Introduction
“We need to be a bit more concrete, a bit more analytical on whether [Africans] are getting exactly what we desire. I see a great discussion about migration and mobility, with always the notion that as African countries we have a responsibility to prevent young people and other Africans from moving out of the continent. But people move for opportunity. So what we have got to do in the partnership is [to] ensure that we, in Africa, create opportunities, that we re-industrialise so that our young people have real opportunities... If our partnership doesn’t translate into that kind of economic transformation then I don’t think we are going far enough.”
These were the words of South Africa’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Naledi Pandor, given at the margins of the recently concluded AU-EU Ministerial meeting in Kigali on 26 October 2021.
At the centre of the call for the partnership to take into account African interests is the notion of a “paradigm shift” that was touted as the new principle to guide the reform of the partnership between Africa and Europe when leaders from both continents met in 2017 in Abidjan. This paradigm shift would usher a new era in the relationship, one that moves beyond development aid as the determinant of the relationship. It would recognise the full value that Africa brings to the table.
The paradigm shift would also involve a two-way dialogue rather than a top-down one led primarily by the EU. African leaders, practitioners, experts and civil society leaders have since formulated options that could help the continents realise this ambition.
We invited African thought leaders in think tanks, civil society and independent foundations, who have worked in the Africa-Europe sphere for many years to share their insights and analyses. Thought leaders were drawn from several sectors: climate change, technology, digital taxation, migration and trade. The result is this volume.
On climate change, Africa as a continent contributed the least to creating the crisis, yet it is already facing the harshest of its consequences. At the same time, Africa hosts some of the natural resources required for the energy transition needed to move away from the terrible fossil fuels that caused the problem. Europe needs those minerals to power its transition. Africa needs to make sure that it can industrialize, create jobs and address the myriad of challenges thrown up by the climate emergency. Plus Africa wants to make sure that it controls the terms under which it contributes to global decarbonization efforts, considering that it is very much under-resourced to do so, and if it will grow, it may have to do so without the resources to decarbonize.
In approaching the issue, Saliem Fakir challenges the dichotomy between adaptation (for the global south) and mitigation (for the global north). Current lived experiences in both the global north and south challenge those limited views. Africa indeed should not be relegated to the ghetto of adaptation aid. Europe should also not suffer from the failure of imagination that makes it to be so shocked by the lack of preparedness for the floods of 2021. If there is anything the crisis offers, it is the chance to think of solutions that move away from an extractive model of exchange and that treats addressing the climate crisis as part of a larger move towards a structural transformation of Africa’s economies, and, one might add, the lifestyles and consumption patterns in Europe.
More pressingly, Saliem asks that we all think of how to deal with the climate crisis with a whole economy approach. Europe already has a roadmap that is imagining things along those lines, the EU Green Deal. Perhaps there is a chance for a continent with high historical emissions to work with the one with the least historical emissions on this?
Ottilia Maunganidze turns towards the issue of migration. This is a subject that provokes very strong reactions in certain quarters in Europe. Yet here are the facts: 80 percent of African migration takes place on the continent. One might be forgiven for thinking that 80 percent of Africans are heading towards Europe, if one considers how much resources the EU spends convincing African governments to police borders where the trend had been towards relaxing border controls. The effect of this has in some cases been to adversely affect age-old intra-Africa migration.
At the same time, Europe needs skilled and unskilled migrants. Speaking recently in an interview (August, 2021) the head of the German employment agency said that Germany needs 400,000 immigrants a year to address the gaps in the labor market, an amount more than twice the current levels of net migration.
Ottilia writes of four key areas that could serve as cornerstones for how both continents can address migration. These are legal pathways, centering economic development, cooperation on international protection (of refugees) and better collaboration on returns, readmission and reintegration. On reintegration in particular, this is an area in which the EU has not exactly adhered to principles of basic dignity and safety. By Ottiilia’s estimation, these four issues form the cardinal points that can guide the movement towards a partnership on migration that can work.
On technology: while Neema Iyer reviews what constitutes Europe’s relationship with Africa on digital issues, Ruth Wamuyu digs into a specific area, examining efforts by both Africa and Europe to tax multinational tech companies, among others.
Even though it lacks tech giants – or perhaps because it lacks them – the EU has taken on the role of global digital regulator. With this role, it seeks to shape what tech companies can do, as it sets the standard for how other countries regulate the tech sector. Take GDPR for example, the EU’s data protection rules. It has inspired similar regulations in Brazil, Australia, and the US American state of California. Beyond this, any company that wants to access the near EUR 145 trillion GDP-rich bloc – one-sixth of the global economy – must abide by the rules the EU makes.
Despite being Africa’s largest trading and investment partner, the EU lags significantly behind China and the United States in investments in Africa’s digital sector. From Neema’s analysis, promoting regulations appears to be the main way the EU interacts with Africa on this. She cautions against this, however, as regulations that are suited to Europe are not necessarily suited to Africa – just as the light-touch regulatory practices of the US are not necessarily ideal for African countries. Instead, she suggests a significant increase in real foreign direct investments in Africa’s digital sector and creating linkages with Europe’s single market. After all, although the EU is the single largest source of investment to Africa, that investment represents only 2.7 percent of the total investments of EU residents. There is definitely significant room for improvement.
One area that the EU has been having issues dealing with from a policy position is how to tax multinational companies, the most profitable of which include the biggest tech companies, which are not European. Under an initiative hosted by the OECD, countries have been working together on how to find a clear way of taxing these companies. Ruth provides a detailed account of the process, explaining the concerns of African policymakers around the solution that is being proposed. She also shows how this is an opportunity for the EU and Africa to work together on an issue that concerns both of them, but that one might ordinarily not include in the EU-Africa partnership. The EU might even bag some goodwill in the process.
In the final paper in the collection, Cheikh TIdiane Dieye turns a critical lens at the fundamentals of the relationship between both continents – trade. It all started with trade relations that were carryovers from colonial times, during which Europe imposed trade policies on Africa. What we have today is a patchwork of trade relations based on Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAS) which Cheikh describes as a liberalization agenda out of reach of Africa’s least developed countries (LDCs). Even though EPAs were originally sold as instruments that could enhance Africa’s integration, they have become things that are creating problems for Africa’s regional integration efforts. This extends to potentially creating problems for Africa’s most ambitious integration project till date, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The AfCFTA is an instrument that pulls all of Africa together, not making any distinction between north Africa and Africa south of the Sahara. When discussing trade relations between the EU and Africa, it is often forgotten that the EU treats north Africa quite separately. Cheikh also analyses these relations. He concludes by calling for the EU to abandon the paternalistic way it behaves towards Africa and instead position itself as a true commercial partner.
Giving a place to African thinking on Africa-Europe relations is essential to the maturity of the partnership. Equally important is providing visibility to ideas and analyses, even if such analyses are critical. We would like to thank all authors for putting aside time to contribute to this long-overdue collection.
About the Editors
Olumide Abimbola is founder and director of APRI. Before APRI, he worked at the CONNEX Support Unit, a GIZ-hosted G7 initiative funded by the German government and the European Commission. Prior to that, he worked on trade and regional integration at the African Development Bank.
Faten Aggad is specialist on Africa-Europe relations. She acted in different capacities including as Senior Advisor to the AU High Representative on relations with the European Union. She sits on the Advisory Editorial Board of the South African Journal of International Affairs as well as the Board of Changes for Humanity.
