Podcasts about un economic commission

Lester Kiewit speaks to Carlos Lopes, professor at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance at UCT, and a former executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. They discuss the ways in which the African Union can reform and unite, to play a leading role globally.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Systemic barriers and poor support structures are stifling the progress of women in STEMUnderrepresentation of women in science and technology is limiting the continent's access to different perspectives and innovation, educators in the sector tell Africa Science Focus.Women account for only 20 per cent of women in science and engineering in Africa and 32 per cent of research and development scientists, according to research by the UN Economic Commission for Africa.In this episode of Africa Science Focus, reporter Michael Kaloki talks to women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) about how to break the barriers women and girls face.He speaks with Adefunke Ekine, educational expert and researcher at the Tai Solarin University of Education in Nigeria's Ogun state, who says abstract teaching and a lack of female role models are among the problems.Verdiana Masanja, mathematics professor at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology in Tanzania, pushes for more inclusive policies in STEM education.Excellence Joshua, a social entrepreneur and creator of the Techy Train Incubator, a foundation that equips young African women with digital skills, wants to see more support for women in the workforce.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast was supported by the Science Granting Councils Initiative which aims to strengthen the institutional capacities of 18 public science funding agencies in Sub-Saharan Africa.    Africa Science Focus is produced by SciDev.Net and distributed in association with your local radio stationThis piece was produced by SciDev.Net's Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.Do you have any comments, questions or feedback about our podcast episodes? Let us know at podcast@scidev.net

“We need quick reform of the international financial architecture. It simply doesn't work in terms of addressing the financing and the debt challenges that Africa is having.”That's the view from Claver Gatete, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), taking part in a discussion organized by Africa Renewal earlier this week.UNECA brings countries together alongside the African Union to boost key development issues such as financing, climate action and new technology.He told UN News's Julia Foxen about the need for fairer global financial systems and greater investment in climate adaptation efforts. 

Gyude speaks with Antonio Pedro of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, about the links between the sustainable development goals, climate adaptive technology, and accelerating infrastructural development on the continent.

Small island developing states (SIDS) suffer disproportionately from external shocks. They face an existential threat from the climate emergency, while global economic uncertainty and geopolitical shifts have derailed recent progress that SIDS have made towards achieving growth and resilience.That's why governments of SIDS and their international partners met in Antigua and Barbuda a fortnight ago for the SIDS4 conference, which aimed to formulate a 10-year action plan intended to chart ‘the course toward resilient prosperity' for small island nations.In this episode, guests review this seminal conference, setting it in context of the unique challenges that SIDS face. We hear about the strengths of the Antigua and Barbuda Plan (ABAS) that emerged from it and what is missing from this framework. Guests outline reforms that are urgently needed to drive meaningful change for SIDS.GuestsSara Pantuliano, Chief Executive, ODIAmbassador Walton Webson, Permanent Representative of Antigua and Barbuda to the UNEmily Wilkinson, Senior Research Fellow, ODIJean-Paul Adam, Director for Technology, Climate Change and Natural Resources Management in the UN Economic Commission for AfricaRelated resourcesResilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI)Small Islands Big Picture podcast: Will the 4th UN International Conference on SIDS generate ‘resilient prosperity'?Small Islands Big Picture podcast (all episodes)The SIDS Future Forum 2024: Shaping the future of Small Island Developing StatesPreparatory meetings for the Fourth International Conference on Small Island Developing States: participation, priorities and outcomesFinancing resilient prosperity in SIDSWhy small islands need their own Marshall Plan

Diana Games,  Chief Executive at Africa At Work discusses the UN Economic Commission for Africa Conference in Victoria Falls, which is set to address critical financial issues in Africa, including green economy financing, climate finance, debt, and illicit financial flows. President Mnangagwa's attendance adds significance, with the event showcasing the growth of conferences and tourism in Victoria Falls. The conference will also feature the launch of the Economic Report on Africa 2024, raising questions about its alignment with the positive outlook presented in a recent report by the African Development Bank (AfDB). The AfDB's 2024 Economic Outlook indicates that 11 of the world's fastest-growing economies are in Africa, driven by new oil and gas production. The continent's overall growth is predicted to exceed the global average, demonstrating resilience amid international conflicts and crises.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

World Nuclear Symposium, held in London, brought together key figures from across the global industry, who took part in a variety of panel discussions on many of the current big issues in the sector. In this special edition of the podcast, World Nuclear News reports on those sessions:The topics covered, in order:The launch of the Net Zero Nuclear campaignPublication of World Nuclear Association's Nuclear Fuel ReportRecruitment and expanding the nuclear workforceHow nuclear can decarbonise different industriesOptimising plant life performanceInvesting in and financing of nuclearWe hear from, in order of appearance:Sama Bilbao y León, Director General of World Nuclear AssociationRafael Mariano Grossi, Director General, International Atomic Energy AgencyMohamed Al Hammadi, CEO, Emirates Nuclear Energy CorporationKaajal Desai, Senior Programme Lead for Fuel Cycle, World Nuclear AssociationMalcolm Critchley, President and CEO ConverDynChris Frankland, Director of Sales and Marketing, Nuclear Fuels CorporationJeanne Tortorelli, Director of Nuclear Fuel Supply at Constellation Energy GenerationTamer Albishawi, Chief Nuclear Officer at Hinkley Point CCallum Thomas, Chairman of Thomas ThorGrace Stanke, Nuclear Engineering Student, Nuclear Advocate and Miss AmericaCharlotte Griffiths, Sustainable Energy Division of the UN Economic Commission for EuropeTodd Noe, Director of Nuclear Technologies Strategy at MicrosoftMikal Bøe, Chairman and CEO Core PowerNaoki Chigusa, CEO of World Association of Nuclear OperatorsVinod Kumar, Station Director of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited's Kaiga 3 and 4Catherine Cornand, Senior Executive Vice President FramatomeChris Cunningham, Vice President Nuclear Projects at Ontario Power GenerationWolfgang Denk, Managing Director, SwissnuclearKeisuke Sadamori, Director Energy Markets and Security, International Energy AgencyIain Smedley, Global Chairman of Banking, BarclaysKevin Kelly, CFO Bruce PowerJulien Bocobza, Partner, White & Case LLCSophie Macfarlane-Smith, Head of Customer Engagement Rolls-Royce SMRThomas Branche, Senior Vice President for Engineering, AssystemRumina Velshi, President and CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Safety CommissionErick van Egeraat, ArchitectTim Gitzel, President and CEO CamecoKey links to find out more:World Nuclear Symposium 2023Nuclear Fuel Report 2023Nuclear industry urged 'take advantage of window of opportunity'Net Zero Nuclear campaign launched, seeking to triple capacity by 2050The challenge of recruiting a rapidly growing nuclear workforcePositive trends continue for global nuclear fuel cycleSuccessful nuclear projects key for future investmentsContact info:alex.hunt@world-nuclear.orgEpisode credit:  Presenter Alex Hunt. Reports from Claire Maden and Warwick Pipe. Co-produced and mixed by Pixelkisser Production.

