The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Jul 23 2026 (IPS) - Every morning, as the Indian Ocean retreats from the reef off Zanzibar’s Jambiani village, Chiku Chande steps into the knee-deep lagoon carrying bundles of seaweed seedlings. Years of farming these waters have taught her about every channel and coral outcrop. But lately, the corals that once glowed in brown and gold have become chalky white.
“You don’t need anyone to tell you these changes,” Chande tells IPS. “We see it with our own eyes. The coral has lost its colour.”
Like many families in Jambiani, the 48-year-old grandmother depends on the reef. It shelters her seaweed farm from crashing Indian Ocean waves, supports fish stocks and brings tourists to the village. As the corals bleach and slowly die, she worries about the future.
Chande has watched the reef change year after year. Scientists say her observations mirror what is happening across the world’s tropical oceans.
Scientists long regarded El Niño – the natural warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that disrupts weather patterns globally – as the main driver of mass coral bleaching
A new study led by Climate Central and published in Oceanography concludes that human-induced climate change has driven every global coral bleaching event over the past four decades. The researchers found greenhouse gas emissions have warmed the oceans so much that El Niño now acts mainly as a trigger rather than the root cause.
“Our study shows that without climate change, coral bleaching would be a rare and isolated event, and global mass coral bleaching simply would not occur,” says Andrew Pershing, Climate Central’s chief programme officer and the study’s lead author.
2026-2027 projected bleaching risk map. A report published in Oceanography argues that nearly every global coral bleaching event over the past 40 years would not have occurred
without human-caused climate change. Credit: Oceanography
Corals bleach when unusually warm water forces them to expel the microscopic algae that provide most of their food and give them their vibrant colours. If temperatures quickly return to normal, corals can recover. But prolonged heat starves them and can kill entire reef ecosystems.
To determine how much of that warming came from human activity, researchers compared today’s sea surface temperatures with computer simulations of a world unaffected by greenhouse gas emissions. They then assessed whether bleaching would still have occurred under those cooler conditions.
Their analysis showed that every global bleaching event since 1998 – including those in 1998, 2010, 2014-2017 and the ongoing event that began in 2023 – required human-caused warming to push ocean temperatures beyond bleaching thresholds. Although El Niño coincided with many of those events, the study found they would not have become global bleaching episodes without decades of warming driven by fossil fuel emissions.
Women seaweed farmers in Zanzibar’s Jambiani village receive guidance while tending seaweed farms in the shallow lagoon, where warming seas have also left nearby coral reefs increasingly bleached. Scientists say human-caused climate change, rather than natural climate cycles, has driven every global mass coral bleaching event on record. Credit: Muhidin Michuzi
The findings have particular implications for Tanzania.
The country’s 1,400-kilometre coastline, which includes the reefs surrounding Zanzibar, Pemba and Mafia islands, supports fisheries, tourism and thousands of coastal livelihoods. Healthy reefs also protect beaches and coastal settlements by absorbing up to 97 percent of incoming wave energy, reducing erosion and storm damage.
As reefs deteriorate, fish populations decline, tourism suffers and coastlines become increasingly vulnerable to flooding and erosion.
Similar pressures are happening across tropical reefs worldwide. Although coral reefs cover less than one percent of the ocean floor, they support roughly a quarter of all marine species and generate an estimated US$2.7 trillion annually in ecosystem services through fisheries, tourism and coastal protection. The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network estimates the world lost about 14 percent of its coral between 2009 and 2018 as repeated marine heatwaves left reefs too little time to recover.
Recent ocean temperature records suggest the pressure is intensifying.
According to the Copernicus Marine Service, June 2026 was the warmest June on record for global sea surface temperatures, while marine heatwaves covered about 82 percent of the world’s oceans by the end of the month. Because the oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases, marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and severe, increasing the likelihood of coral bleaching.
The Climate Central researchers project that by 2028 human-caused warming will outweigh El Niño’s influence in every coral reef region worldwide. Bleaching, they say, will increasingly reflect persistently warmer oceans rather than unusually strong natural climate cycles.
Using the same attribution methods, the researchers also assessed bleaching risk during the developing 2026-2027 El Niño. They found that while the climate pattern could still trigger bleaching in some regions, human-caused warming would account for most of the risk, particularly in the southern Caribbean, the Pacific coasts of Central and South America, and parts of East and Southeast Asia.
Globally, the monthly average sea-surface temperature for the extra-polar ocean (60°S–60°N) was the highest for June, exceeding the previous record set in June 2024 by just 0.01ºC. This partly reflected the development of strong El Niño conditions in the equatorial Pacific, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service. Credit: ECMWF/Copernicus Climate Change Service
The study challenges the long-held assumption that bleaching is mainly a response to natural climate cycles. Researchers say bleaching can no longer be viewed as an occasional event linked to natural climate cycles; scientists say it is increasingly becoming a recurring consequence of steadily warming oceans.
