The African Free Trade Agreement: under which conditions will it succeed?

Confronted with surging unemployment and miles long lines at food banks across the United States, most states have begun reopening the economy. Many of these states are seeing rising numbers of new cases and face a real risk of relapsing into an uncontrolled pandemic. To avoid this outcome, they must adopt a strategy that entails testing, tracing, and isolation of the infected, with priority given to groups and places where the medical impact – reducing infections and saving lives – ...

La Communauté économique des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CEDEAO) est souvent présentée comme étant le système d’intégration régionale le plus dynamique du continent africain. Les Conférences des chefs d’Etat et de Gouvernement y sont régulières, les citoyens de la Communauté disposent d’un passeport commun et les discussions sur une monnaie unique sont à l’ordre du jour. Néanmoins, le modèle de la CEDEAO souffre de deux paradoxes majeurs. Les paradoxes africains Le premier pa ...

This paper aims at evaluating the virtual water content in trade in an intra-country perspective and discussing potential tradeoffs between the use of natural resources and value added creation. We develop a trade-based index that reveals the relative water use intensities associated with specific interregional and international trade flows. The index is calculated considering the measures of water and value added embedded in trade flows associated with each regional origin-destinat ...

Le processus de mondialisation, si solide soit-il, se trouve à l’épreuve d’une crise sanitaire mondiale inattendue et brutale. Cette réalité adresse au monde une question qui interpelle autant les décideurs, les managers que les chercheurs : Que pourraient être les effets du Covid-19 sur l’économie politique internationale ? Rupture, continuité ou inflexion ? Une des perspectives qu’il convient de surveiller est celle relative à l’inflexion du processus de la mondialisation. C'est- ...

Depuis l'entrée en vigueur de l'Accord de libre-échange (ALE) entre le Maroc et l'Union européenne (UE), il y a près de deux décennies, les performances des exportations marocaines vers les marchés de l'UE ont été plutôt décevantes, tandis que le déficit commercial du Maroc avec l'UE a augmenté de manière significative. Cela a conduit de nombreux observateurs à percevoir l'accord d'un oeil critique. Cependant, les balances commerciales bilatérales ne sont pas toujours suffisantes po ...

The Mara Group, producer of the Mara smartphone, has set up manufacturing facilities in two key strategic countries, Rwanda and South Africa, with a total estimated investment of $100 million. On the back of political shifts in South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa embarked on an investment drive, announced in his state of the nation address in 2018. This was followed up with an investment conference, at which Ashish Thakkar, CEO of Mara Group, announced a $100 million investment ...

The Service sector is central to economic growth, trade and employment across the world. Trade in services has increased from 8.5 per cent of global GDP in 1995 to 13.1 per cent of GDP in 2017. However, Africa is taking less advantage of these opportunities than others. In this policy brief we highlight important misconceptions that may be holding back services exports in Africa. The potential for services sector growth and services exports from low levels in Africa is large. Polici ...

The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN-ECLAC) defines regional integration as a “multidimensional process which may take the form of coordination, cooperation, convergence and deep integration initiatives and whose scope extends not only to economic and trade issues, but to political, social, cultural and environmental ones as well.” As an organizing principle, the concept of regional integration has been around for some time in various config ...

For a second, the uniformed officer looked threatening. He followed me. When I reached the stairs leading to my Transavia flight to Paris, he stepped in front of me, asking, “Sir, may I talk to you for a second?” Did he suspect I was smuggling precious Islamic art or some cannabis, the popular Kif? “When are you returning to Marrakech,” the customs officer inquired. “In four days”, I replied. “Perfect,” was his reaction. “May I ask you to buy in a French pharmacy the drugs mentioned ...

The Moroccan diaspora contributes in major ways to Morocco’s economic development. Moroccan migrants ease the country’s chronic unemployment and underemployment problems, send remittances, invest in the home country, and typically visit Morocco frequently as tourists. In addition to that migrants usually retain close links with Morocco, and help in less direct ways to forge trade and third-party investment links between Morocco and their host countries. Drawing on the relatively sma ...