- The EU’s African Peace Facility Annual Report 2015 provides an overview of the main activities, achievements and challenges of this instrument of the European Union to support the African Union's and African Regional Economic Communities' efforts in the area of peace and security in 2015.

- The Institute for Security Studies Africa explains the delays in the Mali peace process, particularly before the June 2015 Agreement was reached, and the difficulties encountered in implementing that agreement.

- The European Council on Foreign Relations’ “Into Africa: China’s global security shift” argues that, after decades of hiding behind the rhetoric of non-interference, China has undergone a paradigm shift in its thinking. This is spurred by the wish to build its reputation as a good global citizen and the wish to protect its interests on the continent.

- The global economy is stuck in a low-growth trap that will require more coordinated and comprehensive use of fiscal, monetary and structural policies to move to a higher growth path, according to the OECD’s latest Global Economic Outlook.

- Brookings launched “Geopolitics in the 21st Century”, a series of books that analyse the important issues and dynamics currently at work on the world stage, and put forward specific policy recommendations that can guide the world’s leaders and policymakers in renovating the current international liberal order.

- Global foreign direct investment flows last year reached $1.8tn, their highest level since the 2008 global financial crisis, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development reported in its latest World Investment Report.

- The German Development Institute’s “Tax revenue performance and vulnerability in developing countries” addresses vulnerability of revenue to external shocks using export composition to capture economic structure and differentiating countries according to income levels, resource endowments and political regimes.

- UNU-WIDER’s “Can mining promote industrialisation? A comparative analysis of policy frameworks in three Southern African countries” examines Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe’s mineral sectors’ linkage development strategies. Variations have resulted in different outcomes in terms of local upgrading trajectories and institutional coherence.

- ICTSD Bridges Africa’s “How to leverage Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for service sector development in African countries?” finds that FDI in services is critical to enable African LDCs and LICs to be active participants in the servicification of production and to ensure that they are not left out of Global Value Chains.

- One of the challenges in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals is looking beyond national approaches to the powerful role that regions and cities play. The OECD’s “Regions at a Glance 2016” makes a critical contribution to advancing this global agenda, providing disaggregated data and unveiling the differences within countries that otherwise remain hidden behind national averages.

- Passive agents? Bureaucratic agency in Africa-China negotiations: A case study of Benin from the London School of Economics examines the negotiating tactics and manoeuvres of bureaucratic actors of a small francophone African state when negotiating infrastructure contracts with China.