The main emphasis is the State's (mostly US, but some international angles) role in disaster management and the discrepancies between perception, legal frameworks, expectations and aspirations, as well as what that means moving into an anthropocenic era of more frequent, perhaps constant, crisis.
Topic:
Governance, Leadership, Crisis Management, and Statehood
The fifth webinar in a seven-part series focused on various aspects of sustainable development in Africa.
Featuring:
Peris Nyaboe Bosire - co-founder of FarmDrive
Peris Bosire is passionate about inclusive financial systems and economic mobility. Her goal is to build meaningful technology platforms and digital financial services to drive capital where it’s needed most. She is a computer scientist with successful experience in using technology to innovate and distribute high-impact, scalable solutions.
Peris is the co-founder of FarmDrive, a technology company that applies data science and finance to build software that increases access to meaningful financial services. FarmDrive’s mission is to transform every smallholder farmer (SHF) and agriculture value chain SME in Africa into a sustainable and profitable business.
FarmDrive’s big bet is to increase the flow of capital to the agriculture sector in Africa, especially to smallholder farmers and SMEs working in the agriculture value chain.
Peris has led FarmDrive through exciting product rollouts and strategic partnerships. A notable achievement is a partnership with the largest telecommunication company in East Africa (Safaricom) to roll out DigiFarm, a neobank for farmers. FarmDrive’s work has led to a digital registry of over 1 million smallholder farmers in Kenya and unlocked a loan portfolio of over $40 million dollars so far in loans to farmers and small businesses across Kenya.
FarmDrive’s clients include but are not limited to mobile network operators such as Safaricom, commercial banks, micro-finance banks, saccos and cooperatives, non-bank financial service providers such as One Acre Fund, agricultural insurance providers and processors.
As the CEO of her venture, Peris spends her time implementing strategies to build a sustainable, transformative business that meets the needs and aspirations of clients and organizing the 1’s and 0’s to achieve this. She is a champion of financial inclusion and youth employment and has been supporting other entities such as The Mastercard Foundation to create inclusive youth engagement strategies for different countries in Africa.
Peris has a First Class Honours B.Sc. Computer Science degree from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. She is a 2023 Sloan School of Management MBA candidate.
Topic:
Development, Governance, Leadership, and Regionalism
Moderator:
Taylor Fravel is Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the MIT Security Studies Program (SSP). He studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China, and East Asia.
Panelists:
Eric Heginbotham is a principal research scientist at MIT’s Center for International Studies (CIS) and SSP. He is a specialist in Asian security issues. Before joining MIT, he was a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where he led research projects on China, Japan, and regional security issues.
Ketian Vivian Zhang is an assistant professor of international Security in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. She studies rising powers, coercion, economic statecraft, and maritime disputes in international relations and social movements in comparative politics, with a regional focus on China and East Asia.
Ali Wyne is a senior analyst with Eurasia Group's Global Macro practice, where he focuses on US-China relations and great-power competition. He is the author of a forthcoming book, America's Great-Power Opportunity: Revitalizing US Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, Hegemony, Strategic Competition, Rivalry, and Strategic Interests
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America
A book talk with Spencer Ackerman, national-security correspondent. A union of journalism and intellectual history, Reign of Terror is a pathbreaking and definitive book with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on its civic life.
Topic:
Security, National Security, Terrorism, Counter-terrorism, Surveillance, Civil Rights, and Police State