Economy

The multilateral, rule-based trading system underpinned by the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been undermined by the unilateral imposition of U.S. tariffs. Crucially, the foundational principle of non-discrimination among WTO members has been abandoned. While many countries have attempted to negotiate with the U.S. to resolve tariff disputes, they have simultaneously sought to deepen trade ties with each other through plurilateral and regi ...

The international monetary system has been dominated by the U.S. dollar since the Second World War. The hegemony of the greenback cut across the end of the dollar exchange standard established by the Bretton Woods Agreement, and came out from the global financial crisis—and the euro crisis—even stronger than before. The euro area and China are taking steps to strengthen the international role of their currencies, but surmounting the inner strength of the dollar-based monetary system ...

This Paper was originally published on springer.comBrazil went from a quite impressive economic performance during much of the twentieth century to a period of mediocre growth from 1980 onwards. This shift has positioned the country as a textbook case of the “middle-income trap”. This paper aims to demonstrate how certain transformations in the international economy since the 1980s—notably the globalization of firms and industries—combined with a set of domestic challenges, disrupte ...

China's ascent to the position of the world's most prominent energy consumer has altered global energy markets and fundamentally reshaped the geopolitics of energy security. As China navigates the complexities of sustaining its economic momentum, ensuring access to reliable, affordable, and diversified energy sources has become an existential imperative, intricately woven into its foreign policy strategy. In parallel, Africa's immense wealth of both conventional and renewable resour ...

An Executive Order issued on July 30 by President Donald Trump hiked United States tariffs on imports from Brazil by 40%, in addition to the 10% established on April 2—the so-called ‘Liberation Day’ when Trump set out ‘reciprocal tariffs’ on countries around the world.The decree came with a long list of exemptions for Brazilian exports. For a number of product lines, the 10% April 2 tariff will continue to apply. These include air transport equipment, orange juice, furniture, fuel, ...

This paper was originally published on The South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) In the face of Africa’s development challenges and the mismatch between long-term needs and short-term pressures, ring-fencing development expenditures offers a viable solution to secure sustainable financing for growth. ...

This article assesses the economic performance of the original BRICS economies, relative to the growth and currency appreciation projections presented in the papers that introduced the acronym, prior to the grouping becoming a diplomatic, political, and economic reality. It also discusses the BRICS agenda in the current challenging geopolitical context, in which economic fragmentation tends to raise costs for the global economy and presents considerable obstacles for emerging and de ...

This Blog was originally published on t20southafrica.org The G20 should address reform challenges during South Africa's presidency, as ongoing geopolitical tensions obstruct global cooperation and complicate efforts to revamp the international financial architecture. ...

The BRICS+ group of countries met in Rio de Janeiro over the weekend of 6-7 July. The original group – Brazil, Russia, India, China and, soon after, South Africa – emerged as the materialization of a work of fiction. Jim O’Neill, then chief economist at Goldman Sachs, produced a report in 2001 drawing attention to the rise of these countries as emerging regional powers in global economic growth. ...

Available soon on livremoi. The 2025 edition of the African Economic Report continues in the spirit of previous versions. It presents a broad overview of the continent’s economic evolution and offers insights into Africa’s relationship with the rest of the world. In other words, it explores how Africa navigates the effects of global fragmentation within its regional spaces while pursuing its ambition of continental integration. ...

Developing countries have few options to deal with the ongoing tariff war amid unpredictable shifts in global supply chains. However, regional economic integration offers a strategic path of development in these uncertain and challenging times. Helped by geographical proximity and cultural familiarity, countries in a region can benefit greatly from promoting trade with one another, reaping the benefits of comparative advantages and economies of scale—if they are able to establish a ...

La stabilité apparente des taux directeurs de la BCEAO (Banque centrale des États de l'Afrique de l'Ouest) masque une réalité bien plus préoccupante : un resserrement monétaire non déclaré dans la zone UEMOA (Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine) et une rareté accrue de la liquidité qui frappe tout le système. Nous proposons une analyse en profondeur des mécanismes de cette crise bancaire latente, ses manifestations concrètes sur le tissu économique et ses implications pour ...

Cet article a été publié initialement sur lopinion.fr"Afrique/Europe : il faut repolitiser pour mieux coopérer", selon Karim el Aynaoui, président Exécutif Policy Center for the New South ...

Dans un contexte devenu plus incertain et plus compliqué à la suite des décisions de la nouvelle administration américaine, les impératifs de la lutte contre le changement climatique et de la transition énergétique et écologique demeurent.Les banques centrales peuvent et doivent apporter leur contribution à cette transition, en « verdissant », dans une proportion à définir, la politique monétaire qu’elles mènent. Concrètement, cela veut dire compléter la palette des object ...

