The EU's summit of magical thinking on Africa

Buffeted by crosswinds from the COVID-19 pandemic, protesters, past failures, and present-day divisions, the European Union tried to land this week’s summit with African Union leaders with a simple message: Trust us. The question is whether there is enough trust left.

Months of preparation and two days of roundtables, speeches, musical performances, and tête-a-têtes culminated Friday in a six-page declaration on topics ranging from military training and Special Drawing Rights to vaccines, migration, and more.

Postponed due to the pandemic, the summit in Brussels was supposed to have happened in October 2020, following the launch of the European Commission’s latest Africa strategy. In December 2019, the newly constituted commission went to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to meet Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and declare that Europe did not want to present a grand plan for Africa, but rather to listen.

Since then, Ethiopia has descended into a brutal conflict, drawing protests about Abiy’s presence outside this week’s summit. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has accused Europe of hoarding COVID-19 vaccines. And when EU countries reached a historic deal in the summer of 2020 to jointly borrow €750 billion to sustain their economies, a proposed €10.5 billion in budget guarantees for development banks and €5 billion in humanitarian aid were cut to keep frugal states on board.

Redoing the reset

Now, Europe is once again trying to rekindle its relationship with Africa, this time with a grand plan dubbed “Global Gateway.”

Under the plan, the European Commission wants to prioritize green and digital projects, saying last month that it would support gas investments in Africa only if no other options are available, they replace coal, and the investments are hydrogen-ready. But African leaders, particularly Senegalese President Macky Sall, say that approach forgets the fossil fuels that African economies need to grow.

After numerous drafts, Friday’s declaration acknowledged that “Africa's energy transition is vital for its industrialisation and to bridge the energy gap.”

It continued: “We will support Africa in its transition to foster just and sustainable pathways towards climate neutrality. We recognise the importance of making use of available natural resources within that energy transition process.”

On vaccines, Ramaphosa led the calls this week for Europe to end its long-standing opposition to a waiver on intellectual property rights at the World Trade Organization.

“All that has been asked for is that TRIPS waiver should be done within a set period of time so as to enable those countries that do not have easy access to vaccines to have access to vaccines,” Ramaphosa said Friday during the launch of an EU-supported hub to help manufacturers in six African countries produce messenger RNA vaccines. “We are talking about the lives of millions, hundreds of millions of people, rather than the profitability of the few companies,” he added.

The summit declaration committed “to engage constructively towards an agreement on a comprehensive WTO response to the pandemic, which includes trade related, as well as intellectual property related aspects.” At the closing press conference, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen committed to reach a solution on intellectual property related to vaccines by the spring.

‘Magical engineering’

But there was still a €150 billion elephant in the room. When von der Leyen went to Senegal earlier this month, she announced that half of the €300 billion Global Gateway would be allocated to Africa, catching many EU officials and diplomats by surprise. Earlier this week, one senior EU official told reporters that the €150 billion was a product of “magical engineering.”

The figure is a projection based on a combination of grants, loans, and budget guarantees designed to spur more private investment and drawn largely from the EU’s existing 2021-2027 budget.

“We have not produced a specific calculation,” the head of the commission’s development department, Koen Doens, wrote to staffers in an email seen by Devex, following von der Leyen’s announcement. “We do not enter into the debate on the split between grants, guarantees, private sector etc.”

Asked by Devex on Friday how the bloc could vaunt the “transparency” of the Global Gateway vis-à-vis offers from rival donors such as China and then fail to detail how it would be funded, French President Emmanuel Macron cited a monitoring mechanism designed to track how the EU delivers on projects — such as a fiber cable connecting the two continents along the Atlantic coast — as part of the plan.

At a previous leaders summit in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, in 2017, the EU committed to deliver €44 billion in investment in Africa — in particular to provide jobs for young people — by 2020. The most recent report on the fund meant to deliver on that commitment now promises over €50 billion in overall investment but does not say how much has been raised to date.

“We have not delivered that agenda,” Macron conceded Friday. This time, however, he said that more detail on the specific projects to be financed and follow-up reports every six months would help make sure that the EU meets its commitments.

And Macron promised to provide full transparency on the implementation of the Abidjan plan, “because that’s the best way to be credible.”