Africa

One aim of COP27 was to persuade countries to make commitments to reduce emissions and earmark resources for technologies to be transferred from industrialized states to less developed states. Hovering over the COP27 was the reluctance of wealthy states to live up to their 2009 commitment to provide $100 billion to poor countries, financial assistance for adaptation (as opposed to just mitigation projects), and more compensation for what the Paris Agreement termed “loss and damage,” ...

After several decades of reforms, the situation in centralized power sectors has hardly changed. The sub-Saharan power sector remains underdeveloped, and power sectors are experiencing significant financial difficulties that have been further exacerbated first by the effects of the pandemic and then the war in Ukraine. ...

In a global context shaped by a three-dimensional crisis: the Covid-19 crisis, the climate change crisis, and the Russia-Ukraine war, the issues of connectivity, value chains, and the green transition are at the heart of the current policy debates all over the globe. In this regard, the Policy Center for the New South has organized, jointly with the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), a conference on November 2nd, 2022, under the theme “Connectivity, Value Chains, and the Green Tr ...

This chapter was originally published in the book "Africa–Europe Cooperation and Digital Transformation", co-edited by Chux Daniels, Benedikt Erfoth, and Chloe Teevan Since the mid-2010s, North African countries have been pursuing what some observers have called a “return to Africa” (Dworkin, 2020). Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia have attempted to position themselves as major components of Europe- Mediterranean-Africa infrastructure and supply chains corridors (Tanchum, 2020). The thr ...

This piece examines the role of labor and religious movements in the face of the “informalization” of the African economy. How does the growth of an informal sector set back class formation and labor activism? How will the rise of economic networks outside formal economic and political channels affect state capacity? Can labor unions develop organizational independence if the labor market is segmented with a growing number of informal workers? What happens when labor market “insider ...

Africa is acutely affected by the ongoing global democratic recession. In 2020, a military coup took place in Mali. In 2021, four African countries – Chad, Mali, Guinea, and Sudan - experienced military takeovers. Thus far, in 2022, two coups have occurred in Burkina Faso and an attempted one in Guinea Bissau. Yet polling data and activism on the ground shows African youth believe in and are prepared to fight for democracy. ...

If the recent peaceful transfer of power in Madagascar heralds a new trend, then the Malagasy people can dream big. For decades, the exercise of economic-cum-political power in the hands of a tiny elite has held the entire nation hostage. Today, the high poverty rate—around 80% (2021) stands in stark contrast to the natural resource abundance of this huge enormous island. There is hope, however, that with political stability, the Plan d’Émergence Madagascar (PEM) President Andry R ...