Tunisia

The Arab Maghreb Union is a trade agreement aiming for economic and some sort of future political unity in North Africa between the Arab countries... Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. The union is inactive and frozen due to deep political and economical disagreements between Morocco and Algeria regarding, among others, the issue of Western Sahara. The idea for an economic union of the Maghreb began with the independence of Tunisia and Morocco in 1956. It was not until thirty years later, though, that five Maghreb states - Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia - met for the first Maghreb summit. The following year, in 1989, the agreement was signed by all member nations. According to the Constitutive Act, its aim is to guarantee cooperation “with similar regional institutions [to] take part in the enrichment of the international dialogue... [to] reinforce the independence of the member states and... [to] safeguard... their assets....
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The African Development Bank Group is a development bank established in 1964 with the intention of promoting economic and social development in... Africa. The Group comprises the African Development Bank , the African Development Fund , and the Nigeria Trust Fund . AfDB provides loans and grants to African governments and private companies investing in the regional member countries in Africa. It is owned and funded by member governments, and has a public-interest mandate to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. Its headquarters is in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Following the end of colonial period in Africa, growing desire for more unity within the continent led to the establishment of two draft charters, one for the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity , and for a regional development bank.
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The African Union is a union consisting of 54 African states. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established on 9 July 2002,... the AU was formed as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity . The most important decisions of the AU are made by the Assembly of the African Union, a semi-annual meeting of the heads of state and government of its member states. The AU's secretariat, the African Union Commission, is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Among the objectives of the AU's leading institutions are: The African Union is made up of both political and administrative bodies. The highest decision-making organ is the Assembly of the African Union, made up of all the heads of state or government of member states of the AU. The Assembly is chaired by Yayi Boni, president of Benin, elected at the 18ordinary meeting of the Assembly in January 2012. The AU also has a representative body, the Pan African Parliament, which consists of 265 members elected by the national parliaments of the AU member states. Its president is Idriss Ndele Moussa.
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The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programs. The World Bank's official... goal is the reduction of poverty. According to the World Bank's Articles of Agreement all of its decisions must be guided by a commitment to promote foreign investment, international trade and facilitate capital investment. The World Bank differs from the World Bank Group, in that the World Bank comprises only two institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association , whereas the former incorporates these two in addition to three more: International Finance Corporation , Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency , and International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes . The World Bank is one of five institutions created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. The International Monetary Fund, a related institution, is the second. Delegates from many countries attended the Bretton Woods Conference.
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Marie-Louise-Taos Amrouche was an Algerian writer and singer. She was born to a family of Kabyle Roman Catholic converts. She was the first Algerian... female writer. Her first novel Jacinthe noir was published in 1947 . Her mother Fadhma Aït Mansour had a great impact on her life. Her literary style reflected the oral traditions of Kabylie, descended from her mother. With her compilation of tales and poems La Grain magique in 1966, she took the nom de plume Marguerite-Taos, Marguerite was her mother's Christian name. While she wrote in French, she sang in Kabyle. Her first album Chants berbères de Kabylie, which was a great success, was a collection of traditional Kabyle songs that were translated to French by her elder brother Jean Amrouche in 1939 . She was an activist in Berber issues and she was among the founders of Académie berbère in 1966.
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Abdellatif Kechiche is an actor, movie director and screenwriter. He made his directorial debut in 2000 with La Faute à Voltaire , aka Poetical... Refugee, which he also wrote. He also directed L'Esquive, which won a César Award for Best Film and Best Director. He has presented recently his last film La Graine et le Mulet on 64th Mostra del Cinema at Venezia for which he was awarded the Special Jury Prize, the FIPRESCI Prize, such as later the Louis Delluc Prize and others César Awards for Best Film and Best Director. As an actor, his introduction to most English-speaking audiences was starring as Ashade the taxi driver in the 2005 psychological thriller "Sorry, Haters", an "official selection" in both the Toronto and American Film Institute's film festivals.
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Hooman Majd, born 1957 in Tehran, is currently an Iranian-American journalist and author based in New York City, from where he makes frequent trips... to Iran. His maternal grandfather was the Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Kazem Assar , who had been born in a village in Iraq "to an Iraqi mother and a Persian father". The Ayatollah, along with other contemporary ulema, overcame traditional opposition to serve as a professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran. His own father, whose origins were in village Iran, became representative of a "middle class" that was "pro-democratic and pro-modernization". Raised in a family involved in the diplomatic service, Majd was raised from infancy abroad. He attended boarding schools in England. He stayed in Iran after the 1979 revolution and finished his college education in the United States of America. Majd worked in the entertainment industry, including Island Records and Polygram Records. He then worked as a journalist, contributing to GQ, The New York Times, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Salon, the New York Observer, and Interview, where he is also a contributing editor.
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Algeria /ælˈdʒɪəriə/ , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the... Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a large country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital. When referring to its land area, Algeria is the largest country in Africa, Maghreb and the Arab World. It is also the largest of the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea; it is also the tenth-largest country in the world. The country is bordered in the northeast by Tunisia, in the east by Libya, in the west by Morocco, in the southwest by Western Sahara, Mauritania, and Mali, in the southeast by Niger, and in the north by the Mediterranean Sea. Its size is almost 2,400,000 square kilometres with an estimated population of 37.1 million as of 2012. Algeria is a member of the African Union, the Arab League, OPEC and the United Nations. The country is also a founding member of the Arab Maghreb Union. The country's name is derived from the city of Algiers.
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