Navigating Ontological (in)Security in EU-Africa Relations

Remy Maduit | Authors published

Navigating Ontological (in)security in EU–Africa Relations

Toni Haastrup is an Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) in the Division of History, Heritage, and Politics at the University of Stirling. She is also a joint editor-in-chief of JCMS: Journal Market Studies, UK.
Niall Duggan is an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in the Department of Government and Politics at University College Cork, Ireland.
Luis Mah is an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Development Studies at ISEG-Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Universidade de Lisboa. He is also an associate at CEsA- Center for Africa and Development Studies (ISEG), Portugal.

When the first six members of the European Economic Community (EEC) took that initial step towards deeper integration that has culminated in what is now the European Union (EU), they also agreed “to associate with… the non-European countries and territories which have special relations with Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom”. [1] The founding members expected to keep a close relationship between the community and their colonies. Indeed, the colonial prism through which to engage with African countries is reinforced because the United Kingdom was not at the time a prospective member of the EEC. At the heart of this relationship has been the intent “to promote the economic and social development of the countries and territories and to establish close economic relations between them and the community”. [2] The inclusion of soon-to-be former colonies into the integration framework of the EEC is significant since the almost independent countries themselves did not agree. The design of this relationship is thus colonial. [3] The relationship often narrated as “asymmetrical” has its basis in the coloniality of power, which “articulates continuities of colonial mentalities, psychologies, and worldviews into the so-called ‘postcolonial era’ and highlights the social hierarchical relationships of exploitation and domination… has its roots in centuries of European colonial expansion but currently continuing through cultural, social and political power relations”. [4] This coloniality of power has been the core basis for the aspiration to reorient Africa–EU relations.

While the field of study EU–Africa relations have often identified this hierarchical relationship as “asymmetrical” in this article, we confront the factual basis for the design of this asymmetry. We argue that the coloniality of power, as the basis and form of the EU–Africa relationship, provides a “fundamental sense of safety [for the EU] in the world”, and depends on a status that is maintained by these hierarchical power relations. [5] This hierarchical relationship is a basis for the EU’s ontological security. Yet, in the desire for a change to a less hierarchical partnership and African shifting interests and international partnerships over the past two decades, which has allowed for the emergence of African agency, this ontological security is challenged externally. The external challenge is further exacerbated, as we show internally, by political and policy fragilities. These challenges to the EU’s ontological security and the EU’s response, we show, have important implications for the future of EU–Africa relations.

This article is a qualitative analysis that draws on academic literature, official institutional policy documents, think tank papers, and news items. The diversity of sources is also a means of triangulating the data collected and used to support the analysis. In line with scholars such as Kinnvall, Manners, and Mitzen [6] and Kaunert, De Deus Pereira, and Edwards, we will analyze the EU as a single foreign policy actor. The essay does not deal with the direct relationship of EU member states with African countries. While the historic relationship of some EU member states, like France or Portugal, contributes to European outlooks in Africa and is important to understanding bilateral relationships in Africa, the focus on those relationships is beyond the current analysis.

We structured this article into four parts. It explores why ontological security is a useful theoretical framework to better understand the function of contemporary EU–Africa relations. It situates this analysis in continuities and changes in the relationship. Subsequently, it focuses on the changes in the economic and political landscapes within Africa and Europe, and especially on how they impact the EU’s sense of self. Further, it then engages with articulations of African agencies and the EU’s responses. The essay concludes with a reflection on the impact of ongoing contestations on future relations between Africa and the EU.

Articulating EU ontological security in EU-African relations

The literature has established that from the 1950s until the 2000s, the relations between Africa and the EU (and its predecessor) were asymmetrical. [7] Despite EU (both Commission and member states) decades-old development assistance with the continent, Africa has continued to experience poverty and stagnation in terms of social development indicators. During the same period, Europe has thrived by deepening integration and extending its reach and capacities as a foreign policy actor.

Much of the early literature on EU–Africa relations focused on the economic relationship between the EU and the group of African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries. This literature focused on economic development assistance, poverty reduction, and trade. [8] Within this set of literature, there was a lack of focus on new African institutions created to articulate African agency and represent African interests in the various practices of international politics. As noted by Haastrup [9], “Africa, whether through its states or institutions, can only play one role: as receivers of international relations practices rather than active participants”. The development of comparative regionalism, literature, however, offers a potential entry point to thinking differently about EU–Africa relations. [10] Except for work such as that of Mattheis [11] who argues that the EU too dominates the diversity of regionalism in Africa, it demands that. But as Mattheis intimates, thinking via comparative regionalism can help to open the debate on African agency, where African regionalisms are not only images of the EU but grounded in indigenous realities.

