Morocco’s New Challenges as a Gatekeeper of the World’s Food Supply: The Geopolitics, Economics, and Sustainability of OCP’s Global Fertilizer Exports

Learn in PDF
 

Introduction

Morocco’s phosphorus fertilizer trade, with its large manufacturing capability and worldwide attain, has reworked the dominion right into a gatekeeper of worldwide meals provide chains. Morocco’s centrality to international meals safety rests with the truth that all meals crops, certainly all flora, require the component phosphorus to develop and Morocco possesses over 70% of the world’s phosphate rock reserves, from which the phosphorus utilized in fertilizers is derived. Not like different finite assets reminiscent of fossil fuels, there is no such thing as a different to phosphorus. By turning into one of many world’s main fertilizer exporters, as an alternative of continuous to only export the uncooked materials, Morocco has enriched its economic system and elevated its worldwide standing. In Sub-Saharan Africa specifically, the dominion’s mixture of three way partnership partnerships in native fertilizer manufacturing and deft direct outreach to farmers has resulted in a exceptional enhance in African agricultural yields and the notable enlargement of Morocco’s delicate energy affect throughout the continent.

After spending the earlier decade reworking its fertilizer manufacturing sector into a worldwide trade chief, Morocco now faces new challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and the extreme provide chain disruptions which have adopted in its wake. These financial shocks have induced a pointy rise in world starvation and hovering international meals inflation, throwing a highlight on Morocco’s position in guaranteeing worldwide meals safety and the soundness of meals costs upon which a lot of the worldwide economic system relies upon. The 2021 Meals Value Index, revealed by the U.N. Meals and Agriculture Group (FAO), reached a 10-year excessive, with common meals costs having jumped 28% worldwide from the earlier 12 months. Whereas provide disruptions have induced shortages and elevated ranges of meals inflation throughout extra prosperous international locations, the present disaster has resulted in an alarming rise in starvation throughout the extra susceptible segments of the worldwide inhabitants. In its 2021 annual report on the State of Meals Safety and Diet within the World, the FAO warned that “the world is at a crucial juncture,” citing its median estimate that 768 million individuals confronted starvation in 2020. Though the rise in international starvation had been stored to a standstill from 2014-19, this modified in 2020 when the variety of individuals going through starvation rose by an estimated 118 million. The issue is especially acute in Africa, which among the many world’s areas has the best proportion of its inhabitants, 21%, experiencing extreme starvation. In 2020, the overall undernourished inhabitants in Africa amounted to 282 million individuals, an increase of 46 million from 2019. Morocco’s rising position in enabling African nations to extend their meals manufacturing is now at a crucial inflection level as its fertilizer vegetation in West and East Africa are scheduled to change into operational between 2023 and 2025. If Morocco can reach serving to to stem the rising tide of starvation in Africa, it can change into one of many principal geopolitical actors on the continent.

Because it seeks to appreciate these business and geopolitical ambitions, Morocco is going through more and more daunting environmental and financial challenges exacerbated by the debilitating influence of local weather change. Phosphate extraction and fertilizer manufacturing are extremely energy- and water-intensive, making fertilizer manufacturing ground-zero for a vicious cycle within the food-energy-water nexus. Morocco’s phosphate and fertilizer trade consumes about 7% of its annual power output and 1% of its water.

The issue is additional difficult due to nitrogen, the opposite primary fertilizer component that vegetation want. Pure fuel will not be solely a producing energy supply but in addition a constituent element of nitrogen manufacturing, which means the value of pure fuel accounts for at the very least 80% of the variable value of nitrogen fertilizer. Diammonium phosphate (DAP), the most well-liked sort of phosphorus fertilizer worldwide, is comprised of 46% phosphorus and 18% nitrogen, produced by inflicting a response between phosphoric acid and ammonia — the latter being composed of nitrogen and hydrogen. By November 2021, the spike in pure fuel costs noticed the price of producing ammonia rise to $1,000 per ton in comparison with $110 earlier within the 12 months. Accordingly, the value of DAP rose to its highest stage in 10 years.   

