Middle East & Africa | Open Sesame

Morocco and Algeria keep building more barriers

Fences make neighbours poorer

Not the best way to enhance trade
|MARSA BEN MHIDI

HAD Algeria and Morocco honoured their agreement back in 1989 to form an economic union, along with Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania, they would be among the Middle East’s largest economies. Their poor border regions would be booming crossroads. Over the decade to 2015, reckons the World Bank, their two economies would each have almost have doubled in size.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Open Sesame”

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From the July 29th 2017 edition

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