African Union and European Union draw closer together in a hostile world

The African Union (AU) and European Union (EU) are reinvigorating their 25-year-old partnership, drawing closer together to face a world increasingly fractured by geopolitical rivalries and the nationalist protectionism of Donald Trump’s United States.

The 81 nations of the AU and EU will meet for their 7th summit in Luanda, Zambia, on 24 and 25 November. Their relationship has sometimes been difficult, with disagreements over issues including migration and Zimbabwe.

However, this year the two continental organisations may be more united as they both face other, bigger, common global challenges, including conflict, climate change, poverty and trade wars.

This emerged at a seminar held in Pretoria last week by the EU, the Angolan embassy in SA and the Institute for Security Studies on the theme, “Anchoring cooperation: strengthening the AU-EU partnership in a shifting global order”.

The seminar was held under Chatham House rules, so no one may be quoted by name.

One diplomat said the Africa-Europe relationship had “a huge potential to shape the global landscape. Together, we are fostering stability, strengthening economic ties, investing in skills, science, technology and innovation, and addressing environmental challenges.”

The EU’s European Peace Facility was supporting the peace efforts of African armed forces. And the EU remained Africa’s biggest trading partner and largest direct foreign investor and provider of development aid.

Multilateralism under threat

The seminar focused on three pillars of EU-AU cooperation: strengthening multilateralism, boosting trade and investment, and bolstering military and security cooperation.

Participants noted that the UN Security Council was effectively paralysed by fundamental differences among the veto-wielding permanent members.

Multilateralism itself was under threat, including the UN peacekeeping so vital for Africa, one expert warned.

It was asked whether Africa-Europe cooperation was strong enough to counter the trend towards a new global order based purely on power.

There were promising signs.

For instance, for the first time since early 2022, the AU and the EU, in May this year, managed to hold a successful ministerial summit with an outcome. And on 9 October, the EU Political and Security Committee and the AU Peace and Security Council met and produced a joint communique, also for the first time in three years.

However, there were also potential upsets facing the Luanda summit, like the demand for reparations to be paid to Africans for slavery and colonialism — which is the AU’s theme for 2025 — while managing migration from Africa into Europe continues to be contentious.

There was also a sense that these issues could be overshadowed by the need for greater African-European solidarity in dealing with geopolitical fractures and Trump’s US.

Read more: ‘We are here to stay’ — EU investment in SA soars as ties with Trump’s US shrink

The seminar was reminded, for instance, that in December 2023, after years of lobbying, the UN Security Council had finally passed Resolution 2719 to enable the funding of AU peace support operations through UN-assessed contributions.

And so in September this year, 14 Security Council members agreed to invoke Resolution 2719 to fund the AU military mission in Somalia (Aussom) through the UN. However, the US vetoed this decision, leaving Aussom stranded.

The AU is now hoping that the EU will step into the gap at the summit in Luanda to rescue Aussom. This issue epitomises the AU-EU-US relationships now.

However, an AU expert said the AU had to do more to finance its peacemaking efforts.

Participants noted that with 81 states, constituting some 40% of UN members, the AU and EU could be a powerful voting bloc at the UN if they aligned their visions.

This included the reform of the UN Security Council to include permanent representation for Africa.

An African diplomat said the AU and EU needed to agree clearly on what values they wanted to uphold in the international order, including in the UN. They shared the values of human rights, democracy and international law.

They had to defend these values and not continue to operate under the threat or protection of a few powerful states. The diplomat lamented that some members of the EU did not want international law brought into the G20.

Trade beyond Trump

Participants noted that world trade was fundamentally deglobalising, starting with Trump’s first presidency, then the Covid pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine, and this year, Trump’s aggressive tariff war.

“Can the EU and AU find love in a time of Trump?” asked one researcher.

A trade expert replied that they had to, and noted, for instance, that there was a large gap in the leadership of the hobbled World Trade Organization, which Africa was looking to the EU and other like-minded partners to fill.

Meanwhile, Africa is pinning great hope on the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) to lift the continent’s economies.

This agreement could boost intra-Africa trade to $22-billion by 2029, said an EU diplomat, adding that Global Gateway, Europe’s external investment programme, was supporting this momentum through Є150-billion of investments in energy, transport and digital infrastructure, “helping Africa to move up the global value chains and integrating more fully with Europe”.

European companies were waiting for Africa to implement the AfCFTA fully to really kickstart the trade relationship, said an EU diplomat.

