PREVIEW-EU, Africa look for new partnership in summit
04 Dec 2007 12:50:18 GMT Source: Reuters
By Axel Bugge LISBON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - European and African leaders will seek to forge a fresh partnership to tackle issues like trade, immigration and peacekeeping this week when they hold their first summit in seven years. Pressed by China's growing investment and influence in Africa, EU leaders hope to reinforce ties with the world's poorest continent by improving cooperation on several fronts and moving away from dependence-inducing aid. EU president Portugal says the EU-Africa summit is long overdue -- the last was held in Cairo in 2000. It has gone ahead despite British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's boycott over the invitation of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, accused by Western governments of gross human rights violations. Portugal says the summit will herald a multilateral European approach to Africa, moving away once and for all from the colonial heritage of the 1885 Berlin conference when European powers carved up Africa between them. "The Berlin model of dividing (Africa) among ourselves was the model that has dominated EU-Africa relations before this summit," Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado told Reuters. "This summit marks the end of that model." China's economic expansion into Africa has marked it out as the emerging power on the continent. Hungry for resources to fuel its own economic growth, China has poured money into African economies. The EU remains Africa's largest trading partner, with total trade of more than 200 billion euros ($296 billion) in 2006, but China jumped into third place last year with 43 billion. "China has now positioned itself as the essential backdrop to this summit," said Patrick Smith, editor of the Africa Confidential newsletter. "I think the EU has to be a lot more imaginative now." SUSTAINED DEVELOPMENT? Rapid growth in many parts of Africa holds out the hope that the continent is now on a sustainable development path. That should encourage Europe to view Africa as an investment opportunity and not just a recipient of aid. The IMF has estimated sub-Saharan Africa's growth rate will rise to 7 percent next year, its highest in three decades, from 6 percent in 2006. "Both sides must think in terms of partnership and complementarity to push Africa into a sustained development track and not to deepen its dependency on Europe and its markets," said Khaled Charguaoui, chairman of the independent Moroccan Human Rights Center. Besides trade, key areas to be discussed at the summit of more than 70 leaders include how to strengthen peacekeeping in Africa, a big challenge considering the EU's delayed implementation of a force for Chad because of a shortage of resources such as helicopters. Europe also hopes to renew calls for a crackdown against illegal immigration, something it hopes to do by encouraging legal migration through a so-called "blue card" scheme to allow in skilled African workers. With Europe's heavy reliance on energy suppliers such as Russia, Brussels also hopes to secure an energy partnership to tap increasing production of African gas and oil. But controversy over human rights could sour the summit, especially with Mugabe's attendance. A group of prominent writers, including Nobel prize winners Gunter Grass and Nadine Gordimer, accused European and African leaders on Tuesday of cowardice for not putting Zimbabwe and the Darfur crisis high on the agenda at the summit. Human Rights Watch also urged them to address human rights. "Will the summit make a difference to the civilian under bombardment in Somalia, to the democracy activist in Zimbabwe, or to the Senegalese youth on a rickety boat bound for Spain?" said Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch, in a statement. (Additional reporting by Henrique Almeida in Lisbon, Ingrid Melander in Brussels, Pascal Fletcher in Dakar, Rabat and Nairobi bureaux; Editing by Keith Weir)
