Transforming the Africa–Europe Relationship
Category
Topics
This piece draws on a longer publication, “Walking Together Differently: Transforming the Africa–Europe Relationship”, which explores in depth what it will take to shift how Africa and Europe work together. Here, the focus is on one aspect of that broader reflection: the gap between the language of partnership and how the relationship is currently experienced in practice.
By Mahmood Sonday and Mille Bojer
Africa and Europe are at a crucial juncture.
The two continents are deeply and inextricably interdependent — economically, politically, and socially — and the stakes of the relationship are significant. Effective collaboration across Africa and Europe is key to addressing some of the most challenging issues of our time, including energy transitions, migration, restorative justice, and climate.
At the same time, the relationship is in flux, reshaped by shifting power dynamics, new global actors, and unresolved historical tensions. One dimension of this shift is the emergence of a genuinely multipolar landscape in Africa. European partners are no longer the primary external presence or point of reference. African governments are navigating this landscape with growing confidence, diversifying their alliances and making more deliberate strategic choices.
This, alongside shifts in global geopolitical alliances, changes the nature of the Africa–Europe relationship. Engagement can no longer be assumed; it must be built in ways that are credible, reciprocal, and responsive to a broader set of possibilities. And it makes the gap between the language of partnership and the lived experience of it more consequential than it may have been in the past.
A Relationship Shaped by an Earlier Model
The language of “partnership” is firmly embedded in Africa–Europe relations. It appears in joint declarations, summit communiqués, and institutional strategies. It is used with intent, and often with sincerity. Yet in practice, the relationship it describes is still evolving, and in important ways, remains uneven. This is not primarily a question of goodwill, but of how the relationship is structured and experienced by those working within it.
Much of the architecture underpinning Africa–Europe engagement was established in a different historical and geopolitical context. That legacy continues to shape how the relationship operates today. Development finance, tied aid, and manufactured goods largely flow in one direction, while debt repayments and raw materials flow in the other — a structure in which ‘assistance’ frequently functions as market access and dependency management rather than genuine transfer. Trade structures continue to favour the export of raw materials, 68% of Africa’s exports to Europe are raw materials, while 65% of Europe’s exports to Africa are manufactured goods, an echo of colonial-era economic structures. Policy priorities, whether related to climate, migration, or critical minerals, are often shaped in Europe and then presented as shared agendas, a subtle but consequential form of agenda-setting power that partnership language tends to obscure.
These dynamics are widely recognised, particularly from the African side. What is striking is not their persistence, but how slowly they shift in practice. The language of partnership has evolved, but the underlying structures have proven more resistant to change. In this context, the gap between the language of partnership and the lived experience of it becomes more visible and more consequential.
What This Looks Like in Practice
With over two decades of facilitating collaboration across Africa and Europe — bringing together actors from government, civil society and grassroots movements, and businesses — we have seen what becomes possible when partnership is genuinely shared, and what is lost where it continues to fall short. The difference is rarely technical. It is more often structural and relational, shaped by patterns of power that are not always visible or named. Two patterns stand out from this experience.
The first concerns how processes are convened. Many engagements are still shaped before they begin, with agendas, frameworks, and expectations largely defined by those who convene or fund the work. Others are then invited into a structure that has already been set. This is not always intentional; it often reflects how institutions operate. But the effect is that the questions being asked, and the terms of engagement, have already been decided. A different approach requires opening up the design process itself, creating space for multiple actors to shape not only the outcomes, but the questions being asked.
The second concerns how power is understood and engaged. Power differences do not disappear when they are left unspoken; they continue to shape interactions beneath the surface. In our experience, progress often depends on the willingness to acknowledge these dynamics explicitly — to name how history, resources, and institutional roles shape the room, and to work with that reality rather than around it. In our work supporting Médecins Sans Frontières to dismantle structural racism within its own organisation, creating early space for participants to share personal experiences of race and identity, before any analysis or problem-solving, proved to be an important foundation. People reported feeling seen in ways that reduced defensiveness and made it possible to engage honestly with difficult material. The same principle applies, in different forms, across the Africa–Europe interface.
What a Different Approach Requires
The question, then, is what it would mean in practice to engage differently — to “walk together”, as we put it in the full article — in a way that reflects the realities of the current moment rather than those of the past. A more balanced and effective partnership, a relationship that earns the name partnership rather than merely adopting its vocabulary, is possible, but it requires far more than a change in language. It calls for attention to how collaboration is structured from the outset: who shapes the questions being asked, who has genuine agency in the design of a process, and how power is acknowledged and navigated rather than left to operate in the background.
This means moving beyond the inclusion of African voices toward genuine co-creation, where African actors are partners in shaping the work from the beginning, not participants invited into a frame that has already been set. It means treating the building of trust across historical and structural divides as serious, long-term work, rather than assuming it as a given. And it means being willing to name the conditions that continue to shape the relationship, including the historical and structural ones, not as a diversion from the practical work, but as part of what makes that work possible.
None of this is straightforward. Building trust across deep divides is not linear. It does not fit easily within standard project cycles or results frameworks. It requires patience, honesty, and a willingness to engage with complexity. But it is also, in our experience, where the genuine potential of the relationship is most likely to be realised.
The current geopolitical moment is unusually fluid. There is an openness now that could lead Europe and Africa to drift apart or to make a more deliberate effort to reshape how the two continents work together. That direction is not fixed. It depends, in large part, on the choices made about how to design spaces for engagement, how to enter them, and how seriously the relational dimensions of collaboration are attended to alongside the policy and technical ones.
The Full Article
In this moment, we feel the urgency of sharing our experiences in facilitating collaboration across many manifestations of the Africa-Europe interface. This collaboration matters deeply, both from a pragmatic perspective of solving our societal challenges and from a human perspective of preventing harm and enabling healing.
It often fails. It doesn’t have to.
The full publication explores these dynamics in considerably more depth, including the structural barriers to collaboration, the shifting geopolitical context, the unresolved questions of memory politics, reparations, and restorative justice, and practical lessons from two decades of experience working across Africa and Europe.
There is an extensive road to travel, and there will be obstacles and failures along the way. But it is more important than ever to keep walking together, differently and further.
Read the full publication: “Walking Together Differently: Transforming the Africa–Europe Relationship”.
