As curtains closed on the 14th African Union High-Level Private Sector Forum held at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) in Nairobi, Kenya (10th – 12th July 2023), it emerged that Africa will see a rise in trade from $235 billion to $450 - $655 billion by 2035. Current intra-African trade at 14%-18%, lags behind Asia (59%), the Americas (44.4%), and the EU (69%). Given the projections of increased trade and trading opportunities in Africa, intra-African trade is still in the headwinds despite the official ratification of the AfCFTA in January 2021.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia (KSA) are currently at a geopolitical inflection point, both regionally and globally. Their growing prominence is enabled by recent events that have allowed them to leverage their strengths towards a position of influence. In terms of geopolitical shifts, both the UAE and KSA have been actively deepening their connections with countries in the Global South. They are extending an olive branch to old foes in the region, while simultaneously diversifying their economic and political ties beyond conventional allies. Both are also actively striving to position themselves as preferred trade and development partners for markets in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The transformative phase experienced by these two Gulf countries in recent years has established them as global heavyweights, rapidly reshaping global geopolitics through strategic alliances with emerging markets.

Stepping away from the confines of traditional film production, mobile filmmaking might just be the next big thing in the African film industry. The revolutionary impact of using smartphones as a filmmaking medium in the African film industry is propelled by the increased accessibility of mobile phones, a surge in internet connectivity, and the allure of reduced production costs. This shift has gained traction among African content creators and filmmakers, who increasingly turn to smartphones for their vlogs, short films, and other productions. The rise of modern mobile devices with their impressive camera quality and enhanced resolution has facilitated the shift.

Africa’s Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI) serve as critical social, cultural, and economic engines for the continent. However, the accelerated adoption of eCommerce is necessary for the African creative economy to reach its full potential.

e-Commerce has the ability and potential to move African fashion around the continent and around the world - if only given enough support and investment, especially considering that MSMEs make up 90% of African fashion businesses.

Over the years, China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has experienced mixed international success in establishing an infrastructure network that connects China to its key trading partners. By utilizing the Maritime Silk Road (MSR) within the BRI framework, China has formed connections across the Global South, particularly in Central Asia and Africa. However, the realization of a Silk Road from China to Africa needs to consider the Middle East. A critical lynchpin, the Middle East has historically been a region where the Global West has exerted significant influence. Nevertheless, with recent geopolitical shifts and the decoupling of power centres, this geopolitical dynamic is also undergoing changes. China is strengthening its economic ties with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to support the expansion of its Belt and Road Initiative towards the West. Saudi Arabia is emerging as a crucial node in China's geostrategic expansion.

Together, the African Union’s ETTIM Department and Botho will collaborate to boost intra-African trade under the AfCFTA and strengthen the competitiveness of African economies internationally through a multi-pronged partnership involving research and knowledge production; forging powerful relationships between the AU and the African private sector; and developing strategic ties with the Middle East and Asia, which, as a region, is becoming an increasingly important geopolitical and economic partner for the continent and vice versa.

With more than 40 countries interested in joining the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) alliance, now is the time to analyze and question the bloc’s raison d’être and trajectory from the perspectives of its incumbent members. In particular, it would be worthwhile to look at BRICS from the point of view of Brazil, a member that has been through many different political and economic upheavals that have shaped its relationship with the bloc since its inception in 2009. The country has one notable point of divergence from the bloc’s core ambition, namely, creating a new world order to counter the West. As a country that has historically tried to maintain good relationships with the West while simultaneously promoting trade with other partners, it is not in Brazil’s direct interest to promote an alternative global order, especially one that alienates Western allies.

The notion of a multipolar world has been met with all five stages of grief. The spectrum of responses is understandable; change, after all, is unnerving. And true multipolarity promises change of seismic proportions. Arguably, no single nation is a better embodiment of the advent of multipolarity than Saudi Arabia. Lately, the Kingdom has led the charge in reconfiguring longstanding relations in the Middle East – from the Abraham Accords to the recent détente with Iran; it has challenged the limits of old alliances, notably with the United States, while progressively diversifying its associations; and it is courting investors at hitherto unseen levels.

The growing popularity of sustainable finance and sustainability accounting practices has led to a significant increase of their adoption in emerging markets. As a result, these markets are gaining greater visibility in the global investment landscape, attracting increased funding for various projects and ventures. The adoption of these measures improves the reliability of projects in emerging markets, prompting the need for increased engagement and incentives from investment firms, regulatory agencies, and other key stakeholders. However, it is important to define what sustainable finance looks like in the context of emerging markets and assess whether it needs to be redefined to better address the unique challenges faced by these countries.

Africa’s renewable energy potential is enormous, though still largely unfulfilled. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), 60% of the world’s best solar power resources are in Africa, although only 1% of that capacity has been actualized. Similarly, Africa accounts for less than 1% of the wind global capacity despite having a wind energy potential of 180,000 terawatt hours (TWh) annually.

The African economic landscape needs to prioritize the local consumption of Green Hydrogen to propel its energy access in addition to bolstering its energy transition journey. With over 645 million Africans lacking access to electricity, energy deficits in Sub-Saharan Africa are one of the major impediments to the continent’s economic progress and industrial growth.

