International Relations and Security

Growing Prevalence and Influence of Arab Migration Trends In recent years, Arab emigration has been growing. Arab expatriates constitute approximately 6 percent of the local population in the countries across North Africa and the Levant, a percentage that is twice as high as the world average.[i] Notwithstanding such significant patterns of out-migration, the impact of […]

As civil strife and conflict have curtailed the reach of Baghdad and Damascus, a popular notion has emerged suggesting that the artificial colonial-era boundaries of Iraq and Syria are collapsing. The popular and mistaken refrain is that the Sykes-Picot Agreement is unravelling. This has engendered a number of misguided suggestions that the borders of the […]

Harvard Africa Policy Journal (APJ): Hi Lekan. Thank you very much for your availability for this interview. You are the CEO of Lekoil, a young Nigerian international oil exploration and production company. Where does the company have its offices? Lekan Akinyanmi (L.A.): Hi William. My pleasure! Thanks for inviting me! So, Lagos is the head […]

On April 16, 2015, JMEPP Associate Editor Kristin Wagner interviewed Nabil Fahmy, Former Foreign Minister of Egypt and Dean and Professor of Practice in International Diplomacy, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (GAPP), American University Cairo. Watch the discussion of Egypt’s transitional process, public policy challenges, and foreign policy, including relations with Iran and intervention […]

On 5th July 2014, a group of three sisters got on a night train after visiting their family. They were scheduled to reach Bangkok the next morning. However, the oldest sister woke up to find that her 13-year-old sister had gone missing, her bed in disarray. The two sisters searched the whole train but came up empty-handed. After notifying the officers and their parents, search teams were set up along the train route and police began investigating those […]

Ghana Rising Among the emerging Africa narratives, Ghana has often been touted as something of a model: over a decade of consolidated democratic institutions, economic expansion, and poverty reduction. With economic growth of over 6% for the past seven years, buoyed by high commodity prices, Ghana appeared to have avoided many of the pitfalls in […]

On April 3, 2015, as he came to Cambridge (Massachusetts, United States) to honor an invitation by the Institute of Politics of Harvard Kennedy School of Government to give the opening keynote address of the 6th annual African Development Conference at Harvard University, His Excellency Mr. Issoufou Mahamadou, President of the Republic of Niger, kindly […]

On March 10th, the British parliament rushed through new anti-terror laws aimed at stopping potential jihadists from traveling abroad. In less than 15 minutes, it banned people subject to a “Terror Prevention and Investigation Measure” from boarding planes and obliged airlines to provide the government with detailed passenger lists. The Parliament further instituted “temporary exclusion […]

As the Nigerian elections come around, the broadcast is out again and every pundit on Africa especially the western ones are on, once more, about Nigeria disintegrating.  This alarm and concern for Nigeria by outsiders seems to me not so much about caring but about perpetuating the myth of Africa’s failure in governing itself. In my […]

BY HUGO ZYLBERBERG General Keith Alexander maintained in a 2013 speech that, as director of the National Security Agency (NSA) at the time, he was doing “everything [he] could to protect civil liberties and privacy,” then added a warning: “Everyone also understands that if we give up a capability that is critical to the defense […]

The following interview was conducted by APJ’s Ngozika Amalu on the occasion of HE Ambassador Ali’s visit to Harvard University, sponsored by the Center for African Studies and co-hosted by APJ, the Africa Caucus, and the Harvard African Students Association. Ambassador Amina Salum Ali is the African Union Ambassador to the United States. As the […]

One day a Harvard economics professor asked his graduate class: “Who has ever been in Sierra Leone?” Students raised their hands, most of them non-Africans and none of them from Sierra Leone. And he continued: “Who has ever seen a cow in Sierra Leone?” This time, no more hands were raised. Believe it or not, […]