Similarly, some of the literature that adopts constructivist IR approaches to EU–Africa relations can account for African agency to an extent. [12] While they focus on weak African states’ interaction with major powers and international bodies, they offer limited explanations on how African states can affect change in the EU’s African policy. A recent intervention by Hurt [13] has gone some way in balancing the outlook of the African agency on its terms and the relationship with the EU through a Coxian framework. It acknowledges the complexities and constraints of exercising agency. Despite these important engagements, the study of African agencies remains underdeveloped. [14] The dominant literature on EU–Africa relations lacks substantive engagement with expressions of African agency and its implications for the EU’s approach to Africa over the years. An ontological security approach would help to develop our understanding of the importance of African agencies in how the EU develops its African policy.

Ontological security can be understood as where “an actor has a consistent sense of ‘self’ by performing actions to underwrite its notion of “who they are”. [15] That self-identity is constituted and maintained through a narrative that gives life to routinized foreign policy actions. [16] Concerning states, Mitzen argues that, as actors, they value these routines as they underwrite their sense of self–that is, the state might privilege routine over other values, even when the physical cost is involved. [17]

We can apply the same to the EU as a foreign policy actor. [18] We can understand ontological insecurity as the interruption of the “security of being” found in feelings of fear, anxiety, crisis, and threat to wellbeing. [19] It has also been described as “destabilizing and challenging established worldviews, routines, and core conceptions of selfhood”. [20] As an approach, ontological security “provides leverage for understanding how fears and anxieties at… EU level have psycho-socio-political effects that shape political movements, [and] policy debates…”. [21]

Presently, the EU is ontologically insecure because of multiple ongoing crises starting with the Euro crisis, exacerbated by the so-called migration crisis, Brexit, and reinforced by the boldness of far-right extremism. [22] In this state, the EU is threatened by the sense that it is losing its equilibrium, and its sense of self, in terms of its external policy. It must gain back this sense of self–to achieve ontological security. In this analysis, we extend the existing analyses beyond the internal dimensions of the EU to consider how ontological security is understood in the EU’s external relations reinforced by hierarchical power relations, and what it means when this is threatened.

Normative Power Europe as ontological security

Within EU studies, Normative Power Europe (NPE) has long described the EU self–its ontological identity. NPE assumes an “ideational impact of the EU’s international identity/role” [23], which is grounded in the EU’s ability to shape what is expected to be normal in international affairs. [24] The EU pursues its international relations to bring others closer to its way of thinking about how the world is and should work. [25] And while Manners rejects Therborn [26] suggestion that the EU’s normative role requires coercive force to tell “other parts of the world what political, economic and social institutions they should have”, he agrees with the main thrust of what NPE requires: political influence over external international actors by setting the conditions of social interaction with those actors.

As an approach, NPE has a profound impact on the conceptualization of EU foreign policy practices [27], including toward Africa. [28] It allows EU actors to see themselves and the EU as a force for good. [29] As argued by Diez, NPE “constructs the EU’s identity and the identity of the EU’s others in ways which allow EU actors to disregard their shortcomings”. [30] NPE is tied to the EU sense of self and, therefore, its ontological security.

But assumptions about the EU as NPE are hardly benign. This is particularly the case when the EU advances its material interests as “norms are woven into material interests”. [31] The EU often used norms to justify material sanctions because of human rights violations, conflicts, illegal trade, or wildlife/environment exploitations. But this is a very selective approach that is pursued towards less powerful and more dependent countries on EU financial support, mostly in Africa. [32]

The EU notwithstanding its shortcomings even at the expense of its external others is content because the status quo of asymmetry reduces fear and anxiety, reinforcing the ontological self. This is manifested in interests that logically put the EU first, which problematizes the idea of a partnership of equals and support for African-led initiatives. It is in this context that we argue that where there are efforts to reorient EU–Africa relations by prioritizing African interests and manifesting African agency within the structure of existing EU–Africa relations, there is also a challenge to the ontological security of the EU.

