On 6-7 february 2007 an interesting meeting was held in Ouagadougou organized by the French Fondation pour L’innovation Politique, the Institut Afrique Moderne (Burkina Faso), the French Agency for Development (AFD) and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung on the future of French-European-African relations.
The meeting gathered a mix of some 100 participants including former African and French Ministers and a broad variety of experts and stakeholders, including private sector, academia and civil society organizations.
I would like to share some personal impressions that could also be relevant for the Joint EU-Africa strategy process:
1. The partnership between France/Europe and Africa now seems to be characterized by frankness, pragmatism and a healthy degree of modesty on both sides. Both European and African policy makers tend to be more self-critical over their respective roles in the development failures in Africa. Gone seems the time that one side in the partnership was putting all the blame on the other side for poor development results (e.g. ‘colonization & exploitation’, ‘African mismanagement & lack of leadership’, etc…). New generations in Europe and Africa seem to be willing to assume their responsibilities and to redefine partnership relations based on real common interests.
2. The willingness to redefine the joint partnership stems from a growing awareness on both sides that Africa and the EU do not seem to be any longer each other’s exclusive preferred partners. For quite some time now the EU has expressed a strong interest in developing solid relationships with it’s immediate neighbours at the Eastern and Southern borders of the EU, as reflected in the European Neighbourhood Policy Instrument. Also Africa is extending and diversifying partnerships with other regions and countries (China, India, Latin America. USA, Arab World,…). By doing so, Africa gradually moves away from a too heavy European dependency. This diversification of external relations provides a unique opportunity to do a proper assessment of the current and future values and interests that are shared by both continents and to build a new and more balanced type of relationship.
3. At first view, the water between Africa and Europe does not seem to be deep. However, a more detailed analysis may point to divergent views between the EU and Africa. For Africa any new type of partnership with Europe should essentially move out of the traditional aid dependency and ‘charity and conditionality culture’. More and more a strong African plea can be heard for strengthening African productive capacities, industrialization, private sector development (mainly through small and medium enterprises) and major investments in science & innovation and the knowledge economy. The new partners of Africa who tend to promote a more ‘business-like’ approach seem to attract African attention. It may come as a surprise but African perceptions of the USA, nowadays, are significantly more positive than the perceptions of Europe, as evidenced by an opinion poll in a limited number of African countries -Ghana, Mali, Congo Brazzaville. As one former French Minister said: ‘Africa is tired of European paternalism’.
4. The new generations in Africa do not need the EU to be convinced of the key importance of good governance in African development. Awareness is growing that in the long term the economic and social exclusion of young generations and the lack of economic and social justice pose much greater security threats to Africa than armed conflicts. Awareness is also growing that Africa is primarily responsible for solving it’s own problems through combined efforts of different categories of state and non-state actors. Civil society, local governments and decentralized authorities are more and more claiming their legitimate place in the African political society and it is encouraging to see that an increasing number of governments recognize the value added of these actors in the African development process.
5. Europe has to define very clearly how it could support these promising processes while avoiding the trap of paternalism, interference or even intervention. Inevitably, any future partnership between the EU and Africa, will also have to be based on the principle of mutual accountability. This means that the EU will earn African trust and credibility if it is also willing to tackle it’s own incoherencies: the contradictions between EU external relations with Africa ( e.g. agricultural, trade, aid, migration policies, etc..), the incoherence in the various EU cooperation agreements and financial instruments that do not treat Africa as one and the lack of harmonization between the various actors dealing with Africa ( 27 member states + different departments within the EC). If the EU wants to be taken seriously by the Africans, it should undertake genuine efforts to also comply with essential good governance principles in the partnership.
Geert Laporte
European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM)
