Energy Cooperation : a Prerequisite for Sustaining Energy Security

This paper is about the basic principles which should guide fertilizer policy for smallholder agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa It is not about detailed country-specific prescriptions on the “how” of policy. This important task should constitute the substance of detailed country studies. The overarching goal here is to use fertilizer to spearhead and sustain an African Green Revolution (GR). In this paper, fertilizer use is not considered as an end in itself, but as a necessary mean ...

“O! WRETCHED MORTALS, OPEN YOUR EYES” Leonardo da Vinci, creator of the ever beautiful and impenetrable Mona Lisa, noted 500 years ago that he realized the importance of water, which is, the artist jotted in his notebooks , “the driving force of all nature”, the vetturale di natura, the vehicle of nature. Da Vinci was not only acclaimed by kings and wealthy nobility like the Florentine Medici’s for his paintings , but the genius, possibly one of the greatest minds and creative pow ...

This note approaches the relationship between natural wealth and economic growth, using the case of Sub-Sahara African economies as an illustration. Delving into recent World Bank reports, it highlights how a sustained positive correlation between natural capital and GDP growth happens through the transformation of the former into other forms of assets: produced capital, human capital and other intangible assets. Governance features and the quality of macroeconomic policies are of t ...

Earlier this month, the World Resources Institute based in Washington D.C. revealed that 17 countries, home to one-quarter of the world's population, are facing extremely high water stress. Below is an international press review of the global water crisis by Helmut Sorge, former Foreign editor, and Middle East expert for Germany's leading newsmagazine "Der Spiegel", and columnist at the Policy Center for the New South.    “A QUARTER OF THE WORLD IS FACING A LOOMING WATER CRISIS” “ ...

Empirical models of international commodity trade ows tend to show that exchange rate volatility has either no or negative impact on export volumes. This analysis has a number of limitations. In particular, it underestimates the role of physical traders and, consequently, the importance of future markets. In this context, this article aims to provide the theoretical underpinnings to demonstrate that these traders play a very particular role and that they have an influence on the rea ...

Has the integration of European, North American and Asian natural gas markets been fostered over the last few years by growing LNG export capacities and an increasing market share of spot transactions? This is the key question that this article sets out to answer. For this purpose, we develop bivariate error correction models with structural breaks and asymmetric responses among gas references prices, oil prices, and coal prices. We use daily prices of all reference prices spanning ...

Adopting an integrated approach to the management and governance of natural resources including land, water and energy is seen as an effective way to improve the sphere of production while respecting the environment. Fatima Ezzahra Mengoub, economist at the Policy Center for the New South, was invited by Stockholm Environment Institute, alongside other prestigious research centers with expertise in environmental studies, to co-author this research paper and share her analysis of th ...

Le rapport Arcadia a été présenté le 9 avril à Paris par le Policy Center for the New South (PCNS) et le Cercle CyclOpe. Ce document de référence fait chaque année le point sur la conjoncture des matières premières africaines. “Elles restent essentielles, avec une forte dépendance pour nombre de pays et une gestion de la rente relativement problématique”, a affirmé en introduction Philippe Chalmin, président du Cercle CyclOpe. Fortement exposées aux chocs extérieurs, les économies ...

Les cours des matières premières ont, une fois encore, été marqués par une importante volatilité en 2017 et 2018. Si de nombreux facteurs économiques permettent de l’expliquer, la raison politique fut également bien présente. Les Annual Report tensions commerciales entre la Chine et les États-Unis on Commodity et, plus globalement, la montée des incertitudes ont pesé Analytics and sur les perspectives macroéconomiques mondiales et sur Dynamics « le dynamisme des marchés ». Comptant ...

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 ...