Follow the link for a full transcript of "Global Threats Today: The 2024 Edition."

Illiberal Actors Are on the Move  |  Amichai Magen

Around the world, we are seeing a new axis of influence coalescing. Some have called it the "axis of misery" or the "axis of resistance." It is composed of Russia and Iran and North Korea, with a lot of Chinese involvement as well. It is transforming our international system in unbelievable ways. It is united by the desire to dismantle the liberal international order, and we're starting to see the nature and the interconnectivity of this new axis of chaos much more clearly. 

You see North Korean soldiers fighting for Putin in Ukraine. You see Putin helping the Houthis attack international Western shipping in Yemen. We see North Korean tunnel technology turn up in Lebanon with Hezbollah and then with Hamas in Gaza. The interconnectivity is something that we really need to know much more about.

Historically, emperors, kings, dukes, used to spend 50% of their resources on preparing for war or waging war. But in the post-Second World War era, we built a critical norm that we've called the liberal international order. And the miracle of the liberal international order is that we've managed to take global averages of defense spending from about 50% to a global average of about 7%. And the resulting surplus wealth has allowed us to invest in education, health, and scientific discovery.

What is at stake now is the possibility of a return of a norm where states are destroyed and disappear. And we have currently three states in the international system, at the very least — Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — that are at risk of annihilation. To that end, we must articulate a positive strategic vision for the Middle East that will strive towards a two state solution, that would give the Palestinian people the dignity and the freedom that they deserve alongside a safe and secure Israel, and that will leverage the new spirit of cooperation that exists in the Middle East.

If we allow the norm of the non-disappearance of state to erode and collapse, we will go back to the law of the jungle, where we will have to spend so much more money on the wrong things. That is what is at stake in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and with Taiwan.
 

Challenges to Democracy Come From Within |  Didi Kuo

Many people think that the threat to democracy comes from outside our borders, particularly from countries like Russia and China that are asserting themselves in new and aggressive ways.

But the real threat to democracies that we're seeing across the globe is coming from within. Leaders come to power through democratic means, but then they begin to erode power from within. They attack the electoral system and the process of democratic elections, and they take power from other branches of government and aggregate it to themselves within the office of the executive. 

The good news is there are examples of countries like France, Brazil, and Poland where illiberal leaders have been stopped by pro-democracy coalitions of people who came together. These coalitions don't necessarily agree with each other politically, but they've come together and adapted in order to foreclose on these anti-democratic forces. 

That flexibility and adaptability is the reason democracies succeed. We see this over and over again in the the United States. When our institutions have become out of date, we've changed them. We extended suffrage, first to Black Americans who were formerly enslaved, then to women, then to Native Americans. We eliminating poll taxes and rethought what it means to have a multiracial democracy. We have a long track record of making changes.

Today in 2024, some of our democratic institutions are antiquated and don't reflect our contemporary values. This is a moment where we should lean into that flexible strength of democracy and think about institutional reforms that will both strengthen our system against illiberal creep and help us better achieve the ideals that we aspiring to as a people.
 

Ukraine Is Not Fated to Lose |  Steven Pifer

There's a narrative that's taking place that Russia is winning the war, Ukraine is losing, and it's only a matter of time. And it is true that Russia has captured a bit more territory than they occupied at the start of the year. But they've only achieved that at enormous cost.

As of September, the Pentagon says Russia had lost 600,000 dead and wounded soldiers. To put that in context, in February of 2022 when this major invasion began, the total Russian military — not just the army, but the total Russian military — was 1.1 million people. And the British Ministry of Defense earlier this week assessed that Russia now is losing 1,200 soldiers killed or severely wounded per day. You have to ask how long that's sustainable.

When I talk to Ukrainians, they still regard this war as existential. They're very determined to win, and we need to do a better job of supporting that. A stable and secure Europe is vital to America's national security interests, and you're not going to have a stable and secure Europe unless there's a stable and secure Ukraine. So we need to both provide them the weapons they need and relieve some of the restrictions we currently have and allow the Ukrainians to use those weapons to strike military targets in Russia.

Because we have to ask ourselves: what does an emboldened Vladimir Putin do if he wins in Ukraine? I don't think his ambitions end with Ukraine, perhaps not even with the post-Soviet space. There's going to be a much darker Russian threat hovering over Europe if Putin wins. So let's not count the Ukrainians out.
 

