“Our greatest investment is in our intellectual assets” working to address “challenges from the environment to medicine” proudly proclaims University College London (UCL) Provost, Malcolm Grant. UCL runs an MSc Systems Engineering course in partnership with BAE Systems, Britain’s largest arms company, responsible for producing artillery guns, munitions and missiles, even warships and nuclear submarines, and whose customers include the repressive Saudi Arabian secret services, the Israeli Defence Forces, the US army and the Indonesian forces responsible for violently extinguishing West Papua’s secession movement.

Much of development has historically been directed by colonial powers and more recently by the neo-liberal consensus. This has led to a situation whereby developing countries have had little control over their own resources, policies, economies and futures.

There are few more circular arguments than those that spiral around the impact of media upon politics. And as soon as you mention New Media that circle turns in to a vicious or virtuous cycle depending on your view. Internet Evangelists like Joe Trippi claim that blogging, email, websites, and social networking are transforming political communications. That in turn is changing the process of politics and politics itself.

Pakistan came into being out of a nationalist cause; the ethnic Muslim minority felt that its rights would be better preserved and served under a separate democratic setup, rather than among an overwhelming majority of Hindus. Great Britain also wanted a buffer state between the Muslim belt and India to save the Sub-Continent (which contained a quarter of the world’s population) from the effects of ‘Islamization’ and to ensure that it never emerged as a challenging power to British ambitions in the East (the Middle East, Hong Kong, Burma and Japan to name a few).

‘We believe in sharing, and we want what our God has put in us to be seen’. The entire group nods in agreement with the words of William Mensah, founder of the Pace Setters youth group. Arriving late he is the last member to take a seat in the dimly lit schoolroom that is the group’s regular Sunday afternoon meeting place. His audience comprises around twenty inhabitants, all in their early twenties, of Sukura, an impoverished suburb of the Ghanaian capital Accra. Set up last year to combat a perceived growth of social problems in the area, the group has already become renowned locally for its zeal and effectiveness.