In this episode, we explore ONS's work with other countries to raise the world's statistical capabilities.    Transcript  MILES FLETCHER  Hello and welcome again to ‘Statistically Speaking', the Office for National Statistics' Podcast. I'm Miles Fletcher, and in this episode we're going international.   Now it hardly needs saying that global issues, climate change, population growth, inflation, to name a few are best understood and addressed with the benefit of good global statistics. So, to that end, the ONS works in partnership with a number of countries worldwide with the ultimate aim of raising the world's statistical capabilities. At the one end of Africa, for example, a continent where it's deeply involved, that includes embedding state of the art inflation indices and other economic data in Ghana. On the other side of the continent, it's meant using AI and machine learning to track the movement of displaced populations in Somalia. How do you run a census in places where nobody has a permanent address?   It's all fascinating work and here to tell us about it, Emily Poskett, Head of International Development at the ONS; Tim Harris of the ONS Data Science Campus's international development team; and joining us from Accra, our special guest, Government Statistician of the Republic of Ghana and head of the Ghanaian Statistical Service Professor Samuel Annim.  Emily then, to start give us the big overview if you would, set out for us the scale and the purpose of this international development work that the ONS is doing.    EMILY POSKETT  We work with countries around the developing world to support strong modern statistical systems wherever we see a suitable opportunity to do so.     MF  What form does that work take? Does it mean statisticians going out to these countries?     EP  Yes, it does, when that's the right way to go about things. So our work is usually through the form of medium-term partnerships with a small group of national statistical offices, or NSOs, from the developing world, and those partnerships are medium term over a number of years in order to build up a real understanding of the context in that country, that national statistical office's vision for modernization and how the ONS can be of most help to achieve their own goals under their own strategy.   That relationship will normally be led by a particular individual who spends time getting to know the context and getting to know the people, getting to know what ONS can do to help. A partnership might cover a range of topic areas from census to data science to leadership training to economic statistics, and the lead point of contact, the strategic advisor in many cases, will bring in the relevant experts from across ONS, and they'll work through virtual collaboration but also through on-site visits, and they will work out the best timing for those and the best delivery modality in order to ensure that the gains are sustained. Our primary focus really is to make sure that changes that we support in the partner organisation are sustainable, and the work that ONS does using the UK's aid budget is really impactful and leads to long term change.   We don't always work through direct partnerships, for example where we see opportunities to work alongside other organisations, so international institutions like the World Bank or other national statistics offices like Statistics Canada or Statistics Sweden, they might choose to bring us in to deliver small pieces of focussed technical assistance alongside their own programmes. One of our medium-term partnerships is with the United Nations Economic Commission For Africa (UNECA), and they work with all 54 countries of Africa, and they can choose to bring in our expertise alongside their own to target particular needs in particular countries. But I would say that 70% of our effort is through these medium-term partnerships.     MF  So the ONS is providing one part of a large patchwork of work, going on right across the developing world, but what is the ultimate purpose of that? What are all these countries trying to achieve together?     EP  Well, strong statistical systems are essential in all countries to aid effective planning and informed decision making. And this is even more important in developing countries where resources are often scarce and you're trying to use scarce resources to target a wide range of needs across the population. And that resource might include UK aid for example, and aid from other countries. The UK has been statistical capacity building for many, many years through different modalities, working with partners, and the ONS is just one implementing partner who can be called upon to provide that technical expertise. We're really proud to be a partner of choice for a number of developing countries and the ONS is seen worldwide as being a leader. We're really proud that countries like Ghana would choose to work with us, and that we want to do our bit to help them to achieve their own strategy and their own goals.     MF  Well, this seems like an excellent moment to bring in Professor Samuel Annim. Our great pleasure, great honour, to have you with us professor. From your perspective, and what you're looking to achieve in the Ghana Statistical Service, how important how useful is the work with ONS been for you?     PROFESSOR SAMUEL ANNIM  From the perspective of how it has been important for us, I mean, I look at it from several aspects. I got into office in 2019,  a year after the ONS and GSS collaboration had been established. And when I joined obviously, I had a sense of what I wanted to contribute to the office. Partnership that we've seen between National Statistical Offices over the years have always taken the dimension of statistical production partnerships, and what I simply mean by that is that they're going in to help the service deliver on its core mandate. So for example, if price statistics are the priority, then that is the area you want to focus on, but our partnership with ONS took a different dimension. In addition to focusing on the traditional mandate of the Institute, which is the production of statistics, we really have over the period achieved some milestones from the perspective of transformation, which is of high priority to me, and secondly, from the perspective of injecting technology or contemporary ways of dispensing our duty as a National Statistical Office. So from an individual point of view, it has it has been beneficial to the mission that I have, and since then we have kept on working in the area of transformation.     MF  Listening to what you have to say there, it does sound as though some of the big challenges you face at the moment are not too dissimilar from the ones faced by ONS, all about modernising statistics, particularly using big data and new technology.     SA  Indeed, and I must say that it is a wave across all national statistical offices, because we are now trying to complement traditional surveys and censuses with non-traditional data sources i.e. Big Data, administrative data, citizens generated data and other geospatial resources. So collaborating is the key thing here, because this is new to the statistical community. So it's important we collaborate to learn how you are dealing with issues that are not consistent with the production of official statistics. Now as a global community, we are all thinking about how to use citizens generated science, I mean, getting citizens to provide us with data. And this is an area in which there isn't any National Statistical Office that can claim authority, because the approach and the processes are pretty not consistent with the guidelines for production of official statistics. So it's important to learn how countries are doing it and see how we can collaborate to get this done.     MF  Yes, in the last episode of our podcast, interestingly, we talked about the challenges of getting our citizens here in the UK to take part in surveys. Are Ghanaians friendly to what you're trying to achieve? Or are they perhaps sceptical as well and difficult to engage?     SA  I wouldn't say they're sceptical, I think they really feel part of it. And that is one of the strengths of citizen generated data, because if you package it in a way that it is more demand driven, rather than supply, you don't just go and tell them ‘do this because I know how it's supposed to be done', but instead give them the platform to tell the National Statistical Office what their experiences are, provide them with platforms that they can easily engage so that they can feel part of the process and they really own the product. In our case, it is not a product that is owned by the statistical service but it is a product that is owned by the sub national agencies, and that is, as I said earlier, the beauty of citizen generated data. It is co-creation and co-ownership of the statistical product. So they are not sceptical, they are very receptive to it, and they are getting a better understanding of what we do as a National Statistical Office.     MF  Thinking internationally, thinking globally, what sort of shape do you think the world's statistical system is in now, as a result of partnerships like this or other developments, generally looking across Africa and looking beyond Africa, when we think about key issues, particularly climate change - how good is the statistical system now in tracking these very important changes, and the impacts they're having?     SA  We have as national statistical offices been very content with the traditional statistics - labour statistics, price statistics, GDP - and you do that either monthly, quarterly, or in some instances annually, and even the social indicators, I mean, it's only a few countries like the UK that has been able to do social indicators annually, for those of us in the Global South, a lot of the social indicators are being collected every five years, or every seven to eight years. So this was the way national statistical offices, up until about 2017 or 2018, were shaped. But with the data revolution that we saw around 2014, and since the World Development Report, the data for better lives document, that came out in 2021, clearly, we now have to approach statistics from a different point of view.   And this is simply asking the question, how do I contextualise the statistics beyond what international communities would be expecting national statistical offices to do? I mean, now we are doing everything possible to ensure that we have a monthly GDP, and this is something that we are also learning from the partnership with ONS, because we are aware that they are developing models to ensure that beyond GDP they have some indicators that would readily give us insight on economic performance.   And related to the issue of climate change that you are you talking about Miles, it's one of the areas that you cannot simply dispense your statistics in that one area as a standalone National Statistical Office, because this is something that has a continental dimension, something that has a global dimension. And at the moment we have data sitting in different silos, and the only thing that we can do is through partnership, see how we can bring these datasets together to help us get a better understanding of issues around climate change.   So going forward, in my point of view, if we really want to sustain the transformation that we are seeing as a global Statistical Office, the only way out is through partnership, is through collaboration. And one of the things that I'm putting on the table is that we better begin to measure partnerships. Because we've treated partnerships as a qualitative engagement. And really, nobody knows which partnerships are working and which are not working. So if we're able to measure it, we can more clearly see the benefits of partnerships, although we all hold the view that it is the way to go.     MF  Interesting what you said about how we've traditionally concentrated on those classical measures of economic progress, and notably GDP. You might be interested to hear that the charity Oxfam, the big NGO, was in the news here in the UK recently when they said that GDP was ‘colonialist', and it was ‘anti-feminist', because it ignored the huge economic value of unpaid work, which they said is largely undertaken by women.   Well, whether you agree with that or not, it does perhaps highlight the need for going beyond GDP and producing these alternative, and perhaps richer, wider measures of economic progress and economic value.     SA  I mean, I clearly associate with that submission, and we currently doing some work with the United Nations Development Programme on the National Human Development Report. And the focus of this report is exactly what you are talking about, Miles. We are looking at the current value of work, and we are looking at the future value of work. And we are going beyond the definition of who is employed, which strictly looks at whether the work that you are doing comes with remuneration or not, because once you broaden it and look at the value of work, you definitely have the opportunity to look at people who are doing unpaid work, and indeed their contribution to the progress that we are seeing as a human society, and the National Human Development Report has a sharp focus on this gender issue. They're going to look at that closely. And again, this is coming on the backdrop of an ongoing annual household income and expenditure survey that we are doing. So traditionally, government and international organisations would ask what is your employment and what is your unemployment rate? And then in this report, we tell them that we need to begin to look at those who are working, but we see they're not employed, simply because they are not working for pay or profit, and the proportion of people who are in there, and then once you disaggregate based on sex, age and geography, it's so revealing that we are losing a number of insights from the perspective of unpaid work. And so I fully subscribe to that view.     MF  That's interesting. Professor, for now thank you very much, and I hope you'll join the conversation again later, but we're going to broaden out to talk about, well, it's actually a related development, Emily, talking about women and unpaid work, that's been another theme of ONS's work with the UN Economic Commission for Africa.     EMILY POSKETT  There was a request put forward by national statistic offices around Africa to undertake leadership training, and this was part of the country's modernization vision. Countries recognise that in order to achieve modernisation, they need to have strong leadership. So they asked the UNECA to deliver leadership training and ONS partnered with UNECA to design and pilot this leadership training programme in a range of countries. As part of delivering that we noticed and recognised a lack of female leaders in a number of National Statistics Offices around the continent, and thought with partners about what we can do to help support that, so now as well as running a leadership training for the top tier of leadership in in each organisation, we also run a women into leadership training for potential future female leaders from within the staff. And it's been really, really successful. Some of the feedback that we've had from leaders in those organisations is that they've seen their female staff becoming more confident, more outspoken, more ambitious, putting themselves forward for positions, putting their ideas forwards as well, and generally feeling more confident to contribute in the workplace. We're really proud of that success and hope to roll it out in many more countries around the continent.     MF  A country that's the other side of Africa in a number of important senses, and that is Somalia, which of course if you've followed the news to any extent over the last few decades, you'll know the serious turmoil that's affected that part of Africa, Tim Harris, bringing you in, what's been going on in Somalia that the ONS has been involved in, particularly when it comes to measuring population and population movement. Tell us about that.     TIM HARRIS  Well, as you say, Somalia is a very fragile context. It's been affected by conflict and climate change and environmental issues for many years. And that's made it very challenging to collect information, statistical information, on a range of things. But particularly on population, which is a key underpinning piece of statistics which any country needs, and in fact, there hasn't been a census in Somalia since the 1970s, almost 50 years now, but there are plans to do a census next year, with support from the UN Population Fund, UNFPA, and other various institutions in Somalia and development partners, as well as the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. And Emily's international development team are also trying to form a partnership, or are forming a new partnership, with the Somalia National Bureau of Statistics. So there are plans to do a census next year, and we're really in the preparatory phase for that at the moment. And we're looking to see in our team how we can use data science, new techniques, new data sources, to try and help prepare to run that census.   One of the particular issues in Somalia is that there are significant numbers of people who are displaced from where they usually live, by the conflict, by climate change. There's also been a drought for the last few years, and so there are hundreds of thousands, in fact millions, of people who are displaced from where they usually live. They tend to congregate in what we call Internally Displaced People Camps, or IDP camps. So they're not refugees, they haven't crossed an international boundary, but they are displaced from where they usually live. And these IDP camps tend to be quite fluid and dynamic. They're often in areas that are difficult to get to, so information on them is very difficult to obtain. They change very quickly, they grow, they contract, and a lot of them are on private land. So we're looking to see whether we can use new data techniques, and new data sources, to give us information about the broad scale of population in that area.     MF  And those new data sources are necessary presumably because it's very difficult to actually get out and physically see these people in those areas and count them physically.     TH  That's right, and they change very quickly. So if you're running a census, you want to know where your people are, so you can send the right number of enumerators to the right places, you can draw boundaries of enumeration areas and so on.     MF  You need an address register essentially, but these are people effectively without addresses.     TH  That's right. That's the way that you do it in the UK. It's not possible in many of these IDP camps in Somalia. So we're looking to see whether we can use high resolution satellite imagery, which we can task for a particular period of time, say in the next week or the next month. And we use that satellite imagery to see whether we can identify structures on the ground in these camps. And in fact, the UN Population Fund has been doing this in a very manual way for some time now. So someone looks at the satellite imagery, and they put a point on each tent, and they try and count the tents and the structures within these camps. That's obviously a very time-consuming way of doing it. So we're looking to see can we do it in a more automated way.  So we've procured some satellite data and we've developed what we call training data. So in certain parts of the camps, we manually draw around the outlines of the tents, and we use techniques called machine learning. We show computers what areas are tents and what areas are not tents. And we try and train them using these algorithms to be able to predict in areas they haven't seen which areas are tents and which areas are not tents. So we're trying to develop models where we can use high resolution satellite imagery to predict the areas where there are tents, to produce numbers of tents, and in this way, we can help to estimate the broad numbers of people in these areas, and that can feed into the preparations for the census to help it run more smoothly and more efficiently.     MF  And trying to count an ever-shifting population allowance, in that we've got seasonal variations going on, some people unfortunately being evicted, and then you've got a population that would be nomadic anyway.     TH  People in these camps, they're a whole mixture of people, some who've been forced to move because of drought, some have been forced to move because of conflict, and as you say, there are large numbers of nomadic people as well. And they have tended to also congregate in these IDP camps in recent times because of the drought and other climate conditions.     MF  And it's thought there could be up to 3 million people at the moment living under those conditions in Somalia.     TH  That's right. I mean, that I think highlights one of the particular issues, in that the numbers are very uncertain. So there is some information from camp management administrative data, there is some information from some limited surveys that the Somalia National Bureau of Statistics has undertaken, but the estimates from those two different sources produce very, very different results. And so this is what we're trying to do, to see whether objectively we can count the number of tents, and therefore have some objective measure of at least the number of tents and structures, obviously then we need to move to how many of those tents and structures might be occupied. How many people on average might be in each of those tents and structures. But can we add something to the information context that produces some more objective measures, at least of the number of tents and the number of structures in those areas.     MF  Well, that's the kind of cutting-edge stuff that the Data Science Campus is all about. But Emily, the ONS has been involved in other censuses in Africa over the longer term, hasn't it?     EMILY POSKETT  Yes, that's right, Miles. So we've been involved in a number of censuses around Africa, including Ghana, also Kenya, Rwanda and a number of other countries through our partnership with the UNECA. And we've been able to really support countries to move from using paper for data collection to using tablets for data collection, during what they call the 2020 census round. And between ONS and the UNECA, we've been able to support on a number of different aspects, including how to make the most of that tablet technology. So you don't just move from using paper to using tablets and do the same processes. There are a number of advantages to using tablets in terms of how you can monitor the quality of the data coming in in real time, and how you can speed up that data collection and that data processing, and we've been able to work with NSOs around the continent on that.   We've also been using modern data matching techniques to support countries with their post enumeration surveys, which is a way of testing and improving the quality of the census. We've also been working with partners on using data visualisation and new techniques for improving the dissemination and user engagement with the products coming out of the census and therefore increasing the value of the census data products.     MF  It's interesting what you say about introducing tablet technology for data gathering in the field, to be honest, it's not that long ago that the ONS actually moved to use that, rather than the traditional what was once described as ‘well-meaning people with clipboards' going around asking questions. And it strikes me that in developing and working with these partner countries, the sort of methods the sort of technology being introduced, is not far behind where we're at really is it?     EP  No, absolutely. The ONS experts that get involved in these projects really learn a huge amount from the partners that they're working with as well, because often the partners we're working with have far fewer resources to deliver on similar goals. So the staff have to be incredibly innovative and use all sorts of different techniques and resources in order to achieve those goals. And people coming from ONS will learn a huge amount by engaging with partners.     MF  Well, on the modernisation theme, the census is another area where we've been working with Ghana isn't it, Professor?      PROFESSOR SAMUEL ANNIM  That's correct. We had support in all three phases of the census engagement, that is before the data collection, during the data collection, and after the data collection. We were very clear in our minds that we were going to use tablets for the data collection. And one of the things that we didn't know, or struggled with, had to do with the loading of the materials onto the tablet for the data collection.   Our original plan would have taken us about six months or four months to do that. And it wasn't going to be new for Ghana. We had other countries that had taken that length of time just to load the materials onto the tablet to enable the data collection exercise. And through the ONS and UNECA collaboration, we got technical assistance to provision the tablets in a much shorter duration. If I recall correctly, it took about six weeks to get all the items on the tablet. And we had been using tablets for data collection, but we hadn't been able to do remote real-time data monitoring because we didn't have a dashboard. We didn't know how to develop it. And through the partnership we were able to get a dashboard. The benefit of that was that after 44 days of exiting the field, we were able to put out a preliminary report on the census because during every day of the census we had a good sense of what the numbers were, whatever corrections we had to make we were making them. So after 44 days of exiting the field, we were able to announce the preliminary result.     MF  Wow, you had a provisional population total after 40 days?    SA  44 days, yes.     MF  44 days! Well, that puts certain countries to shame, I think, but anyway, let's not dwell on that. That's very impressive, Professor. And there's another project you've been working on, which I suppose is close to your heart as an economist, and that's the production of CPI? Modernising that?     SA  Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the first things that happened when I took office in 2019 was as part of the partnership, I visit ONS to understand what they are doing and how the collaboration can be deepened. And one of the things that we explored, and that was the first time I had heard of it, was how to produce a reproducible analytical pipeline. And all that simply means is that if you keep on doing something over and over again, you should think about automating the process. And that is the relationship that we have when it comes to CPI now. We have completely moved away from Excel. When I got in I said in addition to excel, let's use data, because when the process is not automated, and you have heavy dependence on human beings doing it, the likelihood of error is high. So we really bought into this and now we do our traditional ways, Excel, data, and then we do the reproducible analytical pipeline to compare the results. And ultimately, we're going to move away from the traditional XLS database and rely on this automated process. And this again, would allow us to hopefully reduce the length of time that it takes. So that is the extent to which we are modernising our CPI based on our collaboration.     MF  That's very impressive. And so through the process of speeding up the lag time of those regular indicators, you get a much timelier picture of what's going on in the economy.     EMILY POSKETT  This is one of the areas we will be working with a number of partners on. This idea of using new technology to deliver reproducible analytical pipelines and really, this is where national statistics offices around the world, but particularly those with low resources, can really utilise new technology to save time and improve quality. And this is something that we're really excited to be working with a number of different offices on, on a number of different topics, to really save human resources and ultimately improve quality.     MF  Tim, bringing you in...     TIM HARRIS  I think this really illustrates one of the other benefits of data science. We've talked a lot about the mobile phone records, call detail records, and their use in Ghana for producing mobility statistics, talked about using satellite imagery and machine learning in Somalia. But data science, and the tools of the digital age, can do a lot more of the basic underpinning work in statistical modernisation really well, and I think we really need to focus on that and see where we can benefit from that. And the work that Professor Annim talks about, about automating the CPI, I think that is really important. For that we can use the tools of coding, lessons from software engineering, like version control, and auditing processes, to really help us to get much greater efficiencies in these key statistical processes which any statistics office undertakes.   And we've been very pleased to work with the Ghana Statistics Service on automating their consumer price index. I think that we're seeing that it's speeded up the process, it's reduced the scope for human error, it's enabled us to put in quality assurance checks. The process has enabled us to produce much more transparent processes, and processes that can be maintained over time, because people can understand and see what's been done rather than things being hidden in a black box. So this process of automating statistical processes is really important.  I think the way we've engaged with the Ghana Statistics Service also highlights what we're trying to do in terms of building capacity for people within statistics offices to do this work for themselves. So partly we've done some of the work to help them automate. But we've also tried to build the capacity of Professor Annim and his colleagues so that they can then do this work themselves and take it forward, and not only within the consumer price index, but also seeing how they can plan more strategically about how this work can be done in other areas of statistics production.     MILES FLETCHER  Emily, what are the priorities for the future of this international development work of the ONS?     EMILY POSKETT  So our priority for the next phase of this work is to continue with the partnerships that we have and to build new partnerships. So Tim mentioned that we are working towards a new partnership with the Somalia National Bureau of Statistics. We're also considering new partnerships in Tanzania and Zimbabwe, to add to the ones we already have in Ghana, Rwanda, Kenya, Namibia and with the UNECA. And that's just in Africa. We're also looking to see what we can do to support in other regions. We have a partnership with Jordan, and a new one with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, and we're looking to do more in that region and beyond into Asia and the Pacific as well, but also looking to consolidate the kind of topics which we've worked on previously. So we've mentioned census, data science, women into leadership training, open SDG platform, and we're also looking to do more in new topic areas. So we're looking to do more in climate and environment statistics. We think this is a really important area that we're looking to do more in, in geography and geographical disaggregation of data.  And I think we're looking to do more really on the usability of statistical outputs and dissemination of statistical outputs. I think a number of our partners do a really great job of collecting data, but there's a lot more that can be done to make use of new technology to better disseminate and improve the use of that data. So we're ambitious in the reach that we have with our small budget, but we want to make sure that we don't lose sight of sustainability, and by spreading ourselves too thinly, we could reduce the sustainability of the work that we do, and I think we're forever trying to balance off those two things.     MF  Professor Annim, perhaps I could give you the last word on this. How do you see the future of collaboration between the ONS and Ghana?     PROFESSOR SAMUEL ANNIM  We really want to push the collaboration beyond the two statistical agencies, and let me indicate that that's started already. One of the things that we want to achieve is more utilisation of our data. I mean, we are fine with the production of it. We are technical people. We can continue to improve on it. But what I see with this partnership is to scale our relationship as two national statistical offices. Our relationship should be scaled up to the data users. So we don't want to just sit as two statistical offices, improving the production of statistics, but really getting into the realm of the utilisation of statistics, and that is where we need to bring in other government agencies, based on what ONS and GSS are nurturing.     MF  There you have it, statistics are important, but it's outcomes that really matter.   That's it for another episode of ‘Statistically Speaking', thanks once again for listening.   You can find out more about our international development work, read case studies and view our ambitious strategy, setting up the ONS's vision for high quality statistics to improve lives globally, on the ONS website, ONS.gov.uk, and you can subscribe to new episodes of this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all the other major platforms.   You can also get more information, or ask us a question, by following @ONSFocus on Twitter.  I'm Miles Fletcher and our producer at the ONS is Alisha Arthur. Until next time, goodbye    ENDS 

