Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants

Africa-EU Strategic Partnership: Challenges and Promises

Department

African/African-American

College

Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies

Date Range

2010-2011

Abstract

In 2007, the EU and Africa adopted a comprehensive strategic partnership to reflect the changing nature of their relationship in the new world era. Since then, the relationship between the two partners has deepened in a number of significant areas ranging from peace and security, human rights and governance, migrations, trade, climate change to regional integration. While this new phase in Africa-EU relations faces important challenges due, inter alia, to Africa's dependency; it also points towards the possibility of a substantive transformation based on a shared vision of interdependencies between Europe and Africa. The paper will assess the significance of Africa-EU strategic partnership against the backdrop of historical relations between the two partners and in light of the transformative dynamics affecting world politics today. I will argue, in substance, that the liberal nature of the European Union project on the one hand, and the pan-African ethos of the African Union on the other have the potential to overcoming some of the historical shortcomings that have defined and dominated Africa-Europe relations for the past sixty years.

Conference Name

28th Annual Conference of the Association of Third World Studies

Conference Location

Savannah, Georgia

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