“By isolating the effect of climate change, our study shows that the fate of reefs is closely tied to how much carbon pollution goes into the atmosphere. Protecting reefs from overfishing and pollution is very important. We need as many thriving reef areas as possible. Even during severe events, there are often pockets of coral that persist. These areas can be the source for recovery in the short and long term,” Pershing tells IPS
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that even if global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, up to 90 percent of the world’s coral reefs could disappear by mid-century. At 2 degrees Celsius of warming, losses could reach 99 percent.
Chande does not speak in terms of climate attribution. She only knows the reef looks different from when she began farming seaweed. Researchers say the bleaching she has witnessed reflects a much deeper shift: oceans that have steadily warmed over decades because of greenhouse gas emissions.
“When I was younger, the corals were full of colour and fish,” she said. “Now everything looks white. I worry about what is happening to the sea,” she says.
IPS UN Bureau Report
NEW YORK, Jul 23 2026 (IPS) - Under a new rule proposed by the Department of Homeland Security, the duration of “I visas” for foreign media will be slashed from renewable multi year periods—often up to five years—to a maximum of 240 days, and just 90 days for Chinese journalists. Renewals would no longer be a routine administrative step tied to continued employment and compliance with the law, but a discretionary privilege the government can grant or withhold at will.
Turning Journalist Visas into a Weapon
The Foreign Press Association and other media organizations have warned that such a regime will make it “impossible” for correspondents to do their jobs: they cannot build sources, understand the country’s complex politics, or maintain anything resembling a family life if their legal status expires every few months and is constantly subject to political whim. The Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the United States rightly calls this a “flagrant attack on press freedom” designed to chill coverage by making unfavorable reporting a potential visa liability.
An Assault on the Spirit of the First Amendment
Formally, the First Amendment binds Congress, not consular officers or immigration regulators. But in substance, the proposed rule is a direct affront to the First Amendment’s core principle: that a free press must be able to scrutinize those in power without fear of retaliation.
By conditioning a journalist’s ability to live and work in the United States on repeated, discretionary renewals, the administration is creating precisely the climate of self censorship that the First Amendment was meant to prevent. If a reporter knows that a critical story about the president or his allies might translate into a denied extension, the line between immigration policy and political reprisal evaporates.
This is not a hypothetical danger. The rule expressly allows the government to scrutinize the “content” a journalist is covering when deciding whether to grant an extension, opening the door to ideological filtering of who gets to report from the United States. That logic is indistinguishable from the methods long used by authoritarian regimes that the United States has historically condemned.
A Tool for Selective Punishment
The proposal also creates a ready made instrument for selective punishment of journalists from countries with which the Trump administration has tense or adversarial relations. The singling out of Chinese journalists for especially harsh 90 day limits is an explicit signal that Washington is prepared to wield visa policy as a geopolitical stick, not a neutral administrative tool.
Once this precedent is established, nothing prevents the administration from tightening the screw further on reporters from other states whose governments it wishes to pressure—or punish. The result would be a two tiered press landscape in which journalists from favored countries enjoy relative stability, while those from disfavored states face constant uncertainty and the implicit demand to “behave.”
Collateral Damage to US Society and Industry
The damage, however, would not be confined to newsrooms. International coverage of the United States is a critical artery for sectors that depend on global visibility and confidence, including finance, higher education, entertainment, sports, tourism, and cultural institutions. If it becomes prohibitively expensive or logistically impossible for foreign outlets to station correspondents in the US for more than a few months, many will simply relocate their hubs elsewhere.
That relocation carries a cost: fewer nuanced stories about American democracy, markets, universities, and culture, and more reliance on second hand or adversarial narratives. For a country that still claims leadership of a “free world,” deliberately undermining the global visibility of its own society is more than self defeating; it is profoundly hypocritical.
Undermining Treaty Commitments and Global Standing
There is an additional, often overlooked dimension: these restrictions risk clashing with US obligations under the UN Headquarters Agreement and related arrangements governing access for foreign journalists covering the United Nations. New York is not only an American city; it is the seat of an international organization whose work depends on open media access from all member states.
For decades, Washington has rightly insisted that host states of international institutions must guarantee access to the press and avoid politicizing visas. If the United States itself begins to weaponize journalist visas, it hands every authoritarian government a ready made excuse to do the same, eroding what remains of an already fragile global norm.
What Must Be Done
This proposal is not inevitable. It is a regulatory measure that can be challenged, delayed, and ultimately defeated through a combination of legal action, congressional oversight, diplomatic pressure, and public mobilization. Media organizations, civil liberties groups, universities, and US industries that depend on international coverage should submit formal complaints, petition Congress to block implementation, and prepare litigation arguing that the rule is arbitrary, discriminatory, and incompatible with the constitutional protection of a free press.
