Africa

Africa is home to approximately 1.4 billion people[1], about 16 percent of the world’s population, yet its continental share in global trade remains below 3 percent[2], according to the World Trade Organization (WTO). This suboptimal proportion of world trade is compounded by Africa's limited intra-continental trade. During the 26th Africa Business Conference (ABC) held at Harvard Business School (HBS) on the 17^th of February 20, 2024, industry experts, policymakers, students, faculty members, and entrepreneurs converged to interrogate these concerns and explore opportunities for improving intra-African trade. 

As a Predoctoral Research Fellow at the Belfer Center’s Environment and Natural Resources Program and Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, Lydia Zemke has spent the last two years studying climate finance in developing countries. As she rounds out her time at the Belfer Center, Zemke she reflects on her research interests, her experience conducting fieldwork in Kenya and Costa Rica, and her advice for other early-career researchers. 

Meghan Garrity details the history of mass expulsions since the centennial of the signing of the Lausanne Convention—a treaty codifying the compulsory “population exchange” between Greece and Turkey. An estimated 1.5 million people were forcibly expelled from their homes: over one million Greek Orthodox Christians from the Ottoman Empire and 500,000 Muslims from Greece.

Meghan M. Garrity, an International Security Program postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center discussed her research on government-sanctioned mass expulsion events at a virtual seminar on November 3, 2022.

Capital Choices analyzes the creation of different SWFs from a comparative political economy perspective, arguing that different state-society structures at the sectoral level are the drivers for SWF variation. Juergen Braunstein focuses on the early formation period of SWFs, a critical but little understood area given the high levels of political sensitivity and lack of transparency that surround SWF creation. Braunstein’s novel analytical framework provides practical lessons for the business and finance organizations and policymakers of countries that have created, or are planning to create, SWFs.

Opportunistic repression arises when states use crises to suppress the political opposition. An examination of the relationship between COVID-19 shutdown policies and state violence against civilians in Africa, including and a subnational case study of Uganda, tests this theory.

The coronavirus pandemic has already devastated the international economy.  Stephen Walt explores what history and theory say about the military fallout.

As the divergent experiences of the US and South Korea show, testing can be the difference between disease containment and catastrophe. Rather than relying on national governments to ensure the rapid development, production, and deployment of diagnostics during outbreaks, the world needs a global coordinating platform.

February 24th, 2020, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Gesche Joost, Professor of Design Research at the Berlin University of the Arts and head of the Design Research Lab since 2005, discussed the digital divide and how it will shape social connectivity in an event moderated by Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, and Lauren Zabierek, Executive Director of the Cyber Project.

Nonviolent resistance scholar Erica Chenoweth explains the key ingredients of successful social movements.