Economy

Strategic hedging is rational when it preserves a worthwhile choice at a tolerable cost while respecting existing commitments. Drawing on the literature on hedging and Latin American autonomy, this Policy Brief examines contrasting illustrations of that proposition. It distinguishes ambiguity about future alignment from uncertainty about existing obligations and explains how clearly bounded commitments can reconcile autonomy with credibility. The cases reveal different vulnerabiliti ...

In October 2026, Brazil will elect its president. It will also renew the entire lower legislative chamber and two-thirds of the upper chamber, elect governors in all states, and renew state legislatures. What will be the impact of these elections nationally, regionally, and internationally? Who are the main presidential candidates, and what are their agendas? What are the main challenges facing Brazil over the coming years? These are the questions that this Policy Brief seeks to ans ...

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”President Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953 This paper examines the economic and human impacts of the first six months of the Iran war—from February to the end of August 2026—on Iran’s Arab neighbors and compares these impacts with those on the three countries directly involved—Iran, Israel and t ...

Cet article soutient que le Chief Geopolitical Officer (CGO) doit être repensé à partir de l’expérience des entreprises africaines. Dans un environnement multipolaire et fragmenté, leur principal défi n’est pas seulement la gestion des risques, mais la préservation de plusieurs options stratégiques simultanément selon une logique de hedging. Trois modèles de CGO sont à distinguer : l’intermédiation (Office chérifien des Phosphates (OCP), Tanger Med), l’intégration régionale (Ethiopi ...

In the first seven Policy Briefs of this ongoing series of analysis on Pan-Atlanticism: The Atlantic Basin in a Multipolar-Transnational World, we developed the argument that the strategic significance of the Atlantic Basin is on the rise for a range of international actors (states, regions and non-state agents) and from distinct political or ideological perspectives. In addition, in the most recently published Policy Brief -- “The U.S. and the Current International Reconfiguration: ...

This paper was originaly published on Higher Education Policy Journal This article critically assesses the alignment between Morocco’s public guidance schemes for international students and its national development goals. Specifically, it investigates the capacity of these mechanisms to transform student mobility from a potential ‘brain drain’ into a tangible ‘brain gain’. Employing a qualitative case study approach, we conducted a systematic content analysis of 204 mobili ...

The author of this opinion, Marie-Noelle Nwokolo, is a 2024 alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program.In September 1978, delegations from 138 countries gathered in Buenos Aires, Argentina, around a powerful idea: developing countries had knowledge, experience and capabilities worth sharing with one another. The Buenos Aires Plan of Action gave institutional form to what we now call South-South Cooperation, part of a wider post-colonial effort by developing ...

This paper was originaly published on International Journal of Educational Research Open University dropout remains a major challenge in higher education due to its academic, social, and economic consequences. This study examines the role of academic and career orientation in shaping dropout in Morocco and improving student retention. A sequential mixed-methods design is applied. The quantitative component uses APOGEE administrative data covering 55,674 students and logist ...

Le Cameroun dispose d'importants gisements de minerais, notamment de fer, de la bauxite, d'or, de cobalt, de nickel, de manganèse, de calcaire, de marbre, de diamants, entre autres. L'industrie minière du pays est restée dominée par l'exploitation artisanale et à petite échelle, en particulier l'orpaillage, tandis que les hydrocarbures ont représenté l'essentiel des recettes issues des industries extractives. Le pays cristallise ainsi le paradoxe africain : malgré l’ampleur et la di ...

You can imagine how often I've been asked to comment on where the Brazilian economy is headed after the election. With polls pointing to a runoff on October 25 and currently showing a statistical tie between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro in vote simulations, I'm naturally asked about their economic programs and about the country's relations with the United States. ...

This paper was initially published in French on the website of the Fondation Jean-Jaurès. There was a historic decline in Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2025. Foreign aid to developing countries from members of the OECD-DAC fell by some 23%, the largest decline on record and the second consecutive annual decline. Aid to Africa fell by more than 25%. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) described this decline in ODA to Africa as “a shock like no other.” It differ ...