Cohost Janet Bush talks with Carlos Lopes. He is a professor in the Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town. He's also an affiliate professor at Sciences Po, Paris, an associate fellow in the Africa Program at Chatham House, and a member of the African Union reform team. Lopes was the policy director for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. He serves as an advisor on MGI's research on Africa, including our latest report, which discusses the continent's human capital and natural resources and how they can help to accelerate productivity and reimagine Africa's economic growth. His views are his own. In this podcast, he covers topics including the following: The factors constraining Africa's potential The promise of AI for Africa The threat and opportunity of climate change for Africa See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

What's been happeningPrices are moving across all components of the nuclear fuel cycle: enrichment, conversion and, of course, uranium.  The U3O8 spot price has moved through $57/lb, chalking up a respectable 17% growth for calendar 2023.  The sector's largest ETF, URA, issued new units last week We discuss the factors behind this growth, the return of capitalisation of uranium sector ETFs and whether uranium equities are responding or lagging.Winner of the week The major corporate news this week was American Lithium's spin out of their Macusani Uranium Project in Peru.  After acquiring Plateau Energy Metals in May 2021, American Lithium has released the project to develop beyond the shadow of the company's lithium assets.The spin out is being effected via a reverse takeover/back door listing and the Winner of the week was awarded to the shareholders of the target.What luck to have invested into a, ehem, listed dog shampoo company and receive market salvation via exposure to uranium – at a perfect time to ride the most prospective commodity play of recent times.https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/06/07/2683853/0/en/Friday-s-Dog-Holdings-Announces-Plan-of-Arrangement-to-Become-Major-Uranium-Developer-as-American-Lithium-Spins-Out-Macusani-Uranium.htmlBungle of the weekWe found a most deserving awardee of the Bungle of the Week – Carla Denyer on behalf of the UK Greens party.  Whilst the Greens continued science-denying opposition to nuclear power makes them a perennial short listee, Carla got her math horribly wrong when she told BBC that “Nuclear is between eight and eleven times more carbon intensive than renewable energy”. https://twitter.com/TheGreenParty/status/1666075811777003520?s=20This is at odds with the UN Economic Commission for Europe's comprehensive life cycle assessment of all electricity sources, published over a year ago, which found that nuclear power had the lowest carbon intensity of any energy source.  See https://unece.org/sed/documents/2021/10/reports/life-cycle-assessment-electricity-generation-optionsWe discuss whether it's bad math or bad faith – and where those ludicrous numbers could have come from.Tweet of the weekThis week's tweet highlights the major moves afoot in how nuclear energy is perceived by the ethical investment industry, following a Morningstar article highlighting that sustainable funds powerhouse Parnassus Investments have removed nuclear energy from their restriction lists.See https://www.morningstar.com/funds/sustainable-funds-powerhouse-parnassus-weighs-investing-nuclear-energyVarious tweets relayed the story to the delight of uranium investors. However, the actual Tweet of the Week gong is awarded to Nucleation Capital, who tweeted all the way back on May 26 after reading the primary source – ie a Parnassus news release.https://twitter.com/nucleationvc/status/1661932889695744000Question of the week“I have read that the Namibian government have banned the export of critical minerals.  Although it doesn't seem to include uranium, this can't be good for the country.  How much truth is in the headlines?”Moonshots & FizzersWe have noticed a distinct increase in speculation about Kazakhstan being squeezed between Russia and China.For instance, the Astana Times led that Kazakhstan was keen to make BRICS into BRICKS: https://astanatimes.com/2023/06/kazakhstan-seeks-to-join-brics-and-enhance-trade-and-economic-cooperation/  and https://www.seetao.com/details/210273.htmlOilprice.com ran the headline that “China And Russia Lock Horns Over Kazakhstan's Uranium” https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-russia-lock-horns-over-180000094.htmlWhilst this type of media reporting is usually a guarantee of Fizzerdom, some speculators feel a Moonshot could be on the way if Kazakhstan is unable to maintain a Western-facing facet.

