BY PATRICIA TAFT In late 2010, in a city in central Tunisia, a young street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself ablaze in a final act of defiance and frustration after police confiscated his wares on the street. While his protest may have been localized, the sentiment was not. After nearly three decades of falling […]
Daily Archives: April 6, 2019
Understanding Resilience: The Case of Somalia
- Saturday, 06 April 2019 14:05
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BY NATE HAKEN Global efforts at poverty reduction through infrastructure and institution-building have been an overwhelming international success, with poverty rates having dropped precipitously in the last twenty years. However, there is a glaring exception. In fragile states, with protracted or recurrent crisis, international and multilateral development efforts have not worked. In this “last mile”, […]
Ethiopia on the Rise
- Saturday, 06 April 2019 05:02
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BY HANNAH BLYTH AND DANIET MOGES Ethiopia experienced a momentous year of political transformation in 2018. Despite a steadily worsening trend over the decade to 2017, Ethiopia is the most-improved country on the 2019 Fragile States Index (FSI). Improving by 5.3 points to a score of 94.2 in this year’s FSI, the country‘s performance could […]
Africa’s Islands of Stability
- Saturday, 06 April 2019 04:32
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BY J.J. MESSNER “Mauritius was made first and then heaven … and heaven was copied after Mauritius.” So said Mark Twain in 1896 at a time when the small Indian Ocean island nation was under British rule (after having previously changed hands from the Portuguese, to the Dutch, and then to the French). At a time […]
The Caucasus Give Cause for Cautious Optimism
- Saturday, 06 April 2019 04:12
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BY PATRICIA TAFT Straddling Europe and Asia, the South Caucasus has long been considered a region of strategic importance for past empires and modern-day superpowers. It is also a land where the echoes of the Cold War continue to play out decades after the collapse of the Former Soviet Union and the realignment of the […]