Autocrats dithered for decades over a North African trading bloc, but the Arab Spring has placed the idea firmly back on the agenda. John Thorne, Foreign Correspondent, reports
TUNIS // The overthrow of dictators last year united North Africans in spirit. Now the citizens of Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania might be on track for economic union, too.
Tunisia's interim president, Moncef Marzouki, toured Morocco, Mauritania and Algeria last week in a bid to breathe life into the moribund Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), a planned North African trading bloc.
While economic integration could boost employment and living standards across the region, leaders largely unanswerable to voters dithered for years in making it happen.
However, uprisings last year have given the AMU new impetus. Democracy is emerging in Tunisia and, potentially, Libya, while other governments have learnt that malaise can breed revolt.
"There's no question that the Arab Spring has created a totally new regional environment," said John Entelis, head of Middle East Studies at Fordham University in New York. "The more there are democratic advances, the more integration can move forward."
The AMU was launched in 1989 partly in reaction to an oil price collapse three years earlier and dwindling Soviet patronage in North Africa, but the road to economic integration has been strewn with obstacles.
"The question now is whether the global economic downturn and significant political revolution under way in North Africa are forcing leaders to change their calculus about regional politics," said Jacob Mundy, assistant professor of peace and conflict studies at Colgate University in upstate New York.
The AMU has stalled mainly on Moroccan-Algerian bickering over Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony invaded by Morocco in 1975. Algeria backs the Western Sahara's independence movement, the Polisario Front, and refuses to open its border with Morocco until the issue is settled.
"With Morocco and Algeria, just having an open land border would be a sign of change," said Mr Mundy. "Unfortunately, Algeria's position is difficult to walk back from."
Mr Marzouki has called on Morocco and Algeria not to let the Western Sahara dispute obstruct progress on economic integration.
The two countries may in fact be seeking a way forward. Their foreign ministers held a rare meeting in Algiers last month to discuss Western Sahara and the AMU.
"We are conscious now that there have been transformations in some AMU countries and these changes offer an opportunity to iron out differences and work towards North African integration," the Moroccan foreign minister, Saad Eddine El Othmani, said after the meeting.
Mr Marzouki said on Sunday that plans were under way for a summit of the five AMU countries aimed at advancing the project.
The AMU is strongly backed by the European Union, which sees North African integration as a step towards integration with the European common market.
Failure to integrate economies has cost North Africa up to US$9 billion (Dh33bn) in potential free-trade deals with the United States and Europe, according to a 2008 report by the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
For ordinary North Africans, integration holds the promise of more jobs while appealing to cultural affinity and a sense of shared history.
One such North African is the Tunisian filmmaker Abdelmajid Oueslati, whose documentary Al Hoq Al Juwar - roughly translated as "The Right of the Neighbourhood - recounts Tunisian support for Algeria's 1954-62 independence struggle against France.
Long banned by the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted as Tunisian's ruler last year, the film was shown last week at Tunis's state cultural institute to mark the anniversary of a 1958 French attack on a Tunisian border village caught up in the Algerian war.
The documentary was inspired by the story of a painter called Yasmina, who fled the Algerian city of Batna at the age of 5 after French bombs killed her parents, and grew up in Tunisia.
Oueslati met her in 1974 when he was in Algiers to film the 20th anniversary celebrations of the war's end, after he chanced upon her paintings of Tunisia in a state art gallery.
"I didn't make the film for Yasmina, though," Oueslati says. "I wanted to send a message to other Arab countries to help the Palestinians as we had helped the Algerians."
At that time, however, autocratic leaders in North Africa were steering courses that led more often to confrontation than to solidarity.
Morocco and Algeria clashed over their border and, later, Western Sahara, while Tunisia and Libya veered from an abortive union to border closures and severed relations.
In 1987 an ailing Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's first president, was sidelined by Ben Ali, whose regime banned Oueslati's film - among other works of art and literature - for reasons that were never made clear.
While Ben Ali supported a North African trading bloc in principle, he was also keen to supplant the memory of Bourguiba with his own adoration.
Today, with Ben Ali gone, Oueslati hopes to get Al Hoq Al Juwar on TV. Meanwhile, he supports Mr Marzouki's efforts on behalf of the AMU.
"It's a good thing, and I hope it will happen," he said. "It would open doors."
jthorne@thenational.ae
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Takreem Awards winners 2021
Corporate Leadership: Carl Bistany (Lebanon)
Cultural Excellence: Hoor Al Qasimi (UAE)
Environmental Development and Sustainability: Bkerzay (Lebanon)
Environmental Development and Sustainability: Raya Ani (Iraq)
Humanitarian and Civic Services: Women’s Programs Association (Lebanon)
Humanitarian and Civic Services: Osamah Al Thini (Libya)
Excellence in Education: World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) (Qatar)
Outstanding Arab Woman: Balghis Badri (Sudan)
Scientific and Technological Achievement: Mohamed Slim Alouini (KSA)
Young Entrepreneur: Omar Itani (Lebanon)
Lifetime Achievement: Suad Al Amiry (Palestine)
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Rating: 4/5
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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The more serious side of specialty coffee
While the taste of beans and freshness of roast is paramount to the specialty coffee scene, so is sustainability and workers’ rights.
The bulk of genuine specialty coffee companies aim to improve on these elements in every stage of production via direct relationships with farmers. For instance, Mokha 1450 on Al Wasl Road strives to work predominantly with women-owned and -operated coffee organisations, including female farmers in the Sabree mountains of Yemen.
Because, as the boutique’s owner, Garfield Kerr, points out: “women represent over 90 per cent of the coffee value chain, but are woefully underrepresented in less than 10 per cent of ownership and management throughout the global coffee industry.”
One of the UAE’s largest suppliers of green (meaning not-yet-roasted) beans, Raw Coffee, is a founding member of the Partnership of Gender Equity, which aims to empower female coffee farmers and harvesters.
Also, globally, many companies have found the perfect way to recycle old coffee grounds: they create the perfect fertile soil in which to grow mushrooms.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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Document everything immediately; including dates, times, locations and witnesses
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