When President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates arrived in Luanda this past week, it marked his first state visit to sub-Saharan Africa. The trip was not only ceremonial, it was strategic. It produced a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with Angola that will reduce tariffs, expand trade and open the door for large-scale UAE investment across sectors ranging from energy to logistics.

As the world gathered in Geneva for the AI for Good Global Summit last week, a powerful question drove discourse: how do we fund digital inclusion and promote artificial intelligence-driven solutions that serve humanity? This moment, convening governments, multilateral agencies, and industry leaders, signals an inflection point in global development discourse. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic technology and solely the terrain of advanced economies. It is now framed as a tool with the potential to transform education, health care, agriculture, and economic opportunity, particularly for those historically excluded from its benefits. Yet, for all the applause, there is a growing sense that these commitments, despite good intention, risk missing their target for impact in the Global South, where 500 million young people are on the cusp of entering the workforce.

Global health is at a crossroads. Traditional Western donors are pulling back from pandemic preparedness andclimate-linked health investments, creating a growing shortfall that threatens both planetary and human security. Inthis vacuum, new leadership is emerging from unexpected places.

Less than a week ago, Dr. Sidi Ould Tah was elected President of the African Development Bank Group — a pivotal moment not just for the institution, but for Africa’s development trajectory. Maryam Forum Foundation's Advisory Board Member Matthew A. Miller explains that his appointment marks more than a leadership transition - it is a great opportunity to reshape development finance.

Geneva, Switzerland, is a hub for international cooperation. The city has provided a venue for dialogue among governments and nongovernmental organizations alike since the early 20th century, bolstered by critical aspects of the Swiss DNA: neutrality, good governance and a tradition of dialogue for impact and peace.

As the 78th World Health Assembly gathers this week in Geneva, global health funding and governance are at an inflection point. For decades, Western donors — particularly the US — have dominated the agenda. That era is ending.

With Klaus Schwab stepping down after more than five decades at the helm of the World Economic Forum, the organization he is synonymous with stands at a historic impasse. As the world grapples with increasing economic fragmentation, geopolitical unrest and a rapidly evolving technological transformation, the time has come not just to find a new leader — but to reinvent the WEF itself.

A resilient system of neutral governance hubs is indispensable today because it provides legally guaranteed impartial venues for both formal (Track-One) and informal (Track-Two) diplomacy amid great-power rivalries.
Switzerland’s 200-year legacy of armed neutrality, though recently strained by EU sanctions on Russia, still offers a foundational model, while Gulf states (UAE, Qatar, Oman), Asia’s Singapore, and Latin America’s Panama and Uruguay provide complementary strengths in geographic proximity, digital infrastructure, and symbolic neutrality.

Through anecdotes and institutional efforts like the Maryam Forum Foundation, Khalid Abdulla-Janahi calls for a cultural shift—where leadership is earned through service and competence.

True leadership is needed today – from the public, private and philanthropic sectors – to redefine how we take nature into account. We need a new equation that recognizes the full potential of nature as a public good infrastructure from which everyone can benefit. New innovative ideas and scalable projects are gaining visibility from a myriad of sources, including indigenous peoples and youth, and leaders now need to encourage these projects and support implementation.

Peace between Israelis and Palestinians has been the subject of international fora since the 1948 partition of mandatory Palestine, but with the events of 7 October 2023, the international community was reminded, with a rude reawakening, of the lack of effective leadership related to the Middle East peace process on the part of Israelis, Palestinians and the international community. This session which took place on 17 January 2024 was designed as a debate to surface new leadership-focused solutions. We will include voices representative of Palestinian and Israeli aspirations, the public sector, the

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Written by Maryam Forum Foundation co-founder Khalid Abdulla-Janahi, this brief memoir recounts the journey of a man and lessons he accumulated on leadership by observing and questioning the status quo, and asking the penultimate question of why. The book’s key observation is that there is an excess of rulership while leadership is almost always in deficit.

Its initial drafts are what led to the creation of the Maryam Forum Foundation.

The December 2022 COP15 UN biodiversity summit in Montreal marked a breakthrough for global collaboration at a time when nature's destruction presents profound risks to human societies. There is a major nature finance gap – estimated by researchers to be around USD $700 billion, particularly for countries in the global South, where most of the world's biodiversity is located.

The future of a sustainable Ukraine hinges on re-thinking and re-formulating the structures and institutions of the state and the economy. If the job is to be done right, it must also create the conditions for an equitable economic future, avoid the pitfalls of concentrating access and opportunity in the hands of the few, and support a renewed social contract and the development of institutions that put people first.

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