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North African Studies in South Africa: A Research and Policy Agenda
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It was like war … I’d never seen anything like it before, a child, a baby, blood everywhere, the
smell of burnt skin, of burnt hair (eyewitness of the Dahab bombings).
The perpetrators of these heinous acts of terrorism will be tracked down and punished
(President Hosni Mubarak in the aftermath of the Dahab bombings).
This paper narrates the experience of Tunisia's two independent power projects (IPPs), which were developed as part of the country's electricity supply industry reforms. Although both plants use gas as their primary energy, the two projects vary in size, fuel supply arrangements, power purchase agreements and the legal frameworks under which they were developed. With Rades II, the country's first IPP, loans have been indexed to multiple currencies and, to date, charges to the utility remain affordable. This is partly due to the fact that the Tunisian dinar (TND) has been relatively stable since the inception of the contracts - unlike in other emerging economies where currency devaluations have resulted in significant increases in charges. With El Biban, the country's second IPP, fuel supply problems have interrupted production for extended periods, impacting on overall plant performance and revenue. Although the loss in revenue is threatening the financial viability of the plant, it does not have a significant impact on the off-taker and national utility for the following reason. El Biban represents less than 1 per cent of the country's installed capacity with no guaranteed availability in terms of its contract with the off-taker. Still the plant is crucial in understanding Tunisia's overall experience as well as particularly relevant to other countries throughout Africa, such as Nigeria and Tanzania, which have developed power plants as part of a larger gas infrastructure project.
This paper tells the story of Morocco's three independent power projects (IPPs), which were developed between 1994 and 2005. The three projects are very different in nature. Through the first project, the country placed nearly two-thirds of Morocco's electricity production in the hands of private producers, the Jorf Lasfar Energy Company – presently Africa's largest IPP. The second project, Compagnie Eolienne de Detroit (CED), brought about further diversification of the electricity production mix by harnessing Morocco's wind energy potential; CED is also a record setter in that it represents the first wind farm in Africa that is entirely privately financed. Energie Electrique de Tahaddart (EET), the third IPP, served to introduce the first combined cycle gas plant to Morocco, which is fuelled from the pipeline that delivers Algerian gas to Spain. Another outstanding feature of EET is that the majority of project financing was sourced from local Moroccan banks. Among the key elements that explain project successes are that the Moroccan dirham has remained relatively stable in a low inflation environment since the inception of the contracts, and, in the case of EET, charges are significantly shielded from foreign currency risks.
Economic regionalism appears to be growing rapidly. Why this has occurred and what bearing it will have on the global economy are issues that have generated considerable interest and disagreement. Some observers fear that regional economic institutions such as the EuropeanUnion (EU), theNorth American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mercosur, and the organization of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) will erode the multilateral system that has guided economic relations since the end of World War II, promoting protectionism and conflict. Others argue that regional institutions will foster economic openness and bolster the multilateral system. This debate has stimulated a large and influential body of research by economists on regionalism's welfare implications.
Egypt's autocratic regime is being weakened by economic crises, growing political opposition, and the pressures of globalization. Observers now wonder which way Egypt will go when the country's aging president, Husni Mubarak, passes from the scene: will it embrace Western-style liberalism and democracy? Or will it become an Islamic theocracy similar to Iran? Egypt after Mubarak demonstrates that both secular and Islamist opponents of the regime are navigating a middle path that may result in a uniquely Islamic form of liberalism and, perhaps, democracy. Bruce Rutherford examines the political and ideological battles that drive Egyptian politics and shape the prospects for democracy throughout the region. He argues that secularists and Islamists are converging around a reform agenda that supports key elements of liberalism, including constraints on state power, the rule of law, and protection of some civil and political rights. But will this deepening liberalism lead to democracy? And what can the United States do to see that it does? In answering these questions, Rutherford shows that Egypt's reformers are reluctant to expand the public's role in politics. This suggests that, while liberalism is likely to progress steadily in the future, democracy's advance will be slow and uneven. Egypt after Mubarak] clearly offers both an insightful account of Egyptian politics and a potentially fruitful framework for future comparative research on political change in the Arab world."--Waleed Hazbun, Perspectives on Politics.
