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Europe’s latest courtship of Africa arrives wrapped in fresh language, larger investment pledges and carefully staged symbolism. On the one hand, Italy speaks of “nonpredatory cooperation.” France, on the other, is now touting a “partnership of equals.” Summit venues have also shifted from Paris and Rome to Addis Ababa and Nairobi, while public messaging deftly avoids the aid vocabulary that poisoned earlier relations.
Yet the real question is not whether Europe’s tone has shifted but if its incentives have changed.
Italy’s Mattei Plan for Africa and France’s Africa Forward initiative emerged from overlapping European anxieties: migration pressures, energy insecurity after the war on Ukraine (and reignited by the dual chokepoint crisis in the aftermath of the US-Iran war), declining influence in the Sahel and rising competition from China, Turkiye, the Gulf states and Russia. The financial figures sound impressive. France this month announced about €23 billion ($26 billion) in combined public-private commitments. And Italy has expanded the Mattei Plan to 14 African countries while tying projects to infrastructure, energy and debt-conversion schemes.
However, neither initiative significantly escapes or alters the logic that shaped earlier European engagement with Africa. European capital still flows fastest toward sectors that stabilize Europe itself: gas corridors, migration containment, logistics infrastructure, strategic minerals and geopolitical access points.
Italy’s priorities reveal that pattern clearly. Rome wants fewer migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean and more African energy flowing north. Italy imports nearly 80 percent of its energy needs, among the highest dependency rates in Europe. More than half of Italian energy giant Eni’s hydrocarbon production already sits in Africa. Turning Italy into Europe’s southern energy gateway has therefore become a national strategic project disguised as continental partnership.
Migration remains equally central. Irregular sea arrivals into Italy remain high, at just over 66,000 last year. The figures are a far cry from the 2023 peak of about 155,000 thanks to agreements with Tunisia to tighten border enforcement. Now, European policymakers increasingly frame African development spending as a form of preemptive migration control, partially securitizing development funding.
France’s repositioning follows a different political calculation but reaches similar structural conclusions.
Paris understands that the “Francafrique” became politically toxic across large parts of West Africa and the Sahel. French troops were expelled from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger as anti-French rhetoric transformed from fringe activism into a governing ideology across the Sahel’s military-led regimes. Holding this month’s Africa Forward summit in Nairobi rather than a Francophone capital therefore carried strategic symbolism. France wants access to Africa’s future growth centers without carrying the full baggage of its colonial geography.
Moreover, Macron’s emphasis on artificial intelligence, startups, creative industries and first-loss guarantees reflects an attempt to modernize French influence rather than abandon it. French policymakers increasingly understand that military dominance no longer equals political legitimacy. Soft power, venture finance, digital infrastructure and financial engineering now matter more.
Nevertheless, Africa’s massive debt burden remains the elephant in the room that Rome and Paris have consciously sidestepped in their latest overtures.
Africa faces some of the world’s highest borrowing costs, often double those of advanced economies, despite comparatively lower shares of global financial risk. Worse still, nearly half of African sovereign debt is held by private creditors that staunchly resist restructuring. Meanwhile, credit rating methodologies continue assigning punitive risk premiums to African economies, frequently treating 54 vastly different countries as a single risk category.
France’s proposed first-loss guarantee mechanism attempts to reduce investor fear by absorbing early financial losses. Private capital becomes more willing to enter African markets because governments and development institutions shoulder part of the downside risk.
Yet guarantees do not erase debt burdens. Guarantees mainly socialize risk while privatizing returns.
European policymakers increasingly frame African development spending as a form of preemptive migration control.
Hafed Al-Ghwell
And African policymakers increasingly recognize the distinction.
Infrastructure financing also reveals the contradiction inside Europe’s new Africa strategy. European governments criticize China’s Belt and Road debts while simultaneously constructing their own influence corridors. Take Italy’s involvement in the Lobito Corridor project, for instance. Rail and port infrastructure connecting Angola, Zambia and mineral-rich interior regions may indeed improve trade capacity. However, logistics corridors often prioritize extraction efficiency over industrial transformation within Africa itself.
Raw materials still move outward faster than value-added industries move inward.
Africa’s deeper structural challenge therefore remains unresolved: the continent exports commodities but imports finished value chains.
Africa accounts for about 17 percent of the world’s population but less than 3 percent of global trade. Intra-African trade remains about 15 percent, far below Europe or Asia. The African Continental Free Trade Area potentially changes the equation by creating a $3.4 trillion integrated market across 1.4 billion people. Success there matters more than any bilateral European summit.
After all, fragmented bilateral deals weaken African bargaining power because each country negotiates separately against far larger financial systems. European capitals understand this dynamic well. Divided markets produce cheaper access, weaker negotiating positions and more dependence on external financing.
A unified African market changes the power equation entirely.
Developments across the Sahel demonstrate why the old model is fraying. Military-led governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger increasingly reject Western political frameworks while experimenting with alternative alignments via the Alliance of Sahel States. BRICS expansions further widen Africa’s geopolitical options, while Gulf states, China, Turkiye, India and Russia all compete for influence across sectors once dominated by Europe and the US.
Competition changes bargaining behavior.
African governments now possess greater room for transactional diplomacy because external powers increasingly need Africa for energy transition minerals, food security, maritime positioning, its youth bulge, and diplomatic alignment in multilateral institutions.
Europe, therefore, no longer negotiates from a position of uncontested strength.
A more serious partnership would require Europe to support African industrial policy rather than thinly veiled extractionism. Local mineral processing, technology transfers, manufacturing integration and visa liberalization would produce more durable credibility than another summit declaration about equality.
Debt restructuring also matters more than investment branding. No long-term development strategy succeeds while governments spend enormous portions of public revenues servicing external debt at punitive rates.
African leaders also face their own strategic test.
European desperation creates opportunity, but only if African governments negotiate collectively and strategically. Foreign capital should be treated as a competitive marketplace rather than a patronage relationship. Europe’s renewed interest can extract concessions that previous generations could only dream of, from local content requirements to industrial transfer agreements, infrastructure ownership guarantees and stronger regional integration financing.
Ultimately, Europe’s new deals are less transformative than advertised. Fresh branding alone cannot erase decades of structural imbalance.
A different outcome remains possible, though.
Africa’s future bargaining power will depend less on whether Europe offers a “new deal” and more on whether African states finally negotiate as a continental market rather than 54 disconnected economies.
• Hafed Al-Ghwell is senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center in Washington and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies.
X: @HafedAlGhwell
