This report examines the intersections between Covid-19 and food systems across the North African region. It looks at how the dominant ‘food security’ paradigm increased vulnerability to the economic dislocation wrought by the pandemic. It examines the impacts of Covid-19, particularly on (rural) working people and small-scale food producers and how governments across the region responded to these challenges. Finally, it offers a pathway out of this moment of crisis rooted in models of food sovereignty and economic justice.
Durante las revueltas populares en el norte de África y en el oeste de Asia de hace una década (2010-2011), en el marco de la llamada “primavera árabe”, el pensamiento y la praxis de Frantz Fanon demostraron ser más relevantes que nunca. No sólo relevantes, sino perspicaces, ya que nos permiten entender mejor la violencia en el mundo maniqueo en el que vivimos y la racionalidad de la resistencia popular.
Six decades after the death of the revolutionary thinker Frantz Fanon and the publication of his masterpiece The Wretched of the Earth, Algeria is witnessing another revolution, this time against the national bourgeoisie that Fanon railed against in his passionate and ferocious chapter ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’. What would he say about the new Algerian revolution? How might he act in the face of current events? What can we as young Algerians learn from his reflections and experiences?
Tunisia has undergone radical changes in the past decade, and faces more in the years to come, if the EU has its way. As the first country to topple its dictator in early 2011, it set off a chain of revolutions across North Africa and West Asia that led to a political reconfiguration, the impacts of which are still playing out. While Tunisia is often seen as the ‘success’ story of the ‘Arab Spring’, the transition has actually been a lot more complex than that.
Samir Larabi, Shelagh Smith and Hamza Hamouchene explore how the fight to create independent trade unions, the rise of the unemployed movement and the struggle against state oppression in Kabylia (Algeria) have fed into the emergence of the Hirak and assess the movement’s prospects for the future.
Northern African countries are key suppliers of natural resources to the global economy, from large- scale oil and gas extraction in Algeria and Tunisia, to phosphate mining in Tunisia and Morocco, to water-intensive agribusiness paired with tourism in Morocco and Tunisia. The commodification of nature and privatisation of resources entailed in these projects has led to serious environmental damages, and forced these countries into a subservient position in the global economy, sustaining and deepening global inequalities.