Foreign governments and international bodies, including the UN, should make it clear that undermining foreign press access in the United States will invite reciprocal restrictions on American journalists abroad—further isolating US audiences from the world. And American citizens, who ultimately bear the cost of an information starved public sphere, must insist that their government not abuse immigration law as a backdoor censorship tool.
It is no accident that Trump, who is openly hostile to independent media, now seeks to transform visas into levers of control over who may report on it. If this rule stands, it will not only harm thousands of foreign journalists and their families; it will further entrench a creeping authoritarianism in America that fears scrutiny above all else, and that is precisely why it must be stopped.
Dr Alon Ben-Meir is President, Institute for Humanitarian Conflict Resolution
IPS UN Bureau
Excerpt:
For nearly a century, foreign correspondents have come to the United States precisely because this country prided itself on welcoming scrutiny. Now, the Trump administration proposes to turn that legacy on its head—by transforming visas for international journalists into instruments of controlKUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 23 2026 (IPS) - Sunday’s World Cup final focused world attention on the stench of corruption, past and current, surrounding some of its main protagonists, including Argentina, and the presidents of FIFA, Argentina and the main host nation.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Nick Corbishley has exposed the corruption of World Cup football and Argentina’s Milei government, enthusiastically supported by US President Trump’s ‘Donroe Doctrine’.
In the run-up, Argentina committed the most fouls — largely in midfield to disrupt their opponents’ play — but only received a controversial red card in the final. It had the most opponents’ goals disallowed but never conceded a penalty.
Of course, there are always subjective elements in applying football rules, and it is difficult to prove foul play. But it is suspicious when referees refuse to use a video-assisted referee (VAR) to check for fouls.
In Argentina’s first game, Messi stepped on an Algerian opponent’s Achille’s tendon with his studs up. Such an offence would typically get a red card, but in this case, there was no card or VAR check.
As many presume, FIFA would not allow the biggest star of world football, now playing in the US league, to get a match ban at the start of the tournament; it would have been a business disaster.
Many believe the ‘inconsistent’ use of rules and VAR checks helped Argentina reach yet another World Cup final. With VAR, the inconsistent application of rules and procedures, such as awarding cards, can tip games with narrow margins in a team’s favour.
Iggy Rodriguez
While controversial refereeing and VAR decisions were common in this tournament, Argentina has been accused more than any other team. Many believe the level football field was tilted to favour Argentina and its superstar, Messi.
Such advantages only work at the World Cup level if the team is highly competent and competitive, which Argentina certainly is. The latest World Cup has seriously tarnished the reputation of FIFA and football itself.
Billionaire haven
Meanwhile, Argentine President Javier Milei is trying to remove most remaining restrictions on foreign ownership of Argentine land.
A day after the England semi-final, the Argentine Senate began debating Milei’s bill on the “inviolability of private property”. If passed, it would repeal a 2011 law limiting the acquisition and ownership of rural land by foreigners.
As foreign purchases of Argentine land surged after its late 20th century crisis, its Congress limited sales to foreigners. Already, 13.2 million hectares, or 5% of Argentina, are foreign owned. The Milei government now wants to eliminate remaining restrictions on land sales to foreigners.
Foreign ownership of Argentine land is concentrated in specific areas such as Patagonia, rich in energy and mineral resources. Once approved, the bill will allow foreigners to own such strategic areas with water, minerals and foreign borders.
Peter Thiel, famous for arguing ‘competition is for losers’, is promoting the privatisation of public land by creating charter cities such as Prospera Inc in Honduras.
Thiel recently moved to Buenos Aires, where he is believed to be advising the Milei government. Apparently, he envisions Argentina as an economic haven cum ‘laboratory’ for his investments.
Forbes reports Milei is trying to attract billionaires like Thiel to his “new land of freedom” with a full-citizenship-by-investment scheme and by eliminating property ownership restrictions.
Milei scolded Argentina’s footballers and fans for protesting Britain’s ongoing rule of the Falkland Islands at the England semi-final as his government tries to sell off the most valuable rural Argentine land.
As the dispute between Honduras and Prospera Inc. has shown, once sovereign land is transferred into foreign hands protected by international investment treaties, getting that land back is nearly impossible.
From Nazi to Zionist refuge
Milei enjoys Netanyahu’s and Trump’s support, both of whom want him to stay in power.
Asked why he supported Argentina in the World Cup, Netanyahu made clear it had more to do with Milei than Messi. “Milei is a huge friend of Israel”, recently calling himself the “most Zionist president on the planet”.
