Like most of the MENA region non-hydrocarbon producing countries, Lebanon faces an exodus of its most educated citizens. This Financial Times article is about those reasons prevailing in this conjecture. It must however be noted that the country where the moving out attitude is known to be millennia old, is perhaps going through a first in terms of a democratic claim by its people.
Many doubt their future prospects as country sinks into economic meltdown
Lana Noura is only 18 and a first-year computer science student at the prestigious American University in Beirut. But like many of her classmates, she already knows she wants to leave Lebanon once she has finished her course.
“I will leave for work and hopefully take my parents with me,” she said. “Anywhere would be fine, but I would prefer somewhere in the Middle East. It’s for a good life. Here it’s not stable and you never know what will happen next.”
Jad Masry, a fifth-year medical student, also plans to leave, either for Germany or America. “It will be a better income, better education and better lifestyle,” he said. “The politicians in Lebanon cannot bring us a good future because they are corrupt.”
Lebanon has always had a huge diaspora after waves of emigration over the past two centuries, particularly as a result of the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990. Now, once again, as the country sinks deeper into economic meltdown, it faces a new exodus of its brightest and best-educated citizens.
Forced to grapple daily with hyperinflation, power cuts and shortages, many Lebanese have little confidence in the future. They have lost hope their fractious leaders will take action to reverse the country’s catastrophic financial collapse. Two years after the onset of a fiscal and banking crisis, little has been done to salvage the sinking economy in what the World Bank has called a “deliberate depression . . . orchestrated by an elite that has captured the state”.
“Lebanon has yet to identify, least of all embark upon, a credible path toward economic and financial recovery,” said the World Bank in December. “In consequence, highly skilled labour is increasingly likely to take up potential opportunities abroad, constituting a permanent social and economic loss for the country.”
Lebanese people seeking jobs abroad include formerly well-paid professionals whose dollar accounts are blocked by the banks and young people who see no future in their home country. About 40 per cent of the population of almost 7m is considering emigrating, according to a recent survey commissioned by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a German think-tank.
About 40 per cent of Lebanon’s doctors have already left for the Gulf or the west, either permanently or temporarily, according to the World Bank. At least 10,000 teachers have also found jobs abroad, according to some estimates, cited by the World Bank. The Lebanese lira has lost more than 95 per cent of its value against the dollar over the past two years, rendering teachers’ salaries almost worthless.
The German survey found that 40 per cent of Lebanese have had to cut down on food and a third are unable to afford their medication. Three-quarters of the population has been plunged into what the UN terms “multidimensional poverty” — a measure that includes access to health, education and public utilities in addition to income poverty.
The debilitating impact of the brain drain is already being felt in the health sector. Charaf Abou Charaf, head of the doctors’ union, said the main university hospitals in Beirut, which employed highly skilled specialists, had each lost between 100 and 150 doctors. “It means some specialised procedures cannot be carried out,” he added. “And it is not just a question of doctors, there is also a shortage of supplies and medicines. If the political and financial situation are not quickly rectified, the health situation will be in danger.”
At the American University of Beirut Medical Center, Mona Nasrallah, an endocrinologist, said three out of the 10 doctors in her department had gone abroad. “The clinical, teaching and administrative load has increased, taking time away from my research,” she added. “It is also more complicated now because you can’t refer patients to certain specialists if they are no longer there. You have to work to find suitable replacements.”
Nasrallah said the government had made no effort to retain doctors, but individual hospitals were trying to find ways to keep them by paying a proportion of their salaries in “fresh dollars” — a term that refers to money transferred into the country from abroad or to new cash that enters the system that is exempt from restrictions on bank accounts. “It’s not a lot of money, but enough to get by on,” she added. “If you have already made up your mind to go, it won’t make you stay. But if you want to stay, it will keep you afloat.”
Experts warn of the long-term impact of the mass emigration of the skilled. Saroj Kumar Jha, World Bank Mashreq regional director, said that the quality of education in Lebanon had been declining even before the crisis and the departure of highly skilled doctors and teachers meant there was not the flow of “human capital” to replace them.
“The Lebanese children born in today’s times when they become 18 years old, their productivity will be only 48 per cent of their potential, which means that there is structurally something wrong with the quality of learning in the schools.”
Nasser Saidi, a Lebanese economist and former minister, also warned of the dangers of the depletion of Lebanon’s “stock of human capital”.
“When you have skilled people working alongside unskilled people, they help them improve because they teach them,” he said. “If the skilled people and the educated people are not there, then we just have misery.”
