Driving change collectively: the EU’s partnership with Africa in the direction of sustainable prosperity

In 2025, the EU-AU Partnership reaches a big milestone, celebrating 25 years since its inception on the Cairo Summit in 2000. In this pivotal yr, the profitable third EU-AU Ministerial Meeting in Brussels on 21 May paved the best way for the upcoming seventh AU-EU Summit in Africa by the top of 2025. As we commemorate this anniversary, our partnership stays extra dedicated than ever to fostering development that’s inclusive, sustainable and resilient. Africa, with its vibrant youth inhabitants and considerable pure assets essential for the inexperienced and digital transitions, presents a novel alternative for transformative collaboration. The EU is devoted to persevering with to companion with Africa to foster strategic investments and progressive monetary options to harness this potential and obtain substantial financial and social progress throughout each continents. 

Central to those efforts is the Global Gateway Africa–Europe Investment Package. This formidable initiative facilitates impactful improvement in alignment with the African Union’s Agenda 2063. It focuses on 11 key coverage areas: sustainable power, surroundings, biodiversity, water and oceans; agri-food programs; local weather adaptation and catastrophe threat discount; the digital transformation; transport; personal sector improvement and financial integration; sustainable finance; science, know-how and innovation; well being programs; training and abilities improvement. By pooling assets and experience, the EU in its Team Europe format with its member states and the European personal sector, goals to create an interconnected panorama of development and shared prosperity in partnership with African companions and responding to their priorities. 

The EU is Africa’s foremost commerce companion, with 2024 commerce flows reaching €355 billion and the EU accounting for about one third of Africa’s complete commerce. Reinforcing the EU’s place as Africa’s main funding companion, the EU’s inventory of international direct funding (FDI) in Africa stood at €239 billion in 2023. However, Africa nonetheless solely attracts about 3% of world FDI and the EU is decided to do extra, and higher. To that finish, the EU has developed progressive financing mechanisms to slim the funding hole and de-risk funding mobilisation in Africa, such because the European Fund for Sustainable Development Plus (EFSD+). In addition, collectively creating an enabling funding and enterprise surroundings throughout Africa and decreasing overrated threat perceptions are important, and there once more we’re working collectively to make it occur. For instance, the EU co-finances the Africa Virtual Investment Platform collectively created by the OECD and the AU, which goals specifically at offering complete and dependable investment-related knowledge to facilitate funding in Africa. The EU-Africa Business Forum regional platform, a €15 million five-year programme began in 2024, additionally supplies tangible alternatives for structured engagement between the personal sectors on each continents. 

To flip Africa’s aspirations into realities, additional figuring out motion is required: African international locations want to have the ability to entry concessional finance on truthful phrases and have to leverage their very own fiscal assets. 

With illicit monetary flows (IFF) draining roughly $89 billion from Africa yearly, almost matching the mixed annual inflows from ODA and FDI, combatting IFF is one other joint precedence. Through the Team Europe Initiative launched in 2024, the EU has mobilised €450 million distributed amongst greater than 70 programmes to deal with points in a holistic method starting from cash laundering, countering terrorism financing, tax- and trade-based IFFs, to anti-corruption. Once once more, that is accomplished in full partnership with African companions in any respect ranges. 

In addition, guaranteeing environment friendly public finance administration and rising home useful resource mobilisation is pivotal, as this essential report additionally emphasises. This is one thing the EU can also be actively delivering on with the ‘Collect More, Spend Better’ agenda to assist African states optimise each income and spending. 

The worldwide monetary system must be higher geared to channel assets in the direction of sustainable improvement. The EU is actively engaged within the worldwide monetary structure reform, notably within the context of the G20, and in guaranteeing supply in the direction of rising markets and growing economies’ wants. Now is the time to collectively put a powerful give attention to the implementation of the G20 Roadmap for higher, larger and simpler multilateral improvement banks and optimise using concessional finance, work higher as a system and have interaction extra systematically with the personal sector. To improve African international locations’ entry to concessional finance, 16 EU Member States have thus far collectively pledged round $37 billion of voluntary channelling Special Drawing Rights to the IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust and the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT), and 17 EU Member States have additionally supplied grants to the IMF’s PRGT subsidy account, for a complete quantity of near €600 million. The EU complemented these efforts by granting €100 million to the subsidy account of the PRGT in 2022. 

The EU additionally stands as a devoted advocate for strengthening Africa’s illustration and integration throughout the worldwide monetary structure. This consists of supporting elevated illustration on the IMF Executive Board and enhancing cooperation amongst multilateral and public improvement banks for higher integration of African-led monetary establishments. 

Africa is a continent of imminent promise, however one which navigates the challenges of restricted fiscal house, excessive debt ranges, and the need for sustainable improvement funding. The EU recognises these challenges and is making appreciable strides in the direction of addressing them along with our African companions. By investing in Africa, we’re investing in a shared future constructed on cooperation, mutual profit, and sustainable development.