For example, in 2005, the unilateral EU Strategy for Africa made a new commitment to move away from a donor-recipient logic to a relationship founded on equality, ownership, and partnership. These concepts themselves were not new. Yet, made in 2005, it appeared to signal an important rhetorical shift in the relationship, paving the way for the state of contemporary relations. The 2005 EU Strategy for Africa is important because it recognized that the unevenness of relations between the EU and African countries had had a detrimental impact on the relationship as it was formulated and existed. The Lomé IV Convention, for example, was adopted in 1995 and included new areas of engagement, including democracy and good governance, the promotion of the private sector, and the strengthening of gender equality and human rights promotion. [33] Lomé IV especially opened the possibility for intensified region-to-region cooperation between the EU and Africa within the ambit of EU-ACP relations. The expectation after Lomé IV was that its successor would allow the African side to articulate its priorities more clearly and take on greater ownership within the partnership. The resulting 2000 Cotonou Agreement was discursively presented as a new framework to move away from what had been an asymmetrical relationship. That the 2005 Strategy was developed so shortly after Cotonou suggested that the 2000 agreement did not deliver on its promise to allow for greater articulation of African agency. The consequences of the relationship ensured the promises of the Treaty of Rome to economic and social development remained unfulfilled.

Equality in the document is the “… mutual recognition and respect for institutions and the definition of mutual collective interests”. [34] In practical terms, equality would mean that African norms, practices, and interests would hold as much weight as European ones. The second concept was a partnership. The partnership was explained as “developing links based on political and commercial cooperation”, while ownership is explained as “strategies and development policy being country-owned and not imposed from the outside”. [35] In acknowledging the problem of asymmetric relations on the cognitive and material elements of the relationship between EU and African countries, the 2005 strategy provided a pathway to emancipation, in principle. It reinforced that Africa had new interlocutors, specifically the African Union (AU).

The 2005 strategy acknowledged the fundamental challenges of EU–Africa relations under the ACP framework. However, the Strategy was derided by African political elites as an illegitimate basis for change given that it was developed without engagement with African actors. [36] Thus, while the imbalances of power between the EU and Africa are acknowledged, the will to change them, from the perspective of the more powerful actor, was seen to be lacking. EU–Africa relations then continued to show “colonial patterns of interactions”. [37] In this sense, vis-à-vis its relationship with Africa, the EU remained ontological security.

The failure of the Strategy as a vehicle of change precipitated two years of extensive negotiations with African countries to produce a framework that took the three principles seriously. [38] The 2007 Joint Africa-EU Strategy was the first arrangement in which, on paper, Africans enjoyed a “contribution of equals” since the African side was involved in the drafting process. It expanded the relationship and delineated eight areas of cooperation. It signaled a more ambitious EU external relations strategy in Africa, just as much as it did for Africa’s vision of international relations. In articulating agency within the JAES, African elites sought to leverage the AU and assert the interests of the continent. [39] The success of the JAES in design would alter the relationship between Africa and the EU.

However, despite the promise of the JAES for African agencies, substantive change in existing power hierarchies remains elusive. At the time the JAES was being negotiated, the EU negotiated interim EPAs with smaller Southern African countries, directly undermining the aspirations of regional integration within the Joint Strategy. [40] From the EU’s perspective, EPAs were essential to any relationship in the future with African countries. According to MacDonald, Lande, and Matanda [41], the EU threatened African states with withdrawing preferences enjoyed since the Lomé Convention if negotiations did not end. The coercive approach was antithetical to the stated objectives of the relationship and reinforced the coloniality of power. Practically, the EPAs undermined African aspirations of regional integration by pushing for sub-regional agreements within the continent that did not map onto the sub-regional divisions recognized by African elites as Regional Economic Communities (RECs). This is significant since the EU has consistently maintained its support for African integration on African terms. [42] To date, EPAs still have limited uptake in Africa. [43] The insistence on the EPAs by the EU has contributed to mistrust within the EU–Africa relationship, even as the EU maintains that this is best for the relationship. With the Cotonou agreement ending in November 2021, the EU made the move to “reset” relations, with Africa once again with the Comprehensive Strategy with Africa (2020).

The JAES has provided a clear basis for a true partnership of equals, but most EU–Africa relations occur outside of the JAES. The EU has continued to insist on the prior format of the ACP as the basis for the relationship. In this context then, the EU has facilitated the maintenance of the status quo.

