Progress report for
Creating Electronic ECOWAS with Global University System
Achievement at a glance
Dr. Thomas Mensah’s invention of fast extrusion of optical fiber initiated<br>broadband Internet while he was at the Corning Glass in Ithaca, New York.
<br>Prof. Victor Lawrence contributed to the digital data transmission through
<br>the Internet while he was the Vice President of the Bell Lab in New Jersey,
<br>thus an inductee to the Hall of Fame of Inventors of the National Academy
<br>of Inventors. Dr. Takeshi Utsumi initiated globalization of Internet (see 2
<br>blogs in <http://tinyurl.com/3mucrf2> about his saga) and deregulated the
<br>Japanese telecom policies for the use of email and demonopolized telecom
<br>industries which movement was emulated in many countries, thus enabling
<br>more than 4 billion people to use email and cell phone with VOIP (Voice
<br>Over Internet Protocol) around the world nowadays <http://tiny.cc/xxkw0y>
<br><http://tiny.cc/4ykw0y>.
<br>The Millennium Institute, the renowned think tank specializing on the use of
<br>system dynamics methodology, constructed more than 43 country models
<br>(mostly in Africa).
<br>Prof. Tapio Varis (former Rector of the UN University of Peace in Costa
<br>Rica) at the University of Tampere in Finland and Dr. Utsumi created
<br>Global University System (GUS) <http://tiny.cc/vw410y> under the
<br>UNESCO/UNITWIN/Networking Chair Program with a fund from the World
<br>Bank.
<br>Our colleagues in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria and Pakistan, etc., are
<br>now ready to form their GUS consortiums with higher educational and
<br>healthcare institutions in their countries – many other African universities
<br>are in line to join.
<br>Dr. Utsumi conducted the “Global Lecture Hall (GLH)” multipoint-tomultipoint,
<br>multimedia interactive videoconferencing with the combined use
<br>of Internet and satellites spanning globe once or twice every year in the
<br>1990s, e.g., from Melbourne, Australia to Moscow, Russia as connecting
<br>numerous universities between them. This initiated the global e-learning
<br>movement around the world. He subsequently received the Lord Perry
<br>Award for the excellence in global e-learning in the fall of 1994.
Challenges faced in implementation
This project will foster logical thinking for the justice, the central<br>concept of democracy, among future policy makers with the combined use
<br>of qualitative and quantitative analyses. This project framework will also
<br>enact the bottom-up participatory democracy and global collaboration
<br>through Internet. It will then ultimately contribute to sustainability in the
<br>context of climate change and to international conflicting issues by
<br>transforming adversaries to collaborators for dealing with confrontationprone
<br>problems.
<br>Making rational decisions requires both qualitative and quantitative skills.
<br>The former is interpersonal skill to achieve the goal through negotiation to
<br>reach the optimal agreement for all participants. The latter is the skill to find
<br>the objective and optimal solution for complex problems with simulation
<br>model. Today these two skills are both imperative for rational decisionmaking
<br>by the policy makers, yet the training schemes for the leaders have
<br>not combined these two skills as one package.
<br>The next steps of the Paris climate pact are to honor their pledges
<br>effectively and to improve significantly on them in the years to come. This
<br>will require regular and transparent global cooperation with collective and
<br>shared responsibilities in democratic fashion. We plan to achieve this
<br>cooperation by interlinking their individual country’s simulation models
<br>through broadband Internet.
<br>Despite the urgency of climate change, the global cooperation has not
<br>produced a tangible result, because of the lack of the framework based on
<br>the shared rational decision-making skills among the policy makers.
<br>Creating the leaders and the frameworks that promote rational decisionmaking
<br>is urgent and indispensable. This project will develop the
<br>appropriate leadership among the future policy makers and the framework
<br>for their collaboration.
Next Steps
Qualitative (role-playing) normative gaming has been used in international<br>political science at the Columbia University. We will combine it with (modelbased)
<br>quantitative simulation of Nigeria, which was constructed by the
<br>Ministry of Environment of Nigerian government with Millennium Institute as
<br>a means of producing the one package deal. This combined use will be a
<br>significant paradigm shift in the international political science field with the
<br>fusion of humanity and science.
<br>For smooth coordination, we will conduct videoconferences with GUS
<br>parties in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, and Pakistan every two months.
<br>We plan to conduct similar activities later with various major universities in
<br>Nile River basin countries, and elsewhere around the world. We have
<br>already made facts-finding trips to Nigeria and Ethiopia by visiting a half
<br>dozen higher educational and healthcare institutions in each of those
<br>countries.