Depuis 2010, environ, on sait que la Méditerranée orientale est une nouvelle province gazière. Des ressources gazières ont en effet été découvertes au large de quatre pays ou territoires, l’Égypte, Israël, Chypre et Gaza. Deux d’entre eux sont devenus producteurs et exportateurs de gaz naturel, l’Égypte et Israël. Au large de Gaza, le champ gazier de Gaza Marine n’a jamais été développé et il est très peu probable qu’il le soit prochainement en raison des très fortes tensions entre ...

Since around 2010, it has been known that the Eastern Mediterranean is a new gas province. Gas resources have indeed been discovered offshore four countries or territories: Egypt, Israel, Cyprus and Gaza. Two of them have become producers and exporters of natural gas, Egypt and Israel. Off the coast of Gaza, the Gaza Marine gas field has never been developed, and it is highly unlikely to be developed anytime soon given the very high tensions between the State of Israel and Hamas. By ...

Aircraft carriers are massive and menacing, carrying dozens of aircraft and thousands of naval personnel, supported by an escort of warships and supply vessels. Ships such as the USS Gerald R. Ford are formidable symbols of military power. Yet even these giants can be surpassed in length by the largest cruise ships, including Royal Caribbean’s Legend of the Seas, introduced in 2026. The 365-meter Legend is approximately 32 meters longer than the Gerald R. Ford and can accommoda ...

The African Union Summit of February 2026 instructed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Council of Ministers to negotiate a Protocol on Industrial Policy and Development. This work, handled without adequate preparation, is likely to reproduce the weaknesses it is meant to remedy. This paper is a conceptual mapping exercise, written to raise the preparatory questions before drafting begins, rather than to prescribe outcomes.It proceeds in five sections:1. It works towar ...

The Brazilian context involving a clean-electricity base, a more balanced lobbying landscape, and mounting climate and social pressure, makes it more difficult for the kind of abrupt and unrestrained energy policy swing seen in Colombia. The trend in Brazil tends to be more economically viable for renewables. However, these structural conditions by themselves will not guarantee the success of the transition. Fruition will depend on whether policymakers use this window to prepare for ...

Various competing cross-border payment networks have become vehicles for geopolitical competition. As tensions have risen, many countries want to secure access to cross-border payment systems by joining with like-minded countries to form interoperable networks, either via tokenization or Instant Payment Systems (IPSs). Three major projects are under development, serving the strategic interests of the US, China and the Rest of the World—corresponding to the three trading spheres taki ...

Le déclenchement de la Guerre en Iran et le blocage du détroit d’Ormuz ont eu des conséquences majeures sur un grand nombre de marchés mondiaux de matières premières. Si l’attention médiatique s’est logiquement portée sur le pétrole et le gaz naturel, ainsi que sur l’aluminium, en raison de la forte dépendance de l’offre de ce métal aux prix de l’énergie, le soufre, comme l’hélium, l’éthylène, le propylène ou l’urée, a également été pris dans les rets de ce conflit. Loin d’être une ...

The outbreak of the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have had major consequences for a large number of global commodity markets. While media attention has understandably focused on oil and natural gas, as well as on aluminum – owing to the strong dependence of that metal’s supply on energy prices – sulfur, like helium, ethylene, propylene, or urea, has also been caught up in the fallout of this conflict. Far from being a marginal commodity, it is essential to the ...

Le marché du travail marocain connaît, depuis les années 2000, une expansion continue de la scolarisation qui ne s'est pas accompagnée d'une transformation équivalente de la structure productive de l'économie, ouvrant la voie à des situations d'inadéquation verticale entre le niveau de formation des actifs occupés et les exigences des emplois qu'ils occupent. La présente étude analyse les déterminants du déclassement (sur-éducation) et du surclassement (sous- éducation) à partir des ...