China Isn't Going Away Anytime Soon  |  Oriana Skylar Mastro

There is a lot of discussion right now about the fact that the economy in China is slowing down and its demography is undergoing significant changes. What I'm here to tell you is that the challenge of China is not over, and is not going to be over any time soon. China has built power in a different way than the United States, and we have to reassess how we understand that power if we want to effectively deter, blunt, and block them from acting out in ways that threaten our partners and allies.

Since the 1990s, China has developed a significant amount of political, economic, and military power. They've gone from having an economy smaller than France’s  to the second largest in the world. They've gone from not being involved in international institutions to a great degree, not even having diplomatic relations with major countries like South Korea, to now having stronger and greater diplomatic networks, especially in Asia, than the United States.

What we really need to understand is that the U.S.-China competition is not about the United States or about China; it's about the rest of the world, and how the rest of the world sees us and how China interacts with us. The balance of power is shifting, and we have to be a lot smarter and a lot faster if we want to make sure it shifts in favor of our interests.

The United States hasn't had a comprehensive strategy towards the developing world in a long time. And we are running out of time to get that balance right in Asia. We don't have the right stuff. We don't have it in the right numbers, and it's not in the right place. Some of this is about deterring war over Taiwan, but it's also about generally maintaining peace and stability in Asia.
 

We're Doing Better (But Not Enough) on Climate Change |  Marshall Burke

Many people don't recognize how much progress we're actually making on climate issues. Emissions have fallen by 20% since 2005. We're actually speeding up the amount of substantial progress being made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dealing with the core climate change problem, which is the human emission of greenhouse gasses.

In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act and the subsequent implementation of various rules the Biden administration has championed has given a huge boost in transitioning our economy to greener energy technologies, transportation technologies, and other kinds of infrastructure. We're moving a lot of cash to get that done, and the president is trying to get as much of it out the door as he can before his term ends.

Globally, the progress has been less rapid. Emissions are roughly flat. But overall, we're still making progress. I co-teach an undergraduate class on climate change, and we've had to update our slides on how much warming we're expecting over the next century. We thought it was going to be four degrees Celsius. Now we think it's going to be something between two and three degrees Celsius.

But the flip side of that is that we're still going to get warming of two to three degrees Celsius. We're already experiencing warming of about a degree Celsius, which is about two degrees Fahrenheit, and it's projected that we're going to get another three to five degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That is a lot of warming, and we are not prepared to deal with it. We need to do much more on mitigation and much more on adaptation if we're going to meet the realities of living in a changing climate.

So we've had progress on the one hand, but there's still a lot of work left to do in the coming decades.
 

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Stanford University seeks candidates for three faculty positions in Asian Studies. All three appointments will be at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and affiliated with the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). The deadline for submissions is November 30, 2024. Read on for more information about each position. Candidates should submit their applications via the Stanford Faculty Positions website.

Faculty Appointment in Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy

Stanford University seeks candidates for a new faculty position in the politics and foreign policy of Japan. The successful candidate will have expertise in politics, policy studies, diplomacy, security studies, international relations, or global affairs relating to Japan and the Indo-Pacific region, and will be expected to advance research and education on Japanese politics and foreign policy, in the Japan Program of APARC. This is an open-rank search.

The new faculty member will be appointed as a Senior Fellow or Center Fellow in FSI, affiliated with APARC. Senior Fellows at Stanford University are full members of the Professoriate and Academic Council, with a rank equivalent to tenured associate or full professor. Center Fellows at Stanford University are also members of the Professoriate and the Academic Council, with a rank equivalent to tenure-track assistant professor. Center Fellows are appointed for a fixed term of years with the possibility of promotion to Senior Fellow.

For more information and to apply, view the job posting on the Stanford Faculty Positions website > 

Faculty Appointment in Korean Studies

Stanford University seeks candidates for a faculty position in Korean Studies. The successful candidate will be expected to advance research and education on Korea, in the Korea Program of APARC.

The new faculty member will be appointed as Center Fellow in FSI, affiliated with APARC. Center Fellows at Stanford University are the equivalent rank of tenure-track assistant professor. They are members of the Professoriate and the Academic Council, eligible to serve as principal investigators, and accrue sabbatical. Center Fellows are appointed for a fixed term of years with the possibility of promotion to Senior Fellow.