Algeria has been facing serious difficulties since the late 1980s. These began when the country experienced a mounting socio-economic crisis that culminated in October 1988 in violent riots and a brutal military repression. The causes of the crisis were numerous, but among the most notable are the failing economic system put in place in the 1960s and 1970s, the unrepresentative character of the political system and external economic shocks. Following the repression of the riots of October 1988, the governing elite suddenly engaged the country in a process of political liberalisation that ended one-party rule, gave an opening to a variety of political organisations, and brought unprecedented freedom of expression and association. Against this background, this essay examines the relationship between militant Islam and democracy in Algeria in general and, more specifically, the role played by the Islamists in the political opening that took place after 1988 and their likely place in future processes of democratisation.
To compensate for an accumulated delay, Arabic societies, like the rest of the non-Western societies: China, Russia, most of the African states, Asians and Latin Americans; have attempted since the end of the 19th century to join the Industrial Revolution by official strategies. The failure of these strategies has driven many of these societies to change their choices and to revolt against their totalitarian systems during the 1970’s. It’s also the case of Arabic societies who started their fight for democratization in the 1980’s, well before American intervention. But this transition has been delayed due to the particular place the Middle East occupies in international geopolitics and geoeconomy. While the states of Central Europe and the former Soviet Union have well received the democratic system, the states of the Middle East have been considered unfit to integrate themselves into what must be called the club of global democracy, whose center is found in the Occident. The positions seem for the moment changed and nothing now prevents the Arabic states from joining the other democratic nations in the democratic club.
Long shunned by Western countries for its support of terrorist activities, Libya has, over recent years, become an increasingly important partner of European countries in a number of key policy fields. This article examines the rapprochement between Europe and Libya in three areas that have been of particular interest to European Union (EU) countries: immigration control, military cooperation, and collaboration in the energy field. In all of these important policy domains, there has been a significant rise in cooperation between European countries and Libya over recent years. While there has been some debate and criticism within the EU regarding the acceptability of collaborating with the former outlaw state, given its poor human rights record, such criticism has been largely confined to the military (and nuclear) field, whereas the deepening collaboration with Libya in the area of immigration control seems largely acceptable to EU countries. As Libya is playing an increasingly crucial role in several areas that are amongst the EU's main security (and commercial) interests in the Mediterranean region, there has generally been little, if any, willingness on the part of European countries to raise human rights issues in their relationships with Libya.
The present paper discusses the evolution of the relations between Italy and Libya in the recent past with particular attention focused on the developments in the last decade. The aim is to develop a framework for examining and understanding the hidden reasons and the vested interests that have driven these two countries' foreign policies within the framework of the wider Mediterranean region. The findings discussed here are based on an analysis of the evolution of Italian foreign policy towards Libya as reported by the press, the main political protagonists and through an examination of the unfolding of facts and events. Primary newspapers sources are widely used in addition to interviews with Italian and Libyan officials and policymakers.
This article analyses the economic and political crises experienced by Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia in the last two decades. Using the notions of inclusion and exclusion, it compares the way these countries managed the crises and avoided a total breakdown. Tunisia narrowed the political sphere while widening somewhat the economic one; Algeria's all‐inclusive and unmanageable political opening was accompanied by economic reforms with a profound exclusionary effect; and Morocco's graduated political inclusion has contrasted with its exclusionary economic policies. The notions of inclusion and exclusion can be correlated with progress in political and economic development, and can help explain social eruptions and rebellions against the state. When the economic crisis is managed with relative success, political inclusion tends to be minimal, and when the crisis and the reforms worsen social and economic conditions, relative political inclusion becomes necessary.
This research project explores the influence of North Africa in the tradition of tajdeed in Hausaland, northern Nigeria. Tajdeed refers to a periodic renewal of faith. It is thus considered as rebirth, puritanism, fundamentalism, re-assertion, awakening, reformism, resurgence, renewal, reassurance, revitalisation, militancy, activism, integrism, millenninism, messianism, return to Islam, march of Islam, etc. Tajdeed has been a feature of most Islamic communities in the world. In Hausaland, there are records of persistent Islamic reformist and revival movements from the fifteenth century ad to the present.
For four decades Tunisia has been struggling with the question of whether to legalise political participation by Islamist parties. There have been several, but the party now called Ennahda, under exiled leader Rachid Ghannouchi, has been by far the most important. This article traces the shifting relationship of the Tunisian government under Bourguiba and Ben Ali with the Islamic Movement. The relationship is now confrontational, but it has not always been so. Rather, it has varied over time between confrontation and participation. We conclude that, especially with the recent rise of a violent Salafist movement in the Maghreb, there is a possibility of future political participation in Tunisia by moderate Islamists movements such as Ennahda, and that the cost of such participation is far better than the cost of their non-participation.
