According to the participants, the first Global Gateway Forum, which ended on Thursday 26 October after 2 days of round-table discussions, was a success. Organised by the European Commission, the event brought together representatives of some forty governments and the private sector - banks and businesses - to boost investment by the EU, its Member States and their financial institutions in major infrastructure projects in emerging and developing economies in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean (see EUROPE 13279/29, 13279/22).
“We talked about global infrastructure investment needs, strategic investment opportunities and sealed agreements” for public/private partnerships worth “more than €3 billion in investments”, welcomed the European Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jutta Urpilainen, whether it’s a question of digital technology, to put in place the regulatory frameworks, clean energy, transport lanes, health, critical raw materials or education - with the ambition of achieving results “on a global scale” - as the name ‘Global Gateway’ suggests.
“Today we are in a very tense geopolitical context. And especially for that, because we live in troubled times, the Global Gateway has become a central part of our strategy to reach out to the so-called Global South. We are not only in a battle of narratives. We are in a battle of offers”, said the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, without mentioning rival countries such as China and Russia, from which the EU intends to distance itself.
For him, this strategy wants to “support the economic and social development of our partners by helping them build better connectivity infrastructure, accelerate their green and digital transition, and enhance their intangible infrastructure, which is done [for the] health and education of their people”. It also aims to “strengthen the EU’s economic security” by diversifying supplies of critical raw materials, “improve our access to resources, from energy to Critical Raw Materials, breaking [with] the old style extractivism” to enable resource-rich countries to create local added value to create local employment and raise their profile in value chains.
It also aims to serve the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, explained Mr Borrell. “This is what we are doing by investing in the production of RNA-messenger vaccines” in Africa and Latin America. The EU and the EIB signed an agreement on Thursday for an additional contribution of €500 million to their partnership with Bill Gates (€1.6 billion in total) (see EUROPE 13269/2).
Mr Borrell said that Global Gateway was also an instrument for strengthening cooperation with regional organisations - the African Union, CELAC, ASEAN, the Gulf Cooperation Council, which “are new poles in this new multipolar world that has to be both multipolar and multilateral, otherwise the world will become a more dangerous place”.
The President of the Comoros, Azali Assoumani, current Chair of the African Union (AU), thanked “the EU and its Global Gateway for its renewed willingness to accompany the African continent in its new drive towards rapid, sustainable and harmonious economic growth as defined in its Agenda 2063”.
Stressing that the problem of financing infrastructure is Africa’s major challenge, he said: “We call on our partners to facilitate financial accessibility so that the African continent can catch up in terms of investment in infrastructure”.
He also pointed out that hundreds of millions of Africans had no access to energy infrastructure, despite the continent’s potential for thermal energy or renewable energy sources such as geothermal, wind and photovoltaic, and that more than half the population had no Internet connection, while only a tiny proportion had access to high-speed Internet at very high prices. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)