The African population has reached almost 1.5 billion (with a fertility rate of 4.1), more than treble the population of the European Union of 448 million (with a fertility rate of 1.5).
Sixty per cent of the African population is under 24 years of age. Yet, the EU continues to largely ignore its southern neighbour.
Coups d’état from April 2019 to July 2023 have shown Mali, Sudan, Guinea, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger turning not only against France but also against the EU, which has lost its global geopolitical centrality.
Former European Commission president Romano Prodi has called for an urgent well-planned summit to be held between the EU and Africa that “must be specific and between equals, where there is a break with the past and where no country will try to dominate the rest. Or do we prefer to wait for the next coup, that will be the last because, in the Sahel, there is hardly anyone left siding with the West.” (Il Messaggero, July 29).
Prodi also augurs that the disintegration of the former French colonial empire “(makes way)... for a coordinated European presence in Africa. The EU remains the major donor to Africa but without a unified strategy and so unable to achieve any concrete outcomes”.
The EU’s asymmetrical trade relationship with Africa has not changed since the 1960s. The EU’s imports from Africa are made up of fossil fuels (40.7 per cent) and other primary commodities (ores, metals and other minerals together accounting to 14.2 per cent of the total) as well as food items (15.7 per cent).
The EU is Africa’s most important trading partner and accounts for 26 per cent of all imports in terms of value into African countries.
The EU is also Africa’s most important investor but EU investments are also concentrated in the mining sector, including fossil fuels.
If it were to get its act together through a comprehensive continental approach instead of EU member states continuing to go it alone (separate from and also against each other) the EU would have great beneficial economic leverage on how the economy develops in African countries.
The African continent accounts for just two per cent of the EU’s trade (in terms of imports and exports), so the policy decisions of the EU matter considerably to Africa but that of the African continent matters relatively little to the EU.
The EU is being very shortsighted in not engaging more with Africa, leaving the field open to other countries that have the advantage of not being tainted with the colonial legacy of the major European countries.
African countries know their history. They suffered a great deal through Western colonialism and are still feeling its devastating effects.
They lived through the Cold War where military coups and the assassination of African leaders who wanted to liberate their countries and nationalise their resources for the benefit of their people as well as support for the South African apartheid regime and dictators were justified on grounds that they prevented the spread of Soviet-backed communism on the African continent.
Equal partners
What Mario Giro, former Italian deputy foreign minister (Italian Institute for International Political Studies, August 3) recommends for Italy’s partnership with Africa should apply for a whole EU approach to Africa:
“A more structured policy should therefore aim at defending the resilience of sub-Saharan states through a policy to support the stability of states in terms of security cooperation, law enforcement collaboration, intelligence exchanges and military cooperation, provided it is preventive in nature.
African countries know their history. They suffered a great deal through Western colonialism and are still feeling its devastating effects
“This security policy must be combined with a long-term economic project that includes double taxation, technological cooperation and the transfer of production, particularly agricultural production. Africa must be able to produce and process its raw materials (agricultural and mining), at least at an early stage in the chain of production.
“The commodity rent economy is no longer sufficient; rather, it has become unappealing to the populations themselves, who see it as embedded into exploitation, paternalism and neo-colonialism. African countries must become real partners in their own development. An African agri-food industry must be created, even at some cost to the European Common Agricultural Policy.”
Other areas where the EU and the African Union can work together through a reciprocal comprehensive continental approach should also extend to education, energy, tourism, construction, infrastructure but also services. Presently, services ranging from banking and insurance to transport are largely missing from Europe’s trade and development cooperation agenda with Africa.
European trade policy towards Africa remains at odds with the publicly expressed intention to champion the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) -led integration of the African continent.
The EU’s fragmented trade regimes result in hard borders for EU trade between African countries within the same customs union at the regional level. It is difficult to see how a continental customs union could emerge from the divisions created by the EU.
In his London School of Economics blog, David Luke (May 26) suggests: “To get out of the muddle, a good development case can be made for the EU to grant unilateral market access that is duty-free and quota-free to all African countries, with a unified rules of origin regime for a transitional period benchmarked against milestones in AfCFTA implementation and the gains emerging from it. This will require multilateral legitimisation through a World Trade Organisation (WTO) waiver – this should not be an insurmountable feat.”
The EU and AU should also introduce a circular system of migration: Africans coming to train in EU states and also to work there for a set period, then returning home with the possibility to return for specialisation and so on.
If the EU stays away from involving itself in Africa’s development, there is a very real risk that the continent will not only develop without the EU but that it will actually develop against the EU.
Evarist BartoloEvarist Bartolo is a former Labour foreign and education minister.