In 2018, Minister of Education Matthew Prempeh was reconsidering the language of instruction (LOI) policy for primary schools in Ghana, a country with more than 80 local languages and English as the national language. Prempeh saw many challenges to implementing the current LOI policy, where Grades 1 through 3 were taught in one of 11 select Ghanaian languages, and Grade 4 onwards taught in English. He considered the options: what LOI policy would best prepare students for a global society?

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It is July 2021, and, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, access to vaccines is highly uneven around the globe. In this multi-issue, multi-party negotiation role play, participants representing governments from the Global North and Global South, as well as pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers, must work together to solve this issue. And although all parties share a common interest in seeing vaccination rates rise globally, individual and national interests diverge and finding an agreement is extremely challenging.

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In autumn 2022, in the midst of economic turmoil, the UK government had to decide whether to follow through with a long-planned major reform of the crisis-shaken English adult social care sector or delay its implementation, hoping the government’s financial situation would stabilise. With budgets in dire straits, local councils called for a delay, while advocacy groups like Age UK urged immediate action, warning not to kick the decision into the long grass, like successive governments had before them.

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In the 2020s, Japan was making major investments in its semiconductor industry as tensions grew between the US, its major security ally, and China, its largest economic partner. Washington pressured Tokyo to align with US export controls intended to prevent China from accessing advanced chips and the equipment needed to make them. Tokyo, worried about losing access to the Chinese market and potential economic retaliation, had to weigh up the risks of tightening its export controls or resisting US pressure. 

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On 11 May 2021, Estonia’s Ministry of Social Affairs unexpectedly announced that Covid-19 vaccinations would be opened to all Estonians over 16 years old – 500,000 people – in just one week’s time. Estonia’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) Siim Sikkut worried that this large influx of users would crash the repurposed digital health portal. However, he did not have direct authority over the digital decisions of the social affairs ministry. What, if anything, could he do to prevent a crash?