After a sharp fall in 2017, economic growth in MENA is projected to rebound to 3.1 percent in 2018, thanksto the positive global outlook, oil prices stabilizing at relatively higher levels, stabilization policies andreforms, and recovery and reconstruction as conflicts recede. The outlook for...

This paper investigates the impact of openness to trade and higher levels of human capital on the economies of some MENA countries. To answer the question: whether either human capital or openness can be shown to cause productivity, we use panel data on 16 countries spanning the 1965-2000...

For much of the past three decades, soccer constituted the only major battleground that rivaled Islam in the creation of alternative public space in a swath of land stretching from the Gulf to the Atlantic coast of Africa. Away from the glare of the international media, soccer provided a venue...

Digital communication has become a more perilous activity, particularly for activists, political dissidents, and independent media. The recent surge in digital activism that has helped to shape the Arab spring has been met with stiff resistance by governments in the region intent on reducing the...

In the Middle East and North Africa, illicit drugs have long been tackled through drug policies mainly focusing on tough law enforcement. As a result, few efforts have been made to assess the nature and the scope of drug use and dependence, and drug users have become increasingly stigmatised. In...

Innovation is widely recognized as a key driver of sustainable economic development. Governments, international organizations, donors and investors are increasingly interested in evaluating the technological capabilities and innovative capacities in developing countries, but often lack...

After a long period in which state-led development was the dominant economic paradigm, since the 1980s private sector development has been the focus for economic policy makers. It is probably no coincidence that economic growth, stagnant for a few decades in much of the developing world, took...

Oil as a Geo-strategic economic commodity will continue to play at least for the next 100 years a prominent worldly role in shaping Energy Security strategies and policies. This is why the Geo-strategic implications relating to the degree of stabilizing the oil market has increasingly started to...

This paper attempts to synthesise the reports prepared by various authors, who live and work in their homeland in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), on the notion of "corporate social responsibility" ("CSR"). The reports are prepared as a prologue for a workshop organised by the World Bank...