Paper Titles & Abstracts

New agenda for more successful EU/Africa cooperation requires new strategies and tactics.Since the EU/Africa Cairo summit of 2002, the EU has changed its basic approach towards Africa, bringing in the notion of strategic political partnership and dialogue. The EU presents itself these days as a 'privileged partner' to Africa, characterising the latter as a 'natural partner'. The traditional trade-and-aid based relationship proved insufficient in the light of new regional and global realities. Europe now regards Africa as a political actor in its own right as well as an emerging economic force. This new approach is backed by very mundane European self-interests, particularly Africa's geostrategic importance, its growing value as a trading partner and investment destination, and the continent's effectiveness and importance as a role player in the southern hemisphere and multilateral fora. The adoption of the EU's Africa Strategy in 2005 was an important step, leading to a partnership with Africa, concluded during the Lisbon Summit in 2007 as the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES). But was it enough? There is growing evidence that traditional European (and Western) influence in the continent is on a decline due to competition from Asian role players in particular, and that the EU's Africa policy is at a strategic crossroad. Deficiencies in leadership, inadequate policy implementation, insufficient funding, strategic fatigue, bureaucratic excess and lack of results, seem to be at the heart of the problem. Therefore, although the JAES may be something of a bureaucratic masterpiece it seems to fail on the implementation side and new strategies and tactics are called for to make it work.Gerrit Olivier10.01.2013