Relations Between Europe and Africa Seen Through the Franco-German Prism
The year 2020 was to be a pivotal year for (re)formulating Europe's Africa strategy. Germany and France were committed to strengthening relations between the two continents and to consolidating them at the sixth summit of the African Union and the European Union, which was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The evolution of trade agreements and the policy towards the Sahel provide lenses to assess the evolution of this relationship with Sub-Saharan Africa, a zone, whose external partnerships have been recomposing since the 2000s, with a particularly marked Asian tropism. Based on a historical approach, this paper proposes to analyze the evolution of France’s and Germany’s African policies and their possible impact on the EU’s Africa strategy.
Alain Antil is the Director of the Ifri's African Studies Center.
Sina Schlimmer is a Research fellow at the Ifri's African Studies Center.
This publication is available in French: Allemagne d'aujourd'hui, n° 236, avril-juin 2021 (p. 129-142).