Patagonia was identified as a possible site for the establishment of a Jewish State by Theodor Herzl, the father of political Zionism, in the late 19th century. After World War Two, the southern cone of South America became a haven for fascist war criminals fleeing Europe.
Milei’s government has cut public spending and welfare benefits for Argentine citizens. During the last Argentine summer from December to February, vast Patagonian forests went up in flames after Milei cut Argentina’s fire-fighting budget by 80%!
Many believe the government has agreed to allow Israeli settlement on the scorched earth after an Israeli was caught setting fire to 17,000 acres in Chilean Patagonia over a decade ago.
Milei has already signed agreements with the Netanyahu government to grant Israeli citizens living in Argentina access to all government benefits, including pensions, maternity leave and disability allowance.
In the final, Argentina went down to Spain, one of a few European countries to oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the US-Israeli war against Iran, despite repeated threats by Trump.
Despite Spain’s conquistador and fascist past, much of the world supported Spain today against the land of Maradona and Messi, two of the most popular icons of the beautiful game.
Iggy Rodriguez is a Filipino artist and football enthusiast. His solo exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, ‘Under a Borrowed Sun’, runs till mid-August.
IPS UN Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 22 2026 (IPS) - Despite growing up and working in vastly different geographic regions and environments — one shaped by decades of armed conflict and political instability, and the other by remote, hard-to-reach areas — both Sagal and Johao encounter children daily who have never been vaccinated. Sagal and Johao are members of UNICEF’s Global Youth Health Advisory Group, where they advance children’s health by shaping UNICEF’s strategies, policies, and campaigns, while working directly in their own countries to connect community realities to global conversations about children’s health.
Sagal, 23, lives in the Darul-Salam district in Mogadishu, Somalia, where she works as a junior doctor in maternal and child health. Sagal’s passion lies in promoting vaccine confidence, addressing health misinformation, and empowering the youth to become advocates for healthier communities, she told Inter Press Service. While global vaccine coverage is improving, Sagal describes Somalia’s situation as “still very difficult.” Somalia has one of the lowest vaccination rates due to years of conflict, and while coverage is improving, “not all children are reached equally and a child’s chance to get vaccines depends on where they live, especially in unsafe or hard-to-reach places.”
Johao, 14, lives in Ecuador’s Amazon region, where he has seen firsthand the realities of why children in rural, remote, and isolated areas struggle to get vaccinated. Johao has hands-on volunteer experience in infectious disease research and community health projects and is also a part of U-Report, GeneraciónMÁS, and FixMyFood networks in Ecuador. The biggest challenges Johao encounters when it comes to childhood vaccination campaigns, he told Inter Press Service, are “reaching communities with limited infrastructure, overcoming transportation difficulties, and ensuring that accurate information reaches families before misinformation does.” Both conflict-affected and hard-to-reach areas face their own challenges, but what is particularly difficult in remote communities is “isolation and limited access to essential services.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines “zero-dose” children as those who lack access to or are never reached by routine immunization services, which is measured as children who have never received their first dose of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP). According to the annual WHO-UNICEF Estimates of National Immunization Coverage (WUENIC), 90 percent of infants globally received at least one dose of a DTP vaccine and 85 percent completed the three-dose series in 2025. However, in 2025, an estimated 13.5 million zero-dose children did not receive a single vaccine in their first year of life, and an estimated 7.3 million infants received their first DTP vaccine but dropped out before receiving their first measles dose. Globally, more than half of all zero-dose children live in fragile, conflict-affected or vulnerable countries (FCV) where immunization programs are affected by political instability, insecurity, and underfunding.
The Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) Mid-Term Review, identified FCVs as “one of the greatest challenges to achieving global immunization goals.” In Somalia, Sagal explained how “most zero dose and dropout children live in places that are unsafe, far away, or completely unreachable. These children face many problems at the same time, including, no vaccines, poor nutrition, very few health services, and almost no social support.”
Sagal, 23, a Somalian junior doctor and member of the UNICEF Global Youth Health Advisory Group. Credit: UNICEF
The situation is similar in Ecuador, where Johao explained, “children who have never received vaccines often live in remote rural or Indigenous communities, where transportation is limited and access to health services can be difficult.”
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell emphasized that while vaccination rates have bounced back since dropping during the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of children are still left vulnerable due to displacement, poverty and war.
“We must reach every child, and we must rebuild trust where it is fraying. No child should suffer from a disease that a simple vaccine can prevent,” said Russell.
WHO and UNICEF have identified the urgent need to counter the spread of misleading information and erosion of trust, which has led to a surge in vaccine hesitancy and anti-science sentiment. In particular, IA2030 called for tailored support in FCV settings to “promote nuanced and context-specific advocacy messaging and approaches, and foster trust through sustained community engagement.”
