It's been a long hiatus, tout le monde. A hiatus from writing, from thinking about problems and solutions, from having focus, and also a hiatus from myself really. So what's been brewing?
Research projects on Guinea-Bissau, Afghanistan and Burkina Faso, trying to formulate a worthy question on Islamism in Pakistan's geopolitics and acquainting myself with Special Economic Zones in Cambodia. I also am thinking of doing a comparative analysis of Thailand and Indonesia's political economies. Considering between an internship in UNESCO in Paris or one in Thailand's UNHCR office, or maybe applying for something in NYC. All in all a tall order for the short time I have left, but exciting times nevertheless. I also took an eye-opening trip to post-revolutionary Tunisia, which will be fodder for a separate post.
Research projects on Guinea-Bissau, Afghanistan and Burkina Faso, trying to formulate a worthy question on Islamism in Pakistan's geopolitics and acquainting myself with Special Economic Zones in Cambodia. I also am thinking of doing a comparative analysis of Thailand and Indonesia's political economies. Considering between an internship in UNESCO in Paris or one in Thailand's UNHCR office, or maybe applying for something in NYC. All in all a tall order for the short time I have left, but exciting times nevertheless. I also took an eye-opening trip to post-revolutionary Tunisia, which will be fodder for a separate post.
I will mention, however, that the tech platforms used by the Tunisian NGOs (for outreach & elections monitoring) really piqued my interest. There's been likewise a spate of fascinating hi-tech initiatives lately for supporting education in the developing world. Some examples are Veduca, a Brazilian online video platform that gives access to thousands of lectures from universities like MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, UCLA, etc. Another interesting one in Latin America is Educabilia, which is an open source curricula & lesson database of sorts. These efforts, of course, assume that the tech infrastructure already exists, and it goes without saying that this is far from true. A UN report has recently highlighted the crucial "missing piece" in education in the developing world: the lack of broadbrand access (the figures range somewhere from 98% access in developed to 3% in Africa). Microsoft's 4Afrika project is doing something really worthy to keep an eye on in this regard; the weakest link in the project, as far as I can see, is the part where it teams up with the Chinese company Huawei to design low-cost smartphones for the African market - $150 as the proposed price still is pretty darn unaffordable. The fun part is that these phones will customized just for African users with features such as custom apps, replaceable batteries, and so on. They'll also be working with governments to set up Afrika Academy, an off and online school for equip higher graduates with technical and business skills, as well as to experiment with "white space technology" and solar-powered base stations to spread cheap wireless broadband. All pretty exciting times!