Welcome back to another episode of the richer geek, something a little different for you. Today we have Jinan Glasgow George, she has spoken about IP in front of the UN Economic Commission for Europe and been a featured speaker at IP conferences in India, Italy, France, South Africa, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, Ghana, as well as New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Research Triangle Park in the USA. She is a Forbes contributor, author of the new book The IP Miracle, and has advised the Senate Small Business Committee and several Congressional offices on IP and cryptocurrency. Find complete show notes and more information at therichergeek.com/podcast

Kasirim Nwuke, managing partner at Mirisak & Associates and former chief, green economy, technologies and innovation at the UN Economic Commission for Africa, examines Nigeria's presidential election results, in which Bola Tinubu was declared the winner, and where challenges from contenders Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar continue in Nigeria's courts. Show notes and transcript: https://bit.ly/3U7Jajw  Foresight Africa podcast is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback email to podcasts@brookings.edu.

Sign up here for updates on impactinvestor.ioThanks to all the Causeartist Partners - Check them out here.Subscribe to our Causeartist newsletter here.----------------------------------------In episode 50 of the Investing in Impact podcast, I speak with Ladé Araba, Executive Director of AlphaMundi Foundation(AMF), on investing in women and climate to create long-term jobs and  prosperity.Ladé Araba is a senior Development Finance Executive and Board Member with over 20 years of experience. Prior to becoming the Executive Director of the AlphaMundi Foundation, she was the Managing Director for Africa at Convergence Blended Finance.She also sits on the Equality Fund's Investment Advisory Council, serves as a Non Executive Director on the Board of African Risk Capacity (ARC) Ltd, is the Co-Founder/President of the Visiola Foundation, and was an Advisory Committee Member at the Green Outcomes Fund.She previously served as Technical Adviser to the former Minister of Finance of Nigeria and was the Head of the Strategic Monitoring Unit. She was also an Adviser in the Power Sector Team at the Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility (NIAF).She was previously a Senior Investment Officer in Infrastructure Finance at the African Development Bank and served as Technical Adviser to the Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Ms. Araba was an Enterprise Development Specialist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and also worked for the QED Group LLC in Washington, DC.She holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Thunderbird School of Global Management and a dual Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree in Management Information Systems (MIS) and International Business from the University of Oklahoma (2001). A native English speaker, she is fluent in French and Italian and has basic knowledge of Spanish.About AlphaMundi FoundationAlphaMundi Foundation's mission is to strengthen the long-term commercial viability of SMEs in Africa and Latin America to drive economic transformation. This leads to more jobs and income generation benefiting more people and in turn, increased purchasing power and improved qualities of life.The vision: Economic transformation where SMEs in Africa and Latin America can scale sustainably and create well-paid jobs.What they do:Structured blended financeAccess to capital and technical assistance are two of the biggest barriers to businesses getting off the ground. We're willing to take the risk and invest in these impactful SMEs. We do this by offering SMEs with investments that may have lower returns and/or higher risks through measures like technical assistance grants, first loss guarantees, returnable pre-investment stage grants, concessional loans, and/or scaling capital. All of this is done with the expectation that these investments will be truly catalytic and more likely to bring strong social and environmental rewards.GLIC field buildingWe believe gender and climate issues can't be addressed on an ad-hoc basis. Rather, these complex challenges require an intentional approach, which brings explicit gender and climate solutions into all investment decisions. Over recent years, gender lens investing has gained traction, although as global temperatures rise, the demand for climate investing will only continue to increase. That's how we came to coining a new term: GLIC—Gender Lens Investing for Climate. ----------------------------------------Sign up here for updates on impactinvestor.ioThanks to all the Causeartist Partners - Check them out here.Subscribe to our Causeartist newsletter here.

The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era (Harvard University Press, 2022) tells the story of how a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world. Making an innovative and provocative intervention across the fields of global history, Latin American history, and economic thought, Margarita Fajardo reconstructs the origins of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL. Cepalinos challenged the orthodoxies of development theory and policy, outpacing the United States and the International Monetary Fund as the agenda setters for a region traditionally held under the orbit of Washington and its institutions. Their story interlocks with the emergence of dependency theory in Latin America, whose diverse history Fajardo recasts in pioneering fashion. Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era (Harvard University Press, 2022) tells the story of how a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world. Making an innovative and provocative intervention across the fields of global history, Latin American history, and economic thought, Margarita Fajardo reconstructs the origins of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL. Cepalinos challenged the orthodoxies of development theory and policy, outpacing the United States and the International Monetary Fund as the agenda setters for a region traditionally held under the orbit of Washington and its institutions. Their story interlocks with the emergence of dependency theory in Latin America, whose diverse history Fajardo recasts in pioneering fashion. Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era (Harvard University Press, 2022) tells the story of how a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world. Making an innovative and provocative intervention across the fields of global history, Latin American history, and economic thought, Margarita Fajardo reconstructs the origins of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL. Cepalinos challenged the orthodoxies of development theory and policy, outpacing the United States and the International Monetary Fund as the agenda setters for a region traditionally held under the orbit of Washington and its institutions. Their story interlocks with the emergence of dependency theory in Latin America, whose diverse history Fajardo recasts in pioneering fashion. Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies

The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era (Harvard University Press, 2022) tells the story of how a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world. Making an innovative and provocative intervention across the fields of global history, Latin American history, and economic thought, Margarita Fajardo reconstructs the origins of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL. Cepalinos challenged the orthodoxies of development theory and policy, outpacing the United States and the International Monetary Fund as the agenda setters for a region traditionally held under the orbit of Washington and its institutions. Their story interlocks with the emergence of dependency theory in Latin America, whose diverse history Fajardo recasts in pioneering fashion. Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/caribbean-studies

The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era (Harvard University Press, 2022) tells the story of how a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world. Making an innovative and provocative intervention across the fields of global history, Latin American history, and economic thought, Margarita Fajardo reconstructs the origins of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL. Cepalinos challenged the orthodoxies of development theory and policy, outpacing the United States and the International Monetary Fund as the agenda setters for a region traditionally held under the orbit of Washington and its institutions. Their story interlocks with the emergence of dependency theory in Latin America, whose diverse history Fajardo recasts in pioneering fashion. Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era (Harvard University Press, 2022) tells the story of how a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world. Making an innovative and provocative intervention across the fields of global history, Latin American history, and economic thought, Margarita Fajardo reconstructs the origins of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL. Cepalinos challenged the orthodoxies of development theory and policy, outpacing the United States and the International Monetary Fund as the agenda setters for a region traditionally held under the orbit of Washington and its institutions. Their story interlocks with the emergence of dependency theory in Latin America, whose diverse history Fajardo recasts in pioneering fashion. Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era (Harvard University Press, 2022) tells the story of how a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world. Making an innovative and provocative intervention across the fields of global history, Latin American history, and economic thought, Margarita Fajardo reconstructs the origins of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL. Cepalinos challenged the orthodoxies of development theory and policy, outpacing the United States and the International Monetary Fund as the agenda setters for a region traditionally held under the orbit of Washington and its institutions. Their story interlocks with the emergence of dependency theory in Latin America, whose diverse history Fajardo recasts in pioneering fashion. Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era (Harvard University Press, 2022) tells the story of how a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world. Making an innovative and provocative intervention across the fields of global history, Latin American history, and economic thought, Margarita Fajardo reconstructs the origins of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL. Cepalinos challenged the orthodoxies of development theory and policy, outpacing the United States and the International Monetary Fund as the agenda setters for a region traditionally held under the orbit of Washington and its institutions. Their story interlocks with the emergence of dependency theory in Latin America, whose diverse history Fajardo recasts in pioneering fashion. Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era (Harvard University Press, 2022) tells the story of how a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world. Making an innovative and provocative intervention across the fields of global history, Latin American history, and economic thought, Margarita Fajardo reconstructs the origins of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL. Cepalinos challenged the orthodoxies of development theory and policy, outpacing the United States and the International Monetary Fund as the agenda setters for a region traditionally held under the orbit of Washington and its institutions. Their story interlocks with the emergence of dependency theory in Latin America, whose diverse history Fajardo recasts in pioneering fashion. Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era (Harvard University Press, 2022) tells the story of how a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world. Making an innovative and provocative intervention across the fields of global history, Latin American history, and economic thought, Margarita Fajardo reconstructs the origins of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL. Cepalinos challenged the orthodoxies of development theory and policy, outpacing the United States and the International Monetary Fund as the agenda setters for a region traditionally held under the orbit of Washington and its institutions. Their story interlocks with the emergence of dependency theory in Latin America, whose diverse history Fajardo recasts in pioneering fashion. Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Energy Gang, we revisit the surprise of the summer: the Great American Climate Bill. Now that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has officially been signed into law, what's next?Regular Energy Gang member Dr. Melissa Lott steps in as host this week while Ed Crooks takes a well-earned holiday. Joining Melissa is Robbie Orvis from Energy Innovation and Dr. Linus Mofor from the UN Economic Commission for Africa. A press release from the white house estimates the IRA will result in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by about one billion metric tons in 2030. For many, the bill is a high point of decades of work to pull together a piece of major energy and climate legislation in the US that helps mitigate the impacts of climate change and protect public health. Not just for the hundreds of millions living in the country but for the health of people around the globe. The gang highlights the impact the IRA will have on air pollution – according to some initial analysis of the bill, we are looking at avoiding nearly 4,000 premature deaths and up to 100,000 asthma attacks annually by 2030. The bill also extends and expands the existing electric vehicle subsidiary, requiring that at least 40% of critical metals must come from the US or a Free Trade Agreement partner.As we head into COP27, we look at the response from other countries. Do policies like the IRA help in the energy transition around the world? We turn to Linus to walk us through the effects the bill may have on African countries and the opportunities for development and financing in the climate and energy sector. As always, please do let us know what you think. Send us a note, or a free electron, on Twitter – we're @TheEnergyGang.This episode of the Energy Gang is brought to you by Hitachi Energy, a global technology leader advancing a sustainable energy future for all.Learn more by listening to the Power Pulse podcast, where the Hitachi Energy team discusses the latest in the ongoing transformation of the world's energy systems. The Power Pulse podcast is available now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other podcast app.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Africa is home to about 560 million people out of over 700 million without access to electricity worldwide. In July 2022, the African Union commission and its member states unveiled what they say is a practical approach to tackling the energy crisis in the continent.  The African Common Position on Energy Access and Just Transition stipulates that Africa will continue to deploy all forms of its abundant energy resources including renewable and non-renewable energy to address energy demand.  Natural gas, green and low carbon hydrogen and nuclear energy will play a crucial role in expanding modern energy access in the short to medium term while enhancing the uptake of renewables in the long term for low carbon and climate-resilient trajectory.  Linus Mofor a Senior Environmental Affairs officer in charge of Energy, Infrastructure, and Climate Change in the Africa Climate Policy Centre at the UN Economic Commission for Africa joins us for today's episode.  Mofor, explains why is Africa choosing to mix its energy portfolio with natural gas and nuclear energy instead of 100 percent renewable, and what is being done to catalyze energy investment in the continent. 

