Africa : how to enhance regional integration and economic growth ?

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...