How nicely Morocco manages the food-water-energy nexus amid rising power prices and local weather change-driven challenges to its personal water safety will influence each its personal financial growth and the soundness of meals provides internationally. The dominion’s drive to develop energy technology from its appreciable photo voltaic and wind assets holds the chance to beat these challenges and probably create a virtuous cycle throughout the food-energy-water nexus via the manufacturing of “inexperienced” hydrogen that may very well be used to interchange pure fuel to provide inexperienced ammonia. The way forward for Morocco’s position as a gatekeeper of worldwide meals provide chains will in the end rely upon its success at dwelling in attaining power transition to extend the sustainability of its fertilizer trade.
 

Morocco’s rise as a pacesetter in international fertilizer manufacturing

Because the begin of its phosphate mining trade in 1921, Morocco has been a significant supply of phosphorus for artificial fertilizers. The worldwide use of such fertilizers has created the big will increase in crop yields which have pushed the world’s inhabitants growth over the previous 100 years, climbing from about 1.8 billion to the present 7.9 billion individuals. At this time, in contrast to a century in the past, Morocco is now one of many world’s high 5 fertilizer exporters. Not content material to provide overseas producers the fertilizer’s trade’s equal of crude oil, the monarchy’s Workplace Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP) started greater value-added manufacturing of the chemical inputs to fertilizer, primarily phosphoric acid, and phosphorus fertilizer itself in the course of the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties. In 2008, Morocco re-organized the OCP into the well-oiled, state-owned OCP Group company. The restructuring and accompanying large infrastructure build-up reworked OCP into a worldwide chief in all phases of the fertilizer manufacturing worth chain. The centerpiece of its transformation was the development of the world’s largest fertilizer manufacturing hub in Jorf Lasfar on Morocco’s Atlantic coast. By 2018, the dominion’s annual phosphate output nearly doubled whereas its annual fertilizer manufacturing tripled, attaining a gross working surplus of greater than $1 billion. Producing at the very least 45 completely different blends of fertilizer for export, the hub ships its merchandise by way of the Jorf Lasfar port, which as a consequence overtook the port of Casablanca in tonnage exported.

In 2020, OCP mining operations produced 40.7 million tons of phosphate and exported 10.3 million tons of the uncooked materials. From its phosphate provides, OCP manufactured 7.1 million tons of phosphoric acid — the chemical compound utilized in making fertilizer — whereas exporting 1.9 million tons of the important thing enter. OCP’s 2020 phosphorus fertilizer manufacturing totaled 11.3 million tons, of which 11.2 million tons had been exported. These exports have seen OCP change into an organization of worldwide attain, serving to international locations from Brazil to India keep steady meals provides. OCP dominates the market in Africa with a 54% share of phosphorus merchandise in 2020. The corporate is equally robust in Europe and South America with respective 2020 market shares of 41% and 46%. Primarily on account of its massive presence in India, OCP holds a 32% share of the Center East and South Asia market. Even in North America, the place OCP faces stiff competitors from the American producer Mosaic, OCP nonetheless held a 28% market share, accounting for about 60% of the U.S. import market, previous to the U.S. Division of Commerce’s 2021 imposition of tariffs on imports from OCP.

Morocco’s economic system has reaped the advantages of OCP’s transformation into a global fertilizer exporting big. OCP’s whole 2020 revenues amounted to $5.94 billion and the corporate accounted for roughly 20% of the dominion’s export revenues. On the coronary heart of Morocco’s economic system, OCP is the nation’s largest employer, offering jobs for 21,000 individuals. Ensconced throughout the kingdom’s governing equipment, nearly all of OCP’s board of administrators are officers from authorities ministries. Past increasing export revenues via worldwide advertising, Rabat has used OCP’s exports as a overseas coverage instrument, significantly in Sub-Saharan Africa, the place the corporate adroitly blends gross sales, investments in native manufacturing, and growth outreach to create an increasing community of business connectivity.
 