This drive to maintain the status quo in EU–Africa relations and, therefore, ontological security for the EU is under challenge. One crucial issue is migration. Mitzen [44] shows convincingly that migration from outside the EU is conceived of in existential terms as threatening. For Mitzen, migration is a stressor to the EU’s ontological security [45], and this is manifested in EU–Africa relations. In the 2000 Cotonou Agreement, Article 13, which governs dialogue on migration, sat uneasily within the framework. Van Criekinge [46] argues that Article 13 was a compromise. The process that led to this compromise reinforces the view that the African and European sides did not agree on this issue and that the principles of equality, ownership, and especially partnership failed to be respected. For the EU, there is a preference for more migration and border controls against immigrants from Africa [47]; while external observers see the EU as simply externalizing its borders and interfering in intra-regional migration regimes through its trust funds. [48]

A significant part of the European citizenry viewed migration as a significant challenge to the identity of the EU. The EU, through its institutions, has felt bound to reflect policies that stave off this challenge to its identity, even when those policy actions question the EU self. [49] For example, the EU (including member states), through its migration policies and practices, including the recent Emergency Trust Fund, has been accused by academics and journalists of complicity in the Libyan slave markets of mainly Black Africans. [50] Presently, the EU has pushed for migration deals signed by the European Commission with five African countries (Niger, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, and Ethiopia) linking EU development aid and trade. While this approach to returning “unwanted” migrants from Europe [51] has been challenged on various grounds as incompatible with the values the EU espouses, we suggest it is, however, consistent with the drive to achieve ontological security. Mitzen [52] is thus correct to argue that, in the interventions wielded to maintain ontological security, the EU’s normative self is challenged.

The relationship between Africa and the EU shows the limits of the search for ontological security. As Mitzen [53] has outlined, the search for ontological security can be perilous, where political actors take part in destructive behavior. Rossdale [54] further highlights that ontological security can mask “a violent othering [that is] exclusionary and antagonistic” which is the basis for coloniality. So, the question remains, is the EU’s ontological security always at the expense of its African “partners”, even as the search for this elusive security remains damaging?

Practicing African Agency–responding to persistent hierarchies in EU–Africa relations

For the past two decades, Africans have been increasingly assertive about what they want from all partners and less reticent about forging ahead with regional integration plans. Importantly, this process of integration had the intention of harnessing political power and will have over 50 countries into powerful voices in global politics. This is not suggesting a perfect formulation of that agency. As Khadiagala (2018) rightly notes, African elites have not always taken advantage of the opportunities to leverage this agency, not the least because many African endeavors rely on financial resourcing from the EU. [55] Yet, the concerted efforts of African elites cannot be ignored.

In April 2000, the first EU–Africa summit was held in Cairo. It was the first time Africa as a group was considered outside of the ACP Group in the Organisation’s context of African Unity (OAU), bringing together North African and sub-Saharan African countries. A year earlier, member states of the OAU got together in Sirte (Libya) and agreed to disband the organization. They also agreed to create a replacement shortly. The move to create a new institution was a signal to deepen integration and leverage the level of cooperation of peace, security, and development at the service of Africans’ interests. [56] The Sirte Declaration underscored the resolve of African leaders to “effectively address the new social, political, and economic realities in Africa and the world” [57], thus repositioning Africa as a strategic actor, no longer taking a back sit in international ordering. The resulting institution is the African Union (AU), created in 2001 and came into force in 2002. The AU has since become an important interlocutor for Africans on the world stage, especially for consolidating African agencies. In 2003, African leaders integrated NEPAD, the New Partnership for African Development, into the AU. NEPAD, a new economic initiative, was launched in 2001 and was seen as the blueprint for the full-scale socioeconomic development of the continent. It was the policy response by African leaders to deal with globalization, trade, and aid for economic development. Similarly, an African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) was also set up to guarantee that African leaders would be accountable to each other for the effective implementation of political and economic reforms. [58]

The 2005 strategy was a response to existing tensions. Since the 1990s, academics, activists, and African and European political elites have underscored the need to update the relationship between African countries and the EU, particularly as it has been framed in EU-ACP. The Lomé IV Convention (1995), for example, already included new areas of engagement, including democracy and good governance, the promotion of the private sector, and strengthening gender equality and human rights promotion. [59] Lomé IV opened the possibility for intensified region-to-region cooperation within the ambit of EU-ACP relations.

