#EU-AfricaSummit: A failed chance for a real reset

Last week’s EU-Africa summit in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire was meant to herald a new partnership between the two regions, one marked by mutual respect, and a shift away from the traditional donor-recipient relationship.

Indeed, with high youth unemployment, mass migration, and brewing extremism becoming issues of growing concern for both parts of the world, the stakes at the summit were higher than ever. Numerous leaders promised a fresh start to the relationship, with French President Emmanuel Macron pledging an end to the paternalistic and self-interested approach to relations with former African colonies –collectively referred to as “Francafrique.”

Yet the outcome of the summit has done nothing to quell scepticism among African leaders and civil society about the chances for a meaningful shift in Europe’s current approach to the continent.

Initially centred on the future of youth, the summit concentrated mainly on the migration crisis following harrowing news reports of migrants being sold as slaves in Libya. African Union Commission Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat later announced a plan to return the migrants there, starting by evacuating an estimated 3,800 stranded in Tripoli. Yet leaders still failed to settle on a long-term plan for addressing the wider migrant crisis, and the problem of how to deal with returns has even blocked the summit’s joint conclusions from being published.

The lack of conclusions raises the question if anything truly concrete will come out of the summit, or if EU-Africa relations will remain largely the same as before. And for European leaders, this should be a wakeup call. Unless they foster a longer-term, more deep-rooted partnership that is based on support for democratic reforms rather than kneejerk responses to the prevailing issue of the day, then the root causes of forced migration, human rights abuses, and extremism will continue to fester – to the detriment of both sides.

Indeed, the summit comes at a time when many Africans still perceive European leaders as having failed to do enough about the unrest and criminal regimes that continue to plague the continent. For instance, Macron’s pre-summit visit to Burkina Faso was marked by tensions, with a grenade thrown at French troops hours before he arrived to give a speech in Ouagadougou. His trip came amidst growing calls for an end to what is seen as France’s exploitation of the continent’s natural resources and implicit support for corrupt regimes, with civil society groups in countries such as Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Guinea and Togo all having accused Paris of putting its own interests first, human rights and economic progress second in all its dealings on the continent.

But perhaps the most important and consequential crisis is currently unfolding in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In many respects, the way Brussels handles Joseph Kabila’s refusal to host elections will be the litmus test for the European Union’s supposedly revamped approach to African matters.  The country is not just a hotbed for instability, but is also home to the continent’s fastest growing IDP community: tensions in the Kasai and eastern Congo having caused at least 1.7 million people to flee over the past year.

While Kabila and his cronies have been the main reason behind the deepening humanitarian crisis and surging violence in the country, with Human Rights Watch recently uncovering that the government hired M23 rebel fighters to attack protesters. At least 200 fighters were brought from Uganda and Rwanda with specific instructions to “kill protesters if necessary and suppress any threat to Kabila’s rule”. More than 60 people were subsequently killed.

Despite the horrors, the response from Europe has been middling at best. While to be fair, France and other European states have openly denounced the government’s misdeeds, the EU has so far only enacted one round of targeted sanctions since Kabila’s refusal to step down – despite Human Rights Watch calling on Brussels and the US to expand sanctions against the president and his financial associates. European powers have also failed to offer meaningful support to the struggling Congolese opposition, notably leading presidential candidate Moïse Katumbi, who has been exiled in Europe for more than 18 months now. Katumbi has promised to return to his country and participate in long-delayed presidential elections, but without outside support to protect him from being imprisoned on questionable charges of real estate fraud, his political aspirations may come to nothing.

Not only that, but European lawmakers also continue turning a blind eye to how their own industries have played a central role in indirectly – or directly – propping up Kabila’s regime. The DRC is one of the world’s richest resources of rare metals and minerals like cobalt, which are critical components in products like mobile phones, batteries, and self-driving cars, and companies that rely on these materials, from mining firms like Glencore to car manufacturers like Volkswagen, are eager to get a slice of the pie. Yet a mere 6% of the revenue from the DRC’s mining exports goes into the government’s coffers, largely due to the rot that permeates the state-owned mining company and the corrupt government-linked networks that even foreign investors are forced to deal with in order to operate in the country.

Ultimately, it is such dysfunctional and corrupt regimes that are at the root of the instability and poverty that persists across so much of the continent – problems that have now begun to lap at Europe’s shores. Yet there is still time to start making amends, starting with taking a harder line against dictators like Kabila who have been pillaging their countries and abusing their people and strengthening partnerships with governments that are serious about enacting meaningful change.

Such moves would go far towards addressing not only migration and extremism, but other crises ravaging the continent – and help ensure that the next EU-Africa summit is a success for both parts of the world.

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