The Founder and Executive Director of ACCORD, Vasu Gounden, was invited to be a resource person at an international high level conference arranged by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung (HBS) on the topic “Climate Change, Resources, Migration: Old and New Sources of Conflict in Africa.” The conference was held in Cape Town on 03 and 04 August 2009.
The conference was arranged by HBS to take stock of the current state of Africa’s security architecture and to analyse some of the main current and future issues that might have a significant influence on security in Africa (namely climate change, resources and migration). The conference aimed at facilitating a debate between African and Non-African representatives drawn from politics; academia and civil society and also to sensitise the broader public on the above topic. For this reason the conference was divided into public sessions on 03 August 2009 followed by a non-public expert seminar on 04 August 2009. Mr Gounden was asked to be one of the speakers in the concluding panel on 04 August 2009 focusing on the topic “Stony road: How can we make Africa’s security architecture fit for the new challenges?”.
In 1997 Vasu Gounden was appointed to the South African Government’s Future Challenges Commission to assess South Africa’s technological needs in the future. Mr Gounden has an active interest in future trends and has presented on this topic in many forums, both locally and internationally. He has also participated in a series of scenario workshops hosted by the Government of South African looking at possible scenario futures for South Africa in 2014 and 2019.