The expectation after Lomé IV was that its successor would allow the African side to articulate its priorities more clearly and take on greater ownership within the partnership. They discursively framed the resulting 2000 Cotonou Agreement as a new framework challenging previous asymmetries. The timing of the Cotonou Agreement also happened as broader changes took place in North-South relations. [60] Yet, as evidenced by the 2005 strategy developed soon after Cotonou, the promise of change to allow for greater articulation of African agency was not forthcoming.

Introducing the much-contested Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs evidenced by Cotonou’s limited ability to result in a change in part). From the EU’s perspective, EPAs were essential to any relationship in the future with African countries. According to MacDonald et al. [61], the EU threatened African states with withdrawing preferences enjoyed since the Lomé Convention if negotiations did not end. The coercive approach was antithetical to the stated objectives of the relationship and reinforced the coloniality of power.

Practically, the EPAs undermined African aspirations of regional integration by pushing for sub-regional agreements within the continent that did not map onto the sub-regional divisions recognized by African elites as Regional Economic Communities (RECs). This is significant since the EU has consistently maintained its support for African integration on African terms. [62] To date, EPAs still have limited uptake in Africa. [63] The insistence on the EPAs by the EU has contributed to mistrust within the EU–Africa relationship, even as the EU maintains that this is best for the relationship. With the Cotonou agreement ending in November 2021, the EU made the move to “reset” relations with Africa once again, as articulated in Comprehensive Strategy with Africa (2020).

While these collective endeavors have faced and continue to face governance, economic or social challenges, they are the evidence of a growing African agency. Tieku [64] concretely defines African agency as “the autonomy of African citizens through their lawful representatives, have to act, own, control and lead on issues that affect them”. Bah [65] further argues that the articulation of agency is accompanied by creating new instruments to assert strategic interests. Importantly, the AU is articulated as the manifestation of such agency and to counter Western hegemonies. The political and policy intentions of the progressive articulation of the African agency are perfectly captured in Agenda 2063 (2014), which is designated as “Africa’s blueprint and master plan for transforming Africa… pursued under Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance” (African Union, n. d).

More recently, they have reasserted this agency with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) launched in January 2021. We can read AfCFTA as a success of regional integration and an exemplar of the articulation of African agency. Not without its hurdles ahead [66], AfCFTA has increased Africa’s collective bargaining and, therefore, its ability to manage its relationship with external actors. It is the largest free trade area in the world aiming to connect 55 countries and create a 1.3 billion-people market by lowering tariffs for about 90 percent of products traded within the area.

According to Franklin Obeng-Odoom [67], the normative premise for the AfCFTA is unique because of its rejection of traditional right or left-leaning theories of trade, and rather the adoption of “non-aligned pan-Africanism”. The EU has contributed to this regional development through its Pan-African Program (PANAF). Until 2019, this program provided over 60 million EURO to support the creation of the AfCFTA. [68] This can be read as the EU leveraging its own experience to support a grand integration project and thus reasserting its privileged relationship with Africa. Yet, at the core of AfCFTA is the elimination of coloniality. Where the AfCTA calls for a whole of continent integration, the EU’s continued insistence on EPAs challenges this ambition. The AfCFTA, as envisioned in Africa, is an antidote to the EU’s vision in that this is regionalism on African rather than European terms.

Another signal of the rising African agency is the attempt by African countries to actively woo foreign direct investors to broaden options for economic growth and development (Soule, 2020). African countries are positioning themselves as investment safe havens in an attempt to project their global role and meet the domestic demands for stronger infrastructure, jobs, and well-being. While the EU-27 remains Africa’s major trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) partner, the competition has been growing in the past decade. China, India, Turkey, and Middle East countries provide alternatives to EU roles on the continent, thus challenging the EU’s historic self-identity as a “natural partner”.

China especially is seen as a strategic rival and competitor to the EU on the continent. Chinese investment in Africa increased by 43.8% between 201 and 018, and as of 2018, China is now Africa’s fifth-biggest investor. China’s stock of FDI in 2018 was 46 billion US dollars behind that of the Netherlands, France, the US, and the UK. [69] Unlike the EU, China does not link its development aid or investment policy to human rights reform, good governance, or climate change action, usually framed as European values. This has resulted in offering an alternative source of capital for African governments that would be unwilling to introduce such reforms. [70]