OCP and Morocco’s increasing delicate energy affect throughout Africa

With agriculture contributing 30% of Africa’s GDP and using 55% of the working inhabitants, the continent’s prosperity depends upon the development of its agricultural sector. With Africa now possessing 65% of the Earth’s uncultivated arable land, progress in advancing its agricultural sector is turning into more and more important to international meals safety. By way of OCP, Morocco has positioned itself on the forefront of the hassle to rework African agriculture. In 2016, OCP created its OCP Africa division to contribute to the event of built-in agricultural ecosystems on the continent. With subsidiary divisions in 12 African international locations, OCP Africa focuses on empowering smallholder farmers to raised and extra profitably take part in agricultural worth chains. In 2018, OCP Africa launched its Agribooster program to supply African farmers with “inclusive and customised end-to-end options” to extend their yields, incomes, and long-term livelihoods. Past training and specialised coaching providers, this system facilitates relationships with enter suppliers, monetary providers suppliers, and commodity patrons to optimize using seed, fertilizer and different inputs, loans and insurance coverage, mechanics, warehousing, and offtake mechanisms. Beginning as a single pilot program in Ghana after which increasing to different African international locations, the Agribooster program assisted 168,404 farmers in its first 12 months, creating a further common yield of 33%.

The success of OCP Africa’s holistic method demonstrates each the centrality of fertilizer to meals safety and the need of enhancing native participation in worth chains for fertilizer manufacturing and meals manufacturing. A decade previous to OCP Africa’s creation, the African Union’s (AU) 2006 Abuja Declaration referred to as for an “African Inexperienced Revolution” to extend agricultural productiveness to feed the continent’s quickly rising inhabitants. With Africa’s fertilizer use then averaging solely eight kilograms per hectare, a mere 10% of the world’s common, the AU adopted the aim of elevating the extent of fertilizer use to a mean of at the very least 50 kilograms per hectare. To realize that aim, it established the Africa Fertilizer Financing Mechanism (AFFM), managed by the African Improvement Financial institution (AFDB), which is devoted to accelerating fertilizer manufacturing worth chains in Africa in accordance with the AFDB’s personal Feed Africa initiative and the meals safety and sustainable growth targets adopted by the AU’s Agenda 2063.
 

Morocco itself solely formally rejoined the AU in 2017, having left the then-Group of African Unity in 1984 after it had granted membership to the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), implicitly recognizing the SADR’s declare to sovereign statehood over the territory of the Western Sahara that Morocco claims as its southern provinces. By October 2021, 20 African nations had opened consulates within the Moroccan-controlled a part of the disputed area, recognizing the dominion’s declare to sovereignty. The success of the OCP Africa’s Agribooster program has contributed to the geopolitical turnaround, with Morocco rising as a key companion within the AU’s efforts to make sure enough meals provides for a whole lot of thousands and thousands of individuals throughout the continent. In 2020, for instance, the AFDB’s AFFM partnered with OCP Africa in a three-year mission to help 430,000 smallholder farmers in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana via the supply of a $4 million partial commerce credit score assure. AFFM and OCP Africa are every offering a $2 million partial commerce credit score assure for OCP fertilizer and different high quality inputs in addition to the Agribooster program’s coaching in agricultural practices. Based mostly on OCP’s prior success, the AFDB tasks this system will contribute to a 30% improve in rice yields in Côte d’Ivoire and a 35% yield improve in rice and corn yields in Ghana.

Working in West Africa’s 4 largest economies — Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal — the Agribooster program has benefitted 630,000 farmers, leading to appreciable crop yield will increase throughout the board, together with a 48% rise in Nigeria’s corn yield and a 63% soar in Senegal’s millet yield. OCP’s College Lab operates throughout 9 international locations in each western and jap Africa utilizing travelling faculties, cell laboratories, and digital communications to supply over 420,000 farmers multiyear help and technological options. However past these and different comparable packages, OCP Africa is now concerned in a brand new section of engagement via three way partnership funding in fertilizer manufacturing in Africa.

Morocco’s most vital fertilizer partnership is with Nigeria. OCP provides over 90% of annual fertilizer demand of Africa’s most populous nation. Fairly strategic for Morocco, Nigeria sits on Africa’s largest pure fuel reserves, totaling over 200 trillion cubic ft (5,675 billion cubic meters). Since Morocco lacks ample fuel assets of its personal, Nigeria can present the pure fuel from which fertilizer’s different elementary element, nitrogen, is produced, generally within the type of ammonia. In 2018, OCP Africa and the Nigeria Sovereign Funding Authority (NSIA) signed a protocol settlement for the development of a now $1.4 billion ammonia and fertilizer plant with the intention of OCP boosting fertilizer provides to Nigeria from 1 million to three million tons over a interval of 5 years. OCP’s Nigeria manufacturing unit may have an annual manufacturing capability of 750,000 tons of ammonia and 1 million tons of fertilizer. The mutually useful match between Morocco’s phosphates reserves and Nigeria’s pure fuel provides gave rise to the association whereby OCP’s plant situated in Nigeria’s gas-rich Akwa Ibom State would export as much as 70% of its ammonia output to OCP’s Jorf Lasfar advanced to provide fertilizer manufacturing in Morocco whereas OPC Morocco would provide phosphoric acid for use with the rest of the ammonia in Nigeria to provide 1 million tons per 12 months of DAP and nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium (NPK) fertilizers for Nigeria’s home market.

