On Thursday 22 May, the South African Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Anna Thandi Moraka, welcomed the progress made at the joint ministerial meeting between the European Union and the African Union (AU), held the previous day in Brussels (see EUROPE 13645/19).
“We are going to build an international community that can benefit from this partnership that we are forging here with the European Union”, she told a conference organised by several think tanks.
The Deputy Minister highlighted the strategic role of the EU-AU dialogue on the international stage, in line with the objectives of ‘Agenda 2063’, which aims to build a more integrated, prosperous and resilient African continent (see EUROPE 13504/5).
Against this backdrop, last March the EU and South Africa launched negotiations for a ‘Clean Trade and Investment Partnership’ (see EUROPE 13599/2) aimed in particular at encouraging European investment in the critical raw materials sector.
“Africa wants to work with the European Union to create a viable value chain from which Africans and African countries in particular together with EU can form formidable partnerships in leveraging on this kind of issues. It’s high time that African economies need to industrialise”, said Ms Thandi Moraka.
“Gone are the days wherein we extract our minerals, export them to the world markets raw as they are without them being processed and benefited in the continent of Africa”, she continued.
And she added: “As you export these minerals as raw as they are, you are exporting jobs. So, we need to work together with European companies that are willing to help our economy to be industrialised”. (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)