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 […]

BY MICHAEL ALTER Pope Francis was resolute in his opinion about the toll climate change is exacting on the planet when he released his encyclical on Thursday, June 18. Francis laid out his feelings quite bluntly: “the Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” While this […]

The current migrant boat crisis in Southeast Asia involving Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority and poor Bangladeshis has caught the world’s attention. While there have yet to be any reports of boats entering into Singapore waters, the government has pre-emptively stated that the country “is not in a position to accept any persons seeking political asylum […]

Will Singapore’s next General Elections be as fiercely contested as the last? During the last General Elections, the call for greater governmental transparency drove significant debate, paving the way for the leading opposition party to gain unprecedented political ground on the promise of being a ‘check’ on the ruling party. In the 2011 Presidential Elections, […]

BY PAUL ADLER This piece is cross-posted from Pangyrus, Boston’s new journal of literature, perspective, arts, and politics. In September 1969, Nixon administration counsellor Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a prescient memorandum about the rising carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere. Although noting the need for more scientific research to understand this trend, Moynihan felt confident […]

A lot of things have evolved since the 2011 elections when Nigerian youth celebrated social media as a tool for successful elections. Technology has continued to foster government accountability, as well as active citizen participation in the country. During the 2015 elections, young Nigerians, who make up 70 percent of the country’s 177 million population, […]

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 […]