European Parliament

There is a new struggle for Africa’s market. The contestants include the European Union (EU), United States (US), Russia, India and China. In this blog, I reflect on the new European Union -Africa Comprehensive Strategy proposals. The blog pushes against the Strategy’s revision of the historical relationship between the two regions which is built on embedded inequality. This is because, to be a true partnership, the unequal nature of the relationship between the EU and Africa must be centered. In the contest for its market, Africa has a unique opportunity to harness the competition tactically.

Uncertainty looms for the Kenyan floriculture industry, as leaders of the East African Community Partner States – apart from Kenya - are stalling the ratification of the 2014 Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union (EAC-EU EPA). This analysis explains the deadlock in which this industry finds itself. 

There is a feeling that the next decade will be a watershed period in terms of the economic relations between the EU and Africa. Both continents are experiencing sweeping developments that will invariably affect their respective existence and mutual relationships. In Africa, the largest preferential trade area, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), has recently been ratified while in Europe, the EU is navigating the challenges of Brexit. All this is taking place in the backdrop of negotiations between the two blocs to replace the Cotonou Agreement which has since 2000 served as the bedrock of economic relations between the EU and ACP states. How, then, will the Africa-EU relationship be impacted – if at all – by the implementation of AfCFTA?

It is clear that over the past decade, there is perhaps no other African country that has made such large concessions to the United States as Morocco has. By first adjusting its intellectual property laws, and now allowing the importation of American poultry despite concerns for its domestic market, Morocco's has affirmed its loyalty to its trade partner. By contrast, countries such as South Africa, which refused the U.S.'s intellectual property law requirements and implemented anti-dumping tariffs against American poultry, are moving in the opposite direction of liberalized free trade with the United States particularly with regard to poultry.