Since the early 2000s, the Moroccan labour market has experienced continuous educational expansion that has not been matched by an equivalent transformation of the economy's productive structure, giving rise to situations of vertical mismatch between employed workers' education levels and the requirements of the jobs they hold. This study analyzes the determinants of overeducation and undereducation using anonymized microdata from the 2014 General Population and Housing Census (RGPH ...

This paper was originally published as a chapter in the ISPI report The Pursuit of Smart Mobility in Urban Nodes: Trends and Innovation for Citizens and Freight. Agglomeration economies have historically supported industrialisation and global integration by concentrating firms, labour and infrastructure in dynamic urban cores. However, these same forces have also generated persistent patterns of territorial polarisation. Drawing on New Economic Geography, this chapter interpret ...

La conférence de lancement du projet POMIRE Sud-Sud, tenue au Policy Center for the New South à Rabat les 11 et 12 février 2026, a constitué un moment fondateur. Pour la première fois, l'ensemble des acteurs institutionnels de cinq des six pays partenaires du projet — Côte d'Ivoire, Guinée, Mali, Maroc et Sénégal — se sont réunis pour poser les piliers d’une vision commune et identifier les priorités qui guideront les phases opérationnelles du projet. Quatre focus groupes thématique ...

This Paper was originally published on cgdev.org. Escalatory attacks on multilateral rules and institutions in this era of raw power politics have plunged international politics into uncharted territory. Traditional alliances have been fractured and new partnerships between unlikely bedfellows are emerging. No longer in transition, the post-World War II world order is in rupture. This paper examines international cooperation under these conditions and argues that a new "flexi-l ...

“A band-aid on a bullet hole!” That’s how Charlie McElligott, a cross-asset strategist at Nomura, described the maneuver carried out by United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on August 19. The U.S. Treasury Department announced that from September 9 to November 4, it would double the volume of long-term bond buybacks, going from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation, with a focus on maturities of between 10 and 30 years. ...

Dans un contexte marqué par la superposition des crises sanitaires, géopolitiques, économiques, technologiques et climatiques, les jeunesses du Nord et du Sud évoluent dans des environnements distincts mais convergent progressivement vers un ensemble commun de préoccupations. Malgré des niveaux de développement et des trajectoires historiques différents, elles font face à des défis similaires : incertitudes croissantes sur l’avenir, difficultés d’insertion professionnelle, accès com ...

Amid overlapping health, geopolitical, economic, technological and climate crises, young people in the North and South are evolving in distinct environments that are progressively converging toward a shared set of concerns. Despite differing levels of development and historical trajectories, they face similar challenges: growing uncertainty about the future, difficulties entering the labor market, complex access to housing, fragile mental health, territorial inequalities and ecologi ...

Selon la dernière enquête nationale disponible, 57 % des femmes marocaines âgées de 15 à 74 ans, soit environ 7,6 millions de personnes, ont déclaré avoir subi au moins un acte de violence au cours des douze mois précédant l'enquête (HCP, 2019). Cette prévalence s'accompagne d'un coût économique direct et indirect estimé, pour la même période, à 2,85 milliards de dirhams (HCP, 2019). Ces deux ordres de grandeur — humain et économique — trouvent un écho dans les indicateurs du marché ...

Predictions of American decline have become increasingly prevalent. The United States has run persistent trade deficits for decades, but its public debt now exceeds its annual economic output. Meanwhile, and new centers of industrial and technological power continue to emerge across Asia. Yet despite these developments, no country has so far replaced the United States as the main organizing power of the international economy. Conventional explanations explain this in terms of U.S. m ...

The next Secretary-General should begin with an act of institutional rebellion: refuse to become the Secretary-General ofeverything. Over three decades the office's political and administrative reach has spread across sustainable development, climate, health, migration, digital governance, financing, gender, food systems, and a still-growing list of global priorities. These issues are not unimportant; the trouble is that institutional ambition has simply outrun institutional capabil ...

