Europe, Africa and China

Artificial Intelligence translation of my opinion piece published today in the Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias.

Europe and Africa: searching for a common future

Victor Angelo

The sixth summit between the European Union and the African Union was due to take place later this month in Brussels. The pandemic has ruined the plan. Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa's head of state and current president in office of the AU, tried his best to have the meeting held later this year before the end of his mandate. But he did not get enough supporters for a virtual option. In fact, the lack of enthusiasm for digital screens has revealed that there are significant differences between Europeans and Africans regarding the future of mutual relations, i.e., there is still no agreement on a common strategy.

If all goes well, the summit will take place during the Portuguese presidency of the EU in the first half of 2021. I hope there will be no further postponement. In the second half of the year, it will be Slovenia that will be in the chair, a country that does not give Africa the attention that we give. It is not yet known which head of state will be at that time leading the AU - he will be one from Central Africa - but I hope that Ursula von der Leyen's counterpart will still be the Chadian Moussa Faki Mahamat. Elected president of the African Union Commission in 2017, Moussa Faki is a noble, intelligent, and balanced politician.

We should take the extra time to try to resolve the differences. The priorities in the strategy proposal are too broad, they have everything. Moreover, they give the impression of being a European agenda and not a meeting point between the visions of one side and the other. They deal with the environmental and energy transition; digital transformation; sustainable growth and employment; security and governance; and migration. The African side's reading is that Europe continues to think in terms of aid and dependence rather than economic partnerships, investment, and free trade. The European concern seems to be, above all, to put a brake on migration from Africa to Europe.

Defining a strategy that responds to the concerns of the parties, when we have 55 African countries on one side and 27 European countries on the other, is not easy. For example, the realities that exist in the western region of Africa are quite different from the challenges that Southern Africa faces. A strategy for the relationship with such a diverse continent must stay on the broad lines, define only the objectives and general political principles. It must then be completed by more operational agreements, region by region - as defined by the AU. The strategy needs to recognize the complexity of the African continent. The same should happen with Europe. Certain European countries have a closer connection to Africa than others. Speak of Africa in Poland or the Baltics and you will get a distant comment, quite different from what you hear in Lisbon or Paris.

The strategy also needs to be clearer in recognising what the common problems are and how each side should contribute to solving them. At the moment, the draft strategy suggests that the problems are in Africa and that Europe's role is to help solve them. This is an old-fashioned way of looking at it. It does not serve to build partnerships among equals. Portugal would make an innovative contribution by proposing the discussion of shared challenges and the way to respond to them together.

There is also the problem of the great elephant which, although present in the room, Europeans prefer to ignore: China. Now, China is a major actor in Africa. The African leaders, who thought that a virtual summit with Europe would not be advisable, made one with the Chinese leadership, to discuss the impact of covid 19 and the possible areas of future cooperation, in the framework of the post-Pandemic reality. This initiative should open two new avenues for Europeans to reflect on, which need to be considered before the 2021 meeting. First, to recognize that the strategy needs to be revised to take into account the weaknesses that the pandemic has revealed. Second, to analyse the role of China in Africa and define a European political position on this increasingly decisive presence. Closing one's eyes so as not to see China's massive intervention in Africa may be comfortable, but it is a bad strategy.