For more information and to apply, view the job posting on the Stanford Faculty Positions website >

Faculty Appointment in Taiwan Studies

Stanford University seeks candidates for a new faculty position on Taiwan. The successful candidate will have expertise in policy studies, social sciences, international relations, or global affairs relating to Taiwan, and will be expected to advance research and education on Taiwan studies, in the newly established Taiwan Program of APARC. This is an open-rank search.

The new faculty member will be appointed as a Senior Fellow or Center Fellow in FSI, affiliated with APARC. Senior Fellows at Stanford University are full members of the Professoriate and Academic Council, with a rank equivalent to tenured associate or full professor. Center Fellows at Stanford University are also members of the Professoriate and the Academic Council, with a rank equivalent to tenure-track assistant professor. Center Fellows are appointed for a fixed term of years with the possibility of promotion to Senior Fellow.

For more information and to apply, view the job posting on the Stanford Faculty Positions website >

On May 2, 2024, Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) marked the inauguration of its new Taiwan Program at the conference Innovate Taiwan: Shaping the Future of a Postindustrial Society. The program will produce policy-relevant research to tackle the challenges facing Taiwan’s economy and society in a new era of global relations. It will also prepare the next generation of students to become experts on Taiwan and foster interactions between the Stanford community and Taiwanese stakeholders.

The program’s inaugural conference reflected this triadic mission. It gathered leading industry and academic experts from the United States and Taiwan with Stanford students to engage in diverse panel discussions. The all-day event saw a high turnout of attendees from Stanford and the broader community, including alumni and stakeholders from Taiwan.

Stanford President Richard Saller congratulated the program's establishment, noting it will advance Stanford as a global university by producing scholarship that transcends academic boundaries. “The program will do what Stanford does best — provide a cross-disciplinary, university-wide hub, where scholars from across campus and beyond can convene to study contemporary Taiwan,” said Saller. He described Taiwan as a beacon of democracy and the program’s establishment as demonstrating the university’s belief in the importance of the U.S.-Taiwan relationship.

APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea and a professor of sociology in the School of Humanities and Sciences, remarked that students and community members have increasingly expressed interest in studying Taiwan. “This is an opportune time to launch a Taiwan program with a comprehensive focus on economic, social, cultural, educational, and health-related matters,” he said. Shin underscored the program’s commitment to inspire new generations of Stanford students to engage with Taiwan.

Want to receive email newsletters from the Taiwan Program? Sign up for our Taiwan Update >

Taiwan's Evolving Cultural Landscape

The first panel delved into contemporary research on Taiwan's societal and cultural trends and reflected on the nature of Taiwan studies. Pei-Chia Lan, a professor of sociology at National Taiwan University, shared findings from her research into the emerging formation of second-generation identity in Taiwan. She explained that an influx of immigrants and their bicultural children are transforming Taiwan’s self-perceived racial and ethnic homogeneity. For Lan, “Migration provides a critical lens for investigating Taiwan's history, transformation, and globalized development.”

Jing Tsu, Yale University’s Jonathan D. Spence Chair Professor of Comparative Literature & East Asian Languages and Literatures, offered a captivating account of the increasing appeal of Taiwan’s folk religious tradition exemplified in Mazu pilgrimages honoring the Goddess of the Sea or Taiwan’s “heavenly mother.” Tsu positioned the phenomenon of Mazu worship relative to Taiwanese identity, framing Taiwan's cultural heritage within a global context.

Ruo-Fan Liu, a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and incoming postdoctoral fellow at APARC, zoomed out from her research on education and culture in Taiwan to a larger vision of Taiwan studies in North America. She outlined three strategies to propel the field forward: enhancing data accessibility, bolstering theorizing capability, and expanding transnational and global comparisons. APARC Deputy Director and Japan Program Director Kiyoteru Tsutsui moderated the conversation, integrating the diverse perspectives into a discussion of Taiwan's societal milieu.

Technology, Innovation, and Economic Growth

The conference emphasized Taiwan's success as a modernization exemplar while addressing its challenges on the journey toward a sustainable economic future.

