Regional integration

House of Commons Library

North Africa regional overview 2018

Opportunities for North Africa's young and educated population have not opened up since the uprisings of 2011

Politics

• Tunisias former regime was overthrown, and it is still considered the only country that installed genuine democracy after 2011.
• Now it may now be drifting back towards authoritarianism and the personalisation of politics.

Security

Parts of North Africa have long been troubled by insecurity and unrest; those problems have become far worse in Libya and Egypt, according to one widely-used source. There are many terrorist cells in the region, some local and some linked to external groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which has strong links through the Sahel on the southern edge of the Sahara, and ISIS/Daesh, with its connections in the Levant.

Lack of cooperation

• Most North African countries have porous southern borders and a deep tradition of land-based trade routes; smuggling, including of small arms, is endemic and essential to the livelihoods of the small populations who live in border areas in the Sahara. This environment is fertile territory for radical groups to spread their ideologies and to make money, as commentators such as Jacques Rousselier have pointed out:
  1. The patchy and under-resourced nature of the Maghreb states’ security cooperation, marred by the Morocco–Algeria political rivalry and failed or weak governments in Libya and Tunisia, is particularly evident in the border regions’ glaring vulnerabilities to transnational crime, terrorist networks, and illegal migration.
• North African neighbours share many bonds of culture and history, but their political relations with each other are marked by distrust.
• But other factors, including the lack of any central authority in Libya, exacerbate the weakness of regional collaboration, leaving both intra-regional trade and cooperation on security very limited.

Economic growth

• The region has achieved strong growth in the last few years, although a lot of this growth was the result of a recovery in Libyan oil production; much of the region remains dependent on hydrocarbon revenues.
• Nevertheless, unemployment remains high, particularly for young people, graduates and women, and there are many isolated rural areas that do not benefit much from economic growth.

Migration

North Africa is a source of migrants to Europe and several countries have sizeable North African diasporas. The region, particularly Libya, is also a transit route for migrants from Africa south of the Sahara, and there has been a lot of controversy about EU efforts to handle this, such as EU Navfor Med Operation Sophia.

UK action

• The UK Department for International Development and Foreign and Commonwealth Office run the North Africa Regional Cooperation Fund and the North Africa Technical Assistance Facility. Together these funds aim to bolster stability:
  1. …designed to support the delivery of the North Africa [National Security Council] strategy, the objective of which is to achieve sustainable stability, security and prosperity in North Africa, including by tackling long-term structural issues.

  
  The programmes receive Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) money from the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, overseen by the National Security Council. The North Africa Regional Cooperation Fund’s budget allocation for 2018/9 is £3 million, while the Technical Assistance Facility is spending £5 million.

Brexit

• The UK Government wants to replicate the EU-negotiated free trade agreements with the North African countries. Asked how much progress there had been in replacing the existing trade agreement with Tunisia, for example, the Government’s answer was not time-specific:
  1. We have been in constant dialogue with all our trading partners to achieve continuity by replicating the effects of our existing EU trade agreements. They understand this must be primary objective, and securing continuity will be a strong foundation to build on our already successful trading relationship.
• UK policy towards the region has been shaped by EU initiatives for the region, such as the European Neighbourhood Policy.
• The outline of the political declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the EU and the UK, published in November 2018, suggested that the EU and the UK would coordinate policy where possible.