Insights

Fiji faces a critical noncommunicable disease (NCD) crisis, with NCDs causing over 80% of deaths and imposing significant economic burdens. High rates of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and poor diet—characterized by low fruit and vegetable intake and excessive salt—drive this epidemic, affecting adults and increasingly youth. Tobacco, alcohol, and kava use also contribute to risk. While physical activity is somewhat adequate, treatment and disease control remain weak despite improved screening. Priority actions include health promotion campaigns, restrictive legislation on unhealthy products, shifting resources to primary care and prevention, enhancing digital health systems, and addressing childhood obesity. Challenges include under-resourced prevention, weak treatment adherence, unhealthy food environments, limited multisectoral enforcement, and inequities by gender, age, and location. Addressing these is essential for Fiji's health, productivity, and economic sustainability.
Africa | Health
From Crisis to Action: Addressing Fiji’s Noncommunicable Disease Challenges
Artificial Intelligence for Inspired Action by Cornelia C. Walther presents a vision where AI enhances human values and empathy. Using the POZE paradigm, the book highlights hybrid intelligence, combining human wisdom with machine capabilities. It emphasizes the need for dual literacy—understanding both human and algorithmic intelligence—to maintain agency amid growing AI dependence. The book serves as a guide and call to action for changemakers to ethically shape a future that benefits humanity.
Artificial Intelligence for Inspired Action
Artificial intelligence increases data productivity but also raises the cost of data governance for firms. Analyzing approximately 84,000 SEC filings from 1994 to 2023, firms adopting AI show about 5% higher disclosure of breach-risk attention compared to the average, while AI invention has negligible impact when considered alongside adoption. This heightened risk concern is most pronounced in customer-facing AI deployments, with firms typically describing AI-related breach vulnerabilities as expanding exposure. Findings are supported by additional evidence from staggered state Data Breach Notification laws, emphasizing AI adoption’s link to increased data breach risk awareness.
Data as Liability
Health ministers face mounting pressures from rising demand, staffing shortages, and constrained budgets, with few quick solutions available. Over 4 billion people lack essential health services, and while AI is widely viewed as a potential remedy, there is uncertainty about where to begin and risks associated with poor implementation. Governments need a clear, practical framework to prioritize AI applications that deliver meaningful health outcomes and identify enablers for scaling successful solutions effectively.
Education, Health
“Where Do I Start?”: How Governments Can Prioritise AI Solutions for Health
Luxury brands employ sophisticated language—terms like “strategic oscillation,” “temporal calibration,” and “legacy-driven adaptation”—to frame their navigation of uncertainty, balancing tradition with innovation. While these frameworks reflect past successes, they often serve more as retrospective narratives than practical, real-time strategies. Particularly in areas like sustainability, luxury brands struggle to reconcile their heritage of exclusivity and controlled scarcity with demands for transparency, circularity, and environmental responsibility. The industry's strategic vocabulary and metrics are currently inadequate for addressing rapid changes driven by climate urgency, geopolitical shifts, and generational value transformations, posing risks to their future resilience.
Luxury brands have a language for uncertainty – not a strategy
Narratives shape global understanding and influence priority-setting in development, yet those from the Global South are often misrepresented or excluded. This exclusion leads to distorted realities and overlooked perspectives. The Compass: Voices from the Global South series was created to provide a platform for authentic Southern voices, emphasizing meaningful inclusion—not just symbolic presence—in narrative power. Key themes include the importance of data ownership to influence narratives and the need for continued space, visibility, and attentive listening. The series highlights ongoing efforts within the Global South to assert narrative authority and calls for a more complete, inclusive global discourse.
Finding the Global South’s Footing in the Narrative Power Debate
Cyber threats are expanding rapidly in the AI era, with increasing complexity and speed that many organizations are unprepared for. Steven Mills, BCG’s global chief AI ethics officer, emphasizes the need for cybersecurity defenses to evolve as fast as AI technologies, highlighting both AI-created vulnerabilities and AI’s role in proactively strengthening defenses. Critical leadership actions include ensuring transparency on cyber risks, clarifying decision rights among executives, prioritizing protection of critical assets, and redesigning operating models for swift risk response. Companies must balance accepting AI-related risks with the value these tools provide, making cybersecurity a top strategic priority.