This Blog was originally published on ettg.eu Europe and North Africa are intensifying cooperation, driven by shared interests in renewable energy deployment, trade and industrialisation. This renewed focus is opening doors for deeper energy partnerships, including on green hydrogen, and offers North African countries new opportunities to expand into European markets. At the same time, it raises concerns about the uneven distribution of benefits and insufficient international f ...

This Paper was originally published on ettg.eu KEY MESSAGES1. Aligning climate and energy priorities for mutual benefit - North Africa’s solar and wind potential could help meet the EU’s decarbonisation and energy security goals. A longterm, equitable partnership integrating green industrialisation, energy market integration and climate resilience can deliver shared economic, environmental and geopolitical gains. 2. Transforming energy partnerships for a just transition - ...

This Paper was originally published on springer.com This study investigates the impact of female agricultural cooperatives on women’s empowerment in Morocco, with a focus on the rural Marrakech-Safi region. The research evaluates the effectiveness of these cooperatives in enhancing women’s empowerment through economic opportunities, participatory governance, and leadership roles. The Global Empowerment Index (GEI) was adopted to measure empowerment across five key dimensions: p ...

Les politiques industrielles semblent marquer leur retour, aussi bien dans les grandes puissances économiques que dans les pays émergents et en voie de développement, notamment après la pandémie de la Covid-19, l’accroissement des tensions géopolitiques et commerciales et les effets du changement climatique.L’Afrique n’est pas en reste, surtout qu’une prise de conscience des enjeux liés à la position continentale dans un monde multipolaire est en train de naître. Même au niveau de l ...

This Paper was originally published on atlanticcouncil.org Following a decade-long partnership, the Policy Center for the New South and the Atlantic Council have joined forces around a new program focused on the power of the Atlantic. This series of publications and webinars will focus both on opportunities and challenges around the basin.This brief, the inaugural of the series, by William Yancey Brown highlights the vast energy and mineral potential of the Atlantic O ...

President Donald Trump's "Reciprocal Tariff" policy, announced on April 2, 2025 (dubbed "Liberation Day"), represents one of the most significant shifts in U.S. trade policy in nearly a century. Trump’s policy imposes a baseline 10% tariff on all imports and additional country-specific tariffs that range from 10% to 50% for countries designated as having "non-reciprocal trading practices" with the U.S. These specific tariffs are determined based on each country’s bilateral trade bal ...

In 2000, The Economist dismissed Africa as the “Hopeless Continent”—a label reflecting a broader system of marginalization rooted in colonial legacy and post-Cold War neglect. This essay offers a realist reappraisal, arguing that Africa’s growing strategic relevance is not the result of benevolence, but of structural necessity.Amid a fracturing global order and the rise of transactional geopolitics under Trump 2.0’s Bessent Doctrine, Africa has become indispensable: rich in critical ...

This paper analyses the stabilization experience in the MENA region, focusing on Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Jordan over the past century. It seeks to answer the question: To what extent have these countries succeeded in achieving resilience to shocks and stresses? Key policy elements included significant fiscal adjustments—varying in scale across countries—and exchange rate developments supported by monetary policies aimed at combating inflationary pressures. The outcomes involved ...

This Paper was originally published on tandfonline.com This paper analyzes gender disparities in reading and mathematics among Moroccan 4th-grade students using data from PIRLS 2021 (7,017 students) and TIMSS 2019 (13,536 students). Using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method, it separates performance gaps into explained (observable characteristics such as age, family background, teacher, and school factors) and unexplained (structural) components. In reading, the unexpl ...

This Paper was originally published on cebri.org Within an ever-evolving system of multilateral development banks (MDB) currently reshaped by four structural geo-economic trends, the emergence of new MDBs like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB) carries great geopolitical significance. Yet the new MDBs, attuned to institutional and operational realities, have not upended the MDB system. Their relationship with long-e ...

This Paper was originally published on springer.com Au Maroc, en plus de leurs missions religieuses, les mosquées jouent un rôle dans l’apprentissage qualifiant des adultes, favorisant ainsi leur intégration. L’article développe un indice à caractère économique pour évaluer cette intégration. Il mobilise des données ad hoc constituées par le suivi d’une cohorte de l’ensemble des 351 apprenantes pendant cinq ans et demi. Des résultats prometteurs témoignent d’un p ...

