The first Africa-Spain Think Tanks Meeting, held in 2015, created a space for the exchange of ideas and the strengthening of relations between different Spanish and African centers. In 2016, Casa África brings together experts from different think tanks in the meeting called “ Dialogue between Think Tanks on Sub-Saharan Africa ”, with the
The European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU) maintain a long-standing partnership on peace and security which can be qualified as constructive. It is largely based on joint interests and objectives and is less contentious compared to other more challenging topics, such as migration and trade. The EU’s new seven-year budget for 2021 – 2027 introduces new ways of working which impact on how the EU will engage on peace and security in Africa. Most notable in this regard is the establishment of the European Peace Facility (EPF) which can potentially undermine the AU’s role in leading and coordinating peace and security measures on the continent. Moreover, these new developments take place against the backdrop of an overall troubled EU-AU relationship which suffers not only from the divergences in interests in key areas such as migration, trade and climate but also from the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and global geopolitics.
Multilateralism has been in trouble for a while, particularly at the global level. Yet, the European Union (EU) and its member states have remained among its staunchest supporters.In their June 2019 Council Conclusions, EU leaders drew the outlines of a common European vision to uphold, extend and reform the multilateral system. Against an increasingly complex and contested geopolitical backdrop, these goals were further developed in the recent EU Communication on Multilateralism, published in February 2021.
This briefing note looks at the challenges ahead for large-scale vaccination, as part of our series of looking at the longer term effects of COVID-19 on conflict and fragility in Africa. We ask some of the hard questions about the potential repercussions for highly fragile situations in Africa and what it might mean for the European Union’s role in the global response to the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the current state and prospects of partnership between the East African countries and the European Union on migration and forced displacement. The pandemic has exacerbated the root causes of migration and forced displacement. Read here about the implications and the steps should taken to move forward.
The unprecedented scale of the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic calls for greater empowerment of international, European and regional financial institutions for development, development finance institutions (DFIs) and public development banks. They all need to step up their efforts, to ‘build back better’, in a greener, more inclusive and gender-sensitive manner. This paper suggests ways to do that, adjusting the current business model of financial institutions for development to align and coordinate European investments for development.