SOUTHERN AFRICA
April 8, 2013
"Incompatibility Hinders BRICS Bloc"
Op-Ed, Taipei Times
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"...[W]hile the BRICS may be helpful in coordinating certain diplomatic tactics, the term lumps together highly disparate countries. Not only is South Africa miniscule compared with the others, but China's economy is larger than those of all of the other members combined. Likewise, India, Brazil and South Africa are democracies, and occasionally meet in an alternative forum that they call IBSA (the India, Brazil, South Africa Dialogue Forum)."
AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
Spring 2013
"Climate Change and Insecurity: Mapping Vulnerability in Africa"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 4, volume 37
By Joshua Busby, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2004-2005, Todd G. Smith, Kaiba L. White and Shawn M. Strange
Many experts argue that climate change will exacerbate the severity and number of extreme weather events. Such climate-related hazards will be important security concerns and sources of vulnerability in the future regardless of whether they contribute to conflict.
November 27, 2012
"Trading Places: Commerce Drives Science And Technology In Africa"
Op-Ed, Forbes
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
"Africa used mobile phones to create a radically new way of transferring money, thereby restructuring the banking sector. Mobile technology is on the verge of transforming other traditional industries including education and health, among others. In education, Africa can leapfrog into digital books and mobile learning to become a leading source of new educational businesses and industries. In healthcare, mobile technology will transform the very idea of a hospital."
October 25, 2012
"Poor Infrastructure Is Africa's Soft Underbelly"
Op-Ed, Forbes
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
"Poor road networks illustrate this point. African farmers without adequate road networks are condemned to grow not what they can eat, but what they can carry on their heads and eat quickly before pests destroy it. As a result, nearly half of the hungry people in Africa are farmers."
October 15, 2012
"Africa's Leadership Fails Billionaire Mo Ibrahim's Test, But Technocrats Rise"
Op-Ed, Forbes
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
"The main challenge is the lack of alignment between infrastructure strategies and the need to expand engineering training. As a result, there are very few engineering programs in African universities. There is also a perception that engineering is associated with large projects that tend to be linked to high costs, corruption and ecological degradation."
AP Photo
September 2012
"Measuring the Impacts of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: Placing the Global 'Success' of TRCs in Local Perspective"
Journal Article, Cooperation and Conflict, issue 3, volume 47
By Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch, Research Fellow, International Security Program, Megan Mackenzie, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program/Women in Public Policy Program, 2008–2009 and Mohamed Sesay
"Truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) have emerged as an international norm and are assumed to be an essential element of national reconciliation, democratization, and post-conflict development. Despite the increase in the number of TRCs being initiated around the globe and the international consensus regarding their positive effects, there is little understanding of the longterm effects and consequences of TRCs. Specifically, currently there are no established methods or mechanisms for measuring the impacts of TRCs; furthermore, the few examples of efforts to measure these impacts have serious limitations. This article explores both the rise in TRCs as an international norm and the contradictions and inadequacies in existing efforts to measure the impacts and successes of commissions."
AP Photo
July 2012
"The Durban Platform Negotiations: Goals and Options"
Policy Brief
In December 2011, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, which launched a new round of negotiations aimed at developing "a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force" for the post-2020 period. The Durban Platform negotiations got underway this year and are scheduled to conclude in 2015. This Viewpoint analyzes the elements of the Durban Platform and the possible role that a new instrument might play.
AP Photo
June 27, 2012
"Why Kenya Has to Adopt Biotechnology in Farming"
Op-Ed, allafrica.com
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
"Those countries that adopt agricultural biotechnology today will be better prepared to use the same techniques to solve health, industrial and environmental problems. The underlying knowledge of genomics is the same and is remarkably versatile. As an early adopter, Kenya is now applying mobile technology to other fields such as health and agriculture."
April 30, 2012
"African Game Change"
Op-Ed, Newsweek
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"In the years that lie before us, a great struggle will play out south of the Sahara: a struggle between man and Malthus. According to the Rev. Thomas Malthus’s famous principle—sometimes called the Malthusian trap—population grows geometrically, but the supply of food increases arithmetically. Viewed in those terms, many African countries today seem doomed to misery and vice," writes Belfer Center International Council member Niall Ferguson, "So is Africa heading over a demographic waterfall? Maybe not....Two things are changing the continent’s prospects. The first is the surging demand for the natural resources that are so abundant in Africa....The other game changer is mobile telephony....cellphones are giving poor Africans access to basic financial services for the first time."
AP Photo
March 6, 2012
"Seeding New African Agricultural Universities"
Op-Ed, NAI Forum
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
"Over the last decade considerable work has been done to redefine the role of government in agricultural research, decentralize research activities, increase stakeholder participation, identify new financial instruments, and strengthen system-wide linkages. These measures have been purposed on an incremental basis. They have indeed yielded commendable results. The next challenge, however, is to build on these achievements and pursue bold steps aimed at upgrading the status and performance of agricultural institutes by creating genuine innovation systems that involve research, training, extension, and commercialization."