This study draws on academic and gray literature to identify the dynamics that facilitate the emergence and proliferation of armed groups and increase vulnerabilities to violent extremism (VE). Given the growing concerns about the spread of VE to northern Benin and the rising incidents of violence, it is crucial to address these underlying factors in order to bolster community cohesion and resilience to violent conflict-particularly against recruitment and influence by violent extre ...

The impacts of climate change are increasingly manifesting through severe and multifaceted loss and damage, particularly across vulnerable regions such as the Mediterranean. These impacts extend beyond environmental degradation, contributing to forced displacement, food insecurity, political instability, and the erosion of human rights and dignity. Furthermore, they reinforce structural inequalities between the Global North and South, thereby challenging global principles of climate ...

The late twentieth-century neoliberal experiment, imposed upon Latin America and Africa under the banner of the Washington Consensus, failed both economically and morally. Though it promised prosperity through deregulation, privatisation, and fiscal austerity, it delivered instead economic stagnation, rising inequality, and the systematic dismantling of the instruments of national development. This was not technocratic wisdom, but a project of ideological enforcement that subordinat ...

This paper aims to demonstrate how certain transformations in the international economy since the 1980s¾notably the globalization of firms and industries¾combined with a set of domestic challenges, disrupted the path of industrial and technological development that Brazil had pursued since the 1930s. In essence, growth strategies based on the scale of the domestic market ceased to be effective. The innovation and economic challenges the country now faces cannot be addressed without ...

This paper was originaly published on sciencedirect.com   This paper introduces a novel empirical approach, combining sigma convergence and sigma counterfactual statistics, to examine the dynamics of structural transformation in Morocco from 1990 to 2018. The findings reveal that Morocco experienced structural transformation driven by labor productivity reallocation across sectors during specific sub-periods (1991–1993, 1996–1997, and 1998–2003). However, this process ca ...

Last week marked my twenty-third consecutive week attending the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings in Washington, DC. While I no longer participate in the official sessions, I continue to be invited to the many side conventions and debates that surround them.A key moment is always the release of the IMF's World Economic Outlook report. This year, it drew particular attention due to curiosity about how the institution would project the impacts of the tariff war initiated by Trump’s s ...

This Opinion was originally published in Project Syndicate As the US-China rivalry intensifies, both powers are courting mineral-rich African countries in an effort to secure critical raw materials. Translating Africa's vast natural-resource wealth into lasting development requires an infrastructure-led strategy that delivers long-term value for local communities. ...

The author of this opinion, Danielle Alakija, is a 2024 alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program. Once upon a time—or so the story went—the Global South was cast to the margins of the global development narrative. Assigned a supporting role in someone else’s story, it was exploited for its resources and subdued by the authoritative tone of external narrators. This image, painted in tones of crisis and dependency, continues to echo through textbooks and news cy ...

The author of this opinion, Isabela Carvalho, is a 2018 alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program. In today’s interconnected world, knowledge plays a vital role in driving change and shaping solutions. Yet despite the rise of digital tools and global collaboration, persistent gaps in how knowledge is managed and shared continue to limit the Global South’s ability to fully harness its potential. Strengthening resilient knowledge ecosystems fosters inclusive ...

The United States is at a critical juncture, facing a pivotal dilemma: preserving global leadership in a world it no longer fully controls. While it proclaims its primacy in the liberal international order, its actions tell a different story—one marked by tariffs, reshoring policies, and an open attempt to contain China’s rise. This strategy is driven less by long-term vision than domestic political calculus, underscoring the urgent need for strategic recalibration. ...

This policy brief explores the transformative role of BRICS as a platform for Global South cooperation and an emerging alternative to Western-dominated governance frameworks. Established with a shared goal of reforming international institutions and addressing global decision-making imbalances, BRICS has evolved from an economic concept into a multifaceted alliance that spans finance, diplomacy, development, and security. As the global order shifts towards multipolarity, BRICS has p ...

The second Trump administration’s reversal of federal climate policy is reshaping the U.S. energy and industrial landscape, with significant implications for macroeconomic performance, clean technology competitiveness, and global climate cooperation. While the deregulatory shift and emphasis on fossil-fuel production may generate short-term output gains in selected sectors, the long-term structural transformation necessary for sustained growth in an increasingly low-carbon global ec ...

  Marcus Vinicius De Freitas Professor, China Foreign Affairs University Senior Fellow, Policy Center for the New South The Chinese government’s white paper, ‘China’s Position on Some Issues Concerning China-US Economic and Trade Relations,[1]’ issued on April 9, 2025, in response to the escalating tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, is not just a diplomatic response to the escalating tensions with the United States. It is a meticulously crafted strategic document th ...