Climate, Communications, and COVID

MISTI Radio

On this episode we have a special interview and talk to share; both about how COVID-19 affects things from communications to climate change.

Ari Jacobovitz, Managing Director of MIT-Africa, interviews Michala Mackay, the Chief Operating Officer and Director of the Directorate of Science, Technology, and Innovation in Sierra Leone. DSTI seeks to “transform Sierra Leone into an innovation and entrepreneurship hub.” In her work Mackay implements Sierra Leone’s National Innovation and Digitization Strategy to make technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship integral to the development of the country.

In this interview Mackay discusses how the people and the government of Sierra Leone are responding to COVID-19, what the Directorate is doing, and how technology is playing an important role in conducting real-time analysis, communicating updates, and connecting people with each other in this situation.

Next are excerpts from a Starr Forum hosted by MIT-Brazil and the MIT Center for International Studies. On April 24th they invited Dr. Carlos Nobre, an MIT-Brazil program partner, to talk about how the COVID-19 crisis reveals how balancing tropical ecosystems can actually reduce this risk of future pandemics.

Dr. Nobre is Brazil’s leading expert on the Amazon and climate change. He is currently a Senior Scientist at University of Sao Paulo's Institute for Advanced Studies, chair of the Brazilian Panel on Climate Change and co-chair of the Science Panel for the Amazon. Nobre received a PhD in Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

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