The past decade has witnessed a resurgence of regionalism in world politics. Old regionalist organizations have been revived, new organizations formed, and regionalism and the call for strengthened regionalist arrangements have been central to many of the debates about the nature of the post-Cold War international order. The number, scope and diversity of regionalist schemes have grown significantly since the last major ‘regionalist wave’ in the 1960s. Writing towards the end of this earlier regionalist wave, Joseph Nye could point to two major classes of regionalist activity: on the one hand, micro-economic organizations involving formal economic integration and characterized by formal institutional structures; and on the other, macro-regional political organizations concerned with controlling conflict. Today, in the political field, regional dinosaurs such as the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the Organization of American States (OAS) have re-emerged. They have been joined both by a large number of aspiring micro-regional bodies (such as the Visegrad Pact and the Pentagonale in central Europe; the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in the Middle East; ECOWAS and possibly a revived Southern African Development Community (SADC, formerly SADCC) led by post-apartheid South Africa in Africa), and by loosely institutionalized meso-regional security groupings such as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, now OSCE) and more recently the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). In the economic field, micro-regional schemes for economic cooperation or integration (such as the Southern Cone Common Market, Mercosur , the Andean Pact, the Central American Common Market (CACM) and CARICOM in the Americas; the attempts to expand economic integration within ASEAN; and the proliferation of free trade areas throughout the developing world) stand together with arguments for macro-economic or ‘bloc regionalism’ built around the triad of an expanded European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) and some further development of Asia-Pacific regionalism. The relationship between these regional schemes and between regional and broader global initiatives is central to the politics of contemporary regionalism.
Once again, regionalism is afoot. Twin late-1980s announcements, by the United States and Canada of negotiations for a free-trade area, and by the EU of an attempt to complete its internal market, ignited a conflagration of regional integration. Well over a hundred regional arrangements, involving most nations, now exist. Deja vu: the 1950s and 1960s had likewise witnessed many ‘old regionalism’ initiatives. Except for Western Europe, these in the end amounted to little, however, and efforts for preferential trade became quiescent, until the dramatic advent of the ‘new regionalism’.
The Role of Academia in Regional Governance
- D Ventura
D Ventura, "The Role of Academia in Regional Governance", In M Botto, ed., Research and
International Trade Policy Negotiations: Knowledge And Power In Latin America, Ottawa: IDRC, 2009.
The African Renaissance Statement
- Thabo Mbeki
Thabo Mbeki, The African Renaissance Statement, 13 August 1998,
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mbeki/1998/tm0813.htm ;
The African Renaissance from vision to Reality
- Jacob Zuma
Jacob Zuma, The African Renaissance
from vision to Reality, 23 November 1999.
The Metamorphosis of the Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, International Institute for Islamic Studies
- S A Emerson
S A Emerson, The Metamorphosis of the Al Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb, International Institute for Islamic Studies, Occasional Paper Series, no. 3, 2010.
Libya: The making of the next Islamic Fundamentalist Threat?", South African Yearbook of International Affairs
- H Solomon
- G Swart
H Solomon and G Swart, "Libya: The making of the next Islamic
Fundamentalist Threat?", South African Yearbook of International Affairs 2003/04, 2004, pp.311-25; The
Institute for Security Studies, Report on the conference on Inter-regional challenges of Islamic
Fundamentalist Movement in North Africa, 17 June 2009.
Political Liberalization and Party Radicalization in Algeria: the Case of the Islamic Front of Salvation
And on the Islamist Parties in Algeria see A Layachi, "Political Liberalization and Party Radicalization in
Algeria: the Case of the Islamic Front of Salvation", SAIIA Occasional Papers, no.21, June 2009.
Libya's Socialist Popular Leadership is a body that brings together leaders of tribes and social institutions see G Joffe
Libya's Socialist Popular Leadership is a body that brings together leaders of tribes and social
institutions see G Joffe, "Saif Al-Islam: The Whole Libyan World in his Hands?", Arab Reform Bulletin,
13 January 2010.
The first contested elections in Egypt
- See
- Besada
See for example H Besada," The first contested elections in Egypt", South African Yearbook of
International Affairs 2005, 2005, pp.200-7;
Crackdown on opposition ahead of Egyptian Elections
- Souare
I Souare, "Crackdown on opposition ahead of Egyptian
Elections", ISS Today, 3 March 2008.
