The Global Context: Major Forces Shaping Our World

Leonardo Da Vinci’s mechanical knight was a humanoid automaton, designed and possibly constructed by da Vinci around 1495. When a version of the mechanical knight was brought into existence several hundred years later, it could stand, sit, raise its visor, and independently maneuver its arms, operated by a series of pulleys and cables. Today, of course, robots have escaped da Vinci’s fantasies. Today they land on Mars, help nurses treat COVID-19 patients, and slave in car manufactur ...

La Tunisie a fêté récemment le 10ème anniversaire de la révolution qui a mis fin à l’ancien régime bénalien et défini les principes de la IIème République. Ayant pour principales doléances la croissance économique et la justice sociale, la révolution tunisienne était exclusivement sociale. Or, l’appropriation de la révolution par l’Assemblée nationale constituante (ANC) et le quartet du dialogue national qui ont privilégié le chantier des réformes démocratiques au détriment des réfo ...

This report is part of a partnership between the Policy Center for the New South and the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.   New technologies, such as automation, artificial intelligence and industrial robots, are often seen as a real danger for existing jobs and also for future job-creation prospects. There is a perception that they will make work redundant and lead to massive job destruction. However, others believe that automation, like previous technological waves , will incre ...

Angola’s prospects for reconstruction and development of its poor connectivity infrastructure are heavily dependent upon the export performance of its oil sector. Using an interregional inputoutput table for Angola, we estimate comprehensive measures of trade in value added revealing different hierarchies of interregional and international trade integration, with implications for regional inequality in the country. By encompassing the subnational perspective in the case study of an ...