Technology Archive

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on a range of countries’ space priorities and programs. Last week, India successfully launched 20 satellites in a single mission, a major success for the Indian Space Research Organization that positions India as a key player in the international commercial space market. In an email interview, Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College who writes in a personal capacity, discusses the state of India’s space program. WPR: What are India’s space capabilities—in terms of launch vehicles, space exploration, satellites and space-industrial complex—and who […]

Earlier this month, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee went on a six-day tour of Africa, visiting Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Namibia, where he announced new grant assistance and lines of credit as well as expanded scholarship opportunities. In an email interview, Amanda Lucey, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, discusses India’s outreach to Africa. WPR: How extensive are India’s political and economic ties with Africa, and what sectors are the main focus of India’s outreach to the continent? Amanda Lucey: India has long-standing ties with Africa, stemming from a shared history of colonization, ancient trade ties […]

ALEM GENA, Ethiopia—As she shuffles about the factory floor, watching over the machines that weave spools of thread into fabric, Asrat Yimam personifies the future of the Ethiopian workforce. A 27-year-old mother of one from the nearby capital, Addis Ababa, Yimam has spent the past six years toiling for Ayka-Addis, a Turkish-owned textile and garment factory and the largest firm in Ethiopia’s emerging apparel industry. Six days a week, for 1,500 birr ($68) a month after taxes, she rises early for her eight-hour shift, dons her spotted blue and white Ayka uniform, and spends her day churning out cotton for […]

Benin’s two-round elections, held earlier this year on March 6 and March 20, delivered a decisive victory for opposition candidate and cotton magnate Patrice Talon. As in some other Francophone West African countries, the two-round system facilitated a political upset. Talon finished in second place in the first round, with just 23.5 percent of the vote. In the second round, however, he defeated outgoing President Thomas Boni Yayi’s handpicked candidate, then-Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou, with more than 65 percent of the vote. Zinsou quickly conceded, and Benin won international acclaim for the latest milestone in its 25-year-old democracy. Talon has […]

“Fifteen years after a drone first fired missiles in combat,” journalist Josh Smith recently wrote from Afghanistan, “the U.S. military’s drone program has expanded far beyond specific strikes to become an everyday part of the war machine.” Important as this is, it is only a first step in a much bigger process. As a report co-authored in January 2014 by Robert Work and Shawn Brimley put it, “a move to an entirely new war-fighting regime in which unmanned and autonomous systems play central roles” has begun. Where this ultimately will lead is unclear. Work, who went to become the deputy […]

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. When NPR reporter Louisa Lim brought the iconic photograph of “Tank Man”—the young Chinese man who stood before a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, just one day after the massacre at Tiananmen Square—to the campuses of four prestigious universities in Beijing, only 15 of the 100 students she randomly interviewed could identify the picture. In her book, Lim wrote: The students I spoke to are the crème de la crème, […]