In the wake of the global energy transition amid the threat of climate change, countries across the globe have set decarbonization goals to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Global energy demand is expected to rise 25-30% by 2040, implying that economies reliant on fossil fuels will emit more carbon (IV) oxide. Amidst renewable energy alternatives, Green Hydrogen (hereafter GH) emerges as a fairly nascent but suitable decarbonization catalyst. GH is the new ‘it’ fuel in the energy sector. Around 60 countries have unveiled national strategies on hydrogen. Prospective importers of hydrogen, including Belgium and Germany, have ramped up their hydrogen diplomacy with a number of potential exporters across Africa, the Middle East, and South America. By 2040, it is forecast that around 206 gigawatts or 30 million tons of GH projects will be completed around the globe.

This study will hopefully serve as a starting point for a series of reports that will explain the unique challenges and opportunities that think tanks in different regions of the Global South experience. It also intends to test the underlying assumptions of what a think tank is or ought to be, given that prevailing definitions and benchmarks tend to be rooted in the West. We chose to start with the Gulf region, specifically, the 6 Gulf Cooperation Council countries, given that their current political economy sits, in some ways, at an inflection point. The GCC countries share the overriding economic objective of diversifying their economies since, in the next few decades, their oil wealth will deplete significantly. But this collective goal is underpinned by the shifting sands of geopolitics, where longstanding political stances and alliances are now undergoing profound metamorphoses. This will necessitate considerable finessing on the policy-making front. And, yet, think tanks appear to be under-utilized in the region. We set out to understand why.

While the CRAs play an important role in assessing a country’s creditworthiness and aiding investors to understand the continent’s fiscal and monetary position, they do not always give a comprehensive and balanced rating and analysis of the continent. CRAs are constrained by a limited understanding of contextual dynamics, various biases, and limited local private sector insights. These gaps call for the need for a pan-African rating coalition that would enhance the capacity of local credit rating agencies to solidify local analyses, highlight local nuances, curate regional databases, and shape proper investor responses to African events.

The growing acceptance of digitization and artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace is one of the key factors shaping the future of work. However, this phenomenon has raised concerns regarding job loss, unrealistic expectations around productivity, and the necessity for workers to keep up with the changing digital landscape in workplaces all over the world. The future of work is an even more challenging concept in emerging economies, where it is influenced by factors like the nation's economic development, demographic changes, and mechanisms relating to technological advancements/adaptation.

The Middle East is increasingly turning to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and Green Sukuk to finance their green transitions, as these sustainable financing solutions gain momentum worldwide. In 2022, ESG and Green Sukuk achieved a remarkable growth rate of 35 percent, reaching a global value of total funding deployed of $8.1 billion. However, the GCC region continues to dominate this financial sector, with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) outperforming other countries in both total issuance and average issuance size, as seven out of the top 10 issuances in 2022 were from KSA.

Every five years, the World Expo brings together representatives from different countries to engage and address the world's most pressing issues. With the participation of 192 nations, Expo 2020 Dubai set a record that begs to be broken. Amidst high expectations, the next Expo will take place in Osaka, Japan in 2025. Africa had a significant presence at Expo 2020 Dubai. For the first time in the 170-year history of World Expos, every African country participated and had its own pavilion. They had the opportunity to display their unique future visions and to focus on commercial opportunities and collaboration. However, the majority of participating African nations lacked the strategies necessary to take full advantage of this unparalleled global stage.

As the world gets warmer, the earth is getting “sun-bathed” you may think, but the world is sunburned and urgently needs sunscreen. In the African continent, the effects of climate change range from increasingly frequent droughts in Kenya, Somalia, and Sudan, to sudden floods in Chad and Niger, which have disrupted local communities and their economic livelihoods. Present multilateral and multi-stakeholder efforts in climate adaptation measures, including early detection and warning systems (EDWS), do not symbiotically engage with pastoral communities. Rather they employ cut-and-paste techno-managerial approaches, which do not fit well in unique cultural and market contexts

It is widely argued that a hydrogen-driven global order is likely to reduce geopolitical vulnerability and be less prone to international security risks than the current hydrocarbon-driven one. It is expected to do so by increasing the share of energy produced domestically, shifting geostrategic competition from a focus on grabbing resources—a long-standing concern in Africa—to mastering technology and offering states opportunities for economic diversification. However, geopolitical and security risk trends in Africa suggest that hydrogen value chains will likely exacerbate previous fault lines created by regional power plays, derived resource geopolitics, and historic colonial political influences.

Philanthropy has always been at the heart of the Gulf's socioeconomic framework, with the practice of giving having deep religious roots. Philanthropists in the region — whether family businesses or individuals — deepen their religious convictions through the traditional Islamic obligations and voluntary practices of "Zakat" (mandatory almsgiving), "Sadaqah" (voluntary charity), and "Waqf" (charitable endowments). These practices are intended to bring the community together while serving humanitarian causes and needs. Yet, despite the importance of giving in communal rituals, research and studies on Gulf philanthropy have been sparse, leading to the question — what is the impact of Gulf philanthropy?