Such long-term considerations, however, are not a priority for those grappling with the everyday realities of a worthless currency, lengthy power cuts and expensive food and fuel. “If I knew it was going to be like this, I would have left a long time ago,” said Zaher Nashabe, a fourth-year chemistry student who plans to go to the US. “I will work there for a few years, get some financial stability and maybe return. But if my family come too and I find work, I will stay there.”
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), some of the emerging market economies grew in 2020 as government incentives and support were put into action. The Forum‘s article by Ragui Assaad, Caroline Krafft and Mohamed Ali Marouani confirm that the impact of Covid-19 on labour markets in MENA in 2021 was unprecedented and not really well lived in by most. Would this pace or resilience continue in 2022?
Employment is recovering but income losses persist in MENA countries in the second year of the pandemic. Two recent ERF policy briefs summarised in this column illustrate the mix of recovery and ongoing challenges for households and firms.
With the Covid-19 pandemic on the verge of its third year, Middle East and North African (MENA) economies are recovering from the slump caused by lockdowns and other economic disruptions, but households and firms are still experiencing steep income and revenue losses well into the pandemic’s second year.
In two recently published policy briefs, we examine how workers and firms have fared in the first half of 2021 in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia (Krafft et al, 2021, 2022).
Household and enterprise surveys during the pandemic
The analysis is based on the COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household and Enterprise Surveys conducted by ERF over the second half of 2020 and the first half of 2021 (OAMDI – Open Access Micro Data Initiative, 2021a, 2021b).
The surveys were conducted by telephone on a panel of firms and enterprises. The household surveys are the main source of information on how households, workers and microenterprises experienced the pandemic, whereas the enterprise surveys focused on the experience of small and medium enterprises (those with between six and 199 workers) in February 2020 (pre-pandemic).
Four waves of the household survey were conducted in Morocco and Tunisia centred around November 2020, February 2021, April 2021 and June 2021. Two waves were conducted in Egypt and Jordan centred around February and June 2021.
Two waves of the enterprise surveys were conducted in each of the four countries corresponding to the first and second quarter of 2021. Household and enterprise surveys were conducted in Sudan as part of the same series, but are not discussed here.
Health and economic outcomes in the pandemic
Among the four countries, Jordan and Tunisia experienced much higher rates of Covid-19 cases and deaths in the first half of 2021 than either Egypt or Morocco. But while Egypt gradually loosened its closure measures in 2021, Morocco, like Jordan and Tunisia, maintained more stringent measures than the world average.
Egypt was also the only one among the four countries that managed to maintain a positive economic growth rate of 1.5% in 2020. In contrast, Tunisia experienced a large economic contraction of 8.8% and Morocco likewise contracted 6.3%, while Jordan’s economy contracted by 1.6%. Despite relatively strong recoveries in Morocco and Tunisia in the first half of 2021, their economies, as well as that of Jordan, remained depressed relative to pre-pandemic levels.
The tourist and transport industries were the hardest hit in all four countries, with tourism-related industries the most negatively affected in terms of closures, reduced hours and revenue losses.
Labour market outcomes
The evidence suggests that aggregate labour market indicators, such as labour force participation, employment and unemployment rates, were recovering in the first half of 2021, except in Morocco where the progress made earlier in the year later reversed. With the exception of Morocco, more of those who lost jobs early in the pandemic were regaining employment over the course of 2021.
Private wage workers, especially those hired informally, faced substantially more challenges related to layoffs/suspensions and wage reductions in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia than in Morocco. But the prevalence of these challenges decreased in these three countries from February to June 2021, while it increased in Morocco.
The results of the household and enterprise surveys suggest that microenterprises were the most likely to be closed due to Covid-19 in the first quarter of 2021. If open, micro and small firms were more likely to have reduced hours than medium firms.
As Figure 1 shows, a similar proportion of microenterprises across the four countries reported substantially reduced revenues, but higher proportions of small and medium enterprises reported such revenue losses in Jordan and Morocco than in Egypt and Tunisia in the first quarter of 2021.
Figure 1: Revenue change (past 60 days versus 2019), by firm size in February 2020 and country, micro, small and medium enterprises (percentage), quarter one, 2021.
Source: Krafft et al (2021), based on data from the ERF COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household and Enterprise Surveys
Income levels
Despite some recovery in employment rates, household income levels remain depressed, with just under a half to two-thirds of households in all four countries reporting income losses in June 2021 compared to pre-pandemic levels. In fact, the share reporting income losses increased from February to June 2021.
