In October 2013, the US Justice Department announced the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, the founder and operator of ‘Silk Road,’ a massive online marketplace for drugs and other illicit goods. Authorities called it ‘the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet’ and estimated that it had facilitated the transfer of more than a…

One year ahead of the next European elections, the debate over citizens’ participation heats up: How to bring the institutions closer to the citizens? The best inspiration can be found in an extraordinary meeting that took place exactly 70 years ago. In May 1948 more than 800 persons from all walks of life met in…

The last 20 years have been progressive for sub-Sahara Africa, according to Jean Claude Bastos de Morais of the Quantum Global Group. The explosion of economic parameters, advancement in the healthcare sector, and improvement in the standard of living of North Africans have driven up social indicators. This has been possible through proper channelling of…

The common market has been a core idea of Europe but markets are not automatically beneficial for all human beings. Europe needs to re-establish the “primacy of politics” and push for the democratization of the economy. Europe has always been both a community of values and a pragmatic economic endeavour. In recent years, however, the…

The rapid development of technology improves lives and enables more efficient operations in the private and public sectors. The challenges that have emerged as a direct consequence, however, can also undermine progress and expose users to illicit activities online. Before 2000, Africa hosted only 4.5 million Internet users. Since then, telecommunications markets have been liberalised…

Africa is experiencing an ideological crisis that is expressed by the current adhesion of African governments to either neoliberalism or monetarism that destroy human solidarity, erode the welfare state and increase human suffering. After the failure of imported ideologies, the future of Africa lies in the adoption of a new unifying ideology of development, Neo…

The German Federal Government did not show much interest in African affairs in the period after World War II and preferred to leave Africa to the French and the English who had much closer connections to their former colonies. One exception was Horst Köhler. As President of the Republic, he frequently travelled to Africa, brought…

The channel aims to be the most ambitious project in the history of Nicaragua and the largest to be developed in Latin America, after the construction of the Panama Canal. The Chinese telecommunications entrepreneur Wang Jing announced an investment of 40,000 million dollars, almost four times the GDP of Nicaragua. The plan is to build…