Aside from logistical access, there are other factors that determine people’s decisions to get vaccinations. Sagal shared that in Somalia people forgo vaccinations for a variety of reasons, including fear of vaccine side effects or rumors that vaccines cause infertility. In Ecuador, Johao detailed how some families lack clear information regarding vaccination schedules and have vaccine concerns influenced by misinformation, with these “barriers affecting their trust in and ability to access health services.”
As a member of the UNICEF Global Youth Health Advisory Group, Johao, 14, speaks to the experiences of children in Amazon communities in Ecuador. Credit: UNICEF
In FCV and hard-to-reach settings, mistrust surrounding vaccines is driven by multiple complex and multifaceted aspects, including misinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, religious opposition, low health literacy, sociodemographic factors, and the politicization of vaccines that undermines science.
Both Sagal and Johao’s work sits at the intersection of access and trust. As members of the UNICEF Global Youth Health Advisory Group, Sagal and Johao are not only bringing vaccines to children who would otherwise be missed, but doing so in contexts where the social and political conditions that make vaccination difficult are the same conditions their communities live with every day.
When it comes to rebuilding trust and reaching children in FCV settings, youth advocates’ “presence and credibility help [them] enter spaces where formal systems cannot,” Sagal said. “Youth advocates speak the same language and come from the same communities, [so] families trust us more than big institutions.” In Somalia, she explained, youth advocates help to rebuild trust in fragile areas by “reaching other young people quickly, communicating in a natural and friendly way, fighting misinformation fast, and mobilizing communities faster than traditional actors.”
Across settings, culture, language, and traditions strongly influence health decisions. Johao noted how “vaccination messages are more effective when they are communicated respectfully and acknowledge local knowledge and beliefs.”
In order to reach the IA2030 goal and ensure vaccines reach everyone, everywhere, at every age, WHO and UNICEF have put forth four concrete actions. These actions include strengthening immunization programs in FCV settings, countering false and misleading health information to support vaccine uptake, increasing and sustaining global funding for immunization programs, and investing in stronger data and disease surveillance systems.
Sagal and Johao’s lived experiences highlight the dire need for these actions. From Sagal’s experiences, zero-dose children “need health and nutrition support delivered in ways that work in fragile and dangerous environments.” As members of the UNICEF Global Youth Health Advisory Group, Johao explained that to effectively help their communities, “we need access to reliable information, training, resources, and opportunities to work closely with health professionals and community leaders.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jul 22 2026 (IPS) - In September 2024, an outbreak of Marburg virus disease in South Ethiopia was confirmed, contained, and declared over within three months.
In 2023, Tanzania contained a haemorrhagic fever outbreak that could have easily become a pandemic in a record 90 days. It is no accident that disease outbreaks now happen briskly rather than as a full-blown crisis.
Thanks to a steady, Africa-wide public rollout of laboratories, surveillance networks, trained epidemiologists, and emergency operations centres, the next pandemic could test Africa’s health preparedness.
According to the 2026 Africa Health Security (AHS) Index – an independent, public-sourced assessment of epidemic and pandemic preparedness – African countries are improving their ability to detect and prevent health threats. An overwhelming majority of countries – 52 out of 54 – and five of six categories have shown improvement since the last assessment in 2021.
The AHS Index, which builds on the inaugural Global Health Security Index, has been developed specifically for Africa. It assesses pandemic preparedness in terms of prevention, detection and reporting; rapid response; health systems capacity; commitment to international norms; and risk environment.
“The measurable increase in capacity is the result of dedication, hard work, and investment in the health security of Africa over recent years, but much more is needed. Substantial gaps remain that can mean the difference between a small outbreak and an international pandemic. Investments made today will determine Africa’s capacity to address the health threats of tomorrow,” said Dr Wilmot James, senior adviser to the Brown University Pandemic Center and a former member of Parliament and shadow minister of health in South Africa.
“Recent declines in overseas development assistance underline the need for governments to prioritise resources and strengthen the systems that address health emergencies.”
Ready But Not Steady
Judy Omumbo, Head of Partnerships and Resource Mobilisation at the Science for Africa Foundation. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
Judy Omumbo, Head of Partnerships & Resource Mobilisation, Science for Africa Foundation, emphasising that we can only manage what we measure, said that until now there has been no single tool to measure preparedness consistently across every country in Africa using verifiable data.
“The data show real, broad-based progress across this continent, but they also show, unambiguously, that no country is yet adequately prepared for the kind of emerging threat landscape that it faces,” said Omumbo, an epidemiologist.
Developed by the Brown University Pandemic Center, the AHS Index shows that progress made is not sufficient to buttress the continent against future pandemics, health experts observed.
Hayley Severance, Deputy Vice President of Global Biological Policy and Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a global security non-profit based in the US, said Africa has improved its pandemic preparedness by 30 percent but growing risks could trigger a backslide.