<br>The repetitive mode of the model will create a simulator/trainer for daily
<br>policy analysis and decision-makings, so that users in developing countries
<br>can participate with academic excellence around the world and unleash
<br>creativity with their brilliant brainpower in globally collaborative fashion.
<br>This scheme for decision-making exercises will also enable participation of
<br>the ordinary citizens with their cell-phones, thus promoting bottom-up
<br>participatory democracy based on facts and figures rather than exclusively
<br>upon hunches, habits or traditions.
<br>This project will also promote globally collaborative democracy with our
<br>procedure on the inter-linking mechanism of distributed socio-economicenergy-environmental
<br>simulation models in those participating countries
<br>together. These activities will then lead to the possible creation of
<br>“Electronic African Union” and eventually “Electronic United Nations,”
<br>as improving the FUGI world model of Soka University of Japan, which
<br>currently has 194 countries’ sectors and 6 UN sectors. This approach will
<br>be a stark contrast to the conventional climate models, which aggregates
<br>every country by ignoring the national boundaries because of inevitable
<br>natural phenomena.
Beneficiaries
Attaining SDGs contributes to the betterment of a country’s current social
<br>system. To achieve this requires policy-decision-making with rational,
<br>scientific critical thinking that has a clear vision of its consequences. This is
<br>particularly necessary to deal with the conflicts that arise when the positive
<br>effects of one SDG related policy lead to negative effects on some
<br>segments of other SDG objectives. It is important to convert potential
<br>adversaries into collaborators who can work together to achieve the best
<br>results among the SDGs and to mitigate negative side effects that cannot
<br>be avoided. The same principle would also apply to resolving potential
<br>conflict among participating countries, since no single country can exist
<br>alone, and it should not ignore the negative effects some of its policies may
<br>have on a neighbor. They need to be able to work together with common
<br>tools to deal with cross boarder effects most beneficially.
<br>Our major challenges for the capacity building of young government
<br>officers and aspiring future leaders who will be involved in policy design
<br>and decision making would be the following two promotions:
<br>a) The use of system dynamics methodology,
<br>b) The combined use of qualitative, normative (role-playing) interactions
<br>to learn consensus building and of quantitative model-based
<br>simulation for rational logical and critical decision-making.
<br>It is important for users of system dynamics to understand its reliance on
<br>real world causal relationships, not only within normal sectors, but across
<br>sectors, including those related to the economy, social activities, and the
<br>environment. It lays the basis for developing models that can address the
<br>SDGs in an integrated manner, understand the positive and negative cross
<br>sector impacts, and work out ways of mitigating them.
Actions
Following universities have now been designated as the key institutions to<br>form their countries’ consortium of higher educational and healthcare
<br>institutions;
<br>(a)Burkina Faso: University of Ouagadougou,
<br>(b)Ghana: Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology,
<br>(c)Nigeria: University of Port Harcourt, and
<br>(d)Pakistan: Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology.
<br>We are now working on the fund-raising for the following actions with them;
<br>Accepting the invitation of the Utah Valley University (UVU) to attend the
<br>68th annual United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI)
<br>Conference that will take place on the 26-28th of August 2019 in Salt Lake
<br>City, Utah <http://tiny.cc/ok410y> “Salt Lake City Mayor’s Office, Press
<br>Release, August 23, 2018; ‘Salt Lake City selected to host 2019 United
<br>Nations NGO Conference’”
<br>(a)We will conduct a workshop at this occasion with colleagues from
<br>Africa and other countries to plan for;
<br>a. Global e-learning,
<br>b. Global videoconferencing,
<br>c. Global peace gaming, etc.
<br>(b)Sending a mission team from the US to them to support more
<br>thorough global e-learning and e-healthcare,
<br>(c)Conducting planning workshops at these universities, that will
<br>associate with seminars on system dynamics methodology, -- they
<br>will form task-teams for each of SDGs segments to construct their
<br>own system dynamics models which will then be interlinked and
<br>expanded to include other relevant activities in order to form a
<br>comprehensive country model, each of those country models will then
<br>interlinked to form a regional model (e.g., ECOWAS in Africa),
<br>(d)Cooperation with similar global e-learning activities in Europe and
<br>Japan,
<br>(e)Possible presentation of these results along with a proposal for the
<br>SDGs Service Trust Fund at the TICAD VII in Yokohama, Japan in
<br>2020.
<br>