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Superpower disinterest turns out to be the main feature of Africa's post cold war era. Although marxism-leninism and models of socialist orientation based thereupon have utterly failed, there is not much reason for capitalism to triumph either: the debate on the limits and risks of the market forces will continue as the example of South Africa shows. The eighties have turned out to be a lost decade for development in Africa and there will be no significant rise in outside development assistance in the coming years : expectations for a Marshall Plan for Africa and hopes concerning a "peace-dividend" because of disarmament in Europe should be discounted in the context of the exploding cost of European reconstruction. Africans can either react with despair or with a "New Realism", geared at solving their problems essentially by mobilising their own resources and creativity. Europe, for its part, would be ill-advised to judge its relations with Africa merely in terms of diminishing strategic and economic interests.
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289.More information
This article analyzes the conditions for change and the viability of French mutual societies from the health insurance sector in an EU organization for supplementary social welfare protection. In an increasingly competitive environment, social economy organizations, which include mutual societies, have been finding themselves in an uncomfortable position. They have to assert themselves, and sometimes re-structure themselves, in order to preserve their solidarity values. After placing the French specificities within the context of the mutualist movement in Europe, the author presents the stages for constructing a single European insurance market and the reasons for mutual societies coming under EU directives. The transposition of the directives should lead France to revise its Mutual Code. After their incorporation in a market subject to European regulations on competition, mutual societies will have to make profound changes. The French mutualist movement is facing new challenges, and the measures taken to support it, on both the national and the European level, will be decisive.
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290.More information
Much of the literature and the academic discussion about the impact of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) in institutional strategic planning has been centred on the US context. However, data shows that although the US are responsible for the largest MOOC platforms and the most successful course provision, it is the European region which accounts for the highest percentage of global MOOC participation. Differently from the US Higher Education system framework, however, in Europe public policy and in particular the European Commission is now driving MOOC institutional uptake. Given the very different institutional, political and cultural contexts, it is interesting to analyse how in these two different regions Higher Education institutions are responding to the challenges of the MOOC phenomena and are integrating it in their own strategic planning.The current research presents the first attempt to conduct a benchmarking study of institutional MOOC strategies in Europe and the US. It's based on a survey launched by the EU-funded project HOME and compares results with a similar survey launched in the US. Results show that are significant differences in how US and European institutions understand the impact of massive forms of open education and also how they perceive the efficiency of digital education and online learning.
Keywords: MOOCs, Institutional strategies, Higher Education, Survey, open education, online learning