By Azza K Maghur When CNN  ran a story about “slave auctions” run by human trafficking networks in Libya, the world decried not the perpetrators, but Libyans as a whole:  people who are, in the main, victims of the same agents of chaos, and who suffer continuous human rights violations at the hands of militias…

The taxi driver suddenly popped a cassette into his radio. “Libya, the Song in my Head,” a tune popular in post-Independence Libya, began to play. The melody, which aroused in me a nostalgic pain, brought back images from a half-century or more. After a decade of exposure to strident Egyptian anthems, for the first time,…

In 1997, the Arab League formed the Greater Arab Free Trade Area (GAFTA), which includes six North African nations: Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and Algeria. GAFTA facilitated a consensus on trade facilitation and regulation, increasing access to markets across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), whilst providing resilience to wider global financial and…

On 3 November 2014, Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaoré was forced into exile after violent protests swept through the cities. The immediate cause of tension was popular anger against Compaoré’s attempt to alter the constitution to legitimize an additional mandate. An interim government subsequently prepared for elections whilst Compaoré fled to Ivory Coast. Nearly a…

East Africa may prove better insulated against the fiscal vulnerabilities facing West African states arising from oil price shocks, surpluses in commodity markets, and tightening global financial conditions.  But it shares a broader unpredictability which associates African markets with political conflict, globalised terror networks, climate change, food insecurity, drought, infrastructure poverty, viral pandemics, and corruption.…

Jihadism has been present in the Maghreb and Egypt for decades. Following the Algerian Civil War in 2002, the region seemed to be stabilizing, despite isolated incidents of violence. But since the Arab Spring in 2011 and the fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, manifestations of extremist Islam have spiraled out of control. A…

Western military intervention in Libya to stop ISIS from expanding its influence beyond its present base in Sirte could help stabilise a region beset by many domestic and regional conflicts, often drawing in actors beyond North Africa. Factors at play involve the control of oil and gas resources, social and economic rents, political posturing and…