EU-Africa Strategy: How Green Growth Can Succeed
29.10.2020
The EU wants to cooperate more intensively with Africa in five key areas: the green transition and energy access, digital transformation, sustainable growth and employment, peace and governance, and migration and mobility. A new Policy Brief makes recommendations for the successful implementation of the EU-Africa Strategy proposed in March 2020.
The Strategy’s basic premise is that our current challenges demand new forms of collective action that are rooted in shared values and geared to resilient societies and a sustainable future. The authors of the Policy Brief, Grace Mbungu (IASS), Kerstin Opfer (Germanwatch) und Mohamed Adow (Power Shift Africa), make three recommendations for the key area Green Transition and Energy Access. These recommendations seek to ensure that policy frameworks and implementation strategies are beneficial in the long term for people in Africa and across the globe.
The authors believe the proposed strategy has the potential to take existing cooperation between the EU and Africa to a new level, to counteract Chinese investment in fossil fuels with investment in green growth, and to develop measures that ensure human-centred, environmentally friendly, and socially responsible transformation processes. The three recommendations are:
- Adopt social performance and sustainability as the frames of reference in developing and implementing the green transition and energy access partnership.
- Commit to developing financial environments that provide sustainable capital for climate-friendly investment, with a special focus on small-scale renewable energy projects.
- Strengthen African leadership, ownership, and good governance as guiding principles for the EU-Africa energy partnership.
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought discussions of a new EU-Africa partnership to a temporary halt. A high-level summit originally planned for October 2020 has been postponed to 2021.
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