Bruno Boccara, economist & psychoanalyst, former World Bank & Standard & Poor's: S.Analytic Dialogue

This Policy Paper aims to provide a better understanding of the drivers of youth unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region by examining some common factors and then delving deeper into the case of Morocco, a relatively stable country that has historically been a source of large emigration, especially towards Europe. The MENA region has some of the highest total and youth unemployment rates in the world. High youth unemployment is especially worrisome because it ...

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson caught policymaker’s attention to the critical role of institutions for development. Their work gives too much emphasis to the prospects of revolution, however. A reading of the World Bank’s World Development Report of 2017 points to directions that all actors involved in the process, whether domestic or international, elite or non-elite, can take to improve societies. ...

The twin cities of Rabat and Salé on Morocco’s west coast embody prominence in Morocco’s past and present, Rabat as capital and Salé as the third most populous city. Less than 20 years ago, however, Salé was charac¬terised by large slums, high unemployment, poor service delivery and limited mobility. Today, it is a changed city, providing housing to the majority of Rabat’s working class, with a modern tram linking the two cities. Morocco’s ‘Cities without Slums’ programme, launched ...

Young researchers face several challenges in getting recognition for their work at the level of institutions and senior intellectual communities. Obstacles include trust issues, funding restrictions, and linguistic and cultural barriers. To these aforementioned limitations, researchers and university students from the Southern Mediterranean shore face an additional struggle, which is access to mobility. The latter is a key driver of quality in the research field. Depending on the su ...

Livelihoods of northern Niger’s population depended for centuries on trade and cross-border movement of licit goods with Libya. Historical trends of domestic and regional shocks demonstrated the ability of local communities to adapt and adjust to transformations caused by these shocks to survive. People moving through and living in the area have different motivations and reasons to cross to Libya and beyond, but economic drivers remain the key factor. The local economy has suffered ...

Scholars of social movements and global protest have long neglected social movements in Africa, ostensibly because African societies are too rural, too tradition- or ethnicity-bound, or lacking advanced class formations. Those who have broached the topic tend to focus on South Africa’s labor movement and anti-apartheid struggle. Even less addressed is how social movements in various parts of the continent have affected each other. A continent-wide approach however shows that protest ...

In order to analyze – and act upon – this great civilizational revolution, we need new conceptual tools. The present political and social sciences are wanting. They were developed in close symbiosis with industrial era mechanical “hard” sciences. This paper tries to contribute to the effort of building new foundations for the “digital” 21st century political and social sciences by tapping into cognitive sciences and Artificial Intelligence insights – particularly “neural networks” r ...