HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT
She’s tackling poverty and climate change. Childhood poverty and the need to combat it were what first attracted Ardern to politics at the age of 17. As prime minister, she’s promised to halve New Zealand’s child poverty rate of around 27 percent over the next decade and dedicated some $5 billion in family assistance funding. On the world stage, she’s challenged the global community to fight climate change — announcing in New York last year that her country would commit a total of $300 million over the next four years in climate-related assistance to Pacific nations. While she faces challenges at home, including from corporate interests and opposition forces, Ardern, 38, has made her mark as a progressive voice to be heard.
... and he’s a guiding light for Africa. Since becoming prime minister last April, Ahmed has fast-tracked change in his long-troubled East African country. The charismatic 42-year-old has freed thousands of Ethiopia’s political prisoners, allowed exiled dissidents to return home and done away with censorship. Embracing democratic values is paying off: The World Bank has committed $1 billion to Ethiopia in direct budgetary support — the first such move since 2005, when donors suspended financial aid over disputed (and violent) elections. Meanwhile, on a continent often mired in conflict, Ahmed has also opened up to neighboring Eritrea in an effort to bury the two-decade-long discord between the two countries.
The Bolsonaro of the ball. With President Donald Trump out of the mix this year, Brazil’s newly elected president — a sharp-tongued pro-gun advocate with homophobic and sexist tendencies — will likely take center stage. Touting his vision of a “new Brazil” in a speech Tuesday, the fiery far-right leader is hoping to attract foreign investors to Latin America’s biggest economy with promises of pro-market policies crafted by Paulo Guedes, his University of Chicago-trained economy minister. Efforts to cut bureaucracy and push pension reform to close a fiscal deficit will be untainted by ideology, Bolsonaro claims — in other words, exactly what the Davos crowd wants to hear. But whether he’ll keep his populist rhetoric contained enough to ease investors remains to be seen.
A kinder face? Anyone wary of Bolsonaro’s brash style might look to 32-year-old Kurz for some relief. While remaining tough on immigration, the conservative but generally pro-EU Austrian chancellor has sparked hope among some Europeans of a more manageable alternative to the continent’s far-right movement. He’s proven popular at home partly because he’s stricter than his more liberal German counterpart, Angela Merkel. This week, Kurz is scheduled to meet with the heads of several foreign tech giants — including Apple, Facebook and Uber — just two weeks after presenting regulation aimed at levying larger taxes on them, as well as promoting greater financial transparency.
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