However, it is the “success” of the Chinese model of development that threatens the EU’s normative position in Africa. The Chinese model allows for strong state-led development, easier access to finance with little need for democratic rules, and respect for human rights or rule of law, which have consistently underpinned the EU’s offers for partnership with the continent. In this way, the Chinese model challenges the NPE model. It does not mean that the Chinese model is better or more beneficial to the aims of the African agency. It just offers a marked alternative, as China can frame the enduring EU model as empty promises of substantive change since they have so far been elusive for over five decades. The Chinese approach moreover allows African leaders the space to develop their models of development. [71] We contend then that the Chinese option in particular challenges EU–Africa relations–a relationship that is embedded in the trajectory of European integration itself. [72]

The EU engagement with Africa vis-à-vis China underscores how ontological security is challenged in EU–Africa relations, based on an articulation of agency that challenges the privileged relationship with African states. Indeed, the EU admits as much in the 2016 Global Strategy [73], where it notes that it faces an existential crisis that stems from specific actors within the global order. China is one such actor that challenges the EU’s vision of global order, especially in the economic realm.

In its strategic outlook for EU–China relations released in March 2019, the Commission noted:

China is, simultaneously,… an economic competitor in the pursuit of technological leadership, and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance. This requires a… pragmatic whole-of-EU approach enabling a principled defense of interests and values. (emphasis added) [74]

Overall, the increasing exercise of African agency [75] challenges the EU’s secure self. [76] We argue, however, that in the attempt to regain equilibrium, or rather in pursuit of ontological security, the EU’s responses undermine its overarching aims of good relations with Africa and as an ethical foreign policy actor via the exercise of its norms.

Towards a more equitable future for EU–Africa relations?

Despite the range of areas of cooperation, efforts to fundamentally change the structure of EU–Africa relations have once again failed. [77] This latest acknowledgment of failure has occurred in a period characterized by crises for the EU. First, the 2008 economic crisis led to the Eurozone-wide financial contagion, resulting in a sovereign debt crisis across the Union. A security crisis followed this with renewed Russian aggression resulting from the conflict in Ukraine in 2014 and the breakdown of the Schengen system during the EU’s so-called refugee crisis in 2015. A more existential threat soon followed the refugee crisis–the 2016 United Kingdom referendum and surprise decision to leave the Union, the rise of populist and Euro-sceptic parties, and the challenge to democratic principles in member states like Hungary and Poland. The latest crisis has been the human and economic crisis caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond this, the geopolitical stances of dissenting countries, particularly China and Russia, who seek more prominence in Europe’s traditional spheres of influence in Africa increasingly challenged the EU’s investment in a multilateral rules-based order. [78]

Amid this, the EU is pushing back, as expressed in the Global Strategy of 2016. The Global Strategy sets out five main external priorities: (1) the security of the Union; (2) state and societal resilience in the EU Neighborhood and Africa; (3) an integrated approach to conflicts; (4) cooperative regional orders and (5) global governance for the twenty-first century. [79] Because of navigating multiple crises with the view of recovering stability and securing the sense of self, the EU has placed increased emphasis on security, resulting in the increased militarization of EU borders and migration control. [80]

Ultimately, the EU seems keener to focus on economic and trade ties in its relationship with African countries, moving beyond security, migration, and development aid. In September 2016, then EC’s President Juncker announces during the State of the Union the creation of the biggest diplomacy project aimed at wooing back Africa: the European Investment Plan (EIP). [81] An ambitious plan to encourage private sector investments in Africa (and the EU Neighbourhood), boost continent-to-continent trade relations and help create millions of jobs. The EIP introduces a 4.1 billion EURO European Fund for Sustainable Development (EFSD) that offers a financial guarantee to a variety of actors from the European Investment Bank (EIB), and European Development Finance Institutions (EDFIs) to private investors in EU Member states and partner countries. In the same State of the Union, former High Representative Federica Mogherini was very clear about the rationale for EIP: to support EU strategic foreign policy goals. [82]

Politically, the core purpose of this plan was to challenge China in Africa rather than a consideration for those enduring power hierarchies that have long undermined the possibilities of a true partnership. To offer Africans a competitive alternative to China, the logical implication would be to get rid of the EPAs and negotiate relations with Africans via the AU. As a tool to support EU strategic foreign policy goals, the EIP emerges to de-risk up-front private venture investments in such sectors as transport, utilities, and infrastructure in Africa. The EIP is expected to help private ventures to deal with “unfair international competition that requires action to ensure a level playing field” [83] and to “tackle the root causes of irregular migration and forced displacement” affecting the continent. [84] In principle, this would be a win-win situation.

