africa

Amid a heated election battle for the re-election of the Japanese Senate, Japanese leader Shinzo Abe was assassinated in a dramatic way that caused great shock and disbelief in the Japanese public opinion. Dr. El Mostafa Rezrazi with PM Shinzo Abe at the Summit of the 5th Edition of TICAD held in Yokohama in June 2013 After his health deteriorated, the man voluntarily left office in 2020, but his party’s comrades persuaded him to give them more support in the election campaign. On ...

Covid-19 has a far-reaching impact and is imposing a slowdown on the world economy, raising fears of the worst consequences on production, jobs and the immediate future of developing economies. Fiscal and monetary authorities around the world are engaging in policies to support their economies with unprecedented funds and initiatives. The African continent, also affected by the pandemic, is pursuing courageous economic (fiscal and monetary) policies, but the main question is what ne ...

Illicit financial flows (IFFs) have become a serious threat to the attainment of global development goals. On February 28th, 2020, the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, and the President of ECOSOC, Mona Juul, have announced a high-level panel on international financial accountability, transparency, and integrity (FACTI) as a means to address this challenge, which inhibits financing for the Sustainable Development Goals. This paper provides an ...

This paper suggests that tribal dynamics of power structure are key in reestablishing peace and development in the region. The Sahel region’s security challenges are directly influenced by tribalism and ethnic dynamics. In recent decades mistreatment, favoritism, and corruption allowed criminality and multidimensional conflicts to flourish. This is evident in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Libya, and Chad. Lightly governed and poorly secured regions in these countries became more strate ...

After a long spell of slow growth in the wake of the global financial crisis, the global economy was gaining speed over 2016-2018, but this recovery is now in some danger. The likelihood of imminent recession is low but growth will be slow over 2019-2020, and growth next year presents many uncertainties. Growth is supported by the consumer for the time being, but business has become very nervous and something will have to give. There are significant and specific risks in the large e ...

This paper empirically examines the impact of exchange rate arrangements on current account imbalances within the African context. Following Friedman’s hypothesis (Friedman, 1953), we test the propositions stating that flexible exchange rate regimes limit the magnitude of real external shocks and permit smoother adjustments of external imbalances. Using a new de facto exchange rate regime classification, we employ two empirical methodologies to test this hypothesis: we first apply a ...

The author is an alumnus of the 2015 Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders program On the 2nd of April 2019, Macky Sall was sworn in as President of the Republic of Senegal for a second five year term, after scoring a resounding 58.7% victory in the first round of the country’s elections. This solemn official ceremony has brought to a close the bitter contest that opposed the President to four challengers that included two former government ministers (Idrissa Seck and Madicke Niang), ...

Africa is experiencing a demographic boom, so as its population is expected to double by 2050 to reach 2.8 billion. The growth in Africa’s working-age population will be inevitable. The youth population will also grow to make of Africa the continent of youth ‘par excellence’, so as it will hold the largest number of young people in the globe. Source: UN DESA | United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2018 Against this outlook, economic growth is essential for Afric ...

Commodity prices were once again marked by significant volatility in 2017 and 2018. While there are many economic factors to explain this, politics were also present—trade tensions between China and the United States and, more generally, a rise in uncertainties—weighing upon the global macroeconomic outlook and the ‘dynamism of the markets’. Africa, which has countries with strong growth rates, has, however, been able to show solid economic performance, and this trajectory is not li ...

African leaders have made many commitments to promote strong growth in the agricultural sector, with a focus on productivity, in particular by using fertilizers. Currently, progress is slow. Goals have not yet been reached in most countries, as the favorable conditions required to do so have not been created. Targeted action is needed to reduce transaction costs and to improve farmers’ access to fertilizers. However, such action will have limited impact without the introduction of a ...

A NATION CRAVING TO RETURN TO GREATNESS It was yet another turbulent episode reflecting the dark sides of politics and secret service conspiracies. Murder is the message. “Do not mess with us.” The killers wore turbans and spoke Arabic. What else is new? It was dark, not a good time to drive on a hellhole of a road in the Central African Republic, one of the poorest nations of the world. So poor that death has no price. Not many streets are paved and streetlights are as frequent as ...

Why do farmers need access to newer technologies on a recurrent basis? Most subsistence farmers already know how to farm and undertake post-harvest processing from their parents. The main reason to turn to technology is that traditional techniques for subsistence agriculture are grossly insufficient when it comes to generating the productivity and output growth required to adequately lift millions out of poverty and keep them out of it. “Efficient but poor” as Schultz (1964:37) put ...

The recently signed African Continental Free Trade Agreement represents a countercurrent to protectionist tendencies across the Atlantic and the Pacific, and may well move the economic integration of the African continent forward. Translating the vision into action, however, will call upon signatories to undertake deeper domestic reforms and to confront specific challenges related to the agreement itself. This brief explains why the agreement is important for Africa and identifies p ...

The second United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG2) includes the goal to: “End hunger and achieve food security and improved nutrition” by 2030. While such an ambitious goal will clearly involve a wide range of policies and actors, this policy brief focuses on the role of trade policies in affecting food and nutrition security. Extensive and frequently contentious, debate swirls about whether trade in agricultural products is beneficial or detrimental for food security, pa ...

The progressive warming of Earth suggests an important danger for future populations. As stabilizing the level of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere becomes inadequate, there is now talk of reducing this level while preserving sustainable economic growth rates. This Policy Brief deals with the issue of the economy’s carbon intensity1 through a decoupling indicator, defined as the ratio between the change in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It a ...