In March 2021, OCP and NSIA signed a shareholders settlement to type a three way partnership firm for the development of the built-in plant, which is scheduled to be operational in 2025. The settlement was a part of a package deal of offers that included a framework settlement for the Nigerian Nationwide Petroleum Company (NNPC), Mobil Producing Nigeria, and the Fuel Aggregation Firm Nigeria to provide pure fuel to the plant in addition to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to judge the potential for an fairness funding by the NNPC within the OCP-NSIA three way partnership. The settlement cements a division of labor between the three way partnership companions by which the Nigerian entities will concentrate on the upstream element whereas OCP focuses on fertilizer manufacturing, creating a cheap Moroccan-Nigerian fertilizer manufacturing worth chain.

Along with its plant in Nigeria, OCP Africa is investing roughly $1.3 billion within the building of an industrial fertilizer advanced in Ghana. Combining Moroccan phosphorus merchandise with Ghanaian pure fuel, OCP will equally produce ammonia, urea, and DAP. Just like the Nigerian facility, Ghana’s fertilizer plant may even have an annual fertilizer manufacturing capability of 1 million tons. Since Ghana’s inhabitants is simply 15% of the dimensions of Nigeria’s, OCP is seeking to the Ghanaian facility to export to different West African markets. For East African markets, OCP is constructing Africa’s second-largest fertilizer manufacturing advanced in Ethiopia. Utilizing phosphoric acid provided by Morocco and fuel and potash (a key supply of potassium), the $2.4 billion first growth section may have an annual manufacturing capability of two.5 million tons of urea, NPK, and nitrogen-phosphorus-sulfur (NPS). In 2021, OCP signed a joint growth settlement with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Finance to function the power. OCP expects the three way partnership firm will begin supplying the Ethiopian fertilizer market in 2023. In 2025, OCP plans to take a position a further $1.2 billion in a section 2 capability enlargement that can allow yearly fertilizer manufacturing to succeed in 3.8 million tons. Situated in Dire Dawa on the Addis Ababa-Djibouti rail line connecting the plant to the Port of Djibouti, the OCP-Ethiopia three way partnership will be capable of export surplus fertilizer to regional markets.

In all three circumstances, OCP Africa developed its deep relationships with its Africa companions via creating blended fertilizers for every nation and developing native mixing models. Blended fertilizer permits a rustic to match the fertilizer vitamins particularly to native soil situations and plant wants. The apply could be more economical and avoids environmental injury from extra vitamins escaping into water sources. Working with Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Company, OCP Africa found {that a} constraint to crop progress in Ethiopia was a soil deficiency in sulfur. Producing NPS and NPS+ fertilizer formulation calibrated for wheat, corn, and teff manufacturing in Ethiopia, OCP was capable of contribute to yields which have elevated by as much as 37%. In Ghana, OCP has been testing two new fertilizer formulation for cassava, greens, and soybean manufacturing.

In Nigeria, OCP’s actions equally started in 2016 with an settlement to companion with the Fertilizer Producers & Suppliers Affiliation of Nigeria (FEPSAN) on mixing operations. Facilitated by NSIA, the OCP-FEPSAN partnership renovated 13 mixing models and packaging amenities, enabling personal operators to determine new factories. Persevering with to develop the manufacturing worth chain in Nigeria, OCP is now developing three mixing models in Kaduna, Ogun, and Sokoto states with an mixture capability to end up 500,000 tons of fertilizers per 12 months. The models will create fertilizer blends custom-made to the wants of rice, corn, soybean, cassava, and tomato growers in Nigeria, rising farmers’ yields by 50-85% per hectare. The Kaduna facility alone is anticipated to learn at the very least 75,000 smallholder farmers. Due to the highly effective influence to enhance situations on the bottom, OCP Africa’s Nigeria division was awarded a $1.4 million co-investment grant by the USAID-funded West Africa Commerce & Funding Hub. Regardless of the U.S. Division of Commerce’s determination to impose a countervailing tariff of 20% on OCP’s fertilizer exports to the US, OCP’s centrality to fertilizer manufacturing in Africa was sufficiently compelling for the U.S. authorities’s worldwide growth company USAID to fund its fertilizer manufacturing operations in Nigeria. Along with manufacturing vegetation, fertilizer mixing amenities have been one of many key infrastructure developments that OCP continues to advance in Africa. OCP is conducting different vital manufacturing and mixing joint ventures in Tanzania, Rwanda, and several other different international locations.
 

