In March 2020 the EU published a proposal for a comprehensive strategy with Africa, ahead of their regular summit with the African Union scheduled for October that year. Both were soon overtaken by the dramatic events of the global Covid-19 pandemic. One and a half years onwards, discussions are now ongoing about rescheduling it in Brussels in the first half of 2022.
Senior officials and Foreign affairs ministers from both continents convened in Kigali on 25 and 26 October for a Ministerial Meeting. A joint communiqué was adopted afterwards, which you can find here.
During this uncertain period for the partnership between Europe and Africa, the European Centre for Development (ECDPM), the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and the Africa Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) convened a series of expert seminars. These seminars brought together a wide broad range and number of experts representing policy, investment, research and civil society communities in ‘closed-door’ virtual expert meetings. Each of these meetings focused on specific priority themes in the relationship between Europe and Africa: trade, investment, environment, health and digital.
The discussions at the seminars fed into a series of policy briefs, based on which we recently published a short synthesis report that is available for download here.
To conclude this initiative, we are convening a final expert seminar to discuss the overall findings from the project, as well as to discuss the current opportunities and challenges in the AU-EU partnership ahead of next year’s summit. This meeting will be convened virtually and held under the Chatham House rule, to create a space and basis for informal and frank exchange.
The draft event for the meeting is as follows:
1. Introduction by the moderator, Geert Laporte (ETTG)
2. Short presentation of the synthesis report, highlighting issues for further exchange
3. Open roundtable discussion
