DAY 1 - The 18th Annual Conference of the Arab Society for Economic Research

Africa's development depends on the mobilization of catalytic levers capable of accelerating growth momentum, with wider benefits for the African people. The digital, energy and demographic transitions are all major challenges, but at the same time they present the continent with new opportunities for transformation. In this context, Atlantic Africa appears to be a strategic and promising area, thanks to the richness and diversity of its natural resources, its geographical position ...

En dépit des progrès sociaux, le Maroc reste confronté à une série de défis. Le chômage persiste à un niveau inacceptable, l’adéquation entre la formation et l’emploi est insatisfaisante, l’accès aux soins est contrarié par maintes contraintes, les disparités territoriales demeurent flagrantes. Pourtant, que de réformes, que de programmes sociaux sont financés depuis des décennies pour couvrir les déficits accumulés par le passé. Beaucoup de ces secteurs névralgiques pour le bi ...

This policy paper examines digital colonialism as a defining structural challenge of the twenty-first century and argues for the urgent pursuit of digital sovereignty in the Global South. While digitalization holds immense potential to foster inclusion and bridge development gaps, current dynamics reproduce historical patterns of dependency: data is extracted from Southern populations, routed through infrastructures owned by Northern corporations, processed by algorithms trained on ...

Global economic growth has been more resilient than expected, as the artificial intelligence-led growth seems to be compensating for the negative impacts of trade conflicts. Overstretched asset values and slowing jobs growth may be signaling that the balanced crossing of those two paths will be challenged. ...

Morocco’s strong macroeconomic performance over the past two decades—anchored in infrastructure modernization, industrial diversification, and renewable energy leadership—has positioned it as a success story in the Global South. Yet these achievements mask persistent regional disparities that undermine inclusive development. Coastal regions such as Casablanca-Settat and Tangier-Tétouan-Al Hoceima dominate economic activity, while hinterland and southern provinces face structural dis ...

Amidst intense geopolitical competition, efforts to develop tokenized monetary units—tradable on programmable platforms such as blockchains—have added a new dimension to the debate about the role of a global payment and reserve currency. Tokenized monetary units are expected to greatly improve the efficiency of payment transactions in terms of their speed and cost, especially cross-border transactions. They could also meet emerging demand for technologically enabled features such as ...