Andrei Covatariu este expert internațional în energie și schimbări climatice. Activitatea sa se concentrează pe politicile climatice și energetice, concentrându-se pe procesul de tranziție energetică și provocările geopolitice, economice și sociale ale acestuia. Opiniile și analizele de politică ale lui Andrei sunt publicate și citate în mod constant în mass-media internaționale. Andrei este în prezent expert în Task Force pentru „Digitalizarea în energie”, la Comisia Economică pentru Europa a Națiunilor Unite (UNECE). Totodată, Andrei este bursier nerezident în Programul Climate and Water, la Institutul Orientului Mijlociu (Statele Unite), și Senior Research Associate la Energy Policy Group (România). În 2021, Andrei a co-fondat ECERA, o rețea de practicieni în sustenabilitate care își propune să producă cunoștințe relevante pentru politici, ajutând guvernele, companiile, ONG-urile, universitățile și alții să navigheze în diferitele fațete ale sustenabilității. În trecut, Andrei a lucrat cu alte companii cu scop profit (Enel România, unde a fost Șef de Afaceri Publice la Enel România, anterior având alte roluri, cum ar fi Director Afaceri Reglementare, Manager Digital, Asistent Executiv al CEO & Country Manager ), organizații multilaterale și internaționale (World Energy Council, în calitate de fost membru al Consiliului de administrație al FEL-100), think tank-uri (Harvard's Belfer Center; Center on Regulation in Europe; Energy Policy Group etc.) sau ONG-uri (Climate Reality Project, Climate Interactive etc.). A fost bursier la programul Frontier Europe al Institutului Orientului Mijlociu (în 2020, Washington DC) și lider în viitor al Institutului Masdar (în 2022, Abu Dhabi). Andrei deține o diplomă de licență și un master în inginerie nucleară și un master în administrarea afacerilor. Andrei a absolvit și un master în politici publice (MPP) la Blavatnik School of Government, Universitatea din Oxford, cu un proiect de vară la Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. Unde puteţi urmări Sustainable Living Podcast: Website: www.sustainable living.ro Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3rI4agY YouTube: https://bit.ly/2QWCPuB Facebook: www.facebook.com/SustainableLiving.ro Instagram: www.instagram.com/SustainableLiving.ro #Sustainablelivingpodcast #NicoletaTalpes #AndreiCovatariu

Today we are joined by Dr. Steven Were Omamo to discuss the agricultural development, inclusive development nexus, and the role of policies.  Before returning to New Growth International at the end of 2021, Were spent most of the last four years as the Representative and Country Director for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Ethiopia. Before this, he was WFP's Deputy Director of Policy and Programme and Representative to the African Union and UN Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa. To find out more about the work Were is doing, visit: www.newgrowthint.com Please subscribe to AgSpirations by AWARD to follow the conversations. You can find all episodes at https://awardfellowships.org/podcast Hosted by World Agroforestry (ICRAF), in Nairobi, Kenya, AWARD works toward inclusive, agriculture-driven prosperity for Africa by strengthening the production and dissemination of more gender-responsive agricultural research and innovation. To find out more about AWARD, go to https://awardfellowships.org/

On this week's episode of The Parley In All Blue, Mark sits down with Dr. Emanuelle Nuesiri to discuss the empire of Mali.Dr. Emmanuel Nuesiri is the lead Social Science faculty at the African Leadership University (ALU) Mauritius, where he teaches courses in African Studies, Feminist Economics, and Environmental Politics. He holds a PhD from St. Antony's College at the University of Oxford, UK. He has been a research scholar at the Pan-African Institute for Development Buea, Cameroon; Cornell University, USA; University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, USA; and the University of Potsdam, Germany. He has also been a research associate with the Center for African Studies (CAS) at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, a resource person at the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit (CPSU) London and with the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA) Addis Ababa. Emmanuel is presently the Chair of the Natural Resource Governance Framework (NRGF), a global governance assessment and correspondence instrument being developed by the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).  Emmanuel's academic interests span the history of colonialism in Africa, rights-based natural resource governance, global economic development, and the social science of climate change. . We'll also explore Sundiata the Lion King, and Mansa Musa the Great. Mali is an empire that was founded by Sundiata. This goes back almost a thousand years ago. He defeated the great and mighty empire of Ghana. After Sundiata conquered Ghana, he went on a mission to build the greatest empire ever. The kingdom of Mali had gold. They had developed the technology and wherewithal to mine gold, transport, and sell it/trade gold with their neighbors to the north. The gold that went to North Africa then went to Europe and then it went to China and all other places in between. During this time period, the Kingdom or empires from 1200 through the 1600s about 2/3 of the world's gold came from Mali. Highlights from the episode:History of MaliSundiata The Lion KingThe 9th Mansa: Mansa Musa The GreatMalian ArtAbubakari ll and his voyageConnect with Dr. Emmanuel NuesiriLinkedIn: @emmanuel-nuesiriConnect with Mark Dawson:Instagram: @iammarkdawsonLinkedIN: @mark-a-dawsonWebsite: www.bentonmuse.comTwitter: @Iammarkdawson

After working with the Lebanese government for many years, Ziad Hayek discusses with Alternative Frequencies host Bilal El-Amine the key problems posed by the existing system of governance, as well as some solutions that can improve the economy and the functioning of the state. A former investment banker, Ziad Alexandre Hayek was Secretary General of the Republic of Lebanon's High Council for Privatization and Public-Private Partnership from 2006 until he was nominated to be President of the World Bank in February 2019. Hayek is currently Vice Chair of the Bureau of the UN Economic Commission for Europe Working Party on PPP, Member of the Board of Trustees of the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, and High Commissioner for Lebanon at the World Business Angels Investment Forum. In 2014, he was made Officer of the National Order of the Cedar, the highest state order of Lebanon. He has lived and worked in the US, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, and he speaks 11 languages. بعد العمل مع الحكومة اللبنانية لسنوات عديدة، يناقش زياد الحايك مع مقدّم "غيّر الموجة" بلال الأمين، المشاكل الرئيسية التي يطرحها نظام الحكم الحالي، بالإضافة إلى بعض الحلول التي يمكن أن تحسّن الاقتصاد وعمل الدولة. زياد ألكسندر حايك، مصرفيًا استثماريًا سابقًا، وأمينًا عامًا سابقاً للمجلس الأعلى للخصخصة والشراكة بين القطاعين العام والخاص في الجمهورية اللبنانية منذ عام 2006 وحتى ترشيحه لمنصب رئيس البنك الدولي في شباط 2019. يشغل حايك حاليًا منصب نائب رئيس مكتب فريق عمل لجنة الأمم المتحدة الاقتصادية لأوروبا حول الشراكة بين القطاعين العام والخاص. زياد حايك هو أيضاً عضو مجلس أمناء جامعة الروح القدس- الكسليك، والمفوض السامي للبنان في "منتدى استثمار ملائكة الاعمال العالمي". في عام 2014، حصل على وسام الأرز الوطني، وهو أعلى وسام دولة في لبنان. عاش وعمل في الولايات المتحدة وأوروبا وأفريقيا وأمريكا اللاتينية والشرق الأوسط ، ويتحدث 11 لغة. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/alt-frequencies/message

Equity, justice, and transparency are needed to enable meaningful conversations around the the debate on solar radiation modification, because Africa has to be very careful about climate-altering technologies, especially when we do not understand their consequences, says Vera Songwe, executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) during a C2GTalk interview. Africa can only sustainably and justly have the conversation on carbon emissions if it sees that this road leads to a more prosperous life, better livelihoods, and that this road will help the continent meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Vera Songwe is the United Nations under-secretary-general and the ninth serving executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). As executive secretary focusing on "ideas for a prosperous Africa," her organizational reforms have brought to the fore critical issues of macroeconomic stability; development finance, growth and private sector; poverty and inequality; the digital transformation and data; and trade and competitiveness. She is acknowledged for her long-standing track record of providing policy advice on development and her wealth of experience in delivering development results for Africa. A strong advocate of the private sector, Songwe launched a business forum debate at ECA and created, for the first time, a private sector division with a number of significant initiatives. Before joining the ECA, Songwe held a number of leading roles at the World Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC). Songwe serves as a non-resident senior Ffllow at the Brookings Institution. She is also a member of the African Union institutional reform team under the direction of the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, and an advisory board member of the African Leadership Network and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. This interview was recorded on October 19, 2021 and is available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

A global and regional discussion is needed to learn about and create governance for climate-altering approaches like solar radiation modification, says Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), during a  C2GTalk interview. The UN's regional commissions, including ECLAC, can play an important role in bringing together a diverse range of actors in this discussion, including public and private experts in environment, energy, finance, economy, and planning. At the end of this C2GTalk, Bárcena said “And someday we will have to pay tribute to Maurice Strong . . . I think of him quite a lot.  I believe that he was really anticipating so many of these things. So hopefully someday we and C2G can do something about it”. On behalf of  Bárcena and Janos  Pasztor this C2GTalk is dedicated to the memory of Maurice Strong. Alicia Bárcena  assumed  office  as  the  executive  secretary  of  the  Economic  Commission  for  Latin  America  and  the  Caribbean (ECLAC) on July 1, 2008. She had previously served as the under-secretary-general for management at United Nations Headquarters in New York, chef de cabinet, and deputy chef de cabinet to the former secretary-general, Kofi Annan. This interview was recorded on August 6, 2021 and is available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

#universalbasicincome #ubi #bien #soas #sewa #COVID has created a frenzied crisis management response from nations, from currency printing to stimulus package rolled out only to the banking industry & big companies. The common man has been forever ignored & this will have long term economical repercussions as the economic engine is run by low/middle class and the small, micro, medium-sized enterprises. What is universal basic income & has the time come for the world to take heed & implement this powerful policy which could not just reverse the impact of COVID but also sow the seeds for an equitable future? Guy Standing is an economist, who has been involved in the basic income experiments in India- Madhya Pradesh fronted by SEWA [Self Employed Women's Associations]. He is a Professorial Research Associate and former Professor of Development Studies at SOAS University of London, founder member and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), an international non-governmental organization that promotes basic income as a right, with networks in over 50 countries. Guy Standing has worked as a consultant with many international bodies, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (now the International Trade Union Confederation), the European Commission, the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). In 2006-07 he was a consultant economic adviser to the Economic Security division of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and was the main writer for the UN's Report on the World Social Situation published in late 2007. Professor Standing was an economic adviser in the Prime Minister's Department in Malaysia and has written various books on the subject of Rentier Capitalism & Universal Basic Income. https://www.guystanding.com https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/guy-standing-54b70514a https://twitter.com/guystanding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1YI-neupU&feature=youtu.be [ Massive Attack-Video] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Standing_(economist) https://basicincome.org/topic/guy-standing/ https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff82877.php https://www.amazon.in/Books-Guy-Standing/s?rh=n%3A976389031%2Cp_27%3AGuy+Standing

Many countries in the ECE region are embracing carbon neutrality recognized as the first milestone towards sustainable energy, with leaders like Canada, Denmark, France, and the United Kingdom, says Olga Algayerova during a C2GTalk interview. She calls for countries to recommit to the future: "We are really running out of time and urgent action is needed." She highlights that UNECE provides a platform for technology-neutral dialogue and are keen to work with C2G to help countries get better informed about new emerging technologies that could play an important role in fighting climate change in the future. Olga Algayerova is the executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Algayerova took office on June 1, 2017. She previously served as permanent representative of Slovakia to the International Organizations in Vienna, Austria (since 2012). She was previously president of the Millennium Development Goals of Slovakia (2010-2012); secretary of state, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2006-2010) and export director at Zentiva International (2004-2006). The 56 countries of the UNECE region span from North America to Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

Africa representing over 17 percent of the world population, is responsible for less than four percent of global emissions. But the continent has significant assets in terms of carbon sinks. Jean-Paul Adam, the director for Technology, Climate Change, and Natural Resources at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), says the Congo basin alone accounts for three years' worth of global emissions in its capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. Africa's agenda 2063 aims at industrializing the continent. But given the temperature rise globally, the continent has to develop but in a low carbon way. Hence, the continent might require some more time to transition from fossil fuel-based energy to low carbon pathways. Why is Just transition critical for the continent now? Listen to how Africa can build better given the Covid-19 and Climate Change twin challenge. Finance is key to unlocking sustainable development. In Africa, climate change is about development and providing sustainable pathways for people to have viable livelihoods. But, Adam says it costs African countries about five to six times more to borrow money for investment in a green recovery. How can nations raise funds to upscale the amount of money available to invest in their climate resilience? What opportunities exist through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA) for sustainable value chains? Last week on 13-17th September in Cabo Verde island, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) organized the Ninth Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-IX), themed - towards a just transition that delivers jobs, prosperity and climate resilience in Africa - leveraging the green and blue economy.” So, on this episode, Adam explains how Africa is financing her green and blue economy, why a just transition is critical when climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic are hard-hitting economies, and why investing in growing economies like Africa is key for global recovery.

