Food, energy and debt crises can reinforce one another—and reshape regional power

Nur Arafeh and Hamza Meddeb argue that the pandemic and Ukraine war exposed structural weaknesses in Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon rather than creating those weaknesses from nothing.

Food import dependence makes foreign-exchange shortages a problem for ordinary access to essentials. Currency depreciation raises local import costs; expensive energy strains budgets; debt service limits the government’s capacity to cushion either shock. Policies favoring large export-oriented agricultural investors can coexist with neglected small farmers producing for domestic consumption.

The domestic political problem is that reforms threaten constituencies on which leaders depend. Preserving those arrangements can worsen the fiscal crisis, but changing them can endanger the governing coalition.

The same pressures alter regional relationships. Hydrocarbon exporters gain income while vulnerable importers seek assistance, giving funders greater influence over economic and foreign-policy choices. Published in January 2024, the paper supplies a structural account of that dependence; its historical debt figures and forecasts should not be read as a present-day balance sheet.