https://arab.news/9te57
North Africa enters 2026 with a paradox. Growth rates are respectable by regional standards, state capacity remains firmer than in much of the continent, and global powers increasingly treat the region as strategically necessary rather than diplomatically convenient.
Yet the foundations beneath that progress are thinner than the headline figures suggest. Economic recovery has outpaced political renewal, climate stress is eroding social contracts, and external interest has grown more transactional as the global order fragments. The region is not failing, but neither is it insulated.
The economic data is encouraging. Combined growth across North Africa has hovered around 4 percent, outperforming both sub-Saharan Africa and the broader Middle East. Egypt and Morocco account for much of that momentum.
Egypt’s rebound from the edge of default in 2024 stands out. Currency flotation, painful subsidy reform, and renewed Gulf and European inflows stabilized a balance-of-payments crisis that once looked existential. Output growth approaching 4 percent may appear modest for a country of 110 million people, but after inflation that exceeded 30 percent and chronic foreign currency shortages, stabilization itself became the achievement.
