By News Investigators – A new report detailing names of 100 Global Thinkers of the last decade has been released with no Nigerian, living or dead, making the list.
The #BringBackOurGirls# campaign that drew the world attention to the abduction of 276 secondary school girls in 2014 in the Chibok community of Borno State, Nigeria also failed to make the list which also drawn from activism events.
The report published by the Foreign Policy, an American think-tank forum, in its recent edition marks the 10th annual special edition of Global Thinkers.
The list which includes the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, is categorized into world: Strongmen and leading influencers in defense and security, energy and climate, technology, economics and business, science and health, activism and arts among others.
The list also featured, Ugandan Singer and politician, Bobi Wine and activist Frank Mugisha, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, former US President, Barack Obama, President Donald Trump, World Bank Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, Journalist and founder of Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins.
“So this year we decided that there was no better way to explicate our current, wildly complex moment—and peer into the year ahead—than to focus once more on the thinkers and doers who had a profound impact on the planet in the last 12 months. The idea is not to honor do-gooders (though we feature plenty of them) but to shine a spotlight on some of the most influential people in the world—for better or worse,” Foreign Policy Editor, Jonathan Tepperman said of the report.
In his introduction Mr. Tepperman, noted that since this is the 10th anniversary of Global Thinkers, we decided to split this year’s list of 100 into 10 groups. To start things off, we singled out 10 nominees who—by our highly scientific calculations—have had the greatest impact on the past decade. After that are people 40 and under, followed by the most influential minds in the areas of defense and security, energy and climate, technology, economics and business, science and health, and activism and the arts.
The report added a category of Global Thinkers chosen through an online readers’ poll to accommodate wider participations.
“Since we’re sure that you will disagree with some of our inclusions and omissions, we added a category of Global Thinkers chosen through an online readers’ poll. And since so many amazing people died in 2018, we featured some of them as well, in a category we call “The Departed.”
“Of course, part of the fun of assembling a list such as this is the opportunity to ask its members questions and to ask other prominent thinkers to write about our Global Thinkers. Robert Kagan kicks things off by explaining why 2018 was the year of the strongman—and 2019 may be too. Asked what we should anticipate this year, Fareed Zakaria, who was first named a Global Thinker in 2009, responds with an essay describing how economics was the key to understanding the last several decades but can no longer play that role today. That’s not to say economists aren’t still important, of course.
They remain vital, which is why we turned to Douglas Irwin—who has recently emerged as one of the best interpreters of U.S. President Donald Trump’s expanding trade wars—to predict how those battles will play out in 2019. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, who has been a Global Thinker many times over, looks at how well the world recovered from the Great Recession of a decade ago and what must be done to prevent another one.
One of the reasons economics can’t explain everything is because some problems defy our brains’ ability to fully comprehend them; we just can’t wrap our heads around them. Climate change is probably the best example of this phenomenon—which is why we asked an artist, the novelist Amitav Ghosh, to take it on. In an essay looking back at the chaos caused by the world’s last great climate shift—the Little Ice Age, which peaked between the 15th and 18th centuries—he tries to predict the kinds of ecological, social, and political upheavals we should prepare for. Other topics, of course, are best left to the experts.
So we turned to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who led the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, to describe one of his nemeses: Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force and its chief Syria strategist. In a very different vein, Helen Clark, a past prime minister of New Zealand, details the many breakthroughs achieved by the current officeholder, Jacinda Ardern. Frank Mugisha, a Ugandan LGBT activist, reports on the international impact of Menaka Guruswamy’s successful fight to get India to overturn its gay sex ban. And Carlo Rovelli, the Italian-born theoretical physicist, presents a beautiful remembrance of his beloved colleague Stephen Hawking, who died in 2018.
We’ve all heard about the wisdom of crowds, but some crowds are wiser than others. Recognizing this, we surveyed our entire list of Global Thinkers to get their collective predictions about the biggest challenges looming this year. We also asked some of them for reading lists and others about what they plan to do next. Put it all together, and you get a compelling, complex picture of our world today—and an intriguing, expert view into what’s about to come,” Mr. Tepperman added.
