Trade Liberalization in North African Countries - Essay Example

The African continent has been divided into three regions to be able to account for the differences in the level of development. The disaggregation is a manifestation of the level of development – of North Africa, the South African Customs Union, and the ‘Rest of Africa’. The South African Customs Union is composed of South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, and Botswana. Both North and South Africa are middle-income countries while most countries in the category of Rest of Africa are low-income countries.

North Africa consists of seven countries namely: Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara. As of today, the region has an estimated population of more than 208 million. Among the African countries, North Africa has the biggest non-black population that comprising more than half of the population at 160 million.

Largely, North Africa is an Arab region with the most number of Arab populations in the world. This can be traced to the historical, cultural, and religious influence of the Middle East. North African countries have diverse cultural and historical backgrounds that affect the variance of their political, economic, and cultural policies. Apart from being collectively referred to as part of the same region, sharing a common adherence to Islamic cultural identity, and colonial history, it is now difficult to find commonality among the countries of North Africa.

As the African continent is known for its enormous wealth of natural resources, with one of the world’s largest countries with vast deposits of diamonds, gold chrome, uranium, copper, iron, cobalt, and many other minerals, the same is true with the North African region. It is endowed with a richness of natural resources, especially in terms of agriculture and minerals. Libya and Algeria are also known to have large amounts of petroleum.

North Africa is a region that can rouse development internally with all of its’ natural and human resources. The full use and maximization of its natural resources alone can help this region into full economic development.

The North African region is not a rookie when it comes to globalization. It relies on oil, natural gas, phosphates, and agricultural products for exports. Tradable industrial output, non-traded goods, and services play a not-so-significant role in North Africa’s economy in terms of manufacturing and most of the existing firms and entrepreneurs are mainly family-owned and out of date compared to other emerging markets in the global industry.

The North African region had also been a region of dispute. Just recently, three of its countries have suffered from political chaos, namely Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. The growing discontent of the people has greatly affected the ruling power in these countries and the government’s retaliation has further destabilized their respective governments. Protests come in different forms, yet, the peoples’ clamor is the same: protests against political suppression and significant economic reforms.

It has been apparent from the series of events from last year and early this year (as of writing, the political conflict in Libya has yet to be concluded) that the government is ruled through repressive laws and is already being isolated from the broad masses.

On the other hand, despite the diversity of North African countries, they also have common features. One of these is the significant aspect of the policy-making process. Two of the major realities that need to be confronted by redefining the role of the state are the region’s low labor productivity and high unemployment rate.