This year Georgia and Cyprus are celebrating 25 years of diplomatic relations, and I think we have achieved substantial progress in forming excellent political, economic and cultural cooperation in this time. [...] I’m extremely proud of taking part in this endeavor. Last year we initiated the Georgian Culture Festival which was held in Nicosia and Limassol. This year we have added the beautiful city of Paphos as well.

It is well known that education is one of the most powerful tools to help people escape from poverty. [...] The problem is that, although governments in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, dedicate on average 18% of their public funds to education, a huge 43% of the region’s population are under the age of 15. This high percentage means that governments are all too often unable to keep up with demand for quality, affordable education.

Just as many fans have been grudgingly coming to terms with football’s new reality, Qatar Sports Investments shelled out the £198m to transfer Neymar from Barcelona. This hardly came as a surprise. Neymar is a phenomenal talent. But it is important to understand what lies behind this: governments from across Asia have been targeting football for some time as a means of building their global soft power and boosting their images.

The world is getting smaller. More and more organizations are expanding into new international markets as globalization continues to become a reality. Such global expansion requires people who are willing to be globally mobile. While we may understand some of the reasons that motivate expatriates to work internationally, it is not very clear how important the destination is to expatriates.

In an era marked with alarming language of “fire and fury,” it is useful to add a bag of tea to boiling water and let it steep for until reason gives diplomacy a chance to percolate for an amiable situation. As a beverage, tea lubricates good conversations, without the hangovers that come along with alcoholic concoctions.

As Uganda joins the rest of the world to commemorate the International Youth Day on August 12, 2017 next week under the theme “Youth building peace”, allow me appreciate the framers of this day to the lives of young people. They did a lot of work and thought twice about the future of youth who are the world’s biggest resourceful population for its development.

Being a crucial partner in IRCICA activities in Central Asia, Uzbekistan represents a crucial example in terms of the peaceful coexistence of various ethnicities and nationalities under the rubric of a truly multinational and multi-faith society. Hosting some of the greatest cultural and civilizational centers in the Islamic world, such as Bukhara and Samarqand, Uzbekistan is home to more than 130 ethnicities and nationalities.

Constraints notwithstanding, a group of 10 Palestinian officials attended a weeklong workshop on “Communication Skills & Media Relations for Diplomacy” this week in Turin, Italy to craft skills for engaging with all manner of media.