As Figure 2 shows, household income losses were highest for the households that were poorest pre-pandemic, confirming the adverse effects of the pandemic on poverty and inequality.
Figure 2: Changes in household income from February 2020 to June 2021 (percentage of households), by country and February 2020 income quartile
Source: Krafft et al (2022), based on COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household Survey in June 2021.
Social support
Social support reached a relatively limited fraction of the population, except in Jordan, where it reached 53% in February and 44% in June 2021. Assistance was generally well-targeted, reaching a higher proportion of lower-income households than higher-income households. But while targeting efficiency improved in Morocco over time, it deteriorated in Egypt.
Targeting of assistance was generally not based on the workers’ vulnerability with respect to labour market status, again with the possible exception of Jordan, which successfully targeted irregular and informal workers.
Firms’ experiences
It appears that firms in Jordan and Morocco were experiencing more difficulty than firms in Egypt and Tunisia due to the Covid-19-induced crisis in the first quarter of 2021. Although the Tunisian economy had the deepest overall downturn in 2020, it appears to have recovered somewhat by the first quarter of 2021 so that the adverse effects on firms were reduced.
The downturn in Egypt appears to be shallower than in the other countries, sparing Egyptian firms the worst of the negative outcomes. Yet in all countries, there is a clear need for continuing support, especially targeted to the most affected industries and firms, as the economic effects of Covid-19 continue to affect micro, small and medium enterprises.
Support for firms
Although policies were instituted in all four countries to support firms through the crisis, the reach of these policies appears to have been limited. A half to three-quarters of small and medium enterprises reported they had not applied for or received any government assistance.
The most common type of support received (and needed) in all four countries was business loans, but firms in Morocco and Tunisia also report needing (and sometimes receiving) salary subsidies. A substantial proportion of firms in all four countries also expressed the need for reduced or delayed taxes.
The featured top image is for illustration and is credit to Reuters
Arab News published article by JARMO T. KOTILAINE is an eye-opener on the currently trendy of the ongoing rush towards another type of gold. Digital this time and not good old solid bars. Does Fintech offer transformative change for financial services? Would the MENA Region be the next Fintech hub? Would it be sustainable? Let us find out.
Transformative change for financial services through Fintech
Fintech has become one of the catchwords of our time, shorthand for creative innovation and potentially transformative change in the way financial services are provided. It has spawned a multitude of start-ups and pushed many incumbent financial institutions to review their operating models.
The restrictions on economic activity during COVID-19 further validated and popularized many of these new ideas, as more and more people resorted to home delivery, touchless payments, and other solutions that reduced physical contact.
Technological change proved effective in driving the growth of disruptive innovators, protecting — or even increasing — the margins of banks, and allowing many companies to generate profits at a time when their survival was threatened.
To what extent, though, have we truly unleashed the transformative potential of fintech? Better payment systems and digitalized transactions are important, but ultimately represent the application of digital technology to something that was happening already.
A very different situation occurred in some developing countries where the rise of fintech has become a potent tool for financial inclusion as new providers have levered widely available mobile telecommunications technology to compensate for the shortcomings of formal financial intermediation in a widely accessible, low-cost manner.
Of course, some of this has been seen in the Gulf, in the form, for instance, of new mechanisms for the remittance payments of unbanked laborers.
How could fintech deliver even more? The true promise of technology stems from its ability to lower costs and boost transparency. Meaningful progress in these areas can deliver substantial benefits in terms of increasing access to finance and of doing so more cheaply.
Many countries have now capitalized on open banking to foster more competition among lenders. Technology can be used to allow customers to compare services and products between banks. This is pushing service providers to compete on price and quality.
Technology can also make it easier to structure complex transactions and products which can not only reduce their prices but also helps broaden the range of available solutions.
Digitalization is reducing the cost and time of on-boarding new bank customers. By decentralizing financial service provision, technology is enabling more business ventures and projects to raise capital through novel mechanisms such as crowdfunding.
Transparency is an issue of particular importance and potential. Perhaps the most profound change delivered by digital technology stems from the ease with which data can be collected and analyzed. This matters because informational asymmetries have been among the main factors restricting access to capital.
Central banks have used sometimes cumbersome regulatory and reporting requirements as a way of addressing the problem. Risk managers at banks are often forced to cite limited or unverifiable information as an argument for restricting access to credit or for pushing up their cost.