“Progress has been made, and we have risen to 41.5 out of 100, but we are still not prepared,” Severance said at a press briefing ahead of the index launch, which measures countries’ capacity to detect and respond to emerging infections.
“More investment and more political will need to be put toward pandemic preparedness to get us closer to that 100 average score across the continent.”
While the index scores indicate real progress in prevention, detection and response to pandemics, scant gains, funding gaps, political insecurity and climate change risk blunting Africa’s new health spearhead
Omumbo underscored that disease outbreaks were occurring more frequently, such as the current Ebola outbreak in Central Africa, and that climate change was worsening the situation by pushing diseases into new areas and straining health systems.
Invest more in health
Wilmot James, Senior Adviser, Brown University Pandemic Center. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
In June, the Africa CDC warned that the ongoing Ebola outbreak could be the largest ever, underscoring the urgent need for continued investment in health security preparedness.
An outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in May 2026, is currently ravaging the Democratic Republic of Congo and spreading to Uganda, with cases confirmed in Kampala. The WHO’s Regional Emergency Director for Africa rates the current response as only a “three or four” out of ten in terms of sufficiency.
“We note that a significant gap in health security funding commitments remains,” Rachel Staley Grant, senior director, Global Biological Policy and Programs, of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, told IPS. “Domestic and international resourcing of pandemic preparedness is an area that countries and global partners need to continue to track—we have recommended the creation of a global pandemic spending tracker to do just this work.
The health experts recommend that African governments accelerate investments in research and preparedness to include biosecurity and biosafety resources and training.
“Capacity without safety and security training is a liability, not an asset,” James emphasised. “It is a moral responsibility we have to use all the resources, all the technology, all the expertise, and all the systems to make it possible to stop outbreaks from turning into pandemics.”
The health experts called on governments to expand investment in emerging surveillance networks for early warning and detection.
“Early detection is the single biggest lever we have for preventing an outbreak from becoming a crisis,” James said.
Furthermore, governments need to build medical and medical countermeasure deployment capabilities to ensure that vaccines and therapeutics manufactured in Africa are delivered to where they are needed and to have people trust them enough to take them.
The experts also recommended that a harmonised Emergency Use Authorisation Framework should be established to expedite the regulatory pathways for medical countermeasures so that life-saving tools are not held up by fragmented approval processes across countries. In addition, countries were urged to formalise inter-country cooperation agreements to combat outbreaks because health threats crossed borders.
Governments should commit to financing pandemic preparedness through domestic resources and global commitments, the experts recommend.
The index charted health preparedness gains against a backdrop of significant international support, a cushion that is now fast disappearing.
African Union member countries have committed to allocating 15% of national budgets to health under the 2001 Abuja Declaration, but most countries have missed this target, indicating difficulties in allocating more funding to the health sector.
“The financial situation of many African governments, not all, is that some are heavily indebted, and there’s very little wiggle room from a fiscal point of view, so this is a heavy duty call on governments to spend more,” James said in response to a question from IPS. “There has to be some kind of fiscal rebalancing to make sure that governments do what they ought to do in terms of saving citizens’ lives.”
Health Sovereignty Still Elusive
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) notes that African countries import over 90% of their health commodities, despite attempts to promote local manufacturing, pooled procurement, and domestic funding for the health sector.
With external health aid to Africa having shrunk by 70% between 2021 and 2025, the Africa CDC launched a continent-wide strategy to radically transform how health systems are financed, putting African resources at the centre of African health.
The Africa CDC noted that the sharp decline in official development assistance, along with a 41% surge in disease outbreaks from 2022 to 2024, overwhelmed already stretched health systems and warned that without urgent reform, Africa risked losing decades of hard-won progress in disease control, maternal care, and epidemic preparedness.
“Africa cannot continue outsourcing its health security,” Jean Kaseya, Director General of the Africa CDC, said at the launch of a new Financing Strategy for Africa in 2025.
“This strategy is not about aid — it’s about ownership. We are building a future where Africa invests in its people, drives its own health agenda, and responds to crises with speed, strength, and self-reliance.”
Development assistance for health has declined from roughly US$80 billion in 2021 to US$39 billion in 2025, according to the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), which has warned that Africa’s reliance on external financing and imported medical supplies leaves it vulnerable to price shocks and supply disruptions.
Africa spends about US$145 billion annually on health, less than half of which comes from public budgets, forcing families to bear high out‑of‑pocket costs.”
ECA Executive Secretary Claver Gatete has highlighted mobilising domestic revenues through innovative financing tools and developing pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing via AfCFTA-enabled regional value chains as priorities for unlocking Africa’s health sovereignty.