UN agency says Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean should register GDP growth of 5.2 per cent on average in 2021, an improved forecast but not enough to offset coronavirus losses.The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean upped its April forecast of 4.1 per cent for 2021, which comes on the back of a 6.8 per cent contraction in 2020 as the region of 33 countries was ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic.The report says the expansion, however, will not manage to ensure sustained growth, because the social impacts of the crisis and the structural problems in the region have deepened and will continue to do so during the recovery.It added that there is nothing to indicate that the low growth dynamic prior to 2020 is going to change.

In this episode, Andrew turns to Geetha Tharmaratnam, CEO of Aequalitas Capital Partners and leader of their Impact Investment practice. Geetha is an investment executive with more than 19 years of experience in Private Equity, venture capital, development finance, impact investing, and insurance in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. She has had a focus on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), gender lens-investing, healthcare, and financial services. As senior investment advisor to the UN Economic Commission for Africa, she has also developed a fund of funds to invest in female African Investors. Join them as they discuss what “impact” funding means. what responsibilities it brings to fund managers, and why is it the right approach for investors in Africa. They also confer about the role of international investment and in particular the role of the international community, whether through government, DFI's and multilaterals as well as the need to create a more diverse environment in business on the continent and how the ECA African Women Investors Training Programme, launched in May 2021, is a significant step in the right direction. Geetha animates this insightful conversation and uses her love for numbers to give us a look into the steps that need to be taken to support and promote SMEs, the key factors which will drive investment in the next year, and the sectors she sees as most likely to thrive.

A very good morning to you and you're listening to the Migration & Diaspora Podcast, one of the fastest-growing podcasts on migration and diaspora issues in the world... probably. I'm delighted to welcome to the show, Almaz Negash, the Founder and Executive Director of the African Diaspora Network (ADN), an exciting network, based in Silicon Valley, that I've just joined as a member of the ADN Executive Leadership Council. Almaz has been named one of the 100 outstanding Silicon Valley Women of Influence for her work in social innovation. In 2010, she founded the ADN, whose mission is to inform and engage Africans in the diaspora and facilitate direct collaboration with social entrepreneurs, innovators and business leaders to invest and improve the lives of everyone on the continent and the communities where they live. Under her leadership and vision, ADN is now the home of the annual African Diaspora Investment Symposium (ADIS), Builders of Africa's Future, Impact & Investment Forums, and Builders of America's Future. The latter is a new programme developed to provide access to capital for black-led startups. Almaz has also contributed to the UN Economic Commission for Africa's High-Level Panel on Migration and has served as an Executive in Residence for the School of Global Innovation & Leadership within the Lucas College and Graduate School of Business at San Jose State University. And this is in addition to her long career in the US spanning the trade, innovation and educational arenas, following her move from Eritrea via the Netherlands. I'm excited to share with you both Almaz's own fascinating migration and diaspora story, as well as some of ADN's brilliant work and Almaz's many insights gained from founding and growing the network. I was particularly keen to talk to her about the merits of such pan-African diaspora networks, their work with African-Americans, and how ADN has managed to broker some very interesting partnerships with the types of organisations that we haven't talked about on this podcasts, such as Facebook and MasterCard. As ever, I'd like to thank you for tuning in and I hope you enjoy the show. Useful links Connect with Almaz - https://www.linkedin.com/in/almaznegash/ https://twitter.com/almaznegash?lang=en African Diaspora Network - https://www.africandiasporanetwork.org/ https://twitter.com/AfricanDNetwork African Diaspora Investment Symposium (ADIS) - https://www.africandiasporanetwork.org/what-is-adis/ Accelerating Black Leadership and Entrepreneurship (ABLE) - https://africandiasporanetwork.org/able/

In this week’s A Perspective, Andrew Skipper continues to discuss key topics with some of Africa's most influential leaders, both on and off the continent. In this episode, Andrew talks to the Executive Head of Non-Banking Financial Institutions and Global Markets at Standard Bank Group, Lindeka Dzedze. She is also the project lead for the Standard Bank Group and MiDA Advisors collaboration to connect US investors to impactful capital deployment opportunities on the African continent. In addition, she is the chairperson of the African Women Impact Fund Executive Committee, an initiative of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and its partners. Join them as they discuss the importance of women’s initiatives and championing gender in the African context. They delve into the work of the African Women Impact Fund, its focus on female fund managers, and what exactly sets this particular impact fund apart from others. Lindeka also shares her thoughts on the importance of partnerships between the public and private sector and how COVID-19 has impacted the activities of such initiatives on the continent.   

Clothing production has doubled in the past two decades, and consumers only keep items for half as long. Low prices and fast-changing trends, combined with poor quality garments, fuel the fast fashion industry. This industry produces 10% of global carbon emissions, is the second largest consumer of the world’s water supply, and 35% of microplastic particles found in the ocean are a result of laundering synthetic textiles. Aside from the environmental harm, fast fashion is also critiqued for its unethical treatment of labour, where workers can make as little as $68 per month. Today, we are joined by three experts to discuss the harmful socio-ecological global impacts of the fast fashion industry to help us understand this issue. Today's guests are Rachel Miller, Sheridan College; Sabine Weber, Seneca College; and Paola Deda, UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion This episode was produced by Faria Amin and Mycala Gill

A conversation on fiscal stimulus and the government spending multiplier with Professor Fabrizio Carmignani, Dean (Academic) of Griffith Business School. Fabrizio and Economics Explored host Gene Tunny discuss: how the size of the multiplier (and the degree of crowding out) varies with the state of the economy;how vouchers might be a more effective stimulus than cash handouts;how governments really do need to run surpluses (or only very small deficits) when the economy recovers so the debt-to-GDP ratio can be stabilised and reduced in the long-term; andhow Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) isn't a theory, nor is it modern.Links relevant to the conversation include:Does Government Expenditure Multiply Output and Employment in Australia?Fiscal Multipliers in Recession and ExpansionHow Much Did the 2009 Australian Fiscal Stimulus Boost Demand? Evidence from Household-Reported Spending EffectsFabrizio's bioFabrizio Carmignani is Dean (Academic) and Professor of Economics in the Griffith Business School. His research is in the broad field of applied macroeconomics and applied econometrics. His recent publications are in the areas of conflict economics, tourism economics, policy modeling, spatial econometrics, and the economics of natural resources. He has also been appointed as a member of the ARC College of Experts from 2019 to 31 December 2021.He is a regular contributor to various media outlets, where he writes and speaks about fiscal and monetary policy issues in Australia and overseas. Between 2002 and 2009 he worked for the United Nations in various roles, including the position of First Economist in the Trade, Finance and Economic Development Division of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Fabrizio holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow and a Research Doctorate from the Universita' Cattolica in Milano.

Chair Judith Tyson  – Senior Research Fellow, International Economic Development Group, ODI Speakers Christopher Egerton-Warburton – Co-Chief Executive Officer, Lion's Head Global Partners Nick O’Donohoe – Chief Executive Officer, CDC Group Søren Peter Andreasen – General Manager, Association of European Development Finance Institutions (EDFI) Vera Songwe – Executive Secretary, UN Economic Commission for Africa Description The Covid-19 pandemic is having a crushing effect on private finance for development. This is resulting in a ‘doubling-down’ on the recessionary pressures in Africa and domestic banks experiencing a classic ‘credit crunch’. With international finance sharply reduced, these acute problems add to the existing barriers to mobilising private finance for development. Barriers include, a lack of bankable projects, a lack of management tools for political and macroeconomic risk and processes being mismatched to investor needs. We explore innovations in liquidity provision, infrastructure financing and climate investment. We examine what investment is needed to create a more resilient and sustainable private sector, the prospects for blended finance and co-financing strategies, and the impacts of the rise in foreign currency assets and debt restructuring. We draw from high-level leaders and their experiences of leading financial institutions, exploring key insights and lessons learnt. Our expert panel share forward-looking innovative solutions for middle-income and low-income countries, as well as approaches that can 'change the game’ on mobilising finance from a range of actors, including multilateral development banks, development and international finance institutions and the private sector.

If there’s anything about responding to an epidemic, it’s that speed matters, and so does investing in people closest to the problem, said Dr. Raj Panjabi, Assistant Professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and CEO of Last Mile Health, in this week’s Friday Podcast. The latter, he said, is the root of resilience. In addition to threatening immune systems, COVID-19 is a serious threat to the broader health system and to non-COVID-19 health care. Drawing on lessons from the Ebola outbreak, Panjabi said that the best system is an everyday system capable of surging in a crisis. Creating such a system would involve sufficiently funding community health workers before communities experience a state of emergency. In the absence of existing and well-funded health systems, communities are left scrambling in a crisis and quality of care declines as a result. During the Ebola epidemic, the availability of skilled facility-based birth attendants across Liberia plummeted three-fold because health workers were becoming infected, Panjabi said. To complicate the issue further, health systems had poor infection control, and people were afraid to go to the hospital. Even in low-transmission areas, expectant mothers who believed they could get an infection from a health worker in a health center were about 50 percent less likely to go to the hospital for the birth, said Panjabi. However, there were cases of strong community-based responses. South Africa, for instance, had about 27,000 HIV & TB community health workers who were retrained. They went on to screen more than 11 million people—about 20 percent of the population— and help detect COVID-19 at the community level in the first months of their pandemic, Panjabi said. South Africa managed to do this because it had been already investing in everyday health workers. And Liberia has improved its health systems since Ebola as well. One in two rural children with malaria are being tested and treated “by their neighbors, by community health workers,” said Panjabi. These case studies illustrate why it is crucial that community health workers in Africa—most of whom are women from poor communities—should be viewed as invaluable employees rather than as informal volunteers. After all, investing in community health workers is not simply a health issue, said Panjabi. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a reminder that robust health systems can benefit both the economy and the security of nations, he said. Based on fiscal stimulus projections from the UN Economic Commission for Africa, Panjabi said that allocating just $2 to $4 billion of a $100 billion budget would help fund a potential pandemic health workforce that could not only help us deal with this current pandemic but help us become better prepared for the next one. For every dollar invested in community health workers, there is ten dollars’ worth of economic return. That stimulus provides protection against the next outbreak and allows patients to lead longer, healthier, and more productive lives, said Panjabi. “But it’s also one of the fastest ways to create jobs for young people on the continent,” he said.