In principle, technology could be used to obviate some of the tasks currently pursued through regulation and supervision by making it easier to gain access to all the relevant data more accurately and swiftly. It should also make it easier and faster for customers to build reliable credit profiles which could be used to assess their eligibility for different products.
Again, open banking is being used by more and more lenders to access customer data and evaluate their financial history through hard data rather than assumption or generalization on the basis of potentially inaccurate or misleading applications.
Easy access analytics can help customers make more informed and efficient decisions. For instance, more investment platforms now provide access to a wide-range of investment options on a global scale, along with analytics on their performance and risks. They have reduced the costs of trading and dramatically boosted the speed of execution. Such platforms can also be used to build financial literacy, for instance through tools for financial projections or scenarios.
Of course, technology cannot overcome human myopia and wishful thinking. The way forward must be to build ways that properly account for data privacy and security. Today, though, the technological toolkit is more versatile than ever.
Progress is already helping us reimagine financial service provision, but much more is both needed and possible. Virtually every independent assessment of the financial services sector in the Gulf comments on constraints on access to capital, which in turn limit financial inclusion, economic diversification, and business growth.
Making the most of the opportunities presented by technology is thus not only a business opportunity but a chance to drive the economic paradigm shift, whose success, in large part, hinges on financial services. With governments repositioning themselves, the core task of financial institutions, the pooling and efficient allocation of capital, will matter more than ever. Doing it faster, more accurately, and for more customers will be an important driver of success.
• Jarmo Kotilaine is an economist and strategist focusing on the Gulf region. He writes on issues ranging from economic development to changes within the corporate sector.
The increase in entrepreneurship and start-ups in the region has been happening over the past decade as revealed by Arabian Business in the latest trends shaping the region’s start-up ecosystem
Financial technologies and e-commerce businesses dominated the market in the Web 2.0 wave, while blockchain and cryptocurrencies are slowly growing in the region
In the post-pandemic economy, it feels like start-ups are launching almost daily in unprecedented numbers, but the Middle East entrepreneurial ecosystem has been steadily growing for almost a decade now, explained Walid Hanna, CEO and founder of MEVP, a venture capitalist firm.
Talking exclusively to Arabian Business, Hanna looked back at the evolution of start-ups in the region and the major trends that dominated each phase until today.
What can you tell us about the regional landscape for start-ups in the post-pandemic economy?
The increase in entrepreneurship and start-ups in the region has been happening over the past decade.
We [at MEVP] began our journey back in 2010 and, at that time, we used to see one or two start-ups a week, while now we receive three or four business plans a day, so the multiplier has been enormous in terms of the number of start-ups.
This has been the case post-Covid as well. When the whole ecosystem realised how important technology is during the pandemic, it gave a boost to our portfolio of companies and they grew faster and it also gave a boost to potential entrepreneurs who left their jobs to start their own businesses.
Why do you think fuelled this growth in the pre-coronavirus days?
It’s a natural progression that happened across the US, Europe and China over the past two decades and since there’s always a lag with the Middle East, it’s finally happening here now.
If you look at the penetration rates in internet usage or mobile phone usage, the Middle East has typically been lagging, the exception being countries like the UAE. But, now they’re all catching up.
What are some of the trends you’ve seen among regional start-ups, in fintech and tech in general?
Trends have been evolving over the past decade as well.
Originally there was the Web 1.0 wave, which was only content-based such as browsing the internet for cooking recipes, for example.[Start-ups] were making money, but it was based on reading, there were no interactions or transactions involved.
Then it evolved into Web 2.0, where we saw a lot of financial technologies, e-commerce sites and software-as-a-service for enterprises. We’ve invested in 60-plus companies across those verticals.
We’ve also seen a lot of mobility plays, such as Uber, and we’ve seen that model [replicated] across tuk-tuks, motorcycles, electric scooters and trucks which, in a way, is good for the environment.
Within fintech, we’ve seen a lot of sub-verticals, such as the Buy Now, Pay Later model, which is a big trend at the moment – there are around ten [such start-ups] in the region and we’ve invested in an Egypt-based one. But there are so many other trends within fintech, including micro-lending, SME-lending or treasury solutions; payment solutions in general.
The hype over non-fungible tokens and cryptocurrencies, the whole blockchain business model, has evolved tremendously over the past couple of years and is just starting to pick up in the Middle East. We’ve seen two NFT marketplaces and a couple of blockchain business models. It is still quite limited, although I expect it to grow much faster in the next three years.
