Energy

Last week, Special Envoy of Senegal's Head of State, Aminata Touré hosted a seminar at Harvard University. She addressed several questions regarding US-African relations.

Like revolutions in the past the on-going AI revolution will produce winners and losers. The first industrial revolution in the 18th century changed the world of production and paved the way for Britain’s global leadership. Similarly, the current digital revolution is redefining the service sector and China’s role in the world.

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have traditionally been created to recycle excess reserves from natural resource or non‐commodity revenues. However, in recent years funds are being established under conditions of capital scarcity with objectives to contribute domestic economic development, often through the buildout of national infrastructure programs. Such trends in new fund creation represent a fundamental shift in the sovereign wealth fund paradigm and raise serious questions about how these entities are to be capitalized and also the implications of capitalization models on their sustainability. This study examines the recent evolution of SWF models focused on economic development. Its analytic focus is drawn, in particular, to countries that are neither endowed with oil wealth, nor otherwise enjoy export surpluses to be used to capitalize a development‐oriented SWF. While this study is relevant to and expands the scope of the broad literature on SWFs, its specific contribution is as a focused analysis of how SWF funding sources impact achieving long‐term financial and socio‐economic development objectives.

The recently promoted heir to the Saudi throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as M.B.S., has pledged to modernize the country. His agenda includes diversifying the Saudi economy beyond oil, expanding trade, bolstering employment and loosening restrictions on entertainment. But at least two domestic factors complicate his ambitions, and we may see them play out on the world stage in 2018.

"Defeating Islamic State is the Trump administration’s most important national-security priority. But removing ISIS from Mosul and Raqqa may end up meaning little absent the ability to secure, reconstruct and govern these and other cities. Preventing a dangerous power vacuum from forming in areas liberated from ISIS control requires the urgent involvement of unified Sunni Arab states."

The Saudi coalition knows what the experiences of numerous Muslim governments have long proven: the Muslim Brotherhood is an oppositionist movement that does not represent a sustainable form of governance, offers little in the way of  social or economic programmes, and some of its members have been linked to political violence and jihadist terror.

"Saudi Arabia has a new crown prince. Mohammed bin Salman, known as MbS, is clearly now slated to succeed his father, King Salman. At 31, the kingdom has never seen anyone like him. He has been given very wide responsibilities as defense minister and overseer of the Saudi economy and its transformation. As one Saudi minister said to me shortly before I met him, “You are about to meet our force of nature.”"

"The appointment of Mohammad bin Salman, 31, as Saudi Arabia’s next king will accelerate his radical reform and further solidify the U.S.-Saudi partnership. King Salman’s long-anticipated decision to name his son crown prince almost certainly is intended to present a unified face to the kingdom’s adversaries, especially Iran—and to bolster U.S. support for a more assertive Riyadh."