Science, Technology, and Public Policy

"Belfer Center Newsmakers" highlights members of the Belfer Center community who have been featured recently in the news.

"The post-election era will require economic construction. Much of this will start with building essential infrastructure needed for growth — especially in transportation, energy and in telecommunications. The World Bank estimates the DRC's infrastructure needs at over US $5 billion a year over the next decade. After all, the country is the size of Western Europe, but has only 2,800 kilometres of all-weather paved roads running through it. This is about the same as Rwanda's networks of roads — even if Rwanda is some 90 times smaller than the DRC. The DRC also has extensive potential navigable waterways that need to be developed. And massive investment in air transportation infrastructure could make the country a hub for the rest of Africa, given the DRC's geographical centrality on the continent."

Cell phone use has grown faster in Africa than in any other region of the world since 2003....Of course, South Africa—the most developed nation—still has the highest penetration, but across Africa, countries have leapfrogged technology, bringing innovation and connectivity even to remote parts of the continent, opening up mobile banking and changing the way business is done.

The Summer 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features analysis and advice by Belfer Center scholars regarding the historic upheavals in the Middle East and the disastrous consequences of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The Center’s new Geopolitics of Energy project is also highlighted, along with efforts by the Project on Managing the Atom to strengthen nuclear export rules.

"Mwapachu will be remembered as a true entrepreneur with a passion for creating new institutions that improve the lives of the majority of people. He operationalised the EAC Customs Union, led negotiations for the EAC Common Market that came into force in 2010 and laid the groundwork for the forthcoming EAC Monetary Union. He also oversaw the admission of Rwanda and Burundi into the EAC."

The Spring 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights the Belfer Center’s continuing efforts to build bridges between the United States and Russia to prevent nuclear catastrophe – an effort that began in the 1950s. This issue also features three new books by Center faculty that sharpen global debate on critical issues: God’s Century, by Monica Duffy Toft, The New Harvest by Calestous Juma, and The Future of Power, by Joseph S. Nye.

"If ethnic strife should return to Iraq in the post-withdrawal era, the United States must encourage cooperation between regional actors, especially Syria and Iran. By returning to Iraq, America will only further complicate the crisis in an already complex region. Instead, addressing the security concerns of regional actors and focusing on common interests that exist between them and America, and subsequently getting these regional actors' cooperation, would be a less costly way to avoid the return of civil war."

"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."

"The constitutional orders put in place in much of Africa, following independence, were largely a continuation of the colonial economic order. The associated governance structures are being swept aside by globalisation, demographic change, and demands for democratic liberties."

"Outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s recently concluded efforts to promote the deliberation among the UN’s 192 member states on a global counterterrorism strategy may well represent the most difficult challenge he has faced in what many see as the most difficult job in the world. After months of consultations starting from a debate on Kofi Annan’s recommendations, member states finally reached consensus this past September on such a strategy, the first of its kind in UN history....Difficulties...led Annan to realize that the only way he could achieve a breakthrough on the issue of terrorism was to focus on the practicalities of a counterterrorism strategy. No matter how much member states differ on the definition of terrorism, he reasoned they share the common interest in stable development. This common interest ultimately proved decisive."