Tunisian crisis will not hit Egypt, trade minister says - Economy - Business - Ahram On... - 0 views
Bringing the Economy Back Into Tunisian Politics - Carnegie Endowment for International... - 0 views
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Observers have often summarized the situation in Tunisia, and the Arab world in general, as a conflict between Islamists and secularists. While the framework of an Islamist–secularist divide is not completely inaccurate, it frequently ignores more nuanced analysis and perpetuates the orientalist premise that Middle East politics should be explained by historical religious norms. In Tunisia, political Islam was marginal until the fall of dictatorship in January 2011.
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The main demands of the sporadic protest movements before 2011 were not ideological, but called for more political liberties or an improved socioeconomic situation, as in the 2008 Gafsa uprising
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a growing sense among disenchanted voters, youth in particular, that their standards of living would not improve no matter which party they voted for.
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The politics of bread in Egypt - Opinion - Al Jazeera English - 0 views
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Food security policy has little room to manoeuvre in Egypt, where the per-person endowment of cropland is one of the smallest in the world. Virtually all 82 million Egyptians, along with almost all agricultural lands, are squeezed into just five per cent of the nation's total land area: A strip running eight to 15 kilometres wide along the Nile River and fanning out through the Delta. It's as if the entire population of the United States and all of our agriculture were clustered within 60 kilometres of the Mississippi.
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See: Tim Mitchell, "America's Egypt" http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_4632_s11/readings/MitchellEgypt.pdf
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There have long been laws against building on agricultural land in Egypt, but enforcement has always been lax. During the past year, with the government otherwise occupied, there was virtually no enforcement at all. Powerful economic interests have jumped into that vacuum, and land-grabbing and construction on cropland have accelerated. Economically stressed farmers have a hard time resisting offers of big money from aggressive developers.
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it will not be easy to restructure a system that for decades fit comfortably into a thoroughly corrupt economy. For one thing, it will be necessary to deal with resistance from the food industries, interest groups, tycoons, and politicians who benefit from the current way of doing things.
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Tunisian PM wants more aid for refugees from Libya - Economy - Business - Ahram Online - 0 views
Youth, Waithood, and Protest Movements in Africa - By Alcinda Honwana - African Arguments - 0 views
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young Africans struggling with unemployment, the difficulty of finding sustainable livelihoods, and the absence of civil liberties
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Political instability, bad governance, and failed neo-liberal social and economic policies have exacerbated longstanding societal problems and diminished young people’s ability to support themselves and their families
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Many are unable to attain the prerequisites of full adulthood and take their place as fully-fledged members of society. The recent wave of youth protests can best be understood in the context of this generation’s struggles for economic, social, and political emancipation
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With Yemen's Saleh gone, attention turns to problem of qat - 0 views
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One in every seven working Yemeni is employed in producing and distributing qat, making it the largest single source of rural income and the second largest source of employment in the country after the agriculture and herding sector, exceeding even the public sector, according to the World Bank. Many of Yemen's poorest families admit to spending over half their earnings on the leaf. "Qat is the biggest market in Yemen, bigger than oil, bigger than anything," said Abdulrahman Al-Iryani, Yemen's former water minister and founder of 'qat uprooting', a charity which supports farmers in replacing qat shrubs with coffee plants.
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qat is entwined in all of Yemen's problems
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the cultivation of qat - the least taxed, most subsidized and fastest-growing cash crop in Yemen - consumes 40 percent of irrigated farming land
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Electing a New Libya - carnegieendowment.org - Readability - 0 views
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there remain questions about the government’s capability to provide security at polling stations. It has “deputized” a number of militias in major cities as part of its security plan. And there have been some very vocal calls for an election boycott in the east by Islamist and pro-federalism leaders, as well as attacks on election offices. The government reportedly has a plan to “freeze” the voting at polling places where there is violence or disruption, which could result in a de-facto invalidation of the results
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The postponement of a few weeks was simply a technical delay. Libya’s transitional authorities were behind schedule in registering voters and in other preparations for the election. According to the accounts of the United Nations and several NGO observers, the delay was fully justified and not nefarious in any way.
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for most of the main parties, the experience of campaigning and articulating a party platform is completely new. For many, the metric of voter support is how many posters are produced or media ads are running on television.
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Habib Kheder Estimates Completion of Constitution in February : Tunisia Live - News, Ec... - 0 views
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members left the Assembly last week for their first break since they began writing in February. Just before their departure, the publication of the first full draft of the constitution demonstrated marked progress, but the contents of the draft have caused controversy throughout the country. The draft revealed that divisive issues, such as the status of women, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and the parliamentary structure of the government, are still far from settled inside and outside of the NCA. The Assembly will reconvene in early September to negotiate these divisions, but the timeframe for the ratification of the constitution remains unclear.
Youth Movements Criticize Government Performance : Tunisia Live - News, Economy, Cultur... - 0 views
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“I can’t really tell if the Tunisian youth are satisfied or not. However, I can tell you about the youth around me. They are trying to be as involved as possible. Tunisian youth are active with many associations like I Watch, and JVT (Tunisian NGOs). All these are young people who are trying to sensitize other people to our political situation,”
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Houssem Eddine Trabelsi, the coordinator of Ekbes, told Tunisia Live, “This was a way of protesting the government’s performance. We are young members of Ennahdha with different opinions and positions than those of the government.” Trabelsi said that he and the campaign members have been connecting with ministers and plan to hold more events, as well as conduct their own investigations into how the government can do better.
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Farah Labidi, a Constituent Assembly representative and member of Ennahdha said that the criticism of Ekbes was good for the accountability of leaders. “This is a very healthy initiative as they are asking for daring decisions to fight corruption, and immediate execution of plans. It is a plus for us as they are pointing to our weaknesses. Their criticism is a right.”
The Mirage State of Egypt - Daily News Egypt - 0 views
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The problem isn’t that the revolution created this Mirage State, but rather that it has always existed from the days of Mubarak, which we always suspected but never believed, because things used to function due to informal structure that we created without noticing. The state used to function based on a network of connections; the economy used to and still functions based on an informal sector that no one can either measure or penetrate; the policing used to be carried out away from the law or true investigative work and more reliant on torture and jailing; politics used to be the domain of one party that would insist that it believes in democratic transition and values while always rigging elections; and the president used to do anything he wanted in the country no matter what the constitution or the laws stated
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The illusion was so strong that they thought it was real even after it was destroyed.
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Instead of resolving the issues that exist between the governorates and the trash collection companies, or using the help of the zabaleen community, who have been doing a remarkable job of being the informal trash collectors of Egypt, President Morsy asked the people to simply resolve the trash problem by picking up the trash. Fine, but take it where? No answer. Would that mean that we no longer have to pay the trash collection money added to our electricity bill, since we are the ones collecting the trash? No answer. Is this part of maybe some sweeping recycling initiative, where we create a huge recycling industry and quite possibly create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process? Nope. The plan is simply to pick up the trash and for Egyptians to engage in their civic duty in collecting trash that they pay to be collected for them in order to… eh… nothing.
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