On July 21, the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) published its eighth annual report on Global Public Investors (GPI). It included a survey the asset allocation plans of reserve managers of central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and public pension funds. Together, the 102 investors who responded to the survey manage $42.7 trillion in assets (Figure 1).
Elon Musk, owner of the electric car company Tesla, declared in February that his company would accept the digital currency Bitcoin, as a payment method. The news lifted the shares of the carmaker by around 20%. Three months later, Musk reversed his decision, sold 10% of his Bitcoin holdings and raked in the modest sum of $100 million. Economist and Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South Henri-Louis Vedie noted in his Policy Brief, Bitcoin, a Speculative Virtual Currency Yet Not an Alternative to Fiat Currency that “what has happened is confirming the highly speculative character of the cryptocurrency”.
With no hesitation, Daniela Varela describes herself as a “good-listener, and a perseverant person with a positive-attitude”. Born and raised in Posadas, Misiones, a province of North-East Argentina bordering Paraguay and Brazil, she knew from a young age she wanted to work in international relations.
Over 25 years after the launch of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) in the 1995 Barcelona Conference, the Mediterranean geographical area continues to be subject to the reflection and conceptualisation of the European Union (EU) with the aim of firmly establishing this strategic neighbourhood relationship and addressing the progress of the inherent challenges. Since then, several initiatives have marked the Euro-Mediterranean framework as stages on the path that claimed to be the result of a joint reflection, i.e. a dialogue between the two shores of the Mediterranean on the future of relations between the EU and its southern neighbourhood.
Le Forum Génération Égalité s’est tenu, du 30 juin au 2 juillet 2021, à Paris et virtuellement dans le monde entier. Organisée par la France sous l'égide de l’ONU et présidée par le Président de la République française, Emmanuel Macron, cette grande assemblée multilatérale entendait répondre à «l'urgence d'égalité réelle entre les femmes et les hommes » [i].
The world faces a huge shortfall of infrastructure investment relative to its needs. With a few exceptions, such as China, this shortfall is greatest in emerging and developing countries.
The G20 Infrastructure Investors Dialogue estimated the volume of global infrastructure investment needed by 2040 to be $81 trillion, $53 trillion of which will be needed in non-advanced countries. The Dialogue projected a gap—in other words, a shortfall in relation to the investment needs foreseen today—of around $15 trillion globally, of which $10 trillion is in emerging economies (Figure 1, left panel). The World Bank has estimated that, for emerging and developing economies to reach the Millennium Development Goals set for 2030, their infrastructure investment would have to correspond to 4.5% of their annual GDPs (Figure 1, right panel).
After completing his studies abroad, Hamza Rkha co-launched a start-up in 2018 with an associate, at 27 years of age. Their company, named SOWIT, is based in Casablanca, Dakar and Paris. It provides data-based decision support tools to African farmers. Through an App and processed satellite images, it helps optimize irrigation, fertilization and phyto-sanitary situations.
UNESCO is leading a two-year consultation process to draft a Recommendation on Open Science in order to increase citizen engagement with science and improve the distribution and production of science globally. An intergovernmental special committee meeting of technical and legal experts reviewed the draft text of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science in May 2021. An approved draft will be shared with Member States in August 2021, and will go to the 41st session of the UNESCO General Conference for adoption in November 2021.
The German town of Dinslaken, roughly 70,000 residents, has not really made a mark on history, but the former coal mining community still managed to get onto the front pages of national newspapers. Dinslaken became a hotspot for German jihadis, ready to join the radical Islamic State. Between 2011 and 2013 an Islamic group, 25 members, rented space just next to the office of the local commissioner of integration. About half of the group followed the call to arms, to fight the infidels in Syria and Iraq. Five of the believers returned, five died, among them Philip Bergner, who blew himself up in a suicide attack in August 2014 near Mosul, killing 20 Kurdish fighters.
Tribune initialement publiée sur Quid.ma
La résolution adoptée par le Parlement européen, le 10 juin 2021, fera certainement date dans l’histoire contemporaine des relations Maroco-espagnoles et, par ricochet, des relations avec l‘Union européenne. Elle risque, par ses conséquences politiques et diplomatiques, d’impacter négativement et à long terme les rapports entre le Maroc et l’Espagne et de limiter les ambitions attachées de part et d’autre de la Méditerranée au renforcement du partenariat entre les deux rives occidentales de la Méditerranée. Le résultat du vote et les prises de positions adoptées par les différents groupes feront sans doute l’objet d’une minutieuse évaluation de la part des autorités marocaines qui ne manqueront pas d’en tirer les conclusions servant le mieux les intérêts du Royaume.
