First Independent Mena Newspaper
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 […]
The Pew Research Centre has recently compiled the results of its research on the opinions of people in different countries across the MENA region on the way women dress. Respondents from seven MENA countries – Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia – were asked which of the six styles of Muslim women’s […]
Because of the mounting security situation in the region of Sahel, closer cooperation and integration in Maghreb is needed. According to the final concluding remarks of the 11th Morocco-EU Association Council, the EU28 stressed the salience of tight cooperation between the MENA and Sahel-Sahara region. The effort of closer collaboration between Sahel and Maghreb was […]
Morocco seems to be fulfilling the promise it made to its citizens about two years ago – it has just embarked on a long journey of fighting youth joblessness. The youth unemployment rate has been for quite some time reaching staggering levels – more than 20 percent for men and almost 40 percent for women […]
As changes continue to redesign the landscape in the Middle East-North Africa region and in Africa, Morocco’s longstanding, friendly relationships with these two regions open new avenues for U.S.-Morocco cooperation, all the more so as the two countries have a shared vision on a set of regional issues, ranging from economic development to stability, from […]
According to the “gender” survey of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the position of women has deteriorated throughout the region of North Africa and Middle East since the onset of the Arab Spring. Out of 22 survey countries, three – Egypt, Yemen and Syria – found themselves at the bottom of the ranking despite being involved […]
In fiscal year 2013, the World Bank (WB) has supported 16 projects worth 2.1 billion USD, out of which 1.8 billion USD came from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and 249 million USD from the International Development Agency (IDA). 56.4 million USD were committed separately for the West Bank and Gaza. On […]
After he had been elected best Finance Minister for the MENA region for 2012 and Minister of Finance of the year 2012 by the «The Banker», a magazine of the Financial Times press group, Morocco’s former Minister of Economy and Finance, Nizar Baraka, earned another consecration in 2013, this time from the World Bank and […]
The Islamic economy has for long been associated with the Islamic financial law. Based on the moral code and religious law of Islam – shari’a – Islamic banking requires very stringent capital requirements in loan markets, rejects interest rates, and promotes profit and loss sharing between the client and the bank according to the contract […]
Simon Kuznets’ inverted U-shaped curve representing the hypothesis that with economic growth country’s inequality level initially increases and then decreases after reaching certain average income level has not yet found much support among the MENA economies. The MENA region has traditionally belonged to the most equal parts of the developing world as supported by the […]