Watch the video from the DEVCO web Infopoint seminar event in cooperation with ETTG and IAI for the Development – Security nexus.
The current policy brief lays out the obstacles to both AfCFTA implementation and realisation of its full economic potential. It also explores how the EU can engage in providing targeted support and how to strengthen AfCFTA-related cooperation between Africa and the EU. The analysis and recommendations draw on a review of the literature and policy documents by the German Development Institute (DIE), the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) and the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), as well as two online expert seminars on 17 and 24 June 2020.
This year was supposed to be crucial for Africa-Europe relations, culminating in the sixth AU-EU Summit, scheduled for 28 and 29 October in Brussels. But then COVID-19 happened. After a long palaver, a decision was finally taken: the summit will be postponed to 2021, although a date still needs to be fixed. Geert Laporte explains why postponing may not be such a bad thing.
Financial access in Africa has been on the rise in the last decade. It has a critical role to play in increasing the resilience of households and supporting their livelihoods. Maintaining this role is vital to tackle welfare and income losses stemming from the Covid-19-sparked economic crisis.
Governments in the Middle East and in North Africa (MENA) are tackling the pandemic in different ways, many challenged by weak social systems and growing societal frustrations. In relatively prosperous (middle-income) countries – such as Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq – leaders have used the pandemic as an excuse to suppress justified protests at their lack of accountability and failure to provide basic services. For international cooperation, which supports the functioning of legitimate, accountable governments and resilient societies, this poses a critical challenge – as the case of Lebanon currently illuminates.
The global Covid-19 pandemic has had an enormous impact on trade across the world. Value chains and trade have slowed down, or even been brought to a halt, via several channels. This paper investigates the impacts of the pandemic on trade and value chains in Africa, with a special focus on Ethiopia and Kenya. It also makes specific policy recommendations regarding the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement in the light of Covid-19.
COVID-19 has led governments across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to take a number of measures to battle the pandemic. Many of these actions directly related to religious practices such as the cancelation of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, closing down mosques and amending the call to prayer from the usual “hayya alas-salah” or “come to prayer” to “salu fi buyutikum” or “pray in your homes”.
An ODI video from their new series named Bites which is a continuation of our previous ETTG-ODI discussion on ‘Africa beyond Covid-19’.
