Københavns Universitets Videoportal

Demographic challenges and opportunities in Asia and Africa

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 10:32:31 GMT

Keynote address by Reiner Klingholz on 29 June 2021 at the international conference 'Asia and Africa in Transition'.

About the keynote: All countries seem to undergo a demographic transition, which in fact is a socioeconomic transition. In this process, societies experience a decline in infant mortality and fertility rates triggered by access to medical services, better education (especially for women), economic development and higher incomes. As a result, population growth declines. As different countries undergo this transition at various moments, population dynamics can differ considerably from region to region. This can be shown by the demographic situations in Asia and Africa. In most of the formerly fast-growing countries in East and Southeast Asia fertility rates have fallen already close to replacement level or even below. In Africa instead, especially in countries south of the Sahara, high fertility rates are still dominant. Population growth in many places remains at a high level, which in itself is a major factor for sluggish development. The analysis of formerly very poor Asian countries like Bangladesh or Vietnam shows that basic investments in health, education and jobs pave the road to demographic transition and opens the window to capture a demographic dividend. Countries like Ethiopia have shown that similar developments are possible in Africa. Nevertheless, the demographic transition poses new challenges to the respective countries, as lower birth rates and economic development imply aging populations. These countries have to prepare for lifelong learning to secure the productivity of a declining workforce, for a changing pattern of disease and for a higher financial burden caused by the need of social welfare for the elderly.

ADI - Dr. Madhusree Mukerjee, Independent Author and Science Journalist

Thu, 25 Jun 2015 15:24:00 GMT

Keynote lectures by

Dr. Madhusree Mukerjee, Independent Author and Science Journalist

"The Imperial Roots of Hunger"

The Asian Dynamics Initiative (ADI) is pleased to announce the 7th annual international ADI conference

Food, Feeding, and Eating In and Out of Asia

Food, feeding, and eating activities are as old as life itself, but recently there has been a heightened interest in such issues within policy-making, international relations, and academic scholarship ranging from the bio-medical, philosophical, historical, and political to the social, cultural, economic, and religious. Food is both global and local: while foods, cuisines, recipes, people, and culinary cosmopolitanisms have been in global circuits of flows and circulations through various periods of history, the smells, sights, sounds, textures, and tastes of local foodscapes may evoke memories of ‘home’ and imaginations of travel alike. Moreover, with increasing numbers of people concentrated in large cities and urban agglomerations, the challenges of feeding people are becoming ever more complex. Against the backdrop of globalisation of Asia and Asian foods, this conference focuses on the wide-ranging aspects of production, consumption, distribution, disposal, and circulation of foods in and out of Asia.

Food, Feeding, and Eating In and Out of Asia is the 7th in a series of annual, interdisciplinary conferences initiated by ADI in 2008. ADI is a cross-faculty and interdisciplinary effort to meet the current challenges and demands for better knowledge of and deeper insights into Asian matters.

ADI - Professor Paul Freedman, History, Yale University - Asian Dynamics...

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 11:57:17 GMT

Welcome
Julie Sommerlund, Associate dean for external relations, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen

Inaugural keynote lecture by Professor Paul Freedman, History, Yale University

"Asian Restaurants in London and New York"

The Asian Dynamics Initiative (ADI) is pleased to announce the 7th annual international ADI conference