By the end of 2020, the EU had approved its 2021–2027 budget, giving it the financial muscle to support its strategic foreign policy goals. The budget includes a new framework for EU development finance aimed at non-EU countries simplifying the current architecture and scaling up the impact of EIP. First, several instruments funding the EU development policy have merged into one, the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) totaling almost 79.5 billion EURO. Second, the NDICI will finance the EFSD+ (an expanded version of the original EFSD) and a new guarantee fund (the External Action Guarantee) with a ceiling of up to 60 billion EURO. This new guarantee fund can also accept contributions from the EU Member States, and other third parties, including other countries. The figures involved in EFSD+ and the new guarantee fund reveal how the EU is attempting to boost its financial resources for strategic foreign policy goals. [85]

In the last five years, the EU has gone to great lengths to underscore the importance of Africa, as evidenced by the Comprehensive Strategy with Africa (2020), a new framework for AU-EU relations. [86] Von der Leyen’s first international trip was to Ethiopia, the seat of the AU. Von der Leyen’s approach was to convince African elites that going along with European preferences would ensure further investment in the continent. In short, for the EU side, the pathway to a true partnership was contingent on African priorities being secondary to the EU’s preferences.

The message that the African side heard, once again, was that the EU continued to exercise the coloniality of power. African business and political elites stress that in a structure of trade (and broader economic relations) it is only more of the same. [87] Renegotiating the replacement of the Cotonou Agreement between the EU and the Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS), which had replaced the ACP group, has reinforced this perception. As Carbone [88] shows, the result did not pan out in what the AU wanted–a whole-of-continent approach. On the one hand, this is explained as because of internal contestations in Africa. The reasons for the contestation are hardly explored, including the EU’s bilateral efforts with AU member states to bypass the Commission (see also Anonymous, 2020). During the negotiations, EU representatives like Joanna Drake, deputy director-general at the Commission’s DG Environment admitted that in EU–Africa relations, while “‘equality’ was used a lot,… the point of departure was not equal.” [89]

Conclusion

The EU’s external relations practices are inconsistent with its commitment to an enduring relationship with Africa that achieves true partnership. There have been many moves over the years, but not enough to change the dynamic of the relationship. In this article, we argue that after a decade of multiple crises internally and vying for attention in previously privileged spaces in its external relations, the EU’s ontological security is being challenged. The EU is attempting to mitigate this challenge through the creation or redesign of new international forums and investment policies such as the EIP allowing it to protect its interests and maintain its status-quo position within the global order, including as a privileged actor in Africa.

However, the EU’s attempt to overcome its fears and anxieties in its relationship with Africa can be at odds with an increasing African agency that eschews the coloniality of power. In articulating this agency, African states continue to push for African solutions to African problems. Exercising agency by engaging with more actors, including the EU’s rivals, China especially, but also Russia and Turkey, challenges the routinized EU–Africa relations as these new actors offer alternatives to the EU presence on the African continent. China can be seen to challenge European extractive practices from the perspectives of Africans and ultimately reduce the EU’s dominant position as an extra-regional and, to date, the main external economic partner for many African countries.

The EU continues to approach Africa by reinforcing the coloniality of power. If the rise of African agency is a challenge to the EU’s ontological security, then the time is now for the EU to reimagine the boundaries of “self”. If the rise of African agency is a challenge to the EU’s ontological security, while the EU’s ontological security vis-à-vis Africa reinforces the coloniality of power, then the time is now for the EU to reimagine the boundaries of “self”. However, with the move towards interest-driven foreign policy codified in the geopolitical commission and reinforced by militarization¹ and coercive negotiating tactics, the EU is in a conundrum, as ontological security will remain elusive.

Positive change within the Africa–EU relationship requires a reconcilement to the broader implications of the colonial past, particularly as it has shaped the continued exercise of the coloniality of power. As highlighted by an EU member state leader Irish President Michael D Higgins [90] “there are preliminary tasks to be accomplished at the European level, one of the most important being abandoning any affected amnesia as to the brutal colonization of previous times, the detritus of imperial subjugations which surfaces too often”. Thus, without reckoning how coloniality is part of the tapestry of the EU’s identity, at least in Africa, where many are no longer at ease with the status quo, the drive to improve relations will remain aspirational.

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