The European Business Council for Africa

Strengthening the AU-EU partnership on the economic development and trade agenda

The European Think Tank Group has published a report about strengthening the AU-EU partnership with regard to the economic development and trade agenda.

This report is the outcome of a partnership initiative launched in 2021 by the European Think Tanks Group (ETTG) and the Africa-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Our initiative seeks to advance Africa-Europe relations in the run up to the 6th EU-AU Summit in Brussels (17-18 February 2022) and contribute to effective follow-up and implementation of the decisions taken there.

The brief identifies some of the shared priorities between Africa and the European Union (EU) as well as challenges in their partnership as it currently stands. It also suggests concrete ways forward to strengthen the economic development and trade agenda of the AU-EU partnership. It draws heavily on discussions at a closed roundtable on 26 November 2021 of policy experts and academics aware of the agendas and high stakes on both the African and the European sides. Furthermore, it looks first at Africa’s economic development priorities and challenges, followed by areas of mutual interest with the EU and existing support measures. It then identifies some of the tensions and gaps in the partnership. These then form the basis for practical recommendations towards a more effective partnership.

 

KEY MESSAGES

• Industrialisation remains one of the main priorities for Africa, including within thecontext of the ongoing AfCFTA

• The EU is an important economic partner with free access to its market for most African countries but unilateral preferences have brought limited results for their economic development, pointing to the need for an investment partnership to build productive capacities

• African firms need to be actively supported to become suppliers of higher value – added products to the EU, including with the help of coherent, robust and context-specific industrial and trade policies

• The long-term objective of industrial development needs to be appropriately matched by short term programmes and initiatives to ensure continuity and coherence, by also building on existing initiatives like the Boosting Intra-Africa Trade initiative (BIAT)

 

Please read the full report here.