This blog post was first published on the Trade Post blog by Gael Raballand and Miles McKenna.
A big issue for the business community, informal trade has been equally as troublesome for the cash-strapped transitional government. According to recent World Bank research, the Tunisian government is losing a significant amount of public revenues-- duties, value-added tax and other taxes-- from informal trade along the Libyan and Algerian borders.
The socioeconomic challenges facing Algeria are many, the most urgent of which is without doubt youth unemployment. In a July 5 interview with the weekly, Jeune Afrique, Mr. Issad Rebrab, the CEO of Algeria’s leading private industrial group Cevital, ran through the raw facts: “Our unemployment rate is 10%, but youth unemployment is above 35%”. He added: “Algeria must move swiftly towards diversifying its economy and creating jobs.”
The last few years have been sobering for the Maghreb. The sudden drop off in demand from the European Union, as a result of the financial crisis, was a stark lesson in the perils of over reliance on a single trading partner, no matter how large. It also revealed how the lack of integration left the region fully exposed to external shocks. The rise of youth unemployment, and the manifestation of popular discontent in the ‘Arab Spring,’ has also made economic growth a priority, as the only way to satisfy the demand for more and better opportunities. 
There was a brief moment of confusion at the opening of the ministerial workshop on regional trade in the Maghreb. Habib Ben Yahia, the secretary general of the Arab Maghreb Union, wondered out loud about which language he should use. Before him was a diverse audience that he could address in Arabic, French, English? What to choose? Sitting next to him, the Moroccan minister of transport and equipment, Aziz Rabbah nailed it: ‘Speak the language of trade! ’
Today at Bruegel—one of the leading European think tanks—we exchanged views on the way forward for the Middle East and North Africa countries one year after the Arab Spring. Jean Pisani-Ferry (Director, Bruegel) chaired a discussion focused on EU-MENA integration to jump start growth and job creation in the MENA region. Various experts reflected on the current European approach to foster greater regional integration with and within the MENA countries. 
We drove 140 miles across the Djibouti desert to the Ethiopian border to gain a better understanding of the flow of transported goods between the two countries. Djibouti depends on its deep sea port around which the Djibouti city built up over the centuries. It is the closest and best equipped port for Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, which has no sea coast of its own. Ethiopia has a population of around 90 million, exceeding that of any one country in Europe, while Djibouti has less than one million, fewer than Fairfax County, Virginia. Almost all of Djiboutians live in the port city. 