Recent crises in the Middle East, particularly attacks targeting commercial vessels in the Red Sea and tensions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, have highlighted the vulnerability of the main strategic corridors of global trade. Rather than fundamentally disrupting the organization of trade flows, these crises are accelerating an ongoing transformation driven by the search for more resilient connectivity chains, the diversification of trade routes, and the development of logistics ...

Les crises récentes au Moyen-Orient, notamment les attaques ciblant les navires commerciaux en mer Rouge et les tensions autour du détroit d'Ormuz, ont mis en évidence la vulnérabilité des principaux corridors stratégiques du commerce mondial. Plus qu'un bouleversement de l'organisation des échanges, elles accélèrent une transformation déjà engagée, fondée sur la recherche de chaînes de connectivité plus résilientes, la diversification des itinéraires commerciaux et le développement ...

La géographie mondiale des hydrocarbures n'est évidemment pas figée. De nouveaux producteurs de pétrole et/ou de gaz naturel apparaissent suite à des découvertes, le plus souvent réalisées par des compagnies pétrolières internationales. On pense notamment au Mozambique, qui produit et exporte du gaz naturel liquéfié (GNL) depuis la fin 2022, au Sénégal, qui est un producteur de pétrole offshore depuis la mi-2024, et au Sénégal et à la Mauritanie, qui sont devenus conjointement expor ...

Lorsqu’une crise éclate, elle donne lieu à l’actionnement des réflexes pour sa gestion et la limitation de ses effets. Commencent, alors, les analyses et les suppositions sur les dysfonctionnements, les manquements et les défaillances ayant entrainé ladite crise. Dans certains cas, la théorie du complot s’ingère et les hypothèses cherchent les auteurs ayant provoqué la crise, leurs desseins et leurs buts.Cependant, la théorie de gestion des crises nous apprend qu’une crise inte ...

This paper addresses the persistent challenge of resource dependence in the world's poorest countries, focusing on the ten poorest African nations where natural- resource rents average 14% of income. It argues that four decades of conventional policy advice, which treated resource dependence primarily as a revenue management problem, have failed to help these countries. While stabilization funds and permanent-income frameworks aim to smooth consumption, they do not answer the fundam ...

This paper was originaly published on Middle East Development Journal This article examines the impact of remittances on human capital formation, living conditions, and economic participation of women in North African countries. While prior research has explored remittances’ effects on women’s access to fundamental rights, it has not fully captured the social and economic transformations induced by these funds. Our findings indicate that remittances significantly enhance w ...

This Opinion was originally published in Project Syndicate and republished by The Edge Malaysia, DT Next, and The Japan Times. Data from a period in which both China and India pursued deliberate industrial policies show that neither country's development route is accessible to other countries. At best, their experience can alert policymakers to structural limitations and coordination problems that will require their own homegrown solutions.RABAT—What is the most reliable develo ...

This policy paper explores how China’s economic development model—rooted in pragmatism, long-term planning, and civilizational renewal—has become its most compelling soft power asset, particularly in the eyes of the Global South. While critically engaging with Joseph Nye’s original conception of soft power as a primarily cultural and normative force, the paper argues that China’s ability to transform itself from an impoverished postimperial state into the world’s largest trading nat ...

Ethiopia continues to struggle to lay the economic foundations of food security for all, more than 30 years after first adopting the East Asian Developmental State Model (EADS) under Zenawi (1911-2012), continued under Hailemariam Desalegn (2012-April 2018), and later shifting toward a neo-liberal, Washington consensus-oriented approach under Abiy Ahmed (2018-present). The achievements recorded under the EADS approach—particularly double-digit annual growth, substantial poverty ...

En un siècle, le cours de l’once d’or est passé de 20 dollars à 5 300 dollars au premier trimestre 2026. Cette étude, consacrée à l’analyse de cette envolée, comporte deux parties.La première privilégie une approche historique. Elle retrace tout d’abord le changement de statut du précieux métal jaune, monétisable jusqu’en 1971 puis démonétisé par la suite. Elle rappelle ensuite que cette évolution, loin d’être linéaire, est ponctuée de phases de forte hausse, de stagnation et d ...