Financial services, Education
“Cyber Defense Has to Move at the Speed of AI”
The development of telecommunication networks required immense investment and management, leading to the rise of big media businesses like Western Union in the U.S. Inventors and entrepreneurs viewed new communication technologies with millenarian optimism, believing innovations like wireless telegraphy and radio could abolish war. However, these hopes were challenged in 1914 when rapid electronic communication accelerated diplomatic crises after Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, overwhelming traditional diplomacy and contributing to the outbreak of World War I. Thus, advances in communication technology did not guarantee peace but instead intensified conflicts.
ICT
The Myth of the Informed Citizen
Widespread public support for climate action contrasts sharply with rising carbon emissions and fossil fuel extraction. This paradox is explained by the concept of "hegemony," where economic inequalities shape perceptions, causing dominant elites' interests to be accepted as common sense. Climate impacts like heat stress disproportionately affect workers in developing countries engaged in intense labor, while consumers in wealthy nations benefit from protections like air conditioning, reducing their immediate risks and dampening urgency for change. Fossil fuel industry influence sustains this status quo by shaping political and public discourse, hindering effective climate policies despite affordable renewable energy solutions.
Health
Why climate action stalls, despite widespread popular support
Over the period 2000–2019, more than one-third of export specializations in 164 economies across over 1,200 products disappeared within two decades, illustrating widespread trade de-specialization. Key factors driving this trend include technological relatedness between products, product ubiquity, and the rising comparative advantage of China. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for economists and policymakers dealing with structural transformation in the global economy.
Belarus, Bermuda, Chile, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, New Zealand, Panama, Spain, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, China, Tajikistan, Tunisia
Trade De-Specialization: Dynamics and Determinants
AI has removed many traditional execution constraints by generating, summarizing, and analyzing information, but judgment remains a critical limiting factor. As AI increasingly handles tasks, employees must discern which AI outputs to trust, making skepticism essential. Effective AI systems require designing for human judgment by keeping people involved, validating outputs, and creating feedback loops to improve performance. At Expedia, teams are experimenting with always-on AI, adapting product development, and preparing employees to emphasize expertise, curiosity, and judgment in this evolving landscape.
Education
Judgment Is the New Bottleneck
Agentic AI models now autonomously conduct full scientific research, including hypothesis generation, experimentation, and paper writing, as demonstrated by Tokyo-based Sakana AI's The AI Scientist and Singapore's Analemma’s Fully Automated Research System (Fars). These systems produce research papers rapidly and cost-effectively, challenging current academic publishing norms amid growing submission volumes and reviewer shortages. This shift may push academia toward valuing innovation over quantity but risks increasing incremental rather than groundbreaking science. Beyond research, AI-generated content is transforming creative industries, exemplified by top-charting AI-produced podcasts and music, raising questions about originality and intellectual property.
Education
The AI scientist: now academic papers can be fully automated, what does this mean for the future of research?
Defense issues have risen significantly in French public opinion, moving from a marginal concern in the mid-2000s to a top priority by 2025, with 18% citing it among the EU’s main challenges. This shift aligns with broader European trends, where security and defense have become leading priorities in response to heightened geopolitical tensions, particularly following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Historically seen as a sovereign and technical matter handled through NATO, defense now competes with traditionally prominent issues like immigration and surpasses others such as environment and healthcare. Despite increased sensitivity, French public opinion still shows reluctance to fully embrace defense implications, reflecting a complex balance between growing awareness and persistent caution.
France, Ukraine
Public Opinion and the EU: The French and Defense Issues
Artificial intelligence demonstrated superior diagnostic accuracy compared to doctors in an emergency department setting, correctly identifying diagnoses in 67% of early-stage cases versus doctors’ 50-55%. The AI analyzed written clinical notes without directly interacting with patients, highlighting its potential as a decision-support tool rather than a substitute for clinical judgment. Despite promising results, concerns remain about real-world implementation, potential harms from overdiagnosis, accountability, and integration into clinical workflows. Effective testing, governance, and clearly defined human oversight are essential before AI tools are widely adopted to improve patient care, safety, and efficiency in emergency medicine.
