The IMF has estimated the cost to the global economy of the pandemic to have been $28 trillion this year, while successive lockdowns are thought to have reduced economic activity in concerned economies by up to 33 percent.

The bold, would-be hegemon that is China today is unrecognizable compared with the nation it was 40 years ago, when it was struggling with a very poor, stagnant, isolated economy.

Few words invoke such a sense of forsaken hopelessness as “Sahara.” The political status of the region known as the Western Sahara, which is at the center of the modern history of Northwest Africa, is the single most important political issue affecting the area.