The Top 10 of the Last 10 Years
The Strongman
Angela Merkel Chancellor of Germany
Barack Obama Former President of the United States of America
Jack Ma Co-founder and executive chairman, Alibaba
The Women of the #MeToo Movement
Christine Lagarde Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
Margrethe Vestager European Commissioner for Competition
Fareed Zakaria Author and TV host
Bill and Melinda Gates Co-chairs, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Jeff Bezos Founder and CEO, Amazon
40 & Under
Jacinda Ardern Prime Minister of New Zealand
Yue Xin Activist
Kim Jong Un Leader of North Korea
Mohammed bin Salman Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia
Sebastian Kurz Chancellor of Austria
Leo Varadkar Prime Minister of Ireland
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez U.S. Representative from New York
Ronan Farrow Journalist and author
Stephen Miller Senior advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump
Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani Emir of Qatar
Defense & Security
Qassem Suleimani Commander of Iran’s Quds Force
Ursula von der Leyen Defense Minister of Germany
Olga Sánchez Cordero Interior Secretary of Mexico
Abiy Ahmed Prime Minister of Ethiopia
Gwynne Shotwell President and Chief Operating Officer, SpaceX
Alex Karp Co-founder and CEO, Palantir
Eliot Higgins Journalist and founder of Bellingcat
Vladislav Surkov Aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin
Sheikh Hasina Prime Minister of Bangladesh
Susi Pudjiastuti Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister of Indonesia
Energy & Climate
Jerry Brown Governor of California
Charif Souki Co-founder and Chairman, Tellurian
Amitav Ghosh Writer
Katharine Hayhoe Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University
Fred Krupp President, Environmental Defense Fund
Mike Zimmerman Founder and CEO, Ionic Materials
Frank Bainimarama Prime Minister of Fiji
Lisa Murkowski U.S. Senator from Alaska
Pete McCabe President and CEO of Onshore Wind at GE Renewable Energy
Uma Valeti and Nicholas Genovese Co-founders, Memphis Meats
Technology
Yuval Noah Harari Author and futurist
Kai-Fu Lee Venture capitalist and writer
Jann Horn Researcher, Google Project Zero
Susan Fowler Writer
Alastair Mactaggart Board Chair, Californians for Consumer Privacy
Lina Khan Legal Fellow at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission
Mukesh Ambani Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries
Maciej Ceglowski Founder AND CEO, Pinboard
Lu Wei Former director of the Cyberspace Administration of China
Ian Goodfellow Research scientist, Google Brain
Economics & Business
Gina Miller Businesswoman and activist
Michel Barnier Europe’s chief Brexit negotiator
Adam Tooze Professor of history at Columbia University
Gita Gopinath Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund
Donald Tusk President of the European Council
Robert Lighthizer United States Trade Representative
Baba Ramdev Yoga guru and businessman
Douglas Irwin Economist and professor at Dartmouth College
Yi Gang Governor of the People’s Bank of China
Chrystia Freeland Foreign Affairs Minister of Canada
Science & Health
Leana Wen President, Planned Parenthood
Michele De Luca Stem cell biologist
Carlo Rovelli Theoretical physicist and writer
John Carreyrou Investigative journalist
Roopam Sharma Scientist and inventor
Gregory Rockson Co-founder and CEO, mPharma
Wayne Koff President and CEO, Human Vaccines Project
Atul Gawande Surgeon, writer, and public health researcher
Mary-Claire King Geneticist
Brian Gitta Diagnostic app developer
Activism & the Arts
Bobi Wine Singer and politician
Donald Glover Actor, singer, writer, and director
Lena Waithe Writer and actor
Menaka Guruswamy Lawyer
Shawn Zhang Student activist
N.K. Jemisin Author
Ruth E. Carter Costume designer
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo Reuters journalists
Colin Kaepernick Football player
The Parkland Students
Readers’ Choices
Audrey Tang Digital Minister of Taiwan
Joey Joleen Mataele LGBT rights activist
Moon Jae-in President of South Korea
Janelle Monáe Artist
Michelle Bachelet United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Peter Navarro Trade advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump
Jordan Peterson Author and clinical psychologist
Michelle Obama Best-selling author and former first lady of the United States
Imran Khan Prime Minister of Pakistan
Nabeel Rajab Bahraini human rights activist
The Departed
Marceline Loridan-Ivens 1928-2018 | Filmmaker and writer
Kofi Annan 1938-2018 | Diplomat
Jamal Khashoggi 1958-2018 | Journalist
V.S. Naipaul 1932-2018 | Writer
Koko the Gorilla 1971-2018 | Communicator
Stephen Hawking 1942-2018 | Physicist
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela 1936-2018 | Politician
Bernard Lewis 1916-2018 | Historian
Anthony Bourdain 1956-2018 | Writer and TV host
John McCain 1936-2018 | U.S. Senator
The Top 10 of the Last 10 Years
The Strongman
The last decade has been a rough one for democracy. Emboldened by the weakness and divisions in the West, authoritarian leaders around the world have refined a playbook for acquiring and consolidating power. The strategy goes something like this: appeal to nationalism, stoke fear and divide people into an “us” and a “them,” use that polarization to win an election (even if it’s just an internal party vote, as in China), and systematically undermine democratic rules and other procedural safeguards. And then repeat. Today, one can see those rules being honed and deployed in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, Xi Jinping’s China, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, and even Donald Trump’s America. These strongmen—and they are all men—are finding strength in each other’s success and the lack of a coordinated pushback. Expect more aspiring authoritarians to follow in their stead.