An AU diplomat noted that Global Gateway was supporting the AU’s Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa, which had already delivered 16,000km of new roads, 4,000km of modernised railways and expanded energy access to more than 30 million people.

However, a trade expert noted that much infrastructure, especially cross-border infrastructure, still had to be built to enable the AfCFTA.

Last month’s Luanda Summit on Capital Corridor and Trade raised pledges of $18-billion for African infrastructure development, which was encouraging, but still barely 10% of the funding gap of about $170-billion, said a researcher.

South Africa is probably eager to see the AfCFTA fully operational soon, because, as Africa’s most industrialised state, it stands to benefit most, a diplomat conjectured. But other African states might be delaying its implementation, fearing they would be the losers.

Why the EU?

A diplomat said several EU states were formulating new Africa strategies because Africa was an obvious partner in the face of rising competition from China and Trump’s strong nationalism and protectionism.

Europeans were asked what they had to offer Africa over and above what new players in Africa, like Turkey and the Gulf States, were offering, in the light of a recent decline of trust in Europe in some African states.

A European diplomat replied that the EU was Africa’s biggest trading partner and investor, which was a good reason to develop the relationship further.

A trade expert added, “Africa needs many partners for many different solutions” and chided the AU and its members for failing to formulate a global strategy to take advantage of Africa’s popularity.

Though some African countries prefer dealing with China because of its unconditional approach, this expert said Africa should negotiate free trade agreements with China that include environmental, social and governance (ESG) requirements. The Clean Trade and Investment Partnership, which SA was negotiating with the EU, should be a model for the continent.

An African diplomat urged the EU not to implement its decarbonisation strategies, such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), and its anti-deforestation and methane gas measures “in a manner that creates barriers to trade between the European Union and African states”. CBAM will impose a levy on the carbon content of imports into the EU from 1 January 2026.

Read more: EU carbon border tax poses existential threat to SA’s aluminium exports — experts

“Maybe a more gradual implementation could be negotiated,” suggested a European diplomat. He added that Africa could not export coal-energy-based products to Europe forever. “So you need to get it green. And EU is helping to do that.”

An African diplomat said that Africa was already going green, citing Morocco’s North Solar Complex, one of the largest solar installations in the world, Kenya’s geothermal projects in Olkaria and South Africa’s independent power producer programme for renewable energy, which had attracted billions in investments and positioned the country as a leader in solar and wind deployment.

Peace and security

The seminar discussed greater cooperation between the AU and EU on peace and security. A European diplomat said the EU and AU must defend multilateralism, not only to deal directly with military threats but also poverty, famine, competition for natural resources, violation of human rights and inequality, which were drivers of conflicts. The UN was important in collectively addressing these challenges.

The EU also had to continue to support African ownership in addressing conflict. Already, 12 of the EU’s 21 ongoing Common Security and Defence Policy missions and operations were based in Africa.

One diplomat cited the visit of President Cyril Ramaphosa and other African presidents to Ukraine and Russia in June 2023 to promote their peace plan to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to South Africa this year as good examples of Africa’s converse contribution to European peace.

An expert said Africa had the largest number of national action plans to boost the role of women in peace negotiations. However, most of these plans had expired or were still being negotiated.

A more holistic approach to women in the peace and security agenda was needed to include the underlying causes of conflict, like poverty and food insecurity, which women were more likely to appreciate.

Another researcher suggested the AU-EU should harmonise their security partnership better at this challenging moment.

Europe largely saw African instability as aggravating migration and terrorism, which directly affected European societies, whereas Africa largely saw insecurity as undermining state legitimacy and aggravating socioeconomic marginalisation and governance fragility.

The researcher said the EU sometimes undermined the AU by supporting non-AU peace missions, such as the Rwandan military intervention in northern Mozambique.

The EU’s replacement of its African Peace Facility with its European Peace Facility had created uncertainty in Africa about the predictability of EU support for AU peace efforts, especially when the AU’s peace fund was severely undercapitalised.

“The partnership and friendship between Europe and Africa stands at a pivotal moment,” concluded a European diplomat. “The challenges we face cannot be met in isolation.”

Together, the two continents had to bolster an increasingly unstable international rules-based order and tackle issues like climate change.

“In a time of geopolitical and multilateral uncertainty, the AU-EU partnership brings stability. Our partnership is a geopolitical priority for the EU.

“And we see ourselves as a reliable and consequential partner for Africa, proven over 25 years of partnership with sustainable prosperity as our mutual goal,” said the diplomat. DM

Fabricius’ trip from Cape Town to Pretoria to cover the seminar was sponsored by the EU.