How do you identify the companies you will invest in?
Just as they say “location, location, location” for real estate, it is “people, people, people” for start-ups.
If a start-up is at the earlier stages, the best thing you can look at is how investment-ready the business is and how qualified the founders are with relevant experience. We look at how dynamic, hardworking and motivated they are.
We look at the total addressable market and try to understand if it’s big enough and if they are really answering a pain point that is large enough to make serious money. This is because we are not interested in a small niche in a tiny country. For example, if a start-up is trying to solve a small issue in a country like Lebanon and the issue is not the same in Saudi Arabia and the GCC, then we are not interested.
We also look at the business model and the unit economics to see if it is viable, meaning we try to find out if the cost of producing, marketing and selling whatever product is worthwhile. If you look at the cost of acquiring a user and realise that the margin you are making out of this one product is inferior to that, then it is not worth it.
We also look at how robust and scalable the technology itself is and the stack they use. We invest in tech start-ups only.
Growth is key to our assessment of technology companies. We don’t do seed capital so when we invest in Series A, we can already witness a traction behind the start-up. If the traction is interesting, we get interested but if it is not already interesting, we don’t invest.
What are the challenges that remain for entrepreneurs in the region?
It depends on the country. In the GCC, there are no currency risks because they are pegged to the dollar, but if you look at currency in Egypt, they got really hit by the devaluation about three years ago.
There is also a political risk because of the region’s instability and relationship with its neighbouring countries.
Enablers are becoming better and better, but we still have some issues with the banks, for example. Opening up a bank account for start-ups is very challenging across the region. It takes ages and a lot of KYCs.
Five years ago, the logistics were very poor. Even the online payment systems were very poor so it was difficult for start-ups to thrive within that environment. This has been enhanced over the past couple of years but, for some reason, many customers here still want to pay cash-on-delivery and not use credit cards online. Penetration is increasing in terms of card usage but it is still lower than the global average.
Other than that, the ecosystem has evolved well and the enablers have followed. I would say the only challenge that remains is for fintech companies in terms of licence and regulations. Government regulations are making it easier by offering sandbox licences, but other than that, the regulatory framework is quite limited. The process is very slow but will happen one day I am sure.
Exits are happening, but still at a low rate where selling the start-up is difficult. There are more investors from outside the region looking at the region, which is positive, and the big regional conglomerates have also started to acquire start-ups so the trend is good but the numbers are still behind.
We have good start-ups and we want to sell them, but buyers are scarce. We should expand our horizon of buyers towards the global market, such as China or the US.
Two Thousand Dinars: A Lamentable Legacy By Nejoud Al-Yagout is a story that is fairly common to all countries of the GCC.
The picture above is for illustration and is of the Parliament of Kuwait.
First, we heard that residents above the age of 60 would not be allowed to renew their residencies if they did not hold a college degree. Then, after outrage on social media (by locals, to be sure, since any outrage by a resident would lead to arrest or deportation), there was talk that the rule may not be implemented; instead, we heard that those who came up with the decree would, at least, reconsider the age bracket, perhaps hiking it up to residents over 70 years of age (which in and of itself is lamentable).
Then, it was back again to 60 a few months ago, but with a proposal to fine residents annually (that is when talk of KD 2,000 arose). This latter proposal brewed for a while until it was announced only recently – in the midst of a pandemic, in the throes of increased unemployment and suicides and drug-taking and crimes, and in the whirlwind of murders and corruption – that the Public Authority of Manpower would “allow” residents above the age of 60 who do not hold university degrees to renew their residency provided they pay an annual fee of KD 2,000; as though by making it look like a favor, a permission granted, so to speak, the harsh brutality of the cost of remaining in Kuwait would seem less pronounced, brushed under the rug.
Though already considered official by all of us who read about it in the news, it appears that the “decision” needs a couple more weeks, perhaps, to be considered bureaucratically official, unless a person with strings will use his position of power to take a stand against it. The likelihood of such a selfless act transpiring is well, let’s just say, unlikely. Highly unlikely.
Although many residents above 60 who have graduated from college may have breathed a collective, perhaps even audible, sigh of relief, many others will be in tears, for they have parents and siblings aged 60 and above who live with or near them and who do not hold college degrees, and they themselves, holders of college degrees, will not be able to afford such a fee to keep the family together. And what about us locals? We cannot ignore the two-thousand-dinar elephant in the room.