“It’s time to ensure that no American has to worry about where they and their families will sleep tonight.” James Stockard, referred to as Jim, feels affordable housing should be a right, not a privilege. He links the lack of affordable housing to social justice. He defines the inadequacy of affordable housing in the United States as directly tying into racial and class biases. Jim has been involved in housing on many levels. In 2019, he delivered a lecture in Glasgow for the UN Economic Commission for Europe conference on city living. He was also a visiting lecturer in Shanghai China. As a principal for over 25 years with the Cambridge-based consulting firm Stockard & Engler & Brigham, he has worked with nonprofit groups and public agencies across the country on such issues as affordable housing development, property management, neighborhood revitalization, and supportive service planning.  He has been involved in public housing take-overs and cost studies. www.TrailBlazersImpact.com

Once the COVID-19 pandemic is behind us, all indications are, that cities are going to be “greener, cleaner, quieter, safer and more secure”.   That’s the strong belief of iconic international architect Norman Foster, who’s been sharing this sustainable view with mayors from dozens of cities at a UN Economic Commission for Europe event in Geneva.  In a wide-ranging interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Lord Foster begins by discussing how cities have emerged stronger from disaster in the past, and how they will likely look in the future.  

Once the COVID-19 pandemic is behind us, all indications are, that cities are going to be “greener, cleaner, quieter, safer and more secure”.   That’s the strong belief of iconic international architect Norman Foster, who’s been sharing this sustainable view with mayors from dozens of cities at a UN Economic Commission for Europe event in Geneva.  In a wide-ranging interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, Lord Foster begins by discussing how cities have emerged stronger from disaster in the past, and how they will likely look in the future.  

This week, our theme is Social and Environmental Sustainability Standards. Why do we need to talk about this? Standards exist. Indeed, some say there are too many. And yet problems in fashion's supply chains persist. The fashion industry is well known for it's labour issues and adverse environmental impacts. Are things improving? What is missing when it comes to compliance, collaboration and consumer input, and how might  increase transparency and accountability? To fill out the picture and explore the solutions, your hosts Simone Cipriani and Clare Press interview: Paola Deda, who works for the UN Economic Commission for Europe and is active in the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, Jill Dumain, CEO of the company behind the BlueSign certification system and Biatriz Cunha, a specialist in the textiles, clothing, leather, footwear sector at the ILO. Find out more at https://ethicalfashioninitiative.org/ Our music is from the original production From Kabul to Bamako, music directed by Saïd Assadi. This podcast was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of ITC Ethical Fashion Initiative and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), estimates that Covid-19 could cause Africa's economies to shrink by between 1.8 – 2.6 percent possibly pushing 27 million people into extreme poverty. This week on the Africa Climate Conversations, listen to Mr. Stephen Karingi, Director, Regional Integration and Trade at the UNECA answer what are the most affected sectors, why is diversification of economies critical for Africa economic recovery and growth, what opportunities exists in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA), and why digital economy and the African youth critical to economic recovery.

BizNews — In today's news headlines: * The Covid-19 pandemic will likely kill at least 300,000 and risks pushing 29 million into extreme poverty across Africa, the UN Economic Commission for Africa warns; * The number of Covid-19 deaths in SA now exceeds 50. There have been more than 3,000 confirmed cases in SA, after more than 108,000 people have been tested, says the South African government; * As the government grapples with finalising a plan to feed a growing number of desperately hungry people amid the Covid-19 national lockdown, shelters say they are seeing starving people who have not eaten for up to a week, says the Sunday Times; * Warring gangs in the Western Cape have made international television headlines as they are working together in an unprecedented truce to deliver much-needed food to people under lockdown; and * Banks are in talks with the government and regulators over a loan-guarantee program largely aimed at keeping small business running, says Richard Wainwright, chairman of the Banking Association South Africa.

BizNews — In today's news headlines: * The Covid-19 pandemic will likely kill at least 300,000 and risks pushing 29 million into extreme poverty across Africa, the UN Economic Commission for Africa warns; * The number of Covid-19 deaths in SA now exceeds 50. There have been more than 3,000 confirmed cases in SA, after more than 108,000 people have been tested, says the South African government; * As the government grapples with finalising a plan to feed a growing number of desperately hungry people amid the Covid-19 national lockdown, shelters say they are seeing starving people who have not eaten for up to a week, says the Sunday Times; * Warring gangs in the Western Cape have made international television headlines as they are working together in an unprecedented truce to deliver much-needed food to people under lockdown; and * Banks are in talks with the government and regulators over a loan-guarantee program largely aimed at keeping small business running, says Richard Wainwright, chairman of the Banking Association South Africa.

As countries all over the world restrict the flow of goods to halt the spread of the COVID-19 virus, one UN agency has come up with a plan to keep vital food and medical supplies on the move.  That agency is the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and it has just launched an online Observatory on Border Crossings all over the world.  The tool can be used by transport companies to keep goods flowing as smoothly as possible as UNECE’s Jean Rodriguez tells Daniel Johnson. 

As countries all over the world restrict the flow of goods to halt the spread of the COVID-19 virus, one UN agency has come up with a plan to keep vital food and medical supplies on the move.  That agency is the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and it has just launched an online Observatory on Border Crossings all over the world.  The tool can be used by transport companies to keep goods flowing as smoothly as possible as UNECE’s Jean Rodriguez tells Daniel Johnson. 

Welcome to Finance and Fury, The Furious Friday Edition Today – Run through SDG Goal 17 – Sneaky side to the SDGs along with the method of creating global monopolies – part 1 of two – today 17, next week 12 – they go hand in hand SDG17: “seeks to strengthen global partnerships to support and achieve the targets of the 2030 Agenda - bringing together national governments, the international community, civil society and the private sector” The partnership programs for the UN – Who are these actors? National Governments – self-explanatory – The bringing together of Aus, China, Belgium, etc – every nation The international community – used in geopolitical terms to refer to everyone in the world – global citizens is another term Civil Society – NGOs and activist groups Private Sector - Companies – but only the giant multinationals this will benefit – I know I didn’t get an invite I originally thought that the private sector would say no to these policies – they are meant to make profits But a lot of the largest are enthusiastically backed the new goals Example - mega-corporations backing the scheme are the world’s top three search engines: Google, Microsoft’s Bing, and Yahoo – If you look it up online – everything positive – how it can restore trust in companies, how it can harness growth in the modern economy – all to preserve global resources If these corporations’ support for the UN agenda, do you think this may affect the supposed impartiality of search results? If you are interested, try duckduckgo compared to the same google searches Have a question: Ask myself this - Do we live in a plutocracy? – billionaires, multinational companies and unelected global governments telling us how to live – They fly in private jets and consume far more than the average joe = produce more CO2 than us – but there are only a few of them – so okay, right? They can act as hypocrites – Part of the UN strategy - Recs have to come from others – if the UN says to do it, people may be sceptical But what If google says to do it? Or CEOs like Bill Gates say to do it? They have good public images Why should we trust Someone who was giving millions for research to the recently suicided Jeffrey Epstein, like Gates? Michael Cannon-Brookes – company partaking – but didn’t he just fork out over $100m for property at Point Piper? Don’t know about you – I find this Interesting– why if we are going to be underwater in 10 years? Look around - Billionaire property developers putting up massive projects on coast lines around the world – Florida Would banks lend to finance these projects on the coast? 30-year mortgage for a costal property? No – banks don’t want to lose money – Developments on the coast wouldn’t be lent to as they would be 5m underwater Use logic – ignore the science that is funded to look for climate change (p.s. if cant find no more money) – if the financial system and ‘ultra-wealthy' are either lending or buying property on the beaches – while also telling us to change behaviours in the name of climate, along with taxing future generations more to save the planet – is it real or just a scare tactic to control people choices and extract more resources?   What if we don’t want these SDGs? Do we get a vote? No - When you pay close attention – becomes one rule for me and one rule for thee Reading the UN literature on this, as well as from the horse’s mouth – UN Economic Commission secretary said that these policies (especially circular economy – details more in next week) – “compulsory choice for a sustainable world” A lot of politicians pretend that the SDGs are binding – they aren’t so these agreements should have no force But as UN Agenda 21 previously showed - the people must demand these changes through their elected representatives – that is where the power of the UN comes from – Companies, activist groups acting on behalf of UN UN. Agenda 21 was heavily pushed by an NGO called ICLEI - none of us had been informed about it or have voted for it in any way; it basically leads to the loss of personal freedom and sovereignty worldwide   That is why the 2030 Agenda is universal – ‘applying to all countries and actors’ - nations to take climate action – but the social pressure has to come from everywhere – Companies, activist groups like getup, Even schooling with global citizenship programs The day this is released – climate strikes occurring across the world – taking the afternoon off to glue yourself to a road will really tell the earth to stop rotating on its axis leading to changes in climate The focus has been pushed on CO2 emissions – said a while back that this – I wish this was an onion article – but is the sort of thing that creating Co2 as the enemy leads to after CO2 gas was rebranded as ‘carbon’ – we are carbon based lifeforms – why not eat our ways out of the problems? Global warming – Sweden – scientist introduced eco-cannibalism – eating people – I don’t want to do this – but if UN gets its way – legislate that we have to – come back to this in future SDG eps Let’s just assume that we are doomed – not that climate change is real – as the climate changes – changes 4 times a year where I live - estimates at 10k years ago, the Sahara Desert had the largest inland lake – Lake Chad, along with being a forest – obviously the climate changes – Why not invest into something that can help us adapt to this? What is policy response instead? To control climate, have to control what people buy, where they work, what they eat – Control the economy, control our lives, in the promise that the world will be saved – Government promises – that no government can deliver on   This is part of the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda – but it is a mess – not my words A commentary in The Economist in 2015 said that the SDGs are "a mess" compared to the eight MDGs MDGs were about development while the SDGs are about sustainable development plus the SDGs have a level of inter-connectedness to all of their perceived problems Whilst the MDGs were strongly criticized by many NGOs as only dealing with the problems – not going far enough The SDGs deal with the causes of the problems – What problems? Education? Energy? Inequality?   What do they need partnership programs, activists and companies for? Beyond the blanket marketing – help implement Goals - Strengthen domestic resource mobilization - through support to developing countries for them to improve domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection Total government revenue as a proportion of GDP – Developed 23% of GDP while developing at 18% - Want to get developing up to increase global taxation base Goal - Developed countries to implement official development assistance commitments Target of 0.7% of ODA/GNI to developing countries and 0.20% of ODA/GNI to least developed countries GNI – Gross national incomes - Official development assistance(ODA) - government aid designed to promote the economic development of developing countries Remember – Govs gets income from tax – taxing us to send money overseas – setting targets of sending money overseas based around 1% of our Gross national income each year - $18bn per year – money has to come from somewhere – meant to help with aid – but only when it goes to the right place and not Development banks Also How well does giving aid to African nations run by dictators go when massive corruption exists? It doesn’t - Goal - Mobilize additional financial resources for developing countries from multiple sources Sources - Foreign direct investments (FDI) as a proportion of domestic budget and remittances as a proportion of total GDP Eradicating poverty – by making everyone poor – One thing in it is about remittances (money on sending cash back overseas) – want to cap to 3% fees - enforce on banks on money transfer companies – Mastercard is on board Why would large companies want to cap their costs? Another barrier to entry for all – Mastercard survives but smaller companies may not be able to make profits In 2019, annual remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries are projected to reach $550 billion Makes remittance flows larger than FDI – Remittances are growing 9% p.a. – as this grows, less money spent domestically hurts economic growth and also puts downwards pressure on AUD due to outflows Remember – a lot of this policy is being pushed under climate change and equality as justification - Scam – two-fold – Firstly - people are constantly bombarded – being made afraid as well so it shuts down logical thought and makes it easy to control Fear, information overload – all shuts down our ability to rationally think Government is positioned as the only ones to help – moral puritans and pearl clutches telling others to change behaviours Secondly – allows Governments to let companies take over – monopolise the production and consumption – Circular economy – next week Companies pandering to social pressure – Nike, Gillette, Monopoly with Ms monopoly – if I identify as a woman can I get more money from the start like the rules say? If they don’t pander – they aren’t invited to the UN party – Sadly for shareholders – they are punished as these companies suffer in profits from public backlash – This should be a market sign to just stick to providing products and services – not lecturing us   Leading into next weeks ep – the Companies on the list – H&M group – great history of cheap child labour SC Johnson - 1997, S. C. - taken advantage of audit errors and filed fraudulent tax returns, underpaying its taxes by millions of dollars More recently – was fined for Price Fixing on hygiene products – Greenlist process - settled a lawsuit that alleged the company's Greenlist label misled consumers into believing the products were reviewed by a third party and given a seal of approval – they gave it to themselves Renault – Owns Nissan – Massive producer of EV – major beneficiary from banning petrol cars Banks – going to make billions from issuing the green bonds and other financial products in raising capital Or making money from lending to green projects which tax funds go towards paying off   These examples aren’t to single out companies - just the nature of companies and What happens with monopolies and government backing – regulators mostly turn a blind eye – until whistle-blowers or public hold them to account Companies act in self-interest- normally to make a profit but most of these act in anti-competitive behaviours Illegal practices – price-fixing, pushing for legislation to create barriers to entry Monopolistic competition is a type of imperfect competition such that many producers sell products that are differentiated from one another and hence are not perfect substitutes – why there is one or two large multi-national from each industry When you introduce coercive government policies on the market - monopolistic competition will fall into government-granted monopolies and the monopoly to be served under government is a form of coercive monopoly by which a government grants exclusive privilege to a private individual or firm to be the sole provider of a good or service; potential competitors are excluded from the market by law, regulation, or other mechanisms of government enforcement. As a form of coercive monopoly, government-granted monopoly is contrasted with a coercive monopoly or an efficiency monopoly, where there is no competition but it is not forcibly excluded Advocates for government-granted monopolies often claim that they ensure a degree of public control over essential industries - without having those industries actually run by the state Easy way to control the production and consumption options for goods and services Just make it so hard for anyone else to complete they go out of business Causes inefficiencies in the market place = higher prices to consumers for the good or service being supplied Solutions given are government-imposed price caps = rent control and power prices = derelict apartments and rolling blackouts when tried – so will this time be any different? Allows companies to set prices and production policies without fear of breeding potential competition Why would politicians let this happen? Well, who pays their bills and provides the campaign financing? That is where we leave this – part two going further into the circular economy in next ep   Thanks for listening today, if you want to get in contact you can do so here. 

