Science & Technology

38 Items

View of General Assembly at UN Global Engagement Summit

UN Photo

Discussion Paper - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Exponential Innovation and Human Rights

| Feb. 27, 2018

Technological innovation and the politics of global justice are two fields that interact quite extensively in international diplomatic discourse and public debate. Controversial issues, such as accessing essential medicines, reducing greenhouse gases, conserving biological diversity, providing clean energy, and expanding the adoption of green technologies, require answers at the intersection of technological innovation, international diplomacy, and global justice. Our approach is to start off with the broader understanding that justice is rights-based and then proceed to analyze it using a goal-based framework. This brings into sharp focus the relationships between innovation and human rights.

Nov. 23, 2016, a train returns from transporting ballast used in the construction of the Nairobi-Mombasa railway

AP Photo/Ben Curtis

Discussion Paper - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

African Regional Economic Integration

| Winter 2018

The power of Pan-Africanism as a guiding vision for the continent’s development is widely studied, mostly as an aspirational phenomenon. At worst, Pan-Africanism has often been seen as a poor imitation of American federalism or European integration. Both of these perceptions do not reflect the profound nature of the role that the ideology of Pan-Africanism played in shaping the continent’s economic transformation. 

Ghana has gone through economic stagnation and negligible participation in the global trading system despite its gold mines and cocoa plantations.

EnzoRivos Photo CC

Journal Article - Journal of Policy and Complex Systems

Complexity, Innovation, and Development: Schumpeter Revisited

| Spring 2014

The role of innovation and entrepreneurship is increasingly getting policy attention in emerging countries. A growing body of literature is deriving its inspiration from the work of Joseph Schumpeter. His seminal 1911 book, The Theory of Economic Development, outlined a general framework for understanding the role of innovation and entrepreneurship in economic transformation. Despite Schumpeter's influence on economic policies in industrialized countries, there has been little application of his work in emerging countries.

Announcement - Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, Belfer Center

STPP Fellowships, 2014–2015

November 25, 2013

Each year, the Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School welcomes new pre- and post-doctoral fellows and visiting researchers to a select team of scholars exploring the critical role that science and technology play in everyday life.

Analysis & Opinions - Technology+Policy | Innovation@Work

Forging New Diplomatic Bonds Through Science and Technology

| February 8, 2013

"Slovenia and Kenya are inventing a form of science and technology diplomacy that is based on commitment to taking on global challenges irrespective of size and level of development. The cooperation points to a new future in which science and technology will increasingly become the bond that ties nations together in new diplomatic arrangements."

Analysis & Opinions - Newsweek

African Game Change

| April 30, 2012

"In the years that lie before us, a great struggle will play out south of the Sahara: a struggle between man and Malthus. According to the Rev. Thomas Malthus’s famous principle—sometimes called the Malthusian trap—population grows geometrically, but the supply of food increases arithmetically. Viewed in those terms, many African countries today seem doomed to misery and vice," writes Belfer Center International Council member Niall Ferguson, "So is Africa heading over a demographic waterfall? Maybe not....Two things are changing the continent’s prospects. The first is the surging demand for the natural resources that are so abundant in Africa....The other game changer is mobile telephony....cellphones are giving poor Africans access to basic financial services for the first time."

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.

Mar. 28, 2008 file photo: trucks laden with goods headed for Zimbabwe near a border post in Musina, South Africa. South & east African states are moving toward a free trade agreement that is as much about development as open borders & dropped tariffs.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - The East African

Building Africa Bloc by Bloc

| June 20, 2011

"The map of Africa as a hopeless collection of failing post-colonial economies is being redrawn before our very eyes. Credit should go to African leaders for their stubborn refusal to accept the future as predicted by others but to seek to change it. As they say, for Africa, the future is not what it used to be."

Kenyan school children sit around a table to eat lunch at the Raila Education Center, part of a school feeding program in Kibera, Nairobi. Food prices are rising globally, driven in part by the higher transport costs that accompany rising oil prices.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - The Daily Nation

Stop Demonising Foreign Investors in Agriculture, They're Not Grabbing Land

| June 13, 2011

"Nearly 60 per cent of the world's available arable land is in Africa. What is needed is a vision among African leaders that would help the continent to contribute to global food needs while fostering local prosperity. Efforts to achieve this have already been started through foreign investments in agriculture."

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, left, Tanzanian Pres. Benjamin Mkapa, center, & Kenyan Pres. Mwai Kibaki, at a summit on forming a political federation by 2010 to accelerate economic growth in East Africa, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, May 30, 2005.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - The East African

Juma Mwapachu: Legacy of an Entrepreneurial Leader

| April 18, 2011

"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."