The term “K-shaped recovery” was introduced to describe the economic recovery from the recession triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. It refers to the uneven and divergent growth pattern between leading industries or sectors (the upper arm of the letter K—mainly the high-technology sector) and laggards, or the rest of the economy (the lower arm—the traditional industries). Since then the term has become popular in portraying divergent growth patterns within and between countries, esp ...

This Paper was originally published on cairn.infoL’insertion professionnelle des jeunes, et particulièrement des diplômés de l’enseignement supérieur, constitue un enjeu majeur pour le développement économique et la cohésion sociale de toute nation. Au Maroc, cette question revêt une acuité particulière et s’attache à un paradoxe persistant : malgré une démocratisation et une progression notable de l’accès à l’enseignement supérieur au cours des deux dernières décennies, le tau ...

Thanks to the AI investment boom, the U.S. economy has performed well at the macroeconomic level. However, it is on an unsustainable fiscal and debt path. Mr. Trump’s fiscal policy in his second term has aggravated this trajectory. In turn, Mr. Trump’s tariff-based trade policy has failed to address what he sees as U.S. economic problems associated with the trade balance. Besides explaining why this has been the case, and what its implications are for the U.S. economy and the r ...

This paper provides a structural assessment of India’s services-led development trajectory, and its integration into global value chains (GVCs) between 2012 and 2022. Applying an analytical framework that categorizes services into knowledge (KS), enabling (ES), and local (LS) sectors, the study utilizes sixteen OECD indicators to move beyond the narrative of India as a ‘services champion’ and reveal a more complex economic reality. The analysis identifies three central structur ...

This paper examines the evolution of China’s services sector between 2012 and 2022, analyzing the country’s structural transformation based on a novel three-tier taxonomy: knowledge services (KS), enabling services (ES), and local services (LS). Using sixteen quantitative indicators from OECD databases, the study evaluates China’s transition in comparison to the EU15 benchmark, highlighting three core challenges: manufacturing rebalancing, labor absorption, and global integration.Th ...

Available soon on livremoi. The 2026 edition of the Annual Report on the African Economy examines the issue of the valorization of Africa’s natural resources, particularly its mineral wealth. While the continent holds some of the world’s largest known reserves of a wide range of minerals and metals, the objective is not merely to catalogue these resources, but rather to explore the conditions under which natural resource endowments can be transformed into drivers of Africa’s in ...

For much of the post-war period, the Global South was framed as an object of history, defined by dependency, constrained by structural asymmetries, and confined to the margins of global decision-making. That narrative, once empirically grounded, is now no longer adequate. A profound yet uneven transformation is underway. The Global South is no longer only reacting; it is increasingly shaping rules, institutions, and narratives.This Policy Brief argues that the Global South is thus t ...

Ce Policy Paper a également été publiée en anglais et en espagnol par Le Grand Continent Le Maroc offre un exemple éclairant parmi les pays à revenu intermédiaire, dans un contexte marqué par une fragmentation croissante de l’environnement international, une croissance mondiale atone et un ralentissement de la convergence. Depuis 2022, sa trajectoire se distingue par une certaine robustesse, avec un rythme d’expansion supérieur à celui des autres économies de même catégorie. Dé ...

Este Policy Paper también ha sido publicado en inglés y francés por Le Grand Continent La economía marroquí constituye un caso ilustrativo entre las economías de renta media, en un contexto marcado por una creciente fragmentación del entorno internacional, un crecimiento mundial anémico y una desaceleración de la convergencia. Desde 2022, su trayectoria se caracteriza por una relativa solidez, con un crecimiento superior a la media de las economías de la misma categoría. Superi ...

This Policy Paper has also been published in French and Spanish by Le Grand Continent Morocco offers a compelling example of how a middle-income economy can navigate a more fragmented global environment, characterized by weak growth and slower convergence. Since 2022, economic activity has remained relatively strong, with growth exceeding that of many comparable economies. Non-agricultural growth has averaged 4.4% since 2022, around 1.3 percentage points above its historical av ...