The second panel examined Taiwan's strides in healthcare innovation and biotechnological advancements, with industry leaders offering glimpses into the transformative potential of AI-driven healthcare solutions. Ted Chang, CTO of Quanta Computer, Bobby Sheng, Group CEO of Bora Pharmaceuticals, and C. Jason Wang, Stanford’s LCY Tan Lan Lee Professor of Pediatrics and Health Policy, reflected on the convergence of technology and healthcare delivery and the new era it heralds for personalized medicine and digital health solutions. APARC’s Asia Health Policy Program Director Karen Eggleston moderated the discussion, prompting the panelists to consider questions of equitable access and trust in healthcare technology.

Larry Diamond, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, led a following conversation on the strategic imperatives for Taiwan's economic future and global positioning. Four experts joined him: Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube, Jason Hsu, former legislator of the Legislative Yuan Taiwan, investment banker CY Huang, founder and president of FCC Partners, and digital commerce leader Rose Tsou, a former executive at Verizon Media, MTV, and Yahoo.

The panelists agreed that Taiwan must address its strained cross-Strait relations, develop a more diversified economy, move beyond sole reliance on semiconductors, and modify its energy policy to meet growing electricity demand and the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Another consensus emerged about the need for government intervention to create an environment more conducive to entrepreneurship and global talent. Chen, who relocated his family to Taiwan in 2019 after two decades in Silicon Valley, shared his efforts in cultivating the island's startup ecosystem and experience being the inaugural recipient of the Taiwan Gold Card Visa, issued by the Taiwanese government to attract foreign talent for residence and employment.

Taiwanese Identity and Taiwan Studies at Stanford

Highlighting the role of youth and community engagement, the conference also included a student panel centered on Taiwanese identity and Taiwan studies on campus. Second-year student in Management Science and Engineering Tiffany Chang, who is also a pageant queen and research assistant at APARC, shared her introspective journey of self-discovery through her experience becoming Miss Asia USA, representing the Taiwanese community, and acting as an ambassador for Asian communities at large.

Carissa Cheng, a third-year student in International Relations, described her advocacy for community cohesion via Stanford’s Taiwanese Cultural Society. Yi-Ting Chung, a PhD candidate in the Department of History, recounted her experience designing and teaching a course in Taiwanese history. She argued that Taiwanese history merits being taught in a dedicated history class rather than as a subset of Chinese or Japanese history. ”The existence of a Taiwanese history class at Stanford is a statement and a way for students to have a vested interest in Taiwan,” she said. Third-year student in international Relations Marco Widodo moderated the dynamic conversation.

Marked by multidisciplinary inquiry and cross-cultural exchange, the conference ignited dialogue on Taiwan’s future and generated enthusiasm for collaboration on building a leading program on Taiwan at Stanford.

Media coverage of the "Innovate Taiwan" conference is available via:

Central News Agency >
Radio Taiwan International >

Artificial Intelligence promises to transform Public Defenders in Brazil, as seen throughout our fieldwork trip in Rio de Janeiro. Our team spent the week discussing the integration of AI in legal practices with defenders from 13 states and experts from Instituto de Tecnologia e Sociedade (ITS Rio) and COPPE / UFRJ. We focused on developing AI tools tailored to reduce administrative burdens, enabling defenders to concentrate on advocacy. With nearly 80% of Brazilians entitled to free legal aid, AI can automate routine tasks like document categorization and grammatical corrections.

Significant challenges relate to privacy and potential biases in algorithms, underscoring the need for collaborative governance to ethically implement these solutions. Thus, a unified technological strategy is crucial. We hope that through our work, we can create a collaborative governance framework that will facilitate the development of digital and AI tools, ultimately helping citizens at large. We appreciated the opportunity to learn from incredibly dedicated professionals who are excited to find new ways to jointly develop tools.

We met with government agencies, legislators, military and national security officials, private sector actors, and civil society figures within Taiwan's vibrant ecosystem for countering Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI). On the ground, the team found that China’s FIMI operations are evolving and increasingly subtle and complex. As generative AI empowers malign actors, our team assessed that the battle against sophisticated, state-sponsored influence campaigns requires a more integrated and strategic approach that spans legal, technological, and societal responses.

During their time in Ghana, Skylar and Maya met with various stakeholders in the Ghanaian transportation field, including government agencies, ride-share apps, freight businesses, academics, and paratransit operators. Presently, paratransit operators, known locally as "tro tros," dominate the public transportation space and with a variety of meetings with their union officials and drivers in terminals around Accra they were able to learn about the nature of the tro tro business and their relationships — and lack thereof — with the government.

