The European Union and Africa: Opportunities and Contradictions

The European Union has high ambitions in developing a stronger partnership with the African Union. However, the ambitions are riddled with problems and even contradictions between various policy goals and available instruments. This paper will set the partnership arrangements between the EU and the AU in the context of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Goal number 17 implies that the EU should increase investments and technology transfer to Africa, while goal number 16 hints at the need for some kind of developmental state in Africa, to drive the strategies to achieve economic, social and environmental development. There is a need to rethink the ongoing European strategies and to spell out the contradictions of present policies. The paper will discuss fundamental policy dilemmas, like cooperating with corrupt politicians (making love to dictators, to speak with Stephen Krasner 2020) and trying to build democratic states in societies with clan-like structures. The dilemmas faced by the EU have much in common with the role played by the US as a hegemon in relation to the liberal world order; Should the EU impose its democratic rules on undemocratic African leaders or collaborate with them? Will the EU follow its own rules in a fair way?