This book sets out the main factors that contribute to economic transformation, with a focus on the role of education in achieving it. It also sheds light on the deep-seated challenges that hinder the radical reform of education, most notably weak political will, the absence of long-term strategic planning, and the persistence of a rentier mindset that favours quick returns over long-term investment in education and scientific research.

This book examines contemporary Arab debates on culture, which have been dominated by the quest for a liberating and self-affirming meaning, a meaning held back by a whole range of intellectual, cultural, economic, political and often military challenges. A comparative reading sheds light on the motives, aims, premises and challenges of these postcolonial debates on culture.

This book is one link in a series of intellectual works concerned with pressing national and pan-Arab issues, and with others related to the changing international geopolitical environment. It evokes the state of our turbulent contemporary world, at a time when questions have multiplied and satisfying answers have grown scarce, and when threats, dangers and challenges have intensified: violence and wars, and the complexities of governing advanced and fast-moving technologies, in a competitive world that is becoming ever more fragmented and digitized..