The Educational Intelligent Economy – Lifelong Learning – A vision for the future

Almost every detail of our lives, where we go, what we do, and with whom is captured as digital data. Technological advancements in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and data analytics offer the education sector new ways not only to improve policy and processes but also to personalize learning and teaching practice. However, these changes raise fundamental questions around who owns the data, how it might be used, and the consequences of use. The application of Big Data in education can be directed toward a wide range of stakeholders, such as educators, students, policy-makers, institutions, or researchers. It may also have different objectives, such as monitoring, student support, prediction, assessment, feedback, and personalization. This chapter presents the nuances and recent research trends spurred by technological advancements that ave influenced the education sector and highlights the need to look beyond the technical boundaries using a socio-semiotic lens. With the explosion of available information and digital technologies pervading cultural, social, political as well as economic spaces, being a lifelong learner is pivotal for success. However, technology on its own is not sufficient to drive this change. For technology to be successful, it should complement individual learning cultures and education systems. This chapter is broadly divided into two main sections. In the first section, we contemplate a vision for the future, which is deemed possible based on ongoing digital and computing advancements. The second section elaborates the technological, pedagogical, cultural, and political requirements to attain that vision

Oil and Cocoa in the Political Economy of Ghana-EU Relations: Whither Sustainable Development?

Oil and cocoa represent strategic export commodities for the Ghanaian economy, prioritised within the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda. This article examines these sectors in the context of Ghana’s relations with the European Union (EU). Notably, the EU constitutes the most important market for Ghanaian exports. The European Commission, moreover, has pledged to tangibly assist private sector development in Ghana, with particular reference to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through its focus on oil and cocoa, the article problematises certain aspects of EU aid and trade interventions with respect to normative SDG development pledges

Belt and Road Initiative in Central Asia: Anticipating socioecological challenges from large‐scale infrastructure in a global biodiversity hotspot

Until recently, China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has overlooked many of the social and environmental dimensions of its projects and actions in favor of more immediate economic and sociopolitical considerations. The main focus of investments under BRI has largely been to improve transport, telecommunication, and energy infrastructures. However, in Central Asia, biodiversity is not only foundational for the livelihoods and socioeconomic wellbeing of communities, it also shapes people's culture and identities. Furthermore, ecosystem services derived from functioning landscapes bring enormous benefit for millions of people downstream through integrated and transboundary water systems. Already under pressure from climate-induced melting of glaciers, the fate of ecologically important areas is considered in light of the potential harm arising from large-scale linear infrastructure projects and related investments under China-led BRI. Following review of some of the anticipated impacts of BRI on mountain environments and societies in the region, we highlight several emerging opportunities and then offer recommendations for development programs—aiming fundamentally to enhance the sustainability of BRI investments. Leveraging new opportunities to strengthen partner countries’ priority Sustainable Development Goals and enhancing their agency in the selection of collaborations and the standards to use in environmental impact and risk assessments are recommended

Innovation, Learning, Communities, and Actor-Networks of Practice

This chapter addresses the question: Is there a virtuous circle between situated learning within communities of practice and the corporate pursuit of innovation in large companies? The authors trace a succession of ways in which it has been formulated, reframed, and addressed across a range and sequence of qualitative studies. Overall, they argue for more ethnographic studies of organizational learning and innovation and recommend further use of actor-network theory, which has potential to add considerably to communities of practice theory. The authors illustrate this argument in the chapter through a discussion of Carlile's (2002) important paper and cite a number of other studies that use actor-network theory in combination with communities of practice theory

Climate-smart financial diaries for scaling in Nyando Basin: Factsheet midterm findings Global Challenges Programme Call 4

Climate change requires a change in the way people produce food, since changing rain seasons and more frequent droughts and floods destroy harvests. Possible solutions include new seeds and improved crop management, new animal breeds that can thrive in the changing climatic conditions and water management. In the Nyando Basin in West Kenya farmers suffer from climate change and hence adapting one or more of these measures is needed. However, an important question is whether it is possible for all farmers to take this step. Do they have enough resources to finance these investments? Where could they borrow the required money? This GCP-4 project aims to find out if farmers in Nyando Basin – male and female – have access to credit in ways that can be upscaled to other farmers in the region and elsewhere, and how this takes shape. For this purpose the project consortium has been interviewing all financially active persons in 123 households in the area for 29 weeks now, with 21 weeks to go, focusing on their financial activities. Also the project will assess the impact of large-scale adoption of new technologies for the environment and the local economy. Finally, the project group has started to engage buyers of produce and providers of inputs as potential sources of credit to support Climate Smart Agricultural practices

Organizing business models for smallholder resilience (OSMARE): Factsheet midterm findings Global Challenges Programme Call 4

OSMARE aims to understand whether and how business models for Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) stimulate or stunt smallholder resilience in East and Southern Africa. Agri-food systems in this region are undergoing rapid transformation driven by climatic changes, urbanization and changing consumer preferences. As relatively weak actors in agri-food systems, smallholder farmers (especially youth and women) and their farmer organizations struggle to adapt to and absorb market-, social- and environmental shocks. While many projects focus on technology-based interventions or climate-smart farming practices, this research focuses on how selected agri-business models allow space for resourceful and entrepreneurial smallholder activities. This means giving smallholders space to experiment, for example in: accessing and (re)combining resources, farming, marketing, (re)investing resources or moving to other income generating activities. It is through such experimenting that farmers learn new skills and develop capacities to seize opportunities and to overcome challenges in rapidly changing agri-food systems

CSA/SuPER - Upscaling CSA with small-scale food producers organised via VSLAs: Financing for adoption, behavioural change and resilience in rural Iringa Region, Tanzania: Factsheet midterm findings Global Challenges Programme Call 4

In this CSA/SuPER research project CARE, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Sokoine University of Agriculture, and Wageningen University & Research come together to investigate a new model for upscaling the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices (CSA) practices by small-scale farmers in developing countries. CSA practices increase agricultural productivity, enhance the resilience of farmers to climate change, and, where possible, mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. It is, however, challenging to upscale the adoption of CSA practices by small-scale farmers in developing countries. Farmers often lack agricultural and agri-business knowledge and finance to invest in CSA practices. Many of them are socially disadvantaged, extremely poor, women, and young. They are usually excluded from efforts to improve access to finance and knowledge about CSA practices. We, therefore, need new rural development models that will enhance agricultural and agri-business knowledge, provide access to finance and empower socially disadvantaged groups at the same time to upscale the adoption of CSA practices. The new model implemented by CARE in Iringa, Tanzania, and tested by the CSASuPER project bundles villages savings and loan associations (VSLAs), which provide agricultural finance with farmer field business schools (FFBSs), which deliver agricultural knowledge to groups of small-scale women farmers. The model also follows sustainable, productive, profitable, equitable and resilient, so-called SuPER, farming principles. These principles guarantee that women are not excluded and receive equal opportunities to adopt those practices