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Why “Community-Led” Health Programmes Often Aren’t as Local as They Claim

By Bernabas Petros and Bethelhem Teshome / Shaping Sustainable Futures conference series

Global health policy loves a good success story. Community health workers are constantly praised as the backbone of efforts to achieve SDG 3 — healthy lives and well-being for all. From Ethiopia’s famous Women Development Army to Malawi’s Health Surveillance Assistants and the UK’s Community Health Champions, these initiatives are regularly showcased as shining examples of “localization” in action.

But there’s a problem. Localization is talked about far more than it is genuinely practiced.

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Why Knowledge Diplomacy Deserves More Attention

By Sibout Nooteboom / Shaping Sustainable Futures conference series

In a world where raw power dominates, countries often find it difficult to govern their internationally embedded value chains from a position of equality. Knowledge diplomacy may help to overcome this difficulty, as experiences from the Netherlands Commission for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) suggest.

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Reversing Agrarian Change and Restoring Hope in Ghana’s Mining‑Affected Communities

By Gyinadu Abubakar and Evans Odoom / Shaping Sustainable Futures conference series

From Cocoa to Gold: What’s at Stake

When classical agrarian theory points to rising food prices as the driver of land value, it assumes a single, agricultural use for land. David Ricardo’s rent model is a good example: more demand for corn raises the returns to fertile land and—because the soil’s productive capacity is essentially fixed—landowners capture higher rents. But in many contemporary rural landscapes this model misses a crucial detail: land is multi‑functional. Productive cocoa farms in Ghana—particularly in the Western North, Ashanti, Bono, and Eastern regions—sit atop significant gold deposits, creating a conflict between agriculture and mining.

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