Continual growth in commercial exchange between the Asian giant and many African countries. Closeness of ties that can be seen also in the diplomatic field with the opening of eighteen new Indian embassies on the continent. Back in 2002, on 26 May, the Indian minister for Commerce and Industry, Murasoli Maran, launched the programme “Focus…

The Cotonou Agreement is the overarching framework for European Union (EU) relations with countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) and is based on three pillars: development cooperation, economic-trade cooperation, and the political dimension. The negotiation will start this month of September. This agreement will be valid until 2020. The European Commission has…

The resource curse, also known as the paradox of abundance, is the theory that countries with an abundance of natural resources, such as oil and minerals, achieve less economic growth than countries that are not endowed with natural resources. However, there are some exceptions, and  Botswana is one of them. The case of this southern…

Bogus accusations against Iran as a manufacturer of nuclear arms. The Israeli government fears Iran may change the balance of power in the Middle East, compelling it to respect the rights of Palestinians. The Iranian nuclear question is again dominating the international political scene. It has obscured the deep crises in Syrian, Yemen and Libya,…

Trade agreements have potentially very damaging impacts on health. They multiply precarious jobs, weaken working conditions and open up the health sector more widely to the market. Since the failure of the “Doha Round” (2004), which was to remove barriers to world trade in a variety of sectors and reduce agricultural subsidies, international trade negotiations…

Africa is a continent ‘on the move’, a concept that refers mainly to the migration flows within and from the continent. Media often put more emphasis on intercontinental flows, while African migration remains overwhelmingly intra-continental. Although the exodus of young Africans to other continents, especially toward Europe, is on the rise, the largest number of…

In October 2013, the US Justice Department announced the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, the founder and operator of ‘Silk Road,’ a massive online marketplace for drugs and other illicit goods. Authorities called it ‘the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet’ and estimated that it had facilitated the transfer of more than a…

The Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) are international agreements between countries to facilitate the direct investment of companies from a country, usually economically developed, in another developing country. These agreements originated in the 1960s and aimed to protect the legal security of investors of one country in the foreign country receiving the investment. The BITs can…

The phenomenon of people power and political transition, and how it happened in Zimbabwe and South Africa of recent. Which lessons we draw from these cases. Political pundits are amazed at the strength of citizens’ influence and people power in framing the future political landscapes in many countries across Africa these past few years. This…

One year ahead of the next European elections, the debate over citizens’ participation heats up: How to bring the institutions closer to the citizens? The best inspiration can be found in an extraordinary meeting that took place exactly 70 years ago. In May 1948 more than 800 persons from all walks of life met in…

The last 20 years have been progressive for sub-Sahara Africa, according to Jean Claude Bastos de Morais of the Quantum Global Group. The explosion of economic parameters, advancement in the healthcare sector, and improvement in the standard of living of North Africans have driven up social indicators. This has been possible through proper channelling of…

The common market has been a core idea of Europe but markets are not automatically beneficial for all human beings. Europe needs to re-establish the “primacy of politics” and push for the democratization of the economy. Europe has always been both a community of values and a pragmatic economic endeavour. In recent years, however, the…