Youth unemployment and terrorism in the MENAP (Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) region

2018 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 9-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aniruddha Bagchi ◽  
Jomon A. Paul
Author(s):  
Hayat Al-Khatib

Higher education in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has not been able to deliver the needed knowledge and technology transfer to generate productivity and innovation in this part of the world (Arab Economic and Social Summit, 2009; Thomson and Reuters, 2007). Youth unemployment in the MENA region remains the highest in the world, with the Middle East rating 21% and North Africa rating 25%, out of whom one-third are university graduates (World Bank, 2013). The chapter aims to address issues pertaining to the need to shift perspective in higher education in the MENA region, in the light of its growing importance as a developing entity with natural and human resources. The chapter identifies the role of higher education, in policies and practice, in addressing the needs of the region and transforming its resources, human and physical, to further its economic development.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Krafft ◽  
Reham Rizk

PurposeEntrepreneurship is promoted as a solution to high rates of youth unemployment around the world and especially in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This paper investigates the potential for youth entrepreneurship to alleviate unemployment, focusing on Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia.Design/methodology/approachThe authors examine who entrepreneurs are (in comparison to the unemployed), using multinomial logit models. The authors compare entrepreneurs' and wage workers' working conditions and earnings. They exploit panel data to assess earnings and occupational dynamics. They specifically use the Labor Market Panel Surveys of 2012 (Egypt), 2016 (Jordan), and 2014 (Tunisia), along with previous waves.FindingsThe authors find that entrepreneurs are the opposite of the unemployed in MENA. The unemployed are disproportionately young, educated and women. Entrepreneurs are older, less educated and primarily men. Entrepreneurship does not generally lead to higher earnings and does have fewer benefits.Originality/valuePromoting youth entrepreneurship is not only unlikely to be successful in reducing youth unemployment in MENA, but also, if successful, may even be harmful to youth.


2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-387
Author(s):  
Valentine Moghadam

The year 2011 will forever be known as the year of mass protests for regime change and democratization in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Opinions on causes and outcomes have focused on the role of young people, the demands of “the Arab street,” and the possible transition to a liberal, Islamist, or coalition type of governance. Middle East specialists have long been aware of the problems of authoritarian regimes, widening inequalities, high rates of youth unemployment, deteriorating infrastructure and public services, and rising prices attenuated only by subsidies. But something has been missing from recent discussions and analyses. Let us pose it in the form of a number of (socialist-feminist) questions. We have seen that “the Arab street” is not exclusively masculine, but what kind of democratic governance can women's rights groups expect? To what extent will Tunisian women shape the democratic transition and the building of new institutions? In Egypt, will an outcome be—to use a phrase coined by East European feminists in the early 1990s—a “male democracy”? How can a democratic transition benefit working women and the poor?


Author(s):  
Odile Moreau

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.


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