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Africa has never been the forgotten continent from a European perspective. Colonial history and geographic proximity ensured that Europe did not lose sight of its southern neighbourhood even when the Cold War ended and the former superpowers lost their strategic interest in African political affairs. Yet, the European Union was slow to forge common policies towards the continent as a whole. The Lomé/Cotonou process (towards the so-called ACP - African, Caribbean and Pacific - states) was selective and exclusively focussed on trade and development issues. The Barcelona process launched in 1995 has been confined to the Mediterranean countries and never really got off the ground due to a lack of real interest on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea. It was only in 2000 when a first EU-African summit in Cairo laid the groundwork for a comprehensive relationship between the Union and Africa south of the Sahara.

Since then, Africa has gained further significance in international relations and in European policy discourses for at least three reasons. Firstly, since September 11, 2001, state failure became a prime international concern. Africa happens to be the place where fragile statehood and its related problems occur most frequently. Second, rising market prices for oil and other commodities have raised geopolitical interest in and economic greediness towards Africa. Today, state-owned firms and multinationals from all over the world, not least China and India, compete for scarce resources on the continent. Thirdly, transnational challenges such as migration and environmental concerns have moved upwards on the EU's policy agendas. Today it is acknowledged that Africa is an important partner when it comes to dealing with global problems.

The European Union reacted to these developments by placing Africa higher on its external relations agenda. Since the Cairo summit in 2000, ministerial meetings between the EU and African governments have been held annually. In 2005, the European Union published a document entitled "The EU and Africa: Towards a Strategic Partnership". The second EU-Africa summit took place in December 2007 in Lisbon and also endorsed a "Strategic Partnership" and a related Action Plan to cover a broad range of activities. While the EU thus demonstrated its ambitions, the crucial question, as is so often the case in European foreign policy, concerns resources, implementation and the Union's ability to act coherently. More specifically, Europe and its former colonial powers have a credibility problem towards Africa. This problem not only relates to broken promises in the past but also to allegations of Europe pursuing particularistic interests and neo-imperialism. For instance, some observers saw particularistic French and Belgian interests at work when the EU conducted its security and defence policy missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Against this background, this issue of "Foreign Policy in Dialogue" assesses the perspectives, strategies and motives of the European Union's common policy towards Africa. In his introductory chapter, Siegmar Schmidt discusses how the strategic approach of the EU towards Africa has evolved over time. He concludes that it has become more political as democracy promotion, human rights and security aspects are more relevant today than they were before. In Schmidt's view, the Lisbon summit of 2007 marked a real turning point in EU-Africa relations because it formulated far-reaching objectives, an extensive list of measures as well as a comprehensive catalogue of activities. He warns, however, that Europe "is running the risk of being overly ambitious and too optimistic with respect to African capacities and the compatibility of European and African ideas of democracy and good governance." Moreover, Schmidt also raises the problem that fragile and dysfunctional statehood in Africa deprives the relationship with Europe of one of its most important preconditions: the availability of capable partners.

Siegfried Schieder takes a closer look at the trade and aid dimensions of EU-Africa relations. He argues that this relationship is characterized by a deplorable asymmetry of power and influence; speaking of "partnership" therefore is in fact a misnomer. The reason for this asymmetry, according to Schieder, is that the relationship has in the past been restricted to trade and development cooperation, where Europe is the donor and Africa the recipient. In terms of trade flows, Africa is much more dependent on the EU than vice versa. The author also sees the strengthening of political conditionality of European aid and the EU's pushing of ACP countries into so-called Economic Partnership Agreements as other indicators of asymmetries being reinforced, rather than levelled. As a way to attenuate the asymmetries, Schieder proposes to shift the focus of EU-African cooperation towards other areas beyond trade and aid, namely peace, security and global issues such as environmental and climate protection. In these areas, the relationship would be more balanced as Europe has an interest to win African support for "effective multilateralism" on a global scale.

Martin Pabst analyzes EU-Africa cooperation in security and defence policy. Specifically, his contribution describes the motives and interests of EU involvement in Sub-Saharan Africa and the evolving African security architecture. Since 2003, Africa has become a focus of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) whose stated aim is to help Africa build its own structures and capacities to conduct conflict management. Against this background, the author assesses current EU capacity building programs, recent ESDP operations and indigenous initiatives by the African Union (AU). Pabst argues that the best policy for all sides would be to further develop the "security triangle" of the United Nations (UN), the AU and the EU. He doubts that the European Union and its composite member states "would have enough manpower, resources and legitimacy to shoulder conflict resolution in Sub-Saharan-Africa alone".

Gawaya Tegulle offers a critical African perspective on some of the principal assumptions behind the present EU-Africa relationship. Thus, in his view European development aid has only fuelled patronage networks and thus perpetuated dependencies. As Official Development Assistance (ODA) continues to flow reliably, African leaders have become less dependent on their own people to ensure political and economic survival. Tegulle also deplores European double standards in its dealing with African states when geopolitical and economic interest come into play. Finally, the author faults the European policy of relying on African review mechanisms to ensure "good governance", especially on the "African Peer Review Mechanism" (APRM). He argues that "[v]ery few African countries have the moral authority to indulge a meaningful peer review process" and that the principle "despots watching themselves" does not work. Tegulle does not oppose closer EU-African relations but suggests a more pragmatic approach, which would not be restricted to governmental contacts but place greater emphasis on people-to-people exchanges. His hope is that in the future a new breed of African leaders, who would be more responsive to the need of ordinary Africans, will take over.

The final contribution by Corinna Heuer, Klaus Paehler and Denis Schrey portrays the roles and work of German political foundations in the EU-Africa relationship from a practitioner's perspective. To illustrate their points, the authors offer two case studies of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation's activities in Nigeria and in West African countries. Heuer, Paehler and Schrey argue that political foundations, as well as other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have opportunities to act where official development cooperation must exercise restraint. Unlike official government-to-government relations, they have direct links to the political opposition , trade unions and other forces of civil society. Their focus is thus on civil society and human development in Africa. Against this background, the authors argue that German and European political foundations can significantly contribute to the implementation of the Africa-EU Strategic Partnership which was launched in 2007, especially in the partnership's second thematic pillar, "Democratic Governance and Human Rights". As becomes clear in the case studies of this contribution, the support of African parliaments on the national, regional or local level is one crucial element where foreign political foundations can make a difference through training programs.

Almost two decades after the end of the Cold War, Africa is surely back on the international agenda. It is unfortunate for the continent that this is unlikely to result in a better and more equitable integration into world markets, more political weight in international organizations or a broad societal modernization any time soon. What it does mean is that external political and economic interests and involvement in Africa will intensify and that foreign aid will continue to flow or even rise. In this context, the challenge for Africa will be to develop a common understanding of its long-term self-interests and the capacities and institutions to implement them. In short, it needs to evolve from an object of foreign interests and aid towards an active subject. The existing pan-African structures, such as the AU, currently do not seem to be up to this task. For the European Union, the challenge will therefore be to pursue a coherent policy which does not sacrifice long-term benefits to short term economic gains. The way towards a strategic partnership between a self-conscious Africa and a coherent and responsible European Union is still quite long.

Marco Overhaus is currently completing his PhD dissertation on German security policy within NATO since the end of the Cold War. He is also director of the information and research platform Deutsche-Außenpolitik.de.

This articel served as an editorial in the journal "Foreign Policy in Dialogue. A Quaterly Newsletter on German and European Foreign Policy" and is republished here with the permission of the author.

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