ECONOMICS AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS
November 2009
"Climate Finance"
Policy Brief
By The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
The finance of climate mitigation and adaptation in developing countries represents a key challenge in the negotiations on a post-2012 international climate agreement. Finance mechanisms are important because stabilizing the climate will require significant emissions reductions in both the developed and the developing worlds, and therefore large-scale investments in energy infrastructure. The current state of climate finance has been criticized for its insufficient scale, relatively low share of private-sector investment, and insufficient institutional framework. This policy brief presents options for improving and expanding climate finance.
September 15, 2009
"Riding the Digital Express"
Op-Ed, BBC News
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
The first undersea fibre optic cable, Seacom, reached the east African coast in July 2009....Speaking at Seacom's launch on 23 July, Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete visualised a future in which Africans would truly become part of the global economy....But all these benefits will not be realised without a strong combination of entrepreneurship, education, policy and investment in regional networks.
AP Photo
March 26, 2009
"China's Grand Bargain"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Robert Rotberg, Director, Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution
AS THE G20 group of nations prepares to meet next week to discuss the world economy, a grand bargain with geostrategic significance is implicitly being crafted between Washington and Beijing. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted as much when she said in February that the United States would not hammer China about its human rights violations.
Winter 2008-09
Belfer Center Newsletter Winter 2008-09
Newsletter
By Sharon Wilke, Associate Director of Communications
The Winter 2008-09 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming research, activities, and analysis by Center faculty, fellows, and staff on critical global issues. "What should the next president do first?" is a question raised in this issue. Belfer Center experts respond to the question with advice on what they consider priority issues of national security, climate/energy policy, and the economic crisis.
The Winter 2008-09 issue also features take-aways from the Center’s recent “Acting in Time on Energy Policy” conference hosted by the Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group. In addition, it spotlights Belfer Center Faculty Affiliate Richard Clarke and new Kennedy School Professor Nicholas Burns.
October 14, 2008
"Economic Realities Must Guide Africa's Constitutional Reform Efforts"
News
By Beth Maclin, Communications Assistant
"African countries need new constitutional orders to cope with modern economic challenges, Calestous Juma said at a recent lecture....A major challenge is based in the constitutions and laws left behind for the newly liberated countries. 'What was being negotiated as independence was really an exercise in constitutional continuity from the colonial period through independence,' Juma said....While there is enormous pressure on African countries to focus on economic programs, they are unable to because the governmental framework left behind did not integrate the economic role of the colonizer into the new role of president."
October 2008
China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence
Book
By Robert Rotberg, Director, Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution
“Two myths have been concocted by the West on Africa: that the Western impact on Africa has been benign while China’s record in Africa has only been negative. The truth in both areas is more complex. This volume, China into Africa, brings out the complexity of the China story in Africa and illustrates why more balanced assessments are needed on Africa’s relations with the world”
--Kishore Mahbubani
Dean, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore
AP Photo
June 17, 2008
"Japan and African States Discuss Future Partnership"
Op-Ed, Online Publication
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
Japan announced it will double its aid to Africa over the next five year at the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV) held in Yokohama on May 28–30, 2008....TICAD IV marked a clear departure from previous development conferences, which focused largely on Africa’s immediate crises and challenges, such as corruption and poor governance. Instead, it stressed the importance of human resource development (including higher education and vocational training), industrial development, infrastructure, and trade.
May 29, 2008
"Net Access for African Universities Would Boost Continent"
Op-Ed, Daily Yomiuri
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
"African universities could be the continent's gateways into the global knowledge economy for local diffusion of new technologies. But this potential remains unrealized because universities and research institutes in Africa remain digitally isolated from the rest of the world. This is partly because of government neglect and lack of strategic policies on Internet access....Providing low-cost, high-speed Internet access to African universities will help Africa build the capacity it needs to solve its own problems. It is one of the most strategic investments that the G-8 countries can make in Africa in the coming few years."
April 22, 2008
"It's Not the Price That Causes Hunger"
Op-Ed, International Herald Tribune
By Robert Paarlberg, Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project/Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, 2007-2008
"Africa's food crisis grows primarily out of the low productivity, year in and year out, of the 60 percent of all Africans who plant crops and graze animals for a living. The average African smallholder farmer is a woman who has no improved seeds, no nitrogen fertilizers, no irrigation and no veterinary medicine for her animals. Her crop yields are only one third as high as in the developing countries of Asia, and her average income is only $1 a day."
March 2008
Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa
Book
By Robert Paarlberg, Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project/Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, 2007-2008
Heading upcountry in Africa to visit small farms is absolutely exhilarating given the dramatic beauty of big skies, red soil, and arid vistas, but eventually the two-lane tarmac narrows to rutted dirt, and the journey must continue on foot. The farmers you eventually meet are mostly women, hardworking but visibly poor. They have no improved seeds, no chemical fertilizers, no irrigation, and with their meager crops they earn less than a dollar a day. Many are malnourished.
Nearly two-thirds of Africans are employed in agriculture, yet on a per-capita basis they produce roughly 20 percent less than they did in 1970. Although modern agricultural science was the key to reducing rural poverty in Asia, modern farm science—including biotechnology—has recently been kept out of Africa.
