25 years of AU-EU Relations, and the case for acknowledging history in unprecedented times

This year marks a quarter of a century since the 2000 Africa-Europe Summit in Cairo. This summit was the first in the range of summits of heads of state and government of the EU and the African Union (AU) that have been held since, with the next summit foreseen to be hosted by the Angolan AU Presidency towards the end of this year.

Africa and Europe have a long and complex relationship, with the Cairo summit declaration acknowledging that over the centuries, ties have existed between Africa and Europe, which have led to many areas of cooperation, covering political, economic, social, as well as cultural and linguistic domains. On 21 May, an AU-EU ministerial meeting in Brussels will take stock of the cooperation results since the first summit and set out new goals and ambitions for cooperation. In today’s turbulent international environment, it may be tempting to prioritise short-term cooperation and external investment under the Global Gateway strategy. However, this approach risks overlooking the enduring legacies that shape current partnerships. Rather than maintaining an ahistorical lens, there is a pressing need to confront the full historical context of these relationships, including their uncomfortable truths, to build more equitable and informed cooperation.

Europe’s partnership with Africa evolved from its association’s policy towards its Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs; i.e., its colonies) that was defined by its 1957 founding Rome Treaty. Coupled with an intergovernmental fund to finance investments in the colonies, the European Development Fund, the newly independent states continued cooperation and trade relations under the 1963 Yaoundé convention. This particular history explains the emergence of the invented region of ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’, since the EU engaged mainly on a bilateral basis with North Africa, nowadays referred to as its ‘Southern Neighbourhood’. The 1973 United Kingdom’s accession prompted negotiations to ensure equal treatment of the Yaoundé Convention signatories and Commonwealth states deemed comparable to them, resulting in the 1975 Lomé Convention between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states.

The colonial legacy has and continues to shape many structures within African states, as shown by the largely off-radar and inconsequential Samoa agreement signed in November 2023 by the EU, its member states and 77 ACP states. Crucially, the persistence of coloniality continues to shape dominant narratives about Africa in the postcolonial era, reinforcing unequal power dynamics and often influencing the character of contemporary Africa-Europe relations. European integration and African decolonisation need to be understood as interconnected processes, rather than unfolding in isolation. For instance, former Commission President Juncker’s call for a future EU-Africa free trade area back in 2018 can be seen as an echo of the aforementioned association policy, as well as the 1950 declaration by former French foreign minister Schuman that the development of Africa was one of Europe’s essential tasks. 

The shifting geopolitical and socioeconomic landscape, along with changing dynamics for conditions for international cooperation, demand a rethinking and restructuring of relations between African countries and the EU. For instance, the German federal government’s recently adopted coalition agreement commits to continuing its engagement with its colonial past. In contrast, recent EU statements on cooperation with Africa have been more ahistorical in nature and emphasise the pursuit of an investment and mutual interests agenda.

While it may seem counterintuitive from an international diplomacy perspective, adopting a decolonial perspective is essential for identifying and understanding discontinuities and continuities in Africa-EU relations. For instance, Eurocentric education curricula and approaches have seen the imposition of Eurocentric knowledge, ideas and worldviews, as well as the sidelining and dismissal of African knowledge. Eurocentrism’s most destructive impact on other cultures is its arrogation as a primary and hegemonic pattern of knowledge production. African scholars have thus called for the “re-centering” of Africa within knowledge production and the rejection of the hegemonic ideas that frame Africa as peripheral. A decolonial approach to knowledge production should be accompanied by material decolonisation and breaking down of political, geopolitical and economic structures and systems that maintain and enable coloniality and neo-colonialism.

When thinking about ‘more equitable partnerships’ between African and European partners, two questions need to be considered by policy makers: What does partnership mean? And, what does equitability mean? It also necessitates an honest and historically aware assessment of what the status quo looks like and how it is possible to change and challenge it towards a more equal partnership. In this regard, education and knowledge production play a critical role in facilitating relations and networks over time, as recently acknowledged in the March EU-South Africa Summit that gave considerable attention to cooperation in the field of higher education.

In sum, African and European policymakers should be open and confident about the future by not shying away from addressing the past. An ahistorical approach based on assuming that the partnership revolves around lists of projects and investment (rather than ‘aid’) will not suffice to create a strong basis for a mutual relationship. A historically grounded approach would give the possibility to acknowledge where agendas converge, as well as where (geo)economic interests between Europe and Africa diverge. This can advance a true ‘people-centred’ partnership for which considerable investment in higher education and equitable research partnerships continues to be needed. This should not replace the current investment and infrastructure-oriented discourse, but broaden it from an understanding that successful EU-Africa relations require frankness, ambition, as well as equal appreciation of the soft and hardware needed for cooperation.

Blog authored by Danai Tembo (Nelson Mandela University), Sakhile Phiri (NMU) and Niels Keijzer (IDOS)

Featured Image ©European Union (2025)