Mountains in a flat world: Why proximity still matters for the location of economic activity

Thomas Friedman (2005) argues that the expansion of trade, the internationalization of firms, the galloping process of outsourcing, and the possibility of networking is creating a 'flat world': a level playing field where individuals are empowered and better off. This paper challenges this view of the world by arguing that not all territories have the same capacity to maximize the benefits and opportunities and minimize the risks linked to globalization. Numerous forces are coalescing in order to provoke the emergence of urban 'mountains' where wealth, economic activity, and innovative capacity agglomerate. The interactions of these forces in the close geographical proximity of large urban areas give shape to a much more complex geography of the world economy.

No. 17: International Migration and Good Governance in the Southern African Region

Southern Africa has a long history of intra-regional migration, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. Migration was probably the single most important factor tying together all of the various colonies and countries of the sub-continent into a single regional labour market during the twentieth century. However, entrenched patterns of migration have undergone major restructuring in the last two decades. Southern Africa is now a region on the move (McDonald 2000). Several broader changes underly this shift towards greater and greater intra-regional mobility. First, the end of apartheid, a system designed to control movement and exclude outsiders, produced new opportunities for internal and cross-border mobility and new incentives for moving. The ensuing integration of South Africa with the SADC region brought a major increase in legal and undocumented cross-border flows and new forms of mobility. Second, the region’s reconnection with the global economy has opened it up to forms of migration commonly associated with globalization (Crush and McDonald 2002). Third, growing rural and urban poverty and unemployment have pushed more people out of households in search of a livelihood. One aspect of this has been a significant gender reconfiguration of migration streams (Dodson 1998). Fourth, HIV/AIDS has also impacted considerably on migration. Not only is the rapid diffusion of the epidemic inexplicable without reference to human mobility but new forms of migration are emerging in response (Williams et al. 2003; IOM 2003a). Finally, the countries of the SADC are still dealing with the legacy of mass displacement and forced migration. The impact of the Mozambican and Angolan civil wars continue to reverberate. Recurrent civil strife in the rest of Africa has generated mass refugee movements and new kinds of asylum seeker to and within the region. The cessation of hostilities and threat has confronted countries of asylum with issues of repatriation and integration. Policy responses as the local, national, regional and continental scale must take into account the extraordinary dynamism and instability of migration forms and patterns in the region. Governments wedded to legal frameworks of control and exclusion are finding it increasingly difficult to cope. The fundamental policy challenge is to move the states of Southern Africa to a regionally-harmonized and consistent set of policies that emphasize good governance, sound management and client-centred service delivery (Klaaren and Rutinwa 2004). In addition, because migration is a cross-cutting phenomenon, it needs to be integrated into all facets of state policymaking and planning, including programs and strategies to alleviate poverty and reduce inequality. For this to happen, migration’s key role needs to be documented by researchers and recognized by policy-makers

Gender and Remittances: Creating Gender-Responsive Local Development: The Case of Lesotho

The number of international migrants passed 200 million in 2008, more than double the figure in 1965. As the number of migrants continues to grow, the character of international migration has been transformed. South-South migration, as it is now commonly referred to, is acquiring ever-greater significance in contemporary migration configurations. South-South movements of international migrants are highly gendered. In particular, the feminization of international migration has meant that the absolute numbers and proportion of women migrants is increasingly rapidly. More and more women are also migrating for work in other countries in their own right. The gender dynamics behind this new trend in South-South migration have not been sufficiently examined. In spite of the rapid increase in the volume and diversity of knowledge on the migration-development nexus, issues on gender and especially the changing role of women, continue to be lacking. This study aims to contribute to the narrowing of this knowledge gap through an interlinked analysis of migration and development from a gendered perspective. It pays particular attention to the impact of remittances – financial, in-kind and social – on gendered development processes in countries of origin and amongst transnational households spanning the origin and destination countries. The study focuses on these dynamics in the context of Lesotho and the destination country of South Africa. Objectives The overall objective of the Project is to enhance gender-responsive local development by identifying and promoting options in the utilization of remittances for sustainable livelihoods and the building of social capital in poor rural and semi-urban communities. The strategic aims include: increasing awareness and improving access by women-headed, remittance-recipient households to productive resources while augmenting their assets and strengthening their capacities; providing relevant information and support to local and national governments to identify and formulate policies that will optimize the utilization of remittances for sustainable livelihoods and building social capital; and enhancing the capacities of key stakeholders to integrate gender into policies, programmes, projects and other initiatives linking remittances with sustainable livelihoods and building social capital. The Project has been implemented in six countries, which provide a global representation of UNDP’s regional bureaus: Albania, Dominican Republic, Lesotho, Morocco, Phillipines and Senegal. The Project’s main hypothesis is that the optimized use of remittances enhances gender-responsive local development. By analyzing the actual use of remittances, opportunities and weaknesses will be diagnosed, thus identifying possibilities for intervention as well as identifying capacity building needs for enhancing gender-responsive local development. The developmental impacts of remittances can be analyzed at the macro, meso and micro levels

Health Biotechnology Innovation for Social Sustainability -A Perspective from China