In D.C., Rosie met with development organizations and transport officials and attended the World Bank’s Transforming Transportation Conference and their paratransit and finance roundtable. Collectively, they learned about the issues facing the transport industry primarily related to problems surrounding bankability, infrastructure and vehicle financing, and lack of government collaboration with stakeholders. Insights from the trip spurred their team away from conventional physical interventions and toward solutions that will bridge stakeholder gaps and improve transport governance and policy implementation.

Our team had the opportunity to go to Mongolia and Washington DC where we conducted over twenty structured interviews with a variety of stakeholders. We spoke with people including local and central government officials, officials of international organizations, representatives from mining and cashmere industries, community organizations, academic researchers, herder households, NGOs and Mongolian politicians. Though we knew the practice of nomadic herding is core to Mongolia’s national identity, we didn’t fully realize just how integrated this practice, and the problem of grassland degradation, are in the economy, society and politics of Mongolia.

In the run-up to Mongolia’s election in June, this issue was especially top of mind to those we interviewed. Everyone we spoke with had some form of direct connection with herding, mostly through their own families. Our interviews, as well as being in Ulaanbaatar and the surrounding provinces, helped us to deepen our understanding of the context in which possible interventions operate. Most especially we observed all the extensive work that is being done to tackle grassland degradation and that institutionalizing and supporting these existing approaches could help tackle this issue.

While on the ground, our team met with members from Chinese student organizations and professional associations to gather primary evidence on the online harms they face. We also met with Tom Udall, the U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand, his team, and university faculty to brainstorm solutions to tackle this problem. We learned about the prevalent use of “super-apps” beyond WeChat in crowdsourcing solutions and support, and were able to better grasp the complexities of the relationships between public safety organizations and the focus demographic. In retrospect, it was insightful to hear from actors across the public, private, and civic sectors about the prevalence of online harms and how invested major stakeholders are in finding common solutions through a joint, holistic approach.

Our team met with private sector mini grid developers, government officials from the public utilities commission and energy ministry, and rural communities benefiting from mini grid electrification. While we saw first-hand the significant impact that solar mini grids can have on communities living in energy poverty, we also developed a deeper understanding of the macroeconomic, market, and policy conditions preventing the industry from reaching its full potential of providing energy access to millions of Sierra Leoneans. Moving forward, we will explore innovative climate finance solutions and leverage our policy experience to develop feasible recommendations specific to the local environment.

During our travels around Taiwan and our many meetings, we were surprised with the lack of consensus among local decision-makers regarding which potential solution pathways were likely to yield the most timely and effective results. These discrepancies often reflected the presence of information asymmetries and divergent institutional interests across stakeholders—both of which run counter to Taiwan’s most urgent strategic priorities. Revising existing bureaucratic authorities and facilitating the spread of technical expertise would enable—and enrich—investment in future resilience.

While we anticipated that structural inefficiencies would impede change to some degree, our onsite interviews gave us a clearer picture of where policy interventions will likely have the most positive effect for Taiwan's defense. With the insights from our fieldwork, we intend to spend the remainder of the quarter exploring new leads, delving into theory of change, and designing a set of meaningful policy recommendations.

Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) proudly announces the launch of the Taiwan Program, which will serve as an interdisciplinary research and education hub on contemporary Taiwan. The program will investigate Taiwan’s strides as a modernization exemplar and the challenges its economy and society face in seeking to drive dynamism and growth in an era marked by shifting global relations. On May 2, 2024, APARC will host the program’s inaugural conference, Innovate Taiwan: Shaping the Future of a Postindustrial Society. Registration for the conference is now open.

Mirroring the dilemmas of other postindustrial societies, Taiwan today finds itself pressed by multiple imperatives. These include the need to generate novel economic competitiveness models amid rapid technological advancement and declining multilateral cooperation, address changing demographic realities, foster cultural diversity and tolerance, fulfill the action pathway to achieve net-zero emissions, and create the institutional and policy conditions to enable these adaptations. The Taiwan Program will explore how Taiwan can effectively address these challenges and seize the opportunities they afford for it to remain at the forefront of vibrancy and progress in the 21st century. 

