In late February, the United States signed a trade deal with the East African Community (EAC), the bloc of five countries around Africa’s Great Lakes. In an email interview, Nora Carina Dihel, a senior trade economist at the World Bank, discussed U.S. trade with the EAC and the rest of Africa. WPR: What is covered by the recent U.S. trade deal with the EAC, and what impact is it likely to have on the economies of the EAC? Nora Carina Dihel: The new cooperation agreement signed by trade ministers from the five EAC countries—Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda—and the [...]
Whether by burning a Jordanian fighter pilot alive, massacring Shiites or beheading American hostages, the self-declared Islamic State (IS) has an unprecedented knack for making enemies. IS has also inadvertently achieved what the United States never accomplished during more than a decade in Iraq: the mobilization of a willing coalition of Arab countries to fight jihadi extremists. Still, in the first year of its so-called caliphate, IS’ aggressive expansion appears to have passed its zenith. Both on the internet and on the ground, there are many indicators that the group’s decline has already begun. But IS will likely endure for [...]
On Monday in Khartoum, the leaders of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia signed an initial accord on mutual water rights to the Nile River, removing another obstacle to Ethiopia’s massive Grand Renaissance Dam, which has been a source of tension with its neighbors since construction began just 10 miles from Sudan’s border in 2011. But the agreement is about a lot more than water. It may signal a seismic shift in the politics of northeastern Africa and could lead to a new axis of cooperation to manage, if not resolve, conflicts in one of the world’s most turbulent regions. The accord’s [...]