As the global attention shifts to the next pandemic, Africa’s progress is a rare bright spot, a reminder that health security is a journey and not a destination
IPS UN Bureau Report
Excerpt:
Against the backdrop of an Ebola disease outbreak, the new Africa Health Security (AHS) Index, released today, reveals significant gaps in critical health infrastructure despite important progress in health security capacity in recent years.
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 22 2026 (IPS) - A proposal to restrict US visas to foreign journalists assigned to cover the US has triggered a strong protest from the New York-based Foreign Press Association (FPA).
The FPA says it is dismayed by the US administration’s proposals for restricting international press visas. The shortened duration of the press “I” visa would make it impossible for overseas press to maintain consistent coverage of the US, let alone staff a bureau.
The likely administrative backlogs and possible politically motivated visa denials fly in the face of the First Amendment in the US and challenge international media standards.
“The demand for frequent visa renewal obviates any chance that correspondents could maintain any kind of family life, let alone to develop the network of sources and resources essential for professional journalism.”
“The benefits of free press coverage stand in their own right. However, we should also point out that many essential US industries depend on international media coverage.”
Markets, education, entertainment, STEM, sports, and culture are just some examples of industries where companies and institutions could decide to relocate to more cosmopolitan and accessible countries, the FPA said.
The administration rule changes reducing the length of stay for foreign journalist (I) visas to 240 days and 90 days for Chinese journalists harm the international media’s ability to cover the United States. Journalists, who have spent years building relationships and developing a deep understanding of the U.S. economy, people, culture, and politics, would join the millions whose ability to travel to and work in the U.S. is challenged by the administration’s policies.
According to the US State Department, media (I) visas are for representatives of the foreign media, including members of the press, radio, film, and print industries. The media representative must be traveling temporarily to the United States to work in their profession. The individual may only participate in informational or educational activities, essential to the foreign media function.
Activities in the United States while on a media (I) visa must be for a media organization with a home office outside of the United States. Activities in the United States must be informational in nature and generally associated with the newsgathering process and reporting on current events.
Since at least the Second World War, the FPA pointed out, the State Department has set an example for other countries with its untrammelled welcome for the foreign press and its consistent defense of First Amendment rights. The flurry of reflexive xenophobia represented by these proposals reverses all those decades in a way that clearly does not take account of the needs of the press, nor indeed of the USA.
“Many of us can testify to the professional development of journalists from more restrictive countries like China when exposed to a more open press here, which makes it even more illogical that the proposals impose additional restrictions on Chinese media”.
“We recall that the Headquarters Treaty with the United Nations and other international bodies commits the host country, the US, to facilitate entry to press from member countries to cover the work, and cannot see any provisions to ensure that this international treaty obligation is fulfilled. Once again this suggests that these proposals were rushed through without consideration of the realities, and we can testify, with no consultation with the media affected”.
Ian Williams, President, Foreign Press Association of the USA, told Inter Press Service (IPS), “It’s worse than a crime; it’s a screw-up (mistake), as Napoleon’s general didn’t say… They have lumped journalists in with the overall category of foreigners and acted with reflexive xenophobia—perhaps exacerbated because if there’s any group they hate more than foreigners, it’s journalists.”
The proposals, he said, show no sign of intelligent appreciation of the role of journalism or journalists, and they have produced no statistics for journalists and the alleged threat to security or immigration. Their arguments and proposals are an exercise in knee-jerk prejudice, a reflex that operates without the intervention of the intellect.
“One also wonders whether they have given any thought to American interests. Whatever you think of their social utility, NYSE and NASDAQ depend on global media for international investors,” he said
Similarly, as one would expect from a bunch of Philistines with no professional experience, by bundling the media, along with educational visas, they may have muddied the waters. Higher education has a heavy dependence on foreign tuition income, and they will fight back politically and in the courts, maybe joined by the Murdoch Press, which has regularly imported reactionary talent from abroad.
“Ironically one thinks of the foreign press personalities who have come into the USA—people like Rupert Murdoch, Andrew Neill, Douglas Murray, Conrad Black, Andrew Sullivan, and Stuart Varney—and furthered the conservative cause here, but that is not who they are thinking about,” declared Williams, a former President of the UN Correspondents’ Association (UNCA).
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, President, Institute for Humanitarian Conflict Resolution, told IPS that by conditioning a journalist’s ability to live and work in the United States on repeated, discretionary renewals, the administration is creating precisely the climate of self-censorship that the First Amendment was meant to prevent.
If a reporter knows that a critical story about the president or his allies might translate into a denied extension, the line between immigration policy and political reprisal evaporates, he said.
