As African leaders put together for the seventh African Union–European Union Summit in Luanda on 24–25 November 2025, they need to reassess the continent’s commerce and assist relationship with the EU in gentle of persistent structural imbalances. Greater than sixty years after the formal finish of colonial rule, Africa’s commerce profile with Europe stays extremely extractive and minimally transformative, dominated by uncooked materials exports somewhat than diversified, greater worth‑added items.
The primary AU–EU summit, held in Cairo in 2000, promised a partnership primarily based on equality, mutual respect and shared prosperity, but Africa’s financial diversification has superior solely marginally. Based on Eurostat, between 2022 and 2024 minerals and fuels made up 53% of Africa’s exports to the EU (€194bn), led by Algeria, Nigeria, Libya, Angola and Egypt. Automobiles and elements (6%), electrical equipment (5%), cocoa merchandise (3%), attire (3%) and different gadgets similar to gems, fertilisers, iron and metal collectively accounted for under about 7% of exports.
Colonial-era commerce patterns linger
This sample mirrors the financial geography formed within the colonial period, when infrastructure and commerce routes had been designed to maneuver unprocessed sources from Africa’s inside to European markets. It additionally sits uneasily with the AU’s Agenda 2063, which prioritises industrialisation, worth addition and financial diversification. A key query for the summit, due to this fact, is whether or not present AU–EU commerce agreements and EU “Support for Commerce” are serving to to vary this profile or locking it in.
The 1975 Lomé Conference was the primary main commerce and assist settlement between the European Neighborhood (now the EU) and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states. It was later changed by the Cotonou Settlement in 2000. Each supplied non‑reciprocal preferences to ACP exports. After Cotonou expired, the EU moved to a differentiated method: least developed international locations (LDCs) obtain unilateral preferences via the All the pieces However Arms (EBA) scheme, whereas non‑LDCs are anticipated to conclude reciprocal financial partnership agreements (EPAs) in keeping with World Commerce Group (WTO) guidelines. Though WTO disciplines permit flexibility in such agreements – longer transition durations, partial product protection and extra versatile guidelines of origin – the EU has usually used this room in methods which might be unfavourable for Africa’s non‑LDCs.
Throughout Africa, the EPA expertise has been regarding. Below stress to keep away from lack of EU market entry, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Botswana, Namibia, Eswatini and Kenya ratified EPAs with demanding tariff‑liberalisation schedules on EU imports. In Ghana, analysts argue that the federal government successfully capitulated to far‑reaching EU calls for, partly as a result of negotiations coincided with the tenth European Growth Fund spherical, throughout which Ghana acquired €373.6m in finances help. Within the East African Neighborhood, Kenya’s bilateral EPA has undermined the East African Neighborhood Frequent Exterior Tariff (EAC CET) : it agreed to a 25% tariff on EU wines and spirits, beneath the EAC CET price of 35% supposed to guard native producers. Different signatories with equally demanding phrases embrace Cameroon, Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Lesotho, Seychelles, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
A number of African non‑LDCs stay outdoors EPAs, together with Algeria, Cabo Verde, Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, South Sudan and Tunisia. Nigeria, particularly, resisted EU stress and declined to signal as a result of the EU sought intensive tariff liberalisation regardless of Nigeria providing a 5‑12 months tax vacation to overseas traders to encourage home manufacturing. Nigeria’s plan was to part out tariffs steadily whereas sustaining tax incentives, so EU corporations would put money into native manufacturing and transfer down the worth chain as an alternative of perpetuating uncooked materials exports. EU insistence on far‑reaching liberalisation risked reinforcing the colonial sample: Nigeria exports uncooked commodities to the EU for processing after which imports completed merchandise again.
Worth chains should mirror Africa’s priorities
Support coverage reveals related tensions. The EU presents itself because the world’s main supplier of “Support for Commerce”, and Africa receives the biggest share of this help. But the EU’s personal progress report signifies that the majority funds go to commerce‑associated infrastructure – customs reform, ports, corridors and logistics – somewhat than focused worth‑chain improvement. In the meantime, the EU’s International Gateway initiative, which goals for important investments in Africa, largely focuses on giant‑scale infrastructure in power, transport and digital connectivity. Critics argue these tasks are geostrategic responses aimed toward decreasing EU dependence on Chinese language minerals and Russian gasoline by securing entry to African uncooked supplies, somewhat than efforts towards systematically constructing African industrial capacities.
Infrastructure is critical however not adequate to remodel Africa’s export profile. A lot of the continent’s legacy infrastructure was designed in colonial occasions to maneuver unprocessed sources from mines and plantations to ports. Present assist that concentrates on infrastructure, with out parallel funding in processing and upgrading, dangers mimicking that mannequin.
The final AU–EU summit declaration pledged help for regional and continental integration and described commerce agreements as devices to deepen commerce, foster improvement and obtain mutually helpful integration of each continents’ markets. To honour these commitments, the EU ought to settle for African tariff‑liberalisation schedules underneath EPAs the place they’re clearly calibrated to advertise native manufacturing and financial diversification. It also needs to transfer past a generic give attention to “connectivity” and “laborious infrastructure” and align its assist extra intently with sector‑particular worth‑chain methods in agriculture, manufacturing and companies that mirror Africa’s personal priorities and the realities of Agenda 2063.
African leaders ought to use leverage
This requires altering how assist is designed. Too usually, EU assist frameworks are drafted in Brussels or different European capitals, with African governments handled as implementers somewhat than co‑architects. In right now’s context – the place Africa is a aggressive vacation spot for commerce and funding from China, Turkey, Gulf states and others – African leaders have extra leverage to insist that assist and EPAs help greater worth‑added exports as an alternative of uncooked materials dependence. Progress ought to be measured much less by export volumes and extra by the diploma of worth addition generated inside African economies.
Because the seventh AU–EU Summit convenes in Luanda, African leaders ought to ship a transparent and unified message: Europe’s assist to Africa and its EPAs should transfer past merely securing entry to African markets and sources and as an alternative allow African possession of worth creation on the continent. If the EU fails to adapt to Africa’s aggressive rise and to the ambitions embodied within the African Continental Free Commerce Space and Agenda 2063, it dangers shedding affect and market share in a area that’s its closest neighbour.