China is not only becoming a significant player in the production of high-tech products, but also an increasingly important contributor of ideas and influence in the global knowledge economy. This paper identifies the promises and the pathologies of the biotech innovation system from the perspective of social sustainability in China, looking at the governance of the system and beyond. Based on The STEPS Centre’s ‘Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto’, a ‘3D’ approach has been adopted, bringing together social, technological and policy dynamics, and focusing on the directions of biotechnological innovation, the distribution of its benefits, costs and risks and the diversity of innovations evolving within it and alongside it

Virtual Worlds : Heritage and Educational Challenge

The authors give a brief overview of the development and current trends in the field of virtual worlds. The emphasis is put on one of the social network virtual worlds - Second life and its usage in educational environment and heritage preservation. Furthermore, the first phases of creating of the extended educational environment of the Department of Information Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb are shown

Artificial Intelligence and eLearning 4.0: A New Paradigm in Higher Education

John Markoff (2006, para.2) was the first to coin the phrase Web 3.0 in The New York Times in 2006, with the notion the next evolution of the web would contain a layer “that can reason in human fashion.” With the emergence of Web 3.0 technology and the promise of impact on higher education, Web 3.0 will usher in a new age of artificial intelligence by increasing access to a global database of intelligence. Bill Mark, former VP of Siri note, “We’re moving to a world where the technology does a better job of understanding higher level intent and completes the entire task for us” (Temple, 2010, para. 14). This poster provides a quick overview of the developments from Web 1.0 to Web 3.0, the progression of artificial intelligences, as well as possible advances as we move into the era of eLearning 4.0.https://fuse.franklin.edu/ss2014/1032/thumbnail.jp

The Competence-Based and Ethical Platform for Communication in Modern Education

The vibrant dynamics of the educational realm are interfused by polylingual and polycultural flows and it is important to define and model new competencies in       the opening decades of the third millennium. This article offers a survey of key competencies united by the concept of ”new  literacy”,  or a form of post literacy    that is designed to help students succeed in the information culture and education sphere of the twenty-first century. These include training in: educational and cognitive competence, laying the groundwork for further education with the help of foreign languages; existential competence, which content are Soft Skills vs. Hard Skills; competence of social interaction; intercultural competence; information ethics, modeling a certain image of behavior in online communication; and information literacy. Media education is viewed as a tool for the formation of general cultural competence. This article accentuates the key function of foreign language in modeling the key skills of the twenty-first century, where the language is positioned as a mandate into other cultures and other pictures of life. Teaching foreign languages draws on the competence-based approach, emphasizing digital citizenship,and increasing the share of autonomous learning activities in the paradigm of mobility, interactivity and edutainment. Keywords: information culture and education, multimodal media and information literacy, teacher’s mission, transdisciplinarit

Western Guilt and Third World Development: Part 1

The issue of Western guilt has enjoyed much attention after the independence of most colonized countries in the Third World (developing countries). Western guilt is defined here as the feeling that the West (developed countries) is responsible for the poverty of the Third World. For sometimes now, both the West and the developing countries have had some kind of agreement on the subject. But there has been an emergence of a new ideology championed mainly by Peter Bauer who has argued sternly against Western guilt. This ideology has caused many to sit up to reconsider the subject. The main of this paper is to provide the final verdict on this issue and bring the subject to a close. To do this, the paper identified four main factors of the proponents of Western guilt which includes Colonialism, Neo-colonialism, Slave trade and Trade Barriers. Part one of this work argued in favour of Western guilt using these four thematic areas. It was concluded that the West have been a major contributor of Third World poverty. Part two of this work will consider the otherwise of the situation and a verdict will be provided.Western Guilt, Third World Countries, West, Development

Digital Africa: How Big Tech and African Startups Are Reshaping the Continent

Over the past two decades, Africa has become increasingly connected as more and more Africans gained access to the internet and mobile phones. Building on this enhanced connectivity, a new wave of African startups has emerged, tackling some of the continent's biggest challenges with "homemade" digital technologies. There are growing signs that these new technologies could provide a leapfrogging opportunity for Africa. Africa has seen massive improvements in internet access and mobile phone adoption, due to investments in the continent's digital infrastructure, particularly mobile broadband networks. At the same time, there are significant connectivity gaps between Africa and the rest of the world as well as between and within African countries. These may widen as Africa's digital infrastructure faces capacity pressures from a rapidly expanding internet user base. Tech giants, primarily from the United States, have recognised a business opportunity in Africa's existing connectivity gaps and have begun investing heavily in subsea data cables, data centres, and technology hubs. It is critical that these investments bridge Africa's connectivity gaps - a growing body of evidence shows the wide-ranging positive socio-economic impacts of improved internet and mobile phone access. Africa's enhanced connectivity has led to the emergence of a new wave of growth-oriented technology startups, building innovative and "homemade" digital technologies for widespread use. Digital platforms in particular are increasingly disrupting Africa's major, mostly informal service, retail, and agricultural sectors. Anecdotal reports suggest that digital technologies from African startups can be transformative for individuals, businesses, and farms, but there is very little systematic empirical evidence on their local impacts. Such evidence is urgently needed to harness their full potential for inclusive economic development in Africa. As Africa's digitalisation accelerates, African governments must develop policies that simultaneously harness the benefits of new technologies and ensure that lagging countries and segments of society do not fall further behind. Policies should incentivise private investment in Africa's digital infrastructure and encourage entrepreneurship and innovation, while preventing unregulated new technologies from harming consumers. In addition, digital skills need to be strengthened to prepare African countries for the coming digital century