“This is not a hypothetical danger. The rule expressly allows the government to scrutinize the “content” a journalist is covering when deciding whether to grant an extension, opening the door to ideological filtering of who gets to report from the United States. That logic is indistinguishable from the methods long used by authoritarian regimes that the United States has historically condemned,” said Dr Ben-Meir
The proposal also creates a ready-made instrument for selective punishment of journalists from countries with which the Trump administration has tense or adversarial relations. The singling out of Chinese journalists for especially harsh 90-day limits is an explicit signal that Washington is prepared to wield visa policy as a geopolitical stick, not a neutral administrative tool, he pointed out.
Once this precedent is established, nothing prevents the administration from tightening the screw further on reporters from other states whose governments it wishes to pressure—or punish.
The result would be a two-tiered press landscape in which journalists from favored countries enjoy relative stability, while those from disfavored states face constant uncertainty and the implicit demand to “behave,” he declared.
Dr. Ben-Meir said foreign governments and international bodies, including the UN, should make it clear that undermining foreign press access in the United States will invite reciprocal restrictions on American journalists abroad—further isolating US audiences from the world.
And American citizens, who ultimately bear the cost of an information-starved public sphere, must insist that their government not abuse immigration law as a backdoor censorship tool.
IPS UN Bureau Report
WASHINGTON DC, Jul 22 2026 (IPS) - A farmer in Kenya gets weather and planting advice on a basic phone. A teacher in Nigeria uses a chatbot to help students catch up in math. South Africa’s revenue authority uses data analytics to better target tax audits. These are not futuristic examples from Silicon Valley. They are early signs of the broader transformation that artificial intelligence (AI) could bring to sub-Saharan Africa.
AI will reshape the global economy. The question for Africa is whether it rides the wave or gets left behind.
Transformative potential
Our research shows AI’s promise, but it also points to significant risks and challenges. At current levels of preparedness, we estimate that AI will add just 0.2 percent to the region’s GDP over the next decade—little more than a rounding error. However, if countries can put the right foundations in place to accelerate adoption and extend the impact of AI beyond today’s digitally connected firms, the gains could rise to about 4 percent over the decade—nearly half a percentage point of additional growth a year.
That extra growth is critical given Africa’s vast jobs challenge. By 2030, sub-Saharan Africa will account for roughly half of new entrants into the global labor force. But the issue is not only the number of jobs needed—it is also their quality. Most workers are still in informal microenterprises or smallholder agriculture, where productivity is far below that of formal firms.
For the region, AI’s main promise is not about replacing office workers, but boosting productivity across the economy—helping informal firms manage inventory, enabling farmers to increase yields, and supporting mid-sized firms to transition to formality and export readiness.
The risk is that the opposite happens. AI adoption in sub-Saharan Africa currently lags well behind every other region. If richer economies race ahead while African firms and governments lag, the productivity gap between the region and the rest of the world will only widen.
A different reality
Aid flows have always fluctuated. But this episode stands apart.
The recent cuts are large and broadly simultaneous across countries. They are driven by donor decisions rather than changes in recipient economies. And they come at a time when traditional buffers are weaker: multilateral institutions and NGOs, which have often cushioned past declines, are themselves facing funding constraints. While non-traditional donors, such as China and the Gulf States, have grown their aid presence in the region, the magnitudes are not able to cover the reduction in traditional donors.
The cuts are also difficult to manage because they follow six years of successive shocks—including the pandemic, tighter global financial conditions, and food and energy crises—that have already eroded fiscal space.
Delivering on AI’s promise
Two priorities for AI adoption stand out.
First, countries must build the foundations for broad adoption.
AI depends on reliable electricity, affordable broadband and data infrastructure, and workers with digital skills. That means investing in power and connectivity, supporting regional data infrastructure where viable, and strengthening digital and AI literacy through education and training. Countries in Africa do not need to develop the world’s most powerful AI models. But they do need the capacity to adopt, adapt, and scale AI quickly.
Second, build trust—and scale.
AI can widen inequality if its benefits are concentrated among large firms, skilled workers, and urban hubs. It also creates risks around privacy, cybersecurity, misinformation, and dependence on foreign providers. Governments need clear and practical rules on data, competition, consumer protection, cybersecurity, and the public sector’s use of AI. Regional cooperation will also be essential. Many African economies are too small to build AI ecosystems alone. But together they can create the scale needed for infrastructure, data standards, regulation, and markets.
AI in Africa is not just a technology policy issue—it is central to the region’s growth strategy. Africa does not need to win the race to build cutting-edge AI models, but it must find ways to use AI widely, cheaply, and safely. The window is narrow. Over the next debate, Africa’s young and growing workforce will either find more productive jobs, or watch the global productivity gap widen further. The outcome will not be shaped in Silicon Valley, but in the choices made across governments, schools, farms, and firms from Dakar to Dar es Salaam.
Martin Schindler is an advisor, Nikola Spatafora is a senior economist, and Andrew Tiffin is a deputy division chief, all in the IMF’s African Department.
IPS UN Bureau