Europe's Africa strategy déjà vu

BRUSSELS — The European Commission’s development department has a headache. The new president of the EU executive, Ursula von der Leyen, wants it to deliver “a new comprehensive strategy with Africa” as soon as possible. The problem is, even excluding last year’s Biarritz Declaration for a G7 & Africa Partnership, the commission already has 2018’s Africa-Europe Alliance for Sustainable Investment and Jobs. The mandate for that alliance was said to be the summit declaration with the African Union in Abidjan in November 2017. And all of the above are still framed by the Joint Africa-EU Strategy of 2007. Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, is scheduled to present the upcoming strategy for adoption by leaders of the commission on March 10, allowing Von der Leyen to claim it among the achievements of her first 100 days. But that speed is causing friction inside the commission, EU officials told Devex, with the foreign-facing departments telling Von der Leyen’s team that going too fast leaves little time to consult with African leaders. “How can we come up with a strategy with Africa, totally disconnected from the African pillar in the post-Cotonou talks?” --— anonymous senior official, ACP secretariat Von der Leyen’s choice of Addis Ababa, home of the African Union, for her first trip outside Europe last month was meant to send the message that the continent will be a priority for her five-year term. “I am not here to present some grand plan for Africa,” Von der Leyen told AU Commission President Moussa Faki. “I am here first and foremost to listen.” That reflects concerns about the EU’s relationship with Africa up until now. “The major criticism of [the Alliance] was that there wasn’t consultation and that it was put together far too quickly, so the risk is the same thing happens again,” said David McNair, executive director for global policy at ONE Campaign. One senior EU official, authorized to speak to the media anonymously, couched the strategy as a “two-step” approach. First, broad consultations during February, including at a college-to-college meeting of the AU and EU commission leadership, will feed into the March document, which may be as short as 15 pages, the official said. Second, work will shift towards preparing the 6th AU-EU summit, held every three years, in Brussels this fall. Niels Keijzer, a senior researcher at the German Development Institute, told Devex that it was typical for the commission to release a broad statement of areas it would like to focus on ahead of each AU-EU summit. “Every three years or so we go to a new paradigm, a new phase, a watershed moment, and so on — that’s more or less tradition,” Keijzer said, adding that he did not expect the current process to replace the overarching 2007 joint strategy. Speaking at an event in November, Sandra Kramer, director of EU-AU relations for West and East Africa at the commission’s development department, DEVCO, said the upcoming strategy would be a chance to "rationalize" existing strategies. A commission spokesperson told Devex this week that it is too early to say what the March document might contain, or whether it is intended to supersede the 2007 blueprint. However, speaking on condition of anonymity, EU officials said the usual suspects — peace and security, investment, climate change, migration, jobs, and digitalization — are all likely to feature. The task for EU Commissioner for International Partnerships Jutta Urpilainen, who is assisting Borrell on the Africa strategy, is made more complex by the ongoing effort to conclude negotiations on the successor to the Cotonou Agreement, which governs relations between the EU and 79 African, Pacific, and Caribbean states. “Something is wrong,” a senior official from the ACP secretariat in Brussels told Devex, on condition of anonymity. “How can we come up with a strategy with Africa, totally disconnected from the African pillar in the post-Cotonou talks?” The official said a legally binding agreement like Cotonou was the only way to reliably execute the agenda between the two continents, but worried that should the post-Cotonou talks remain bogged down, the AU — which has a vexed relationship with the ACP — would seek to superimpose the March strategy into the final post-Cotonou agreement. Another risk is that any strategy “becomes a kind of Christmas tree against which everyone hangs everything they are talking about,” McNair said. “To be credible it needs to identify where Europe and Africa working together have common challenges and can really shift the needle on five or six things, where there are competencies and resources and so on, and where there will be tangible changes as a result,” he told Devex this week. “If it is just another cycle of negotiations and processes and so on, that won’t speak to citizens and won’t solve the problem of these institutions seeming relevant to them.” Another EU official shared the hope the strategy would “really take into account the plethora of complex challenges that are in fact seriously deteriorating in certain parts of Africa and propose realistic goals and means in order to gradually achieve meaningful progress.” “Basically it should avoid only nice words but aim for some realistic approach,” the official said. “Even if only in 15 pages.”