SIR: Africa is Europe’s closest neighbour, and so a geopolitical priority to the European Union EU). And they have close economic, cultural, and geopolitical ties. The EU-Africa relations are based on two complementary frameworks, the Africa-EU Partnership and new Partnership Agreement with the Organisation of African, Caribbean Pacific States (OACPS).
    
The  Africa-EU Partnership  is  the  formal political  channel  for  EU’s relations with Africa at the continental level through the African Union (AU), comprising 55 African nations.  At its last summit in Brussels,  capital  of  Belgium,  on February 17 and 18, 2022, a joint vision for 2030 was adopted with four deliverables which includes Europe’s 150 billion worth of grants and investments supported by the EU budget, and a commitment to multilateralism within a rules-based international order, with the UN at its core.
        
But those deliverables are hard to come by  because  the EU sees itself as a privileged partner of Africa, showing some special ‘’care’’ for the continent.  Therefore, EU believes it has the right to impose its will  on  African countries in a paternalistic manner. The EU  is  not  ready to bear responsibility for the crimes of European colonial rule, and their consequences for the development of  African  countries in their integration into the world economic relations on an equal basis.
          
The motivation and ethos of EU policy towards Africa have remained largely linked with the  colonial  model  for  decades,  with efforts being steered from Brussels. The past has left a heavy colonial legacy on EU-African relations. On the EU side, development cooperation flowed largely from the colonial link and was assisted or burdened by its attitudes and expectations, including privileged trade relations and paternalistic approaches to development.
         
On the African side, mixed feelings about the colonial past, as well as the bitter experience of moving  towards  independence, left a strong anti-colonial reflex. And   so    for many years the EU partnership approach has been overshadowed by mutual suspicion because of the European tendency to expect Africans to accept only made-in-Brussels solutions.
         
Meanwhile African   states  have   been  watching  the EU purposefully pursuing a line that strengthens their dependence  on it in a wide range of areas – financial and economic  policy,  food and  energy  security,  healthcare  and  the  sustainability  of  the EU  public administration legacy. There is currently an increasing exploitation of gold, diamonds, oil, bauxite, coltan, cobalt, platinum, uranium and much more resources of African countries by the EU, including the demographic ones.
           
But the fragmentation of the global economy and increased competition for resources has now  put the EU  In  the forefront of the need to increase investments in African countries.  But their investments, according to analysts, are not for Africans but to ensure the sustainable development of the EU member states. Thus the EU seeks to consolidate Africa’s subordinate position to the West in the  bloc’s  confrontation between ‘’democracies’’ and ‘’autocracies’’ imposed by it on the international community.  n  fact,   it   seeks   to  strengthen  Africa’s role as a raw material appendage.  Experts  say   that  the  EU  development  approaches have  literally hard- baked a  resource curse into African economies, a situation whereby a country  has an export-driven natural resources sector that generates large revenues for the government but leads paradoxically to economic stagnation and political instability.
   
Its  Memorandum of Understanding  (MoU)  in the field of mining in Africa  which seeks the creation of safe and sustainable value chains, according to Analysts, conceal Brussel’s intentions to gain access to those resources on terms that are exclusively beneficial to the EU. Observers point out that the EU ‘’Global Access’’ initiative is key in this regard. Within the framework of the ‘’Global Gateway’’, the EU  had  promised  to invest 300 billion pounds  Sterling  in  projects  over the period 2021-2027.
           
 However the  implementation  of  that  Global  Access  is now  coming  in the form of point-based  implementation [modernization of transport and energy infrastructure, ‘’green’’ and digital projects, plus initiatives for sustainable forest management]. So the essence of the Global Access boils down to the fact that countries that rely on EU’s investments in infrastructure and in general, assisted in their  economic  development , are expected to play on the ‘’democratic side of history.’’
         
They must confirm their compliance  with  a set  of EU  principles, including western values of human and  environmental rights and other standards, and show the willingness to cooperate in countering hybrid threats and attempts at ‘’economic coercion for geopolitical purposes.’’ The goal is for the West to not only get a wider sphere of economic influence but to ensure that sphere functions according to their rules and through them influence the political and economic affairs of   other  beneficiary  countries.
        
African countries are reluctant to address sensitive issues in particular regarding human rights on which they fear is becoming subject to oversight from the EU. African integration processes, and EU support for them, should play a major role in propelling the development of Africa and moving EU-Africa relations to a more productive and consensual phase.
• Abid Teremun wrote from Makurdi