Keypoints:
- North Africa is becoming a frontline of global power competition
- Energy, migration and trade routes are reshaping regional leverage
- Foreign influence is narrowing governments’ room for independent action
NORTH AFRICA — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt — is no longer simply a bridge between Europe, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. It has become one of the places where the emerging global order is being tested clearly.
As the post-Cold War system gives way to a more fragmented landscape, North Africa sits across the fault lines that matter most: energy security, migration, Mediterranean trade, military access and the southern approach to Europe. Pipeline deals, elections and diplomatic ruptures are increasingly read through wider strategic rivalry.
That gives the region new weight. But it raises a harder question: can North African states turn their strategic location into real bargaining power, or will they become arenas in which other powers compete?
The superpowers move in
The United States has made its regional priorities clearer in recent years. Washington’s support for Morocco’s claim over Western Sahara and its backing for the normalisation process that followed the Abraham Accords form part of a wider effort to shape a regional architecture under US influence, while limiting Russian and Chinese advances in Libya, the Sahel and infrastructure.
Russia has taken a different route. Through Africa Corps, which absorbed much of Wagner’s African network after 2023, Moscow has consolidated a military footprint in eastern Libya. Bases around Tobruk support Russian operations further south, while longstanding military links with Algeria and energy ties with Egypt keep Moscow relevant.
China has pushed further into the economic and diplomatic space. President Xi Jinping’s September 2026 visit to Egypt, his first in a decade, produced bilateral agreements, joint military exercises and a renewed effort to align Egypt’s Vision 2030 programme with the Belt and Road Initiative. Expansion of the Chinese-Egyptian economic zone around the Suez Canal underlined Beijing’s interest in infrastructure linking Asian trade with Europe.
The European Union, by contrast, remains caught between dependency and division. Europe needs North African energy, migration cooperation and maritime stability, but has struggled to develop a coherent strategy while the Algeria-Morocco standoff fractures regional diplomacy.
Middle powers, bigger rivalries
The region is also being shaped by middle powers pursuing their own agendas.
Turkey has rebuilt influence across the Mediterranean through arms sales, security cooperation in Libya and growing commercial, educational and cultural ties.
Gulf competition is equally consequential. Algeria’s decision on September 10, 2026 to sever diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates brought years of tension into the open. Algiers accused Abu Dhabi of ‘provocative and hostile’ conduct, while the deeper dispute has been linked to Western Sahara, the Abraham Accords and opposing strategies in Libya and the Sahel.
The break matters beyond bilateral diplomacy. It shows how Gulf rivalries are now embedded in North African security politics, where local disputes increasingly overlap with the ambitions of outside patrons.
Israel’s expanding ties with Morocco add another layer. Rabat has become the anchor of Israel’s North African engagement, forcing neighbouring states to reassess their positions.
Suez and the geography of leverage
No single asset better explains North Africa’s strategic value than the Suez Canal.
The canal earned a record $10.2bn in the 2023 fiscal year before Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping pushed major carriers towards the Cape of Good Hope. By 2025, revenues had fallen to around $4.2bn, exposing how vulnerable Egypt is to disruption along a corridor that normally contributes close to 2 percent of GDP.
Traffic has since begun to recover, just as China deepens its economic positioning around the canal.
The lesson is broader than Egypt. Geography gives North African states leverage only when they can convert infrastructure, stability and access into durable political influence. Strategic location alone does not guarantee sovereignty.
Libya remains the clearest warning.
Libya: the proxy battleground
More than a decade after Muammar Gaddafi’s fall, Libya remains divided between rival administrations and security structures. Attempts at political unification have repeatedly failed despite UN-backed negotiations.
In August 2026, Libya’s four main institutions endorsed a new roadmap aimed at presidential and parliamentary elections within roughly two years. The obstacles are familiar: candidate eligibility, security guarantees, institutional legitimacy and the role of foreign patrons.
Those patrons retain enormous leverage. Russia maintains military facilities in the east. Turkey supports the Tripoli authorities militarily and commercially. Egypt and the UAE have backed Khalifa Haftar’s eastern camp, while Algeria has favoured the UN-led process and opposed solutions imposed through outside military pressure.
Libya therefore remains the place where North Africa’s sovereignty problem is most visible: domestic outcomes are inseparable from external interests.
Migration as bargaining power
Migration creates another layer of dependency.
The Mediterranean remains one of the world’s deadliest migration routes. In the first quarter of 2026, nearly 1,000 people died or went missing, according to the International Organization for Migration, even as arrivals in Italy fell compared with a year earlier.
Fewer arrivals combined with higher mortality point to a route that has become more dangerous as European-backed interception by Libyan and Tunisian coastguards has intensified.
For European governments, migration control is a core foreign-policy priority. For North African governments, cooperation has become bargaining power over aid, trade and diplomatic support.
That creates influence, but also risk. When migration becomes a strategic instrument, humanitarian concerns can be pushed behind security calculations.
Tunisia under pressure
Tunisia shows how external attention can coexist with domestic fragility.
Its geography places it at the centre of Italy’s energy strategy towards Algeria. The Transmed gas pipeline already crosses Tunisia, while future hydrogen and electricity projects could deepen its role as a corridor between North Africa and Europe.
Yet that same geography creates dependency. Tunisia risks being treated less as a strategic partner than as transit infrastructure between an Algerian supplier and a European consumer.
Germany has sought a broader relationship through financing and cooperation in energy transition, water management and digital development. Tunisia has also pursued diplomatic relevance by hosting talks between rival Libyan factions.
But these external opportunities come as President Kais Saied faces economic and political pressure. Unemployment remains high, household purchasing power is strained and public debt continues to rise. Opposition protests and pressure on journalists have added to concerns about domestic stability and political openness.
Tunisia’s contradiction is stark: it is being courted because of where it sits, even as its internal capacity to benefit from that strategic location remains constrained.
Sovereignty’s shrinking room
Across North Africa, the same paradox keeps returning. The more external powers invest, compete and build influence, the harder it can become for local governments to set an independent course.
Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia have tried to preserve a regional mechanism for addressing Libya’s crisis, but foreign vetoes and proxy interests continue to complicate locally driven solutions. The African Union has also struggled to match the influence of bilateral deals struck by stronger outside powers.
None of this makes North Africa a passive periphery. The opposite is true. The region is becoming more central to the politics of energy, migration, military access, trade routes and great-power competition.
The test is whether Rabat, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and Cairo can convert that centrality into lasting bargaining power.
If they cannot, North Africa may remain strategically indispensable while politically constrained — a region at the centre of the new world order, but too often forced to host rivalries it does not control.
Dr Nizar Chaari writes on governance, youth policy and institutional reform in Tunisia and Africa. He is the founder of EPIK Leaders and Groupe Tunivision