Towards a extra sustainable future: Inexperienced ammonia

Morocco’s intensive photo voltaic and wind power assets maintain the potential to rework the present vicious cycle within the food-energy-water nexus right into a virtuous cycle by which fertilizer manufacturing will not be solely powered by renewable power however the ammonia itself is produced utilizing inexperienced hydrogen as an enter as an alternative of the “grey” hydrogen derived from pure fuel. OCP has dedicated itself to attaining carbon neutrality by 2040. In 2020, OCP coated 89% of its power wants by cogeneration and renewable power sources. The corporate has set an intermediate goal to cowl 100% of its power wants by 2030 with co-generation and renewables. In accordance the corporate, OCP met 31% of its water wants with unconventional water assets, together with handled wastewater from Khouribga, Benguerir, and Youssoufia, the three cities close to which 92% of OCP’s mining operations are situated, as nicely as desalinated seawater from the Jorf Lasfar and Laayoune desalination vegetation.

Morocco’s rising reliance on sea water reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination vegetation to fulfill industrial, agricultural, and residential wants would require sizeable new investments in energy technology from renewable power sources, as SWROs require 10 occasions the quantity of power to provide the identical quantity of water as typical floor water therapy. To advance the sustainability of OCP’s operations and develop inexperienced ammonia manufacturing, Morocco must strike a cautious stability between its fertilizer exports and its drive to develop its high-value agricultural exports whereas concurrently offering ample ingesting water to its inhabitants.

In the identical 12 months that Morocco reorganized OCP, the dominion launched its Inexperienced Morocco Plan (Plan Maroc Vert), which by 2020 had raised the worth of nation’s agricultural exports by 117% to roughly $3.5 billion and created 342,000 new jobs. Rabat’s new 10-year successor plan, referred to as Inexperienced Era 2020-2030, is meant to boost the resilience and sustainability of the nation’s agricultural manufacturing. To this finish, Morocco has accomplished 65% of the development of a brand new seawater desalination plant at Agadir that can provide water for agriculture via a newly constructed irrigation system in addition to ingesting water for underserved segments of the inhabitants. The dominion’s Water Plan 2020-2050, which incorporates the development of latest desalination vegetation and dams in addition to the enlargement of irrigation networks, is estimated to value roughly $40 billion.

With Morocco’s scant pure fuel assets, OCP imports 1.5 to 2 million tons of ammonia per 12 months. As a substitute of importing ammonia synthesized from grey hydrogen, Morocco might synthesize inexperienced ammonia from the inexperienced hydrogen produced from its home renewable power assets. The majority of inexperienced hydrogen’s manufacturing prices, about 70%, come from the electrical energy required to separate water into its hydrogen and oxygen parts and may very well be powered by Morocco’s photo voltaic power assets. In 2018, OCP signed a cooperation settlement with a German analysis group, the Fraunhofer Institute, Europe’s largest utilized science analysis institute, to develop a inexperienced hydrogen manufacturing mission in Benguerir in partnership with the Moroccan Institute for Analysis in Photo voltaic Vitality and New Energies (IRESEN). The mission would replicate the Fraunhofer Institute’s pilot plant in Germany however with the addition of a inexperienced ammonia synthesis unit. OCP has invested $200 million within the pilot plant with annual manufacturing capability of 1,460 tons of inexperienced ammonia. OCP tasks that inexperienced ammonia manufacturing may very well be scaled up from the pilot plant to succeed in 600,000 tons per 12 months and is eyeing European and different export markets along with satisfying its enter manufacturing necessities.