Many of us who work in the public or private sector, with or without university degrees, or even with Master’s degrees and PhDs, would not ourselves be able (or willing) to pay such a lofty fee. Two. Thousand. Dinars. Imagine. And if we think this will not affect us, we are wrong. “They” are us! They, who we consider expatriates and foreigners and residents are us. We are them. We are one in this society. All of us. Each one of us, a thread of the same fabric, interwoven. What hurts us hurts them and vice versa. Let this register for all of us. Again and again and again.
There are residents in their sixties who were born here and have lived here their entire lives; residents who do not want to go “home” because their “home” is here, in Kuwait, where they belong, with us. Kuwait is the land in which they want to be buried, in which their parents were buried. After all their years of service to our country, we are now showing them the door under the pretext of making rules we know people cannot implement, all so that residents can leave of their own accord.
But they will not leave of their own accord. Ever. They will leave because neither they nor their university-degree-holding families were able to pay such an outrageous sum; they will leave because they are tired of living in a country that does not want them here. So many have left already; others are waiting for the right moment to leave. Others are waiting anxiously to see whether things will get better (or get worse).
We cannot stay silent. We cannot. And the last thing residents need is sympathy; if we are to feel sorry for anyone, we should feel sorry for ourselves for who we have become. Instead of patronizing them with our sympathy, residents should be applauded for their resilience, their bravery, and their contribution. They should be rewarded; they should be given more benefits as time elapses, not less.
We have a lot to learn from them. Even while many are treated as second-class members of the community, they stay, they work, and they support their families. This rhetoric of residents profiting from us is immature and arrogant; we must remember they are doing us a favor, a huge one, by being here as well. We are in this together; and in a healthy community, that is how things work; we give and we take; we take and we give.
Some residents may still find a way to stay here, in their home. But with this new “fine,” there is no way they can save money or help their families. And how can we sleep at night knowing we are creating obstacles for residents to send money back home? How can we sleep at night knowing that there is no money to pay for a parent’s kidney transplant or a relative’s tumor removal or a child’s education because the money is being paid to an oil-rich country instead? What principles are we building our foundation on?
These are certainly not our principles. And as long as we hold on to these pseudo-principles, we will continue to create laws which protect us and ostracize others, laws which are far, far away from the values of our heritage, founded on hospitality and inclusivity. Aren’t we tired of this us vs them attitude? Do we really want a Kuwait for Kuwaitis? Is this our legacy? Can’t we remember who we are?
It’s done. All we can do now is lament and ensure we resurrect a new Kuwait based on the ideals of our welcoming forefathers who never flinched at demographics. All we can do now is remember that what goes around comes around. This is a law. It is not a doomsday prophecy, but a warning, an invitation to recalibrate, a chance, an opportunity, to restore the karmic balance.
This is our chance to wake up and ask ourselves: Is this our legacy? And we should ask ourselves this question every night. That way, we can rectify the situation before karma knocks on our door. Loudly and fiercely. Two thousand dinars. Let’s remember that number. For it may come back to haunt those of us who stayed silent, those of us who spoke out for justice only when it came to our rights and, often, at the expense of others.
A three-day forum in Morocco emphasized the importance of environmentally friendly, socially resilient, and technologically innovative approaches to urban development. Key discussions included the role of smart cities in achieving sustainable development and the significance of digitalization and AI in transforming societies. Participants highlighted the need for smarter planning strategies and collaboration across African cities.
run Africa from top to bottom, just that… April 8, 2024 Russ Cook, nicknamed the “ hardest Geezer » (the toughest of the giants) completed his remarkable expedition of traveling the entire length of Africa after about a year. The 27-year-old from the United Kingdom crossed deserts, mountains and rainforests on his journey from South Africa to […]
North Africa’s Renewables Revolution: Unlocking The Region’s Potential For Climate Resilience By Pooja Chandak In the face of climate change challenges, North Africa – encompassing Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Sudan – emerges as a key player in the global energy transition. The region’s economies, heavily reliant on agriculture, fishery, and tourism, are […]
This site uses functional cookies and external scripts to improve your experience.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
Privacy settings
Privacy Settings
This site uses functional cookies and external scripts to improve your experience. Which cookies and scripts are used and how they impact your visit is specified on the left. You may change your settings at any time. Your choices will not impact your visit.
NOTE: These settings will only apply to the browser and device you are currently using.
Google Analytics
To provide me with an idea of my site’s performance