AI in the emergency department: promising, powerful but still unproven
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s 2026 electoral defeat contrasts with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s continued hold on power due to differing political systems. Erdoğan transformed Türkiye’s parliamentary system into a hyper-presidential one, concentrating power in the presidency and making elections winner-takes-all referendums on his leadership. This personalization of authority, coupled with a strong presidential institution and symbolic leader-state unity, secured Erdoğan’s dominance. In contrast, Orbán’s parliamentary system, despite electoral manipulations, retains institutional checks like a separate presidency, which facilitated his defeat without total party collapse. Hungary’s parliamentary framework lowers the stakes of losing power, enabling potential peaceful transitions, unlike Türkiye’s centralized executive model.
Why Erdoğan succeeded where Orbán failed
Indian multinational enterprises (MNEs) are successfully expanding in emerging markets without major foreign direct investment by adopting a "high involvement, low investment" model. Instead of acquiring or owning local firms, they engage deeply with local partners through co-selling, training, joint problem-solving, and sustained managerial presence. This approach leverages local networks and firm capabilities to build trust and durable partnerships, despite institutional uncertainties and market risks. Examples include Indian industrial and pharmaceutical firms that carefully select and actively support smaller, growth-oriented local partners, achieving significant revenue growth and long-term success without heavy equity commitments.
How Indian multinationals are succeeding in emerging markets without major foreign investment
Generative AI (GenAI) is easy for individuals to use and versatile, driving widespread personal adoption, but company-level productivity and profit gains remain limited. Effective organizational transformation with AI requires more than tool adoption; it demands leadership that integrates AI into scalable processes while balancing human judgment, purpose, and culture. Companies must navigate AI's complexities—foundation models are generalists prone to errors and lack specific business context, necessitating layered adaptations like fine-tuning, data integration, prompt engineering, and governance. The challenge lies in managing relocated complexity behind simplified interfaces and making principled decisions on AI roles within workflows to ensure reliable, value-generating deployment.
Education
GenAI: Easy to use, harder to manage
The OECD working paper explores how horizon scanning aids governments in anticipating and responding to emerging and converging technologies. Analyzing 129 international exercises from 2020 to 2025, it reveals diverse practices ranging from governmental to international initiatives. The paper highlights methodological advances, including AI-enabled analytics, and identifies key technologies such as advanced materials, quantum technologies, and bioengineering, emphasizing their implications for security, resilience, and sustainability. It stresses challenges in interpreting early signals and calls for robust standards and international collaboration to effectively support science, technology, and innovation policy and decision-making.
ICT, Health, Education
Building capacity in technology horizon scanning
Tensions in the Strait of Hormuz are increasing fuel and energy costs, triggering broader economic effects beyond direct price hikes. "Skimpflation" refers to businesses maintaining prices while subtly reducing product quality, quantity, or service levels to manage rising costs without alarming consumers. Examples include substituting cheaper ingredients in foods, cutting restaurant ingredient quality, reducing hotel housekeeping, or airlines limiting complimentary services. These hidden reductions allow companies to absorb energy-driven cost pressures amid inflation concerns. Consequently, consumers may face diminished value in everyday goods and services, signaling a form of "hidden inflation" that complicates cost-of-living assessments.
‘Skimpflation’: how the Strait of Hormuz is linked to your lasagne – and other everyday goods
The European Commission has released draft merger guidelines updating rules from 2004 and 2008, marking the most significant reform of EU merger control in two decades. These guidelines clarify how mergers are assessed to prevent significant harm to competition, such as higher prices or reduced innovation. The reform responds to geopolitical challenges, industrial policy debates, and calls to better balance competition with resilience and innovation. While maintaining the core legal test, the guidelines incorporate new considerations like innovation, security, and global market dynamics, reflecting an evolutionary yet meaningful shift in EU merger enforcement.
Financial services
Europe's New Merger Playbook: Evolution or Revolution?

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