The 6th EU-Africa summit took place about a year ago in Brussels in line with the first joint Africa-EU Strategy adopted in 2007. Though the Joint Strategy provides an impressive overarching long-term policy framework for Africa-EU relations, it is yet to be seen how the successive summits and the resulting investments plan have meaningfully contributed to addressing the aspirations of the African peoples. Indeed, nothing significant has changed in re-orientating the neo-colonial economic model that shaped the EU-Africa relations through the years despite the mantra of building a partnership of equals between the two neighbours expressed in the joint Africa-EU strategy. If the status quo persists, how a partnership of equals can be attained remains questionable. In building a partnership of equals, we believe that the constituent elements of our inequality should be mapped so that we know what to adjust to reduce the disparity. Giving Africa a handout as an investment package does not address the challenges of inequality; rather, it enhances it.
The Faith-Based Organizations (FBO) in Brussels recently interrogated the equality mantra in a roundtable dialogue organized in the EU Parliament. An MEP in the discussion insisted that the metric for measuring the partnership is the good of the people. The current EU investment plan for Africa, popularly called the Global Gateway, according to him, holds the key. To say the least, that position can only be taken with a pinch of salt. The 150-billion-euro investment package of the Global Gateway) is expected to be mobilized from the private sector. Bearing in mind the propensity of transnational corporations in Africa to maximize profit without regard to basic ethical values, both human and environmental, Africa’s weak democratic institutions to hold them accountable, and the refusal of the EU to put in place strong mechanisms to hold them responsible back home, it remains questionable how such businesses will suddenly become champions of human centred investments in Africa.
Lack of coherence is a recurrent mark of the EU investment packages and the experience of African communities on the ground. Indeed, the Africa-EU partnership promises equal partnership between the two neighbours but the inability of the EU to match their words with action through policy coherence is an unfading dark shade over that hope. Nothing meaningful will change in the association if the traditional business models mediate the collaboration. We think that the EU-Africa partnership must tread the path of policy coherence so that implementing the African window of the Global Gateway stays truthful to its principles.
Furthermore, an acknowledgement of power differentials between the two neighbours was observed as an outstanding limiting factor in the journey towards a partnership of equals. The power differential favours the EU to the detriment of the African communities and their environment. A good example is the question of Digital connectivity which has enormous implications for land, biodiversity loss and ecology. Digital connectivity presupposes primary education; how it will benefit Africa’s rural communities that have yet to acquire basic education remains to be seen. On both fronts, African communities are the losers. Indeed, the EU Global Gateway is strategically designed to continue fleecing Africa; it is a wolf posing as a sheep.