Algerian Presidential Elections: Prospects for Change?
- A Boubekeur
- Porter
A Boubekeur and G Porter, "Algerian Presidential Elections: Prospects for Change?", Carnegie Middle
East Centre, 6 April 2009.
Searching for the reasons behind the resilience of authoritarianism in the Arab world has been the focus of a number of studies, see for example B Ghalioun
Searching for the reasons behind the resilience of authoritarianism in the Arab world has been the focus
of a number of studies, see for example B Ghalioun, "The Persistence of Arab Authoritarianism", Journal
of Democracy, vol.15, no.4, 2004,, pp.126-32;
Libya: A Critical Review of Tripoli's Sub-Saharan African Policies
- G Hugo
G Hugo, "Mission Impossible? Colonel Qaddafi quest for Unity", ISS Today, 11 July 2007; A Ibrahim,
"Libya: A Critical Review of Tripoli's Sub-Saharan African Policies", ISS Situation Report, 23
November 2009;
Pharaohs and Fundamentalists, Centre for International Political Studies
- G Swart
- H Solomon
- A Botha
G Swart, H Solomon and A Botha, Pharaohs and Fundamentalists, Centre for International Political
Studies, 2002.
The 40 th Anniversary of the Qaddafi's Regime: Moments of Great Political Contentment, International Institute for Islamic Studies
- Y Ronen
Y Ronen, The 40 th Anniversary of the Qaddafi's Regime: Moments of Great Political Contentment,
International Institute for Islamic Studies, Occasional Paper, no.18, 2009.
Meeting the Sphinx: The Experience of South African Firms Doing Business in Egypt
- H Besada
H Besada, Meeting the Sphinx: The Experience of South African Firms Doing Business in Egypt,
Business in Africa Research Project Report no.7, South African Institute of International Affairs, 2006;
Drawing Lessons from successes in Morocco, The Brenthurst Foundation
- G Mills
G Mills, Drawing Lessons from successes in Morocco, The Brenthurst Foundation,2009; Business
Leadership South Africa, Getting into the Race: Morocco's Lessons from Diversification, Occasional
Paper no.6, February 2009.
Egypt: the Political Process between Opening up and control
For these exceptions see Aggad 2008, Souare, Egypt: the Political Process between Opening up and
control, 2008.
For more information about these activities see Tunisian National Board for Family and Population
For more information about these activities see Tunisian National Board for Family and Population,
South-South Co-operation, http://www.onfp.nat.tn/publish/content/article.asp?id=172
28 Mills 2009, pp. 247-9; Business Leadership South Africa 2009, pp. 7-11.
Institute of National Planning and the United Nations Development Programme
- A Layachi
A Layachi, "Reform and the Politics of Inclusion in the Maghrib", Journal of North African Studies,
vol. 5, no.3, 2000, p. 27-8; Institute of National Planning and the United Nations Development
Programme, Egypt Human Development Report 2008, Cairo: Institute for National Planning, p. 15.
30 Layachi 2000, pp. 15-42.
The State's Monopolization of Religion
- Abdel Fattah
S Abdel Fattah, The State's Monopolization of Religion, Cairo: Al-Shorouk International Press, 2005,
pp. 26-7 (in Arabic)
Following the statement of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights 14 Egyptian NGOs demand a halt of Migrant Killings on Israel Border
Human Rights Watch, Sinai Perils: Risks to Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Egypt and
Israel, New York: HRW, November 2008; The Egyptian Organization of Human Rights, "Following the
statement of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights 14 Egyptian NGOs demand a halt of Migrant
Killings on Israel Border", 4 March 2010.
The two studies are part of a project led by the Programme in Infrastructure Reform and Regulation in the University of Cape Town to study the independent Power Projects throughout Africa with case studies focusing on Egypt
- K Malgas
- A Gratwick
- Eberhard
I Malgas, K Gratwick and A Eberhard, "Moroccon independent power producers: African pioneers",
The Journal of North African Studies, vol. 13, no.1, 2008, pp.15-36 and "Two of a kind: Lessons from
Tunisian Independent Power Projects", The Journal of North African Studies, vol. 12, no.4, 2007, pp.
395-415. The two studies are part of a project led by the Programme in Infrastructure Reform and
Regulation in the University of Cape Town to study the independent Power Projects throughout Africa
with case studies focusing on Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Nigeria and Kenya.