Africa

5 Items

Gertrude Kitongo poses with her mobile phone in Johannesburg, South Africa. She cherishes a cell phone as a link to family and friends and also sees it as a radio, a library, a mini cinema, a bank teller, etc., Nov. 8, 2011.

AP Photo

Magazine Article - Finance & Development

Africa's New Engine

| December 2011

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.

President Barack Obama shares the podium with MIT's Susan Hockfield and Paul Holland of Serious Materials during the President's remarks on investments in clean energy and new technology, March 23, 2009, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

White House Photo

Journal Article - Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change

Trends in Investments in Global Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration

| May/June 2011

Recent national trends in investments in global energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) are inconsistent around the world. Public RD&D investments in energy are the metric most commonly used in international comparative assessments of energy-technology innovation, and the metric employed in this article. Overall, the data indicate that International Energy Agency (IEA) member country government investments have been volatile: they peaked in the late 1970s, declined during the subsequent two decades, bottomed out in 1997, and then began to gradually grow again during the 2000s.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, left, and Israeli-U.S. entrepreneur, Shai Agassi, founder a project developing electric cars and a network of charging points, next to an electric car and its charging station in Jerusalem, Oct. 22, 2009.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Innovations

Energy for Change: Introduction to the Special Issue on Energy & Climate Change

| Fall 2009

"Without energy, there is no economy. Without climate, there is no environment. Without economy and environment, there is no material well-being, no civil society, no personal or national security. The overriding problem associated with these realities, of course, is that the world has long been getting most of the energy its economies need from fossil fuels whose emissions are imperiling the climate that its environment needs."

Magazine Article - John F. Kennedy School of Government Bulletin

Fuel for Thought

    Author:
  • Madeline Drexler
| Winter 2008

As the Biofuel industry surges with investments and new entrepreneurial players, Kennedy School scholars are analyzing it working to develop new ways to create carbon-neutral fuels. Madeline Drexler writes on the Kennedy School's input on this emerging new way to lower greenhouse gas emissions and become less dependent on non-renewable energy resources.

Journal Article - Science

Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being

| January 25, 2008

"I would urge every scientist and engineer with an interest in the intersection of S&T with sustainable well-being...to 'tithe' 10% of your professional time and effort to working in these and other ways to increase the benefits of S&T for the human condition and to decrease the liabilities. If so much as a substantial fraction of the world's scientists and engineers resolved to do this much, the acceleration of progress toward sustainable well-being for all of Earth's inhabitants would surprise us all."