Charting a course for Economic Diplomacy and Trade Promotion in the MENA region

From May to October 2025, twenty-four professionals from across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) joined Clingendael Academy for a Shiraka-training programme on Economic Diplomacy. This training combined two weeks of in-person workshops in the Netherlands and Tunisia – with a period in between for participants to develop projects on topics related to trade promotion, investment attraction, partnerships and diversification.

In The Hague, participants explored themes of economic security, international trade, facilitating foreign investment and stimulating innovation. They had interactive sessions with our commissioning partners the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and RVO, development bank FMO and Dutch organisations such as SNV and Ocean Cleanup working on sustainable growth. Visits to the World Horti Centre and BlueCity showcased Dutch entrepreneurial ecosystems, while the World Hydrogen Summit offered a real-life setting to apply lessons on networking, opportunity identification and pitching. 

In Tunis, the focus shifted to investment attraction with contributions from the WTO, European Union, IFC and Tunisia’s key trade and investment organisations (TIA, FIPA and CEPEX). German development agency GIZ hosted exchanges with exporting Tunisian entrepreneurs, and Dutch company CED shared insights of evaluating foreign markets and entering the Tunisian market.

The programme concluded with teams presentations – including initiatives to improve SME’s access to finance for regional trade in Jordan and Morocco, and to enhance Egyptian-Algerian collaboration, harmonisation and knowledge-sharing in agricultural exports to Europe. With new ideas, partnerships and skills, participants are now putting their economic diplomacy ambitions into practice across the MENA-region.