Summary: Giorgia Meloni’s Made in Italy fund is seeking investment from MENA energy players and Algeria has an opportunity and history on its side to engage with the Italians and invest in the fund. What’s lacking is the political will and the economic nous to seize the opportunity.
Summary: after eight months in office the Iraqi prime minister can point to a period of calm, increased FDI and a building boom in Baghdad as signs that his country is moving in the right direction but many Iraqis do not share his optimism.
Summary: as he systematically deconstructs the last vestiges of Tunisia’s experiment in democracy many are wondering what the Tunisian president’s end game is or if he has an end game at all.
Summary: with the world otherwise occupied, the desperate situation of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Türkiye and Jordan has been shuffled to one side. Fresh thinking is urgently required.
Summary: Saudi Arabia’s crown prince is using giga-projects to drive forward his plan to wean the kingdom off its dependency on oil revenues; the results thus far of his Vision2030 project are mixed but if oil prices hold steady MbS may yet see some of his hugely ambitious schemes come to fruition by the end of the decade.
Summary: with the country’s economic crisis deepening and President Kais Saied continuing to chart an erratic and increasingly dictatorial course the World Bank lowers the boom.
Summary: after years of decline, the production of oil and gas in Algeria could be given a strong boost by the decision of the Algerian authorities to allow the exploration of the country’s shale resources.
Summary: the fighting in Libya may have all but ended in 2022 but that may be the calm before a coming storm as contestation grows over gas rights in the eastern Mediterranean.
Summary: the decision by UNGA was hailed as a significant breakthrough for the cause of Palestinian rights, even as Netanyahu inaugurates the most extreme government in Israel’s history.
Summary: the lingering collapse of Tunisia’s efforts to secure a viable democracy was sped along by the failure to carry out reforms in the security sector.