Housed within APARC, part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the Taiwan Program will pursue a mission encompassing research endeavors, education and learning initiatives, and exchange opportunities. By investing in these three core areas, the program will produce interdisciplinary, policy-relevant research to understand and address Taiwan’s challenges of economic, social, technological, environmental, and institutional adaptation in the coming decades; prepare the next generation of students to become experts on Taiwan; and facilitate meaningful interactions between Stanford faculty, researchers, and students with their Taiwanese counterparts and with policy experts, industry leaders, and civil society stakeholders in Taiwan. In all these areas, the program will leverage APARC’s expertise and networks and build upon the center’s strong track record of academic research and policy engagement with East Asia. This includes leveraging the proven model and rich experience of APARC’s esteemed programs on contemporary China, Japan, and Korea.

"The Taiwan Program underscores our commitment to deepening understanding of and engagement with Taiwan,” said Gi-Wook Shin, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea and director of APARC. “We aim to foster research-practice partnerships between the United States and Taiwan while contributing to Taiwan's long-term development," added Shin, who is also a professor of sociology, a senior fellow at FSI, and director of the Korea Program at APARC.

The program will be led by a distinguished scholar of contemporary Taiwan to be recruited by the university in an international search. APARC will soon announce its inaugural postdoctoral fellow on contemporary Taiwan, who will help organize the program’s activities in the next academic year. The new program is made possible thanks to tremendous support from several Stanford donors who care deeply about Taiwan’s role on the global stage and U.S.-Taiwan relations. 

"We are profoundly grateful to our supporters for their partnership and commitment to advancing understanding of Taiwan and the U.S.-Taiwan relationship in this pivotal Asia-Pacific region," noted Shin. “This new investment will help us establish a world-leading program on Taiwan at Stanford.”

To inaugurate the new program, APARC will host the conference "Innovate Taiwan: Shaping the Future of a Postindustrial Society." Held on May 2 at the Bechtel Conference Center in Encina Hall, this full-day event will convene esteemed academic and industry leaders to engage in panel discussions covering topics such as migration, culture, and societal trends; health policy and biotechnology; economic growth and innovation; and the dynamics of domestic and international Taiwanese industries. Visit the conference webpage to learn more and register to attend in person.

the Taiwanese cables to the Matsu Islands have been cut 27 times, most recently in spring 2023. Our final report and presentation will analyze Taiwan’s current emergency management and resiliency plans, identify areas of improvement, and present solutions to fix these gaps. All of us care deeply about democracy and the rule of law, and the security of Taiwan against PRC aggression is central in the fight for those ideals. Our hope is that this work helps in some small way to improve the security of Taiwan and its people.

need resources to be aware of online risks and the best measures to protect themselves. Netsafe has yet to find the most effective way to appeal to this demographic group.

We aim to understand the demographic's most frequently used online platforms, the most common types of online harms, cultural factors, and relevant stakeholders.

disinformation operations with near impunity. We’re particularly interested in how the development of new tools and tactics – like commercial firms’ use of paid influencers, or generative AI – will aid in further obscuring attribution and scaling operations. Our policy recommendations will address how governments, international organizations, and platforms can tackle this issue.

tools. Our research focuses on how the different state PDOs in Brazil can collaborate and share AI tools to help reduce their demand and better serve their clients. The goal is for AI to be a "shared public infrastructure" that multiple PDOs can use to serve their clients.

integrating solutions available at scale for the public. We aim to recommend policy interventions which reflect local demand, ensuring sustainable, efficient, and accessible transportation solutions for the community.

government interventions, local control of stock numbers, or strong market incentives, herds exceed the grassland carrying capacity in pockets that are becoming increasingly degraded. This threatens nomadic pastoralism, a traditional way of life. With such complex and interlinked drivers to this problem, it has been challenging to isolate the causes we should focus on. We have been working with our partners at The Asia Foundation who are in the early stages of piloting a solution.

these interventions have not led to a widespread growth in mini-grid development, as the industry continues to struggle. We hope to further explore the market and regulatory landscape and learn how sub-interventions including cross-subsidization, de-risking investment, demand creation, and other innovative and locally-based solutions may help improve the industry’s viability and aid in increasing access to affordable, renewable energy in Sierra Leone.