This 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 cooperation and gives policy recommendations towards a more effective partnership.
The COVID-19 crisis has created a dire need for the active facilitation of sustainable investment to promote an inclusive, gender-sensitive and green recovery. The partnership between the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU), and their respective member states, can provide a strategic and institutional framework for stimulating sustainable investment in a collective manner.
Africa has not been spared by the COVID-19 emergency. Beyond the immediate health effects, the pandemic threatens the world’s already fragile food system, with particularly severe consequences in Africa. The Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity believes that the solution lies in small-scale food producers and farmer-managed seed systems.
COVID-19 triggered a collapse in oil prices from approximately 60 to 20 dollars per barrel between January and April 2020. Signs of a rebound are visible but prices remain well below the breakeven for many producers. If prices stay this low for long, or if they fall again after a partial rally in a relapse scenario, the world may witness a crisis within the crisis, with even further adverse effects on the world economy.
This paper stresses the importance of filling the development financing gaps that have been widened by shrinking remittances and suggests adaptations and increases in official development assistance (ODA) as an immediate solution to cushion some of the short-run effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Also, the paper highlights the short- and medium-term measures that policymakers and development partners in both sending and receiving countries should take to lessen the decline in remittance flows.
