First Independent Mena Newspaper
Two of the World Cup’s Round of 16 teams received the homecoming reserved for champions, even though they exited with the final week of the tournament remaining be played. Algeria’s Desert Foxes and Team USA shook the international soccer landscape with their unexpected performances before leaving, though. American team leader Tim Howard tweeted: “We’re playing […]
When Mehdi Jomaa assumed the role of Tunisia’s interim Prime Minister in late January, he did not know how disastrous the true economic condition of his country was. He admitted it roughly a month later during a televised interview by saying that the hole in the budget deficit was about 4 billion dinars (2.5 billion […]
Amid deep political turmoil, there is a mounting concern in Egypt as Ethiopia forges ahead with its plan to build the $4.8 billion Grand Renaissance Dam on the Nile’s main tributary. The hydroelectric dam, to be Africa’s biggest, sounded the alarm bell for Egypt due to its possible impact on the flow of the river. […]
Over the past weekend, the Ukrainian government was ousted, Ukraine’s parliament reinstated the 2004 constitution and former President Victor Yanukovich is on the run in Russia. One might be forgiven to think of these developments in isolation. But it is in fact a reminder that reactionary regimes rarely deliver the sort of stability they are […]
Three years down the road from the wave of Arab Spring revolutions that affected the Middle East and North Africa region, MENA economies remain depressed. Egypt’s gross domestic product contracted by about 3 percent in the second quarter of 2013 while the growth rate amounted to only 2 percent last year, when compared to 2.3 […]
New year 2014 will likely be very significant at least from the viewpoint of the London Stock Exchange, which stakes to become the world centre for Islamic finance. Earlier last year, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron announced the plan to issue sukuk – Islamic financial certificates often compared to Western bonds. The first sukuk certificate […]
While we enter a new year, the emerging consensus among observers of the Middle East and Northern Africa is that the Arab Spring has turned into a frosty Arab Winter. Nothing speaks to this perception as strongly as the ongoing civil war in Syria, where the embattled Assad-regime, propped up by Hizbollah and Iran, is […]
The killing of three French journalists in northern Malian region of Kidal in early November 2013 is indicative of the ability of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to conduct terrorist attacks in the region despite French military presence. Similarly, the announcement of the creation of a new terrorist group called Al Mourabitoun out of […]
The United Kingdom and Morocco maintain “a strong partnership, based on shared values and a shared vision of a peaceful, secure and prosperous North Africa”, says the Foreign Office In a press release following the latest visit made to Morocco, foreign office minister Alistair Burt expressed UK support for Moroccan reforms, hailed the two countries […]
In many ways, it appears as if Algeria is weathering the Arab Spring fairly well. Despite its sheer size, it has dodged the cycle of demonstrations and upheaval, even though the Arab Spring started right in the next door Tunisia. Its long-term president Abdelaziz Bouteflika has maintained a façade of democracy, though his tenure has […]