HKS in the News May 16, 2012

1. Africa: Despite Economic Growth, Food Insecurity Lingers (Juma) All Africa

2. What Will Americans Elect Do Now That It Can't Find a Candidate? (Sifry) The Atlantic

3. Sarko: Nothing Became Him Like the Manner of His Leaving (Cogan) The Huffington Post

Africa: Despite Economic Growth, Food Insecurity Lingers

All Africa

May 15

Quoted: Calestous Juma, Belfer Center

Topic: Food security and policy in Africa

…food insecurity challenges are being faced by all Africans, as highlighted in a new report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which paints a gloomy picture of the food situation on the continent. …

The Permanent Secretary in the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture Romano Kiome admits that African governments are not doing enough to stem food insecurity… "When countries achieve food security, it is because of the implementation of the right policies," says Kiome.

Calestous Juma , a Kenyan professor who is an internationally recognised authority on the application of science and technology in sustainable development worldwide, agrees.

"There is no single bullet or panacea in tackling food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa," says Juma, who is presently a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. …

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What Will Americans Elect Do Now That It Can't Find a Candidate?

The Atlantic

May 15

Commentary by: Micah L. Sifry, Shorenstein Center

Topic: The U.S. presidential election

As David Karpf wrote here 10 days ago , the Americans Elect third-party experiment of 2012 looks like it has hit a dead end. No declared candidate is anywhere close to hitting the group's requirement of earning 10,000 supporters across at least 10 states, with at least 1,000 from each state. Former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer is the closest at just 5,840. He has less than 600 from California. As Jonathan Tilove points out in his story in the Times-Picayune, that means Roemer has more followers on Twitter than he has supporters who actually want him on AE's presidential ballot line. …

Americans Elect had an ambitious plan to hold several rounds of online voting to winnow down what its leaders had hoped would be a competitive field of national candidates, and spent a reported $35 million circulating ballot petitions and building the organizational and online infrastructure to attract those candidates to its fold. It also attracted a fair amount of media coverage for its efforts, and encomia from the likes of Thomas Friedman, John Avlon, and Lawrence Lessig. But it never caught on, in part for the reasons I outlined almost a year ago: the lack of transparency about its finances, which made potential supporters distrustful (even spawning a watchdog blog called AETransparency), and the evident lack of public interest in its founders' evident desire to find a "centrist" candidate. …

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Sarko: Nothing Became Him Like the Manner of His Leaving

The Huffington Post

May 15

Commentary by: Charles Cogan, Executive Education

Topic: The French presidential election

"Sarko the American," as Nicolas Sarkozy was known rather pejoratively in France (such a nickname, however, going down rather well in the United States), conducted himself with calmness and grace after his close, but decisive, defeat in the French presidential election of May 6th.

The moment Sarkozy saw that he had lost, he recognized the verdict of French democracy and French "republican values" and wished his successful opponent, François Hollande, well. The only "down" note in Sarkozy's concession speech was his mention of the opposition's (preposterous) assertion during the campaign that compared Sarkozy's language to the proto-Fascist figures of the Vichy regime during World War II. …

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In the HKS TV Studio

Nicholas Burns, Belfer Center

PBS “News Hour,” 5/15

Topic: European financial crisis