Upon Germany’s promulgation of its “German Nationwide Hydrogen Technique” in June 2020, Morocco turned the primary nation to signal a inexperienced hydrogen settlement with Berlin to create Africa’s first industrial plant for inexperienced hydrogen manufacturing utilizing Morocco’s solar energy infrastructure. Inside the framework of that settlement the Moroccan Company for Photo voltaic Vitality (Masen), Morocco’s privately owned, publicly funded built-in renewable power tasks firm, undertook the creation of a ten,000-ton-per-year inexperienced hydrogen manufacturing facility financed by the German growth financial institution KfW. Masen spearheaded the event of Morocco’s large Noor solar energy advanced, the world’s largest solar energy facility, having obtained €830 million (about $934 million) in German financing facilitated by KfW, amounting to 41.5% of the funding whole.

Nevertheless, each the IRASEN and Masen tasks have faltered on account of Morocco’s March 2021 suspension of diplomatic relations with Germany over Berlin’s stance on the problem of the contested Sahara area, forcing each tasks to proceed with none interplay with their German companions. The brand new authorities that got here to energy in Germany in December 2021 beneath Chancellor Olaf Scholz could present a possibility to restore the breech in Moroccan-German relations, assisted by the mediation of France, which assumed of the presidency of the Council of the European Union in January 2022.

Diversifying its growth companions, Morocco introduced in July 2021 the launching of its HEVO Ammonia Morocco mission to provide 183,000 tons of inexperienced ammonia per 12 months by 2026. Equal to about 10% of OCP’s present manufacturing enter necessities, will probably be Morocco’s largest inexperienced ammonia and inexperienced hydrogen mission to this point. The $850 million plant is being developed by Eire-headquartered hydrogen know-how agency Fusion Gas utilizing its HEVO proprietary know-how along side the Consolidated Contractors Firm. The buying and selling agency Vitol has signed an MOU to handle offtake from the HEVO mission to market inexperienced ammonia in Europe and different close by markets.

How shortly Morocco truly replaces the grey ammonia in its fertilizer manufacturing with climate-friendly inexperienced ammonia will rely upon the extent to which Rabat prioritizes exports of inexperienced hydrogen over home manufacturing use. Finally, the sustainability of Morocco’s fertilizer trade would require appreciable capital expenditures to develop its embryonic inexperienced hydrogen sector and the extra energy technology capability from renewable power sources that it wants.

Conclusion

With most financial indicators signaling a continuation and even worsening of the already excessive ranges of worldwide meals inflation in 2022, Morocco’s position within the worldwide business system guaranteeing each the provision and value of fertilizer will change into much more important to the soundness and affordability of meals provides. How Morocco performs its position as a gatekeeper of worldwide meals provide chains will in the end rely upon its success in attaining power transition via the enlargement of its renewable power sector. Using its massive photo voltaic power assets to energy inexperienced hydrogen and inexperienced ammonia manufacturing, together with desalination, Morocco might escape the vicious cycle of the upward spiraling of costs within the food-energy water nexus. Inexperienced hydrogen and inexperienced ammonia exports might assist different international locations to do the identical as nicely. With OCP’s fertilizer manufacturing vegetation in Sub-Saharan Africa scheduled to come back on-line over the following three years, inexperienced hydrogen and inexperienced ammonia might contribute to much more reasonably priced, greater crop yields that will halt the rise in starvation and gas the long-awaited African inexperienced revolution in meals manufacturing.

The matter is pressing each for Morocco and the worldwide group. The dominion requires further multibillion-dollar infrastructure investments to attain a sustainable, carbon-neutral fertilizer trade. Such investments present the US and Europe a possibility to boost the extent of their strategic engagement with Morocco. Within the absence of such engagement, Morocco will companion with different regional and international actors, shifting the geopolitics of worldwide meals safety.

Professor Michaël Tanchum is a non-resident fellow with the Center East Institute’s Economics and Vitality Program. He teaches at Universidad de Navarra and is an affiliate senior coverage fellow within the Africa program on the European Council on International Relations (ECFR). He’s additionally a senior fellow on the Austrian Institute for European and Safety Coverage (AIES). The views expressed on this piece are his personal. The writer want to thank Rafaella Vargas Reyes for her analysis help.

Photograph by FADEL SENNA/AFP by way of Getty Photographs