Africa Europe Relationships

The relationships between Africa and Europe are of high strategic importance. This volume studies the ongoing dynamics between the two continents by adopting a pluralist understanding of international relations which encompasses non-state actors as well as states. Going beyond pure intergovernmentalism, this focus of this book is on activists, business people, religious believers, local politicians as well as transnational networks and by hybrid coalitions. Such plurality of socio-economic and political interactions underpinning the relationship between Africa and Europe is underexamined and yet of great importance. The text identifies new patterns of cooperation and recurrent obstacles in the African-European multistakeholder dynamics, thus opening the way for a more accurate understanding of the future relationship between Africa and Europe. This book brings African and European reflections together, on an equal standing, in order to achieve a true dialogue among civilizations. This book is aimed at all those who are interested in African-European relationships, including students and researchers, as well as activists, business people, civil servant and functionaries at local and national level.

This timely book explores the current state of EU-Africa relations from a multidisciplinary perspective, placing emphasis on recent developments in five areas that are crucial for EU-Africa relations: development cooperation, trade, migration, security and democratization. It considers how Africa’s dependence on the EU has decreased due to the declining importance of development cooperation, and increasing cooperation with emerging powers, notably the BRIC nations.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the changing dynamics in the relationship between the African continent and the EU, provided by leading experts in the field. Structured into five parts, the handbook provides an incisive look at the past, present and potential futures of EU-Africa relations. The cutting-edge chapters cover themes like multilateralism, development assistance, institutions, gender equality and science and technology, among others. Thoroughly researched, this book provides original reflections from a diversity of conceptual and theoretical perspectives, from experts in Africa, Europe and beyond. The handbook thus offers rich and comprehensive analyses of contemporary global politics as manifested in Africa and Europe. The Routledge Handbook of EU-Africa Relations will be an essential reference for scholars, students, researchers, policy makers and practitioners interested and working in a range of fields within the (sub)disciplines of African and EU studies, European politics and international studies. The Routledge Handbook of EU-Africa Relations is part of the mini-series Europe in the World Handbooks examining EU-regional relations and established by Professor Wei Shen.

Broadening the Debate on EU–Africa Relations is designed to expand the scope of our understanding of the multi-layered relationship between the European Union and African political actors in order to shape both the academic and policy level discourse. The focus on chapters highlighting an African perspective offers an opportunity to redress an imbalance in scholarship, and also represents an effort to reinvigorate the EU-Africa discourse. The contributors scrutinise hitherto underexplored areas, from agricultural cooperation to sanctions to scientific collaboration, as new insights linger in the less visible margins of the relationship. Jointly, they push in the same direction, to broaden the debate on how subjects are approached in a field of study that has one-sidedly focus on the intended actions of the EU. To that end, three dimensions represent the common thread of the book: how to recalibrate African and European perspectives, how to proceed on an assumption of mutual influence rather than unidirectionality, and how to highlight the intertwined nature of the different drivers of the relationship. Recalibrating African and European perspectives by focusing on elements of reciprocity within the broad array of interregional interactions, Broadening the Debate on EU–Africa Relations will be of great interest to scholars of African Studies, African IR, and the EU. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the South African Journal of International Affairs.

This book provides various examples showing how Europe and Africa can be conceptualized and researched as a single macro-area connected by interrelated, global and multilevel dynamics. What types of relations characterize Europe and Africa today? The nature of the connections is neither clear nor unilinear: rather, they appear dialectical, multifaceted and pointing in different directions. This edited book explores narratives, contemporary dynamics and historical legacies demonstrating the long-standing relations between the continents, suggesting that the entangled Euro-African relations in multiple fields should be intended as a permanent condition for any analyses. The authors provide various evidence of the fact that the two continents are deeply part of shared but uneven structures of global wealth and power. Within those structures, certain dynamics are constantly produced and reproduced, yet new opportunities to subvert existing relations have also emerged recently. Hence, instead of proposing conceptual premises holding Africa and Europe as separate regions that get in touch at specific moments in time, be it colonialism, the Cold War, globalization, migration, this book critically considers that each of the matters explored is anything but an episode in a more complex, intertwined story that ultimately represents the explanatory framework for present Euro-African relations.

This book offers a holistic and comprehensive assessment of the European Union's (EU) relations with Africa focusing on their historical, political, socio-economic, and cultural dimensions. In the high imperial period from the nineteenth century, some in Europe advocated the idea of EurafriqueA" - a formula for putting Africa's resources at the disposal of Europe's industries. After tracing Europe's historical attempts to remodel relations following African independence from the 1960s and Europe's own quest for unity, the book examines the current strategic dimensions of the relationship. Most especially, contributors examine the place of Africa in the EU's need for global partnerships. Key topics discussed include trade and investment, security and governance, migration and identity, and the historical legacy on the current relationship. The volume closely analyses the key European players in Africa - France, Britain, Portugal, and the Nordics - within the context of the EU. Finally, it examines Europe's controversial immigration policies and complex relations with the Maghreb and Mediterranean, as well as perceptions of past and current European identity. The study concludes that Africa and Europe still appear not to have escaped fully the burdens of history, and examines the feasibility of elaborating and practising, in future, an Afro-EuropaA": a new relationship defined by genuine equality, partnership, and mutual self-interest between both continents-and one that finally sheds the baggage of the EurafriqueA" past.

The adoption of the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES) in 2007 was a watershed moment in Africa-EU relations, one that sought to 'reinvent' a historical relationship to meet the challenges posed by complex interdependencies, expanding globalization, and growing competition, all framed by the gradual dislocation of the West as the epicenter of world politics. Five years into its implementation, this book offers a thorough and first comprehensive investigation of the JAES, the most advanced form of interregionalism seen to date.

This book examines Africa-Europe relationships and intra-Africa relationships vis-à-vis migration. It analyses the African integration project that is being used to effectively manage migration within Africa and across its RECs, and harnessing it for development. The book presents debates related to the EU’s hardening and securitisation of its external border against migrants from Africa. It shows that migration actually challenges Africa-European relations, which is discussed as an important theme in this book. Authors in this book volume investigate several issues ranging from conundrums relating to migration between Africa and Europe to migration within Africa, but also in relation to borders and boundaries, its bearing on regional and continental integration and the significance of this in terms of relations between Africa and Europe. This book volume brings into conversation issues relating to the governance of migration for development, social cohesion and regional integration.