Africa is facing a massive electricity deficit that is impacting its economic and social development, and its ability to catch up with the rest of the world. It is imperative that the continent increase its electricity production to connect the 600 million people who are currently without access and to improve the quality of service for the millions who are suffering from frequent blackouts and load-shedding. Economic development in the 21st century will crucially depend on the digi ...

À l'échelle mondiale, les politiques publiques de jeunesse sont confrontées à un double enjeu : répondre à des défis socio-économiques structurels; chômage, précarité, fractures territoriales, tout en intégrant une demande croissante de participation citoyenne effective. (OIT, 2023 ; Nations Unies, 2020) En Afrique, ce défi revêt une dimension singulière compte tenu du poids démographique de la jeunesse et des fragilités persistantes des démocraties locales. (BAD, 2020 ; Mo Ibrahim ...

Globally, public policies for youth face a twofold challenge: addressing structural socioeconomic challenges—such as unemployment, precariousness, and regional disparities—while accommodating a growing demand for effective civic participation. (ILO, 2023; United Nations, 2020) In Africa, this challenge takes on a unique dimension given the demographic weight of the youth population and the persistent fragility of local democracies. (AfDB, 2020; Mo Ibrahim Foundation, 2023)Elections ...

The inventory is worrisomely low The US military has fired off more than 1000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, roughly ten times the number it currently buys each year. The Pentagon used more than 1200 Patriot interceptor missiles, "more than three million dollars a pop", and more than 1000 precision strike, ground based missiles, "leaving the inventories worrisomely low." US commanders were forced to ration interceptors by letting unguided or less destructive missiles hit empty or no ...

Au Maroc, la problématique des jeunes NEETs (Ni en emploi, ni en études, ni en formation) constitue une urgence nationale, alimentée par 300 000 abandons scolaires annuels. Face à ce défi, le modèle de l'École de la Deuxième chance nouvelle génération (E2C-NG) a démontré sa pertinence en affichant un taux d'insertion exceptionnel de 81 %.Cependant, ce succès institutionnel repose intégralement sur un tissu associatif local aujourd'hui fragilisé. L'analyse inédite des donné ...

In Morocco, the issue of young NEETs (Not in Employment, Education, or Training) is a national emergency, fueled by 300,000 students dropping out of school each year. In response to this challenge, the “New Generation Second Chance School” (E2C-NG) model has proven its effectiveness by achieving an exceptional employment rate of 81%.However, this institutional success rests entirely on a local network of organizations that is now under strain. A previously unpublished analysis of da ...

History devotes considerable attention to the rise and fall of great powers. Scholars have spent centuries analyzing why empires collapse, why nations decline, and why dominant states eventually lose their position. By comparison, relatively little attention has been devoted to a different question: what happens when a country succeeds beyond its own expectations? ...

Global imbalances are back—and this time the risks look different. The 2008 financial crisis showed how persistent current-account deficits and surpluses between major economies can fuel financial instability and trigger sudden, severe reversals of capital flows. After almost two decades, many thought that episode had been resolved. It had not. New imbalances have built up, with a familiar cast: China, Germany, Japan, and oil exporters running large surpluses, and the United States ...

The early March 2026 Pentagon briefings were tuned towards triumph and surrender - unconditional. The white flag of defeat was visible on the Iran horizon, and America's commander in chief needed only a few more weeks to declare "their military is gone. Wiped out". His secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, added to Trump's assessment his own, the Iranian navy was "decimated, destroyed and defeated", the naval fleet of the enemy rested on the bottom of the Persian Gulf. Iran's defense indu ...

This article draws in part on perspectives shared by members of the Rihla Initiative for Green Economic Growth, whose regional insights helped inform the sections on how the costs of the war are being felt across the Global South. The war on Iran and in the Gulf has made it impossible to treat the Strait of Hormuz as a regional issue. The disruption around the Strait has moved through the world economy in concrete ways, from higher fuel bills and pressure on food and fertilizer ...