Africa

This Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the latest research from leading scholars on the international political economy of energy and resources. Highlighting the important conceptual and empirical themes, the chapters study all levels of governance, from global to local, and explore the wide range of issues emerging in a changing political and economic environment.

Many energy consumers, and even analysts and policymakers, confront and frame energy and climate risks in a moral vacuum, rarely incorporating broader social justice concerns. Here, to remedy this gap, we investigate how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision-making by reframing five energy problems — nuclear waste, involuntary resettlement, energy pollution, energy poverty and climate change — as pressing justice concerns.

On January 30, 2015, Matthew Bunn presented "Mitigating Climate Change: How Much Can We Hope For From Nuclear Power?" for the Harvard University Model United Nations. The full presentation is below.

"Advances in solar and wind energy technology (and the associated smart power management systems) are making renewable energy competitive with fossil fuels. Their widespread adoption is likely to favor poor nations in the tropics that are not committed to traditional energy infrastructure."

"The immediate sources of the crisis are medical. But lasting solutions will have to be sought in the wider economic context in which health care functions. The roots lie in at least two major weaknesses in Africa's current development trends: poor infrastructure and limited investment in public health."

"Genetically-modified (GM) crops or any other breeding methods on their own cannot solve the challenges related to food quality, access to food, nutrition or stability of food systems. But their role cannot be dismissed for ideological reasons."

As Africa's position in the world continues to grow and evolve in 2014, the Brookings Africa Growth Initiative continues its tradition of asking its experts and colleagues to identify what they consider to be the key issues for Africa in the coming year.

The Montpellier Panel is a panel of international experts from the fields of agriculture, sustainable development, trade, policy, and global development chaired by Sir Gordon Conway of Imperial College London. The Panel is working together to make recommendations to enable better European government support of national and regional agricultural development and food security priorities in Sub-Saharan Africa. This report looks at the role of innovation in sustainable intensification for food and nutrition security in Africa.

"In an email interview with Global Ideas, [Calestous] Juma touches on the challenges and opportunities raised by climate change in Africa, the economic drivers behind a rash of innovations, the role of African universities and why dogma is holding back the continent's full research potential."