Reinvigorating Afro-European partnership

BOLSTERING Africa’s capacity to deal with the climate change and vigorously engage in green transformation was one of the key points that President Abdel Fattah El Sisi stressed while chairing a roundtable panel on climate change as part of the Brussels European Union-African Union Summit that concluded in its work last Friday. Be it in an economic context or in an overall political perspective, Africa’s response to climate change constitutes a primal factor for the continent’s socio-economic development as well as for global prosperity and stability. And to build the aspired response, Africa is particularly required to boost climate change adaptation policies and programmes while still endeavouring to recover from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. The combination has indeed laid additional burden on African economies; hence, as President Sisi noted while speaking at the Brussels roundtable, the need for making appropriate financing available to the continent to pursue the adaptability part of the response to climate change, concomitantly with optimising the continent’s potential for green transformation.

Africa has been hard hit by climate change as so illustrated by the frequent and wide-spread drought strikes; and it has equally had to allocate funds for handling coronavirus cases and for getting access to vaccines. In either direction, the developmental process experiences considerable financial stress. It follows therefore that making due support available to Africa’s efforts to pursue climate adaptability programmes and move ahead with the transition to renewable energy represents a considerable asset for the continent as well as for the world.

In this context, the Brussels summit implied an opportunity for Africa and Europe to reinvigorate their multiple partnership especially since the global outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic had prompted a postponement of the joint summit that was originally scheduled for 2020. Nevertheless, the postponement and the circumstances of the past few years have created a time for both parties to reconsider the various frameworks for partnership in a way that bolsters the foundations of dialogue. An overview of the topics that appeared on the Brussels summit’s agenda and the remarks by speakers indicated that the event was much deeper a process that an opening of a postponed conference. Reflecting this observation were Senegalese President Macky Sall in his capacity as the current president of the African Union and the European Council President Charles Michel. “It’s a fresh start for a renewed partnership,” so spoke the AU chairman as the EC president stressed that the Brussels summit was not convening “to carry on business as usual.”  And it was apparently this shared attitude that motivated the emergence of accord at the highest political level on the road ahead for an operable partnership in the form of a well-defined vision for joint action, especially including the response to climate change, until the year 2030.