Back

Redesigning Global Finance

January 30, 2025
Related topics: 
Economy

In this episode of Redesigning Global Finance, we explore the evolving landscape of global financial governance, focusing on how institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and regional development banks are adapting to new economic realities and global crises. The episode examines how financial systems must evolve to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and highlights the transformative role of digital technologies such as cryptocurrencies, blockchain, AI, and fintech in reshaping financial infrastructure and promoting financial inclusion. At the same time, it addresses the regulatory, security, and governance challenges these innovations present. The discussion centers on the urgent reforms needed to ensure financial resilience, aligning capital flows with sustainable development in emerging markets, and the changing role of traditional financial institutions in the face of rising digital finance.

Speakers
Ahmed Ouhnini
Economist, Policy Center for the New South
Ahmed Ouhnini is an Economist at the Policy Center for the New South. His research area covers agricultural economics, human and social development. Previously, he has worked as a researcher at the Paris School of Economics (PSE) and has also a record of working in consulting services in Morocco. Ahmed holds an engineering Diploma in Agriculture and Rural Development from the National School of Agriculture of Meknes and a Master’s Degree in Law, Economics and Management from the Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne Institute of Development. ...
Ferid Belhaj
Senior Fellow
Ferid Belhaj took up the position of World Bank Vice President for Middle East and North Africa on July 1, 2018. Prior to this, he served as the Chief of Staff of the President of the World Bank Group for 15 months. From 2012 to 2017, Mr. Belhaj was World Bank Director for the Middle East, in charge of work programs in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Iran, based in Beirut, Lebanon. In this capacity, he led the Bank’s engagement on the Syrian refugee crisis and its impact on the region, including the creation of new financing instruments to help countries hosting forcibly displaced people; the ramping up of the Bank drive towards the reconstruction and recovery of Iraq during and after the ISIS invasion and the scaling up of the Bank's commitments to Lebanon and Jordan. Befo ...
Masood Ahmed
President of the Center for Global Development
...

RELATED CONTENT

  • Download PDF
    RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK : Industrial Policy for Resource-Rich African Least Developed Economies-Transforming Wealth into Productive Capacity
    Authors
    Hinh T. Dinh
    August 5, 2026
    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 ...
  • The Limits of Asia’s Two Major Growth Models
    Authors
    Hinh T. Dinh
    Karim El Aynaoui
    August 3, 2026
    This Opinion was originally published in Project Syndicate 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 development path for an increasingly fragmented global economy? China ...
  • Download PDF
    DEVELOPMENT AS DIPLOMACY : China’s Economic Model and the Rewriting of Soft Power
    Authors
    Marcus Vinicius de Freitas
    August 3, 2026
    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 ...
  • Download PDF
    ETHIOPIA: IN SEARCH OF FOOD SECURITY GIVEN : Climate Change, Domestic Conflict, and Rising Geopolitical Tensions
    Authors
    Isabelle Tsakok
    July 31, 2026
    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 ...
  • Download PDF
    L’ONCE D’OR AU PLUS HAUT, LES INVESTISSEURS EN QUÊTE D’UNE VALEUR REFUGE
    Authors
    Henri-Louis Védie
    July 29, 2026
    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 ...
  • Download PDF
    AI EXACERBATES THE IMPACTS OF K-SHAPED DEVELOPMENTS IN THE WORLD : The Importance of a National AI Strategy
    Authors
    Hung Q. Tran
    July 28, 2026
    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 ...
  • حديث الثلاثاء: المغرب وسلاسل القيمة العالمية: أي موقع وأي آفاق؟
    July 28, 2026
    تتناول هذه الحلقة اندماج المغرب في سلاسل القيمة العالمية، من خلال توضيح مفهومها واستعراض كيفية انخراط المغرب فيها عبر تطوير عدد من القطاعات الصناعية وجذب الاستثمارات الأجنبية. كما تسلط الضوء على أبرز المكاسب الاقتصادية والصناعية التي حققها هذا الاندماج، مقابل التحديات التي ما تزال تحدّ ...
  • Download PDF
    Whither the U.S. Fiscal and Trade Deficits
    Authors
    Otaviano Canuto
    July 16, 2026
    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 ...
  • حديث الثلاثاء: مراقبة الأسعار والأسواق في المغرب — دور المنافسة
    July 15, 2026
    تناقش هذه الحلقة واقع المنافسة في الأسواق المغربية وعلاقتها بتطور الأسعار والقدرة الشرائية للمواطنين. كما تسلط الضوء على أبرز العوامل المؤثرة في الأسعار، سواء المرتبطة بالمنافسة أو بتكاليف الإنتاج وسلاسل التوزيع. ويتناول الحوار دور مجلس المنافسة والسلطات العمومية والفاعلين الاقتصاديين ف...