Announced by Jean-Claude Juncker in his State of the Union speech (see EUROPE 12094), the new Africa-Europe Alliance for sustainable investment and jobs is not intended to create new structures but to better use the financial resources available now and in the future to encourage investment, attract more private investors, support education and skills development, boost trade and improve the business environment on the African continent.
This is the new stage in the strategic Africa-EU partnership that was created in 2007 and that has since been strengthened – "a partnership of equals, firstly political, for peace and security" in the interest of both continents, as High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini told press on Friday 14 September. The investment needs in Africa are enormous and crucial for it to reach its full potential. The financing of the new Alliance will be assured by the current EU budget (some €42 billion in donations for Africa) and the future multiannual budget of the EU (€61 billion proposed for the continent), and by the External Investment Fund for Africa and the neighbourhood countries, which is supposed to generate €44 billion by 2020 through a leverage effect.
Reaching full potential of economic integration and trade. "We already have a very strong partnership with the African countries. We intend to move on to a new stage in this relationship. This will be the principle of our priorities for the year ahead", Mogherini said. She stated that the AU-EU summit in Abidjan had recognised "the common interest" of such an alliance, the EU being Africa's first trading partner and first direct investor, far ahead of China (36% of African trade is done with EU countries compared with 16% for China, 40% of EU direct investment compared with 5% for China). The long-term objective is a Europe-Africa free trade area, which would be based on the pan-African free trade area.
An African Erasmus to develop young people's potential. Mogherini also underlined the importance of investing in African young people, who are "very ready to work for the economic development of their country, but who often are not trained enough and do not have sufficient access to financing opportunities."
The EU's objective is for 100,000 students to be able to benefit from Erasmus + in the next ten years, and to offer possibilities for vocational training to 750,000 young Africans by 2020.
European Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen said that when it comes to investment, the EU's objective is to update the use of available or additional resources for greater effectiveness. "We would like to boost investment in Africa by learning lessons from the investment plan for Europe", he said, underlining the importance of ownership of the investment in Africa. In his view, investing in strategic sectors, skills, improving the climate for investment, enterprise, and boosting intra-African trade and trade between the EU and Africa can contribute to jobs, growth and stability on the continent. And "the EU would like to play a key role".
Launched in 2016, the External Investment Fund is currently producing the expected leverage effect as €4.1 billion has thus far generated €24 billion (of the €44 billion expected in 2020).
"We are on the right track", Katainen said, and in July the green light was given to the package of public guarantee programmes which is due to generate €9 billion in private resources for productive investment.
This model will be used for the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework, with the creation of an external investment platform that will enable the available resources to be multiplied by bringing together those of the EU budget, the EIB, the EBRD, the member state development banks and the private sector in order to have a leverage effect and to invest more in Africa, Katainen said. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang with Mathieu Bion)