Who walks away from fertile agricultural land available to lease for as little as $1 per year per hectare? Recent reports indicate international investors are doing just that across sub-Saharan Africa.

Conflict always wins the headlines, but in some ways, 2015 was the year of cooperation. From COP-21, the Millennium Development Goals, and the Sustainable Development Goals to disaster risk reduction, financing for development, and the G-7, the list of far-reaching international agreements is incredible.

While much of the attention in international development and academia has focused on mega and primary cities, rapidly growing secondary cities will play a significant role in global economic development in this, the urban millennium. [Video Below]

Aissata M.B. Camara grew up in an educated, upper income household in Guinea, West Africa. One morning, she woke up to singing outside her window and knew they were coming. Many in her community thought that she was unclean and would grow up to be promiscuous if she wasn’t cut. She would be unmarriageable. While her family and community members held her down, she realized, “my body no longer belonged to me.” [Video Below]

One of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first priorities after winning an overwhelming victory last year on a platform of development and growth is to fast-track a decades-old plan to link India’s rivers.

The sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls must be protected, even – especially – during “the toughest of times, in the hardest of places,” said Kate Gilmore, deputy executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), at the Wilson Center on December 3. [Video Below]

The nations of the world may have finally solved the thorniest problem in international relations and now we need to figure out practical solutions, said a panel of experts at the Wilson Center on December 16.

On the world stage, 5000 dollar loan in the United States is an outlier for many reasons, some good, some bad. Few are more alarming, however, than maternal health. Despite spending two and half times more per person on health than the OECD average, the maternal mortality rate in the U.S. – the number of women who die during or as a result of childbirth and pregnancy – increased from 12 to 14 deaths per 100,000 live births from 1990 to 2015, putting the United States at 46^th in the world. [Video Below]