The Good Samaritans Lose Their Way

The complex relations between the EU and Africa have their roots in history, but more recently, the tone of their interactions has been determined by a series of instruments, agreements, and initiatives that the EU and its most influential members decided to launch, often unilaterally. For example, the recent Global Gateway Initiative was announced days before an EU-AU Summit without any prior consultation or warning. This means that frequently, African negotiators have faced interlocutors without a clear strategy and have been undermined by their own fragmentation and shifting priorities along the way. The EU negotiating tactics in the last two decades of this century have taken stock of the previous two, where results did not match expectations, obliging international actors in the development space to accept a shift from prescriptive policies towards goals. African agency got a boost but stumbled, nevertheless, due to weak negotiating capacity.