The EU-Africa Strategy and its Action Plan adopted by EU and African Heads of States in Lisbon in December 2007 are structured around 8 partnerships: peace and security; democratic governance and human rights; trade and regional integration; the millennium development goals; energy; climate change; migration, mobility and employment; science, information society and space.
The EU has stated that the official processes will be nourished and enriched through engagement with citizens and civil society organizations, resulting in not only an institutionally-centred strategy, but also one to which civil society on both continents can relate, contribute and support in their own work. However, although some efforts have initially been realized in 2008 in involving the European civil society in the debates, the participation of African civil society organizations is lagging behind.
The Commission Communication COM (2008 ) 617 “One year after Lisbon – the Africa-EU partnership at work” and the staff working document accompanying it , aim to assess the first year of the Joint Strategy and its first Action Plan (2008-2010), to outline the main challenges ahead, and to provide inputs for a joint progress report. The Communication reviews the initial progress made on the overall political objectives of the Joint Strategy and on the implementation of the 8 thematic partnerships.
Within the EU Council, the ad hoc working group on Africa became permanent to coordinate EU member states’ positions on and contributions to the implementation of the Joint Strategy. The group consists of experts from the EU member states and has established 8 implementing teams, one for each partnership of the strategy. For each implementation team, one or two member states play a coordinating role. In the case of regional integration the coordinating role is played by the EC and in case of peace and security by the secretariat of the Council.
According to the action plan, similar mechanisms should be set up on the AU side and the two processes should lead to the establishment of a Joint expert group for each partnership. Civil society
representatives are supposed to take part in these expert groups. The Joint Expert Groups should be formalised at the Ministerial EU-AU Troika meeting planned on 20 November.
Considering the delay observed in putting in place this institutional framework, it is not surprising that little progress has been achieved so far. In its working paper, the EC staff describes a series of initiatives and activities that are under preparation or represent a continuation of pre-existing processes of dialogue and cooperation that all fall in one way or another under the broad coverage of the strategy.
The majority of these actions are financed with the European Development Fund (EDF) with, so far, limited additional contributions from the EU Member states concentrating mainly on the Infrastructure Trust Fund that had been launched before the strategy was adopted.
The two other initiatives that are more consistent and well advanced are the African Peace Facility (600 million from 10th EDF) that was established in 2004 to support Africa-led peace keeping missions and the strengthening of African military capabilities through programmes such as the Euro-RECAMP1. The second one is the Energy partnership for which a € 200 million replenishment of the EDF funded Energy Facility is foreseen.
The measures described under the partnerships on Human Rights and Democracy relate essentially to political dialogue and institutional development on the African side with no substantial financial support and concrete actions foreseen. The launching of the multi-stakeholder Governance Platform planned in the joint strategy will apparently take place in 2009.
With regard to the MDGs, the EC paper refers to the EU agenda of action on MDGs that was adopted by the Council in view of the September UN Conference. The added value of the EU-Africa strategy seems to be to promote and organise consultations and dialogue on a series of African or multilateral initiatives relating to food security, health and education.
On migration, we know that an ACP migration facility/project is financed with EDF intra-ACP funds notably to establish an ACP migration observatory and to strengthen institutional capacities in regions and countries most concerned as well as the capacities of civil society on migration issues.
Note that in addition to activities undertaken under the 8 partnerships, 55 m€ are allocated to the institutional and capacity building of the AU Commission and that the EC suggested to use part of that envelope to support participation of the African side in the institutional architecture agreed in Lisbon.
It is quite obvious from the progress report of the Commission that the priorities of the EU-Africa strategies are well reflected in the programming of the 10th EDF regional and intra-ACP envelopes and will influence the mid-term review of the Country strategy papers. Moreover, the second review of the Cotonou Partnership Agreement to take place in 2010 will also certainly be influenced by the EU-Africa Strategy and it is expected that the EU will use that opportunity to officialise the use of the intra-ACP envelope of the EDF to support the implementation of the EU-Africa Strategy in the long run through pan-African programmes and facilities.
Convergence of objectives and priorities between the EDF programming and the EU-Africa strategy is not a problem in itself but it is quite clear that EDF resources alone will not be sufficient to achieve the ambitions of the 8 partnerships and that resources are diverted from national indicative programmes co-managed by the EC and the ACP governments to all sorts of intra ACP facilities and initiatives at pan-African or regional level managed by the EC and/or the AU Commission or other regional bodies. Between the 9th and the 10th EDF, we have observed an increase of the funds allocated to the regional and intra-ACP envelopes while national indicative programmes only represent 68 % of the10th EDF.
For more information, please contact k.sohet@aprodev.net
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