Bridging the Scholarship Gap on Statelessness in Africa makers, activists, and mental-health practitioners to mitigate the factors that lead to the trauma of stateless persons. While a great deal of attention - deservedly so - is given to the nexus between human rights and statelessness, it is not common to link sustainable development and statelessness. Badewa’s article broaches this particular nexus, which he describes as ‘poorly investigated’. The main thrust of the article is that there is a strong case to be made for the inclusion of statelessness in the post-2030 development agenda. While the significant potential that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have for addressing statelessness is acknowledged, the lack of coherence in the implementation of multilateral development programmes and national policies is decried as one factor that increases the marginalisation of stateless persons and communities. Pursuing the SDGs, with attention to detail on equity and vulnerable groups, can help stakeholders appreciate that stateless persons are not a homogenous group, and also contribute to enhancing the resilience of stateless persons. Badewa’s article tells a cautionary tale, and offers a well-nuanced narrative on the interconnected risks of exclusion that implementation of the SDGs’ Target on legal identities could involve. It argues that mitigating factors include: embracing the principle of ‘nothing about us without us’ in regard to stateless persons and communities in the context of development; developing a collaborative strategy on statelessness that is tailored to local (national) and regional contexts and political realities; and accelerating the reform of discriminatory and exclusive legal and societal structures. It is said that ‘citizenship’ in pre-colonial Africa was characterised by multiethnic and multicultural societies where individuals had multiple, overlapping and alternative collective identities.30 The same could hardly be said of colonial Africa or its legacy, which continues to affect laws, policies, and practices with a bearing on statelessness in Africa. Mbiyozo’s article – which in part can be described as taking the stance of ‘looking back to look ahead’-, interrogates the linkages between statelessness in Southern Africa and ‘colonial histories, border changes, migration, gender, and ethnic and religious discrimination’, as well as poor civil registry systems. The article laments that several Southern African countries have drawn inspiration from colonial-era laws, thereby exacerbating the politics of othering in nationality legislation. As a result, xenophobia and nationalism are rearing their ugly heads, and are being weaponised to promote exclusionary politics, which in turn hampers or even reverses the fight against statelessness. Efforts to instrumentalise statelessness as a migration management tool are ill-advised, and are neither human-rights compliant nor a lasting policy choice. Conflict and violence are key triggers of both internal and external forced migration across the continent.31 While it is not necessarily a new phenomenon, climate change is recognised as a contributing factor to situations of forced migration. Bruce J Berman ‘Ethnicity, patronage and the African state: The politics of uncivil nationalism’ 97 (1998) African Affairs at 310. 31 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) ‘Global report on internal displacement’ (2022); UNHCR ‘Global trends: Forced displacements in 2021’. 30 9