What the [redacted] are “flying geese?” “North Africa is unlikely to produce its own flying geese in the short term,” Riccardo Fabiani writes for the FT (paywall). North African economies are poised to enter a development stage akin to Asia’s in the 1990s, but only if countries are willing to tackle their political and economic challenges head, he says. With wages in eastern Europe rising in recent years, many companies have begun looking elsewhere for their labor intensive business needs and focus seem to be shifting toward North Africa, where the labor is cheap and both physical and human capital are gradually improving. But Fabiano argues that despite them being attractive destinations for FDI, countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco “do not seem to enjoy the political conditions that enabled the Asian economies to take off … competent bureaucracies dedicated to economic growth and industrialisation.”