This summer, brutally hot temperatures, deepening water scarcity, and spiking fertilizer costs have put North Africa’s agricultural sector under intense pressure. Host Alistair Taylor is joined by Mohammed Mahmoud, CEO and founder of the Climate and Water Initiative and lead for Middle East Climate and Water Policy at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health, to unpack the region’s food and water security challenges. Drawing on Mahmoud’s new report card on agricultural sustainability in North Africa, they explore the diverging picture across the region, why some countries have weathered the strain better than others, and what it will take to build a more resilient and secure food system.
Outlook for Sustainable Agriculture in North Africa: Report Card Assessment
This report assesses the future sustainability of agriculture across North Africa using a multidimensional approach that considers the dynamics of water, climate, land, and economics. To enable this assessment of sustainable agriculture across the region, the author evaluates water resources reliability, water use efficiency, agricultural land sustainability, and the food sector economy for Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania, and provides recommendations for action.
When the Strait of Hormuz closed in March, fertilizer prices spiked within weeks, triggering a food security crisis across North Africa and the Sahel. Host Alistair Taylor is joined by MEI Senior Fellow Intissar Fakir to explore what it means for the region, unpack the link between food security and regional stability, and assess how the strait’s reopening could impact those affected.
The eastern Mediterranean heats up as conflicts over energy move onshore
Not too long ago, the Mediterranean was described as “NATO’s lake” — a sleepy backwater in a world dominated by conflict. Today, Israel’s quarrels with Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria are viewed — and minimized — as legacy conflicts, overshadowed by a new and unstable strategic environment centered upon competing visions of offshore energy and security in the eastern Mediterranean.
Monday Briefing: Erdoğan and the “symbolic war” over Hagia Sophia
This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Seren Selvin Korkmaz, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Mirette F. Mabrouk, Robert S. Ford, and Nilsu Goren.
Sudan’s difficult transition to democracy, one year on
The double whammy of the economic fallout of COVID-19 and a lack of sufficient support from international donors is putting enormous pressure on PM Hamdok’s government.
Monday Briefing: The UN Security Council must act now to save northwest Syria
This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Dara Conduit, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Mark Heller, Syed Mohammad Ali, Gonul Tol, and Guled Ahmed.
Weaving a new path: Meet the organization fighting to save Morocco’s carpet industry
One Square Meter Berber is a Dutch-Moroccan project with a dual mission: to protect the dying craft of traditional Berber carpet weaving and to fight the exploitation of the skilled craftswomen who keep the iconic industry from coming apart at the seams.https://www.onesquaremeterberber.com
Egypt’s path forward from the pandemic’s economic fallout
Today marks almost three months of a global shutdown to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Middle East and North Africa region faces a double whammy from the resulting economic fallout and the sharp decline in oil prices this spring. While Egypt is rightly focused on its short-term response to the crisis, it should take advantage of the international and regional shock caused by the pandemic to change its growth model for the longer term and implement much-needed structural reforms on a variety of fronts.
Egypt’s sizeable informal economy complicates its pandemic response
The lockdown conditions have meant that demand for the services of informal market laborers has declined, leaving them with no means of making a living and no form of insurance or savings to fall back on.
Successes and shortcomings: How Algeria’s Hirak can inform Lebanon’s protest movement
As Lebanese protesters look to advance the systemic reforms they seek and contend with an entrenched ruling elite with little incentive to change, they can draw on their Algerian peers’ successes and shortcomings.
Japan-Libya Relations: A Window on Japan’s Diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa
The story of Japan’s relationship with Libya, which Tokyo often maintained even as other countries were shunning former Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qadhafi as a pariah, predates the latest outreach by many decades. This story provides a fascinating window into Japanese diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) more broadly. More specifically, the story of Japan-Libya relations shows how Tokyo often pursued its own interests in the MENA region despite the preferences of the United States, with which Japan has a longstanding security alliance.
Russia’s involvement in the Middle East: Building sandcastles and ignoring the streets
The collapse of the OPEC+ deal and the diplomatic impasse in Syria reveal the intrinsic fragility of Russia’s gains in the Middle East. Building relations with the region’s autocratic leaders and maintaining a status quo based on a personalistic approach might be effective for some time, but in the long run the Kremlin’s strategy fails to institutionalize relations and thus will be unable to protect them from disruption.
How the battle over energy will reshape Eurasia relationships
The conflict between Turkey and the anti-Turkey bloc is hurting everyone’s energy interests, making an investment in the region costlier for energy companies. Without compromises on all sides, everyone stands to lose.
MEI’s Gonul Tol and Jonathan Winer join host Alistair Taylor to discuss the state of the conflict in Libya, where the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) forces supported by Turkey have made significant gains in recent weeks over Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) forces, which are backed by Russia, the UAE, Egypt, and France.
The oldest peer-reviewed publication dedicated to the study of the modern Middle East, MEI’s flagship journal covers politics, society, and culture in the region.
