Central Bank Digital Currencies in Practice

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 ...