US-China Competition in the Middle East and North Africa

 The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published on 1 July 2026 an analysis titled "In the Middle East and North Africa, America and China Converge More Than They Diverge" by Amr Hamzawy and Kathryn Selfe.

Competition between the United States and China in the Middle East and North Africa is less a threat and more an opportunity.  The region has important geostrategic significance for both countries.  As great power competition develops globally, Washington and Beijing's positions in the region are increasingly converging.  

The United States and China are united by their primary interest in maintaining free trade in the region.  For both countries, a stable, peace-driven order is key.  Washington is also driven by interest in Israel's security; Beijing is similarly driven by China's need for oil and liquid natural gas.  These two interests are compatible and underscore the need for peace and stability in the region.  

Horn of Africa Countries Rank Near Bottom of Human Freedom Index

 The Cato Institute has just released its Human Freedom Index 2021 that ranks and evaluates 165 countries.  The index presents a broad measure of human freedom, understood as the absence of coercive constraint. It evaluates 82 indicators of personal and economic freedom in the following areas: rule of law; security and safety; movement; religion; association, assembly, and civil society; expression and information; relationships; size of government; legal system and property rights; sound money; freedom to trade internationally; and regulations.

Countries in the Horn of Africa did not score well.  Ethiopia ranked 132, Djibouti 137, Somalia 159, and Sudan 162.  Eritrea and South Sudan were not included in the rankings.  

Africa and the Human Freedom Index 2018

The Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute, and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom have just published "The Human Freedom Index 2018: A Global Measurement of Personal, Civil, and Economic Freedom" by Ian Vasquez and Tanja Porcnik.

It evaluated 162 countries for 2016, the most recent year for which sufficient data are available. It looked at 79 indicators of personal and economic freedom in the following areas: rule of law, security, safety, movement, religion, association, assembly, civil society, expression, information, identity, relationships, size of government, legal systems, property rights, access to sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation of credit, labor, and business.

Of the 47 African countries evaluated, the ten best performing were: Mauritius (37), Cape Verde (53), Seychelles (54), Ghana (57), South Africa (63), Botswana (64), Rwanda (71), Namibia (74), Kenya (82), and Uganda (85). The five worst performing African countries were: Libya (158), Sudan (157), Egypt (156), Algeria (155) and Burundi (154).