own raw materials and meet their people's demands for economic growth and jobs, analysts say.

To capitalise on the burgeoning demand, the continent must address power shortages, skills gaps, trade barriers and limited industrial capacity.

Nobel Laureates, scientists, the World Health Organization and cities around the world have all backed a commitment to phase out planet-heating fossil fuels.

Supporters of the global Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative (FFNPTI) - with 17 countries and over one million individual signatories - is hoping to gain more traction at November's U.N. COP30 summit in Belem, Brazil.

The initiative is rapidly gaining momentum, said Africa Campaigner, Prince Papa, based in Nairobi.

Inspired by Gen Z uprisings from Nepal to Kenya, tens of thousands of young Madagascans have taken to the streets in recent weeks to demand an end to broken promises, bust services and bankrupt rule.

The island nation - home to rich minerals and fertile land - is one of the world's poorest, and demonstrators blame corruption at the top for a life they say is blighted by ceaseless power cuts, deep poverty and a dearth of opportunity.