José Antonio Ocampo (Banco de la República, Colombia & Columbia University) Inaugural SOAS Central Banking Lecture: Essential Reforms for a Sound 21st Century International Monetary System. The inaugural SOAS Central Banking Lecture will be delivered by Professor José Antonio Ocampo. The SOAS Central Banking Lectures have been established by the SOAS Department of Economics to provide a forum for distinguished scholars and practitioners to address topics of broad interest in the areas of central banking and international monetary and financial policy. The lecture will scrutinise the need for and the challenges of reforming the international monetary system. The 2007-09 global financial crisis, as the emerging market crises of the late twentieth century, show that the ad hoc international monetary system that evolved out of the crisis of the Bretton Woods arrangements in the early 1970s needs fundamental reforms. This lecture, based on José Antonio Ocampo’s recent book, Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System, will analyse the areas in need of fundamental reform: the global reserve system, macroeconomic policy cooperation, prevention and management of balance of payments crises, and governance of the system. Professor Ocampo’s lecture will be followed by comments by Stephany Griffith-Jones (Columbia University) and Ulrich Volz (SOAS). Spearker biography: José Antonio Ocampo is Member of the Board of Banco de la República, Colombia’s central bank, and Chair of the Committee for Development Policy of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). He is also Professor (on leave) at the School of International and Public Affairs, co-President of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue and Member of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. He has occupied numerous positions at the United Nations and his native Colombia, including UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and Minister of Finance, Minister of Agriculture and Director of the National Planning Office of Colombia. He has received numerous academic distinctions, including the 2012 Jaume Vicens Vives award of the Spanish Association of Economic History for the best book on Spanish or Latin American economic history, the 2008 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought and the 1988 Alejandro Angel Escobar National Science Award of Colombia. He has published extensively on macroeconomic theory and policy, international financial issues, economic and social development, international trade, and Colombian and Latin American economic history. Speakers: José Antonio Ocampo (Banco de la República, Colombia & Columbia University), Stephany Griffith-Jones (Columbia University) and Ulrich Volz (SOAS). Released by: SOAS Economics Podcasts

An interview with Dr. Adeyemi Dipeolu, the Economic Adviser to Nigerian President Mahammadu Buhari. Dr. Dipeolu previously served as Director of Capacity Development at the UN Economic Commission of Africa, based in Addis Ababa.

Every six seconds, somebody is killed or seriously injured on the road, adding up to 1.25 million deaths each year. For this latest Lid Is On podcast from UN News, we'll hear from three of the leading voices involved in the new UN Road Safety Trust Fund, launched this month, which is committed to “accelerating progress” in saving the lives of pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists across the world. Music Credits: Live with No Fear and Sun of the Most High by Ketsa Interviewees: Jean Todt, UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for Road Safety Olga Algayerova, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe Saul Billingsley, Executive Director of the FIA Foundation

The Empire Club of Canada Presents: Right Honourable Paul Martin, Former Prime Minister of Canada On Empowering Indigenous Children and Youth to build a Stronger Canada Mr. Martin will speak to the importance of Indigenous children and youth in Canada, and the need to support communities across the country to improve not only their children's education but also the wider determinants that influence their educational outcomes all within a context that is culturally relevant. From their earliest years through to high school graduation, First Nations, Metis and Inuit children have the same potential to succeed as any other Canadian, and must have the same opportunities to succeed. The Right Honourable Paul Martin was Prime Minister of Canada from 2003 to 2006 and Minister of Finance from 1993 to 2002. During his tenure as Minister of Finance, he erased Canada's deficit, subsequently recording five consecutive budget surpluses while paying down the national debt and setting Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio on a steady downward track. He was the co-founder of the Finance Ministers' G-20, and in September 1999 was named its inaugural chair. During his tenure as Prime Minister, Mr. Martin set in place a ten year, forty-one billion dollar plan to improve health care and reduce wait times; signed agreements with the provinces and territories to establish the first national early learning and child care program and created a new financial deal for Canada's municipalities. Under his leadership the Canadian Government reached an historic deal with Aboriginal people of Canada to eliminate the existing funding gaps in health, education and housing known as the Kelowna Accord. After leaving public life, Mr. Martin created the Capital for Aboriginal Prosperity and Entrepreneurship (CAPE) Fund, an investment fund investing in Indigenous business and founded the Martin Family Initiative (MFI) focusing on the early childhoods and elementary and secondary education of Indigenous children and youth. The mission of MFI is to walk alongside Indigenous experts, communities and leaders to ensure that the educational opportunities from birth through to secondary school for Indigenous children are as good as any in the country and are culturally appropriate. Mr. Martin has advised the African Development Bank and works closely with the Advisory Council of the Coalition for Dialogue on Africa, sponsored by the African Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the African Development Bank. He was a founding co-chair of the Congo Basin Forest Fund, a 200 million dollar British-Norwegian-Canadian poverty alleviation and sustainable development fund for the Congo Basin Rainforest. Mr. Martin was also a commissioner for the Global Ocean Commission. Before entering politics, he had a distinguished career as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The CSL Group Inc., the largest self-unloading shipping company in the world. Its acquisition by Mr. Martin in 1981 represented the most important leveraged buyout in Canada at that time. Speaker: The Right Honourable Paul Martin, Former Prime Minister of Canada *The content presented is free of charge but please note that the Empire Club of Canada retains copyright. Neither the speeches themselves nor any part of their content may be used for any purpose other than personal interest or research without the explicit permission of the Empire Club of Canada.* *Views and Opinions Expressed Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the speakers or panelists are those of the speakers or panelists and do not necessarily reflect or represent the official views and opinions, policy or position held by The Empire Club of Canada.*

American foreign policy under the Trump Administration currently is “chaotic, amorphous, and …unprofessional,” according to Ambassador Reuben Brigety, dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Ambassador Brigety expresses to Spectrum podcast that he is concerned about the huge number of important positions in the State Department that are not yet filled after four months in office. The Trump Administration has not nominated a sufficient number of people for the U.S. Senate to confirm. This leaves foreign policy work undone and sends the wrong message to our allies, according to Brigety. He believes that there are multiple reasons for these vacancies. He said that the Trump Transition Team was the most “slow and chaotic that we’ve seen in decades.” Therefore, nominations were not ready early in the Administration. He also says that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has decided to “take his time” making these appointments since the Trump administration has called for a 30% budget cut in the State Department which leads to a lay-off of 2,300 State Department workers. The Ambassador calls this 30% cut “outrageous.” Finally, Brigety says the positions are not filled because several potential employees have said “no” to joining this administration. Brigety asserts that his observations are not partisan in nature and is quick to point out major foreign policy attributes of the Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations. The Ambassador also notes that the Trump administration, to date, has failed to articulate an overall foreign policy. “America First is not a world view,” says Brigety. He claims that it is a slogan that is rather meaningless when confronting major problems or catastrophes on the world’s stage. Brigety also raised some concerns about the Defense Department and the role of the military in making foreign policy decisions. He cites that we come from a long tradition of “civilian control of the military” through the President. He, however, says it is a reasonable question to ask whether currently any civilians in the Trump Administration have an adequate understanding or comprehension of the military in order to make informed decisions. Speaking specifically of Africa, Ambassador Brigety says that too often America has not taken advantage of the richness of Africa’s resources of land, people, and development possibilities. Instead, China has taken over as the major economic player on the African continent and has eclipsed America’s meager efforts. Brigety says that the Trump Administration, to date, has been “quiet on Africa.” He provides Spectrum listeners with a guide of what to follow in the future in the areas of foreign policy. He thinks it is important to view how America is relating to its allies, how it handles North Korea, and how the Trump Administration responds to the next big disaster that will require humanitarian efforts. Ambassador Brigety previously served as Representative of the United States to the African Union and was named Permanent Representative of the US to the UN Economic Commission for Africa. He also has served as a Deputy Assist Sec. of State in the Bureau of African Affairs and in the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. He also is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.