With the Africa-EU Strategy, Europe aims to make a major effort on poverty reduction in Africa. At the same time, it appears to cut across the Union's 40-year relationship with the ACP countries. The JAES is designed to be the major overall framework for EU support to Africa in a variety of areas, including development, security, economic development and migration. Yet there some major gaps that need to be filled for it to be successful.   The work on Africa-EU Relations includes two areas: the Joint Africa-EU Strategy & EU delivery on Strategy and the support for AU Institutions on relations with the EU. Read more  

---

Joint Africa-EU Strategy & EU Delivery on Strategy

---

EU Member States and civil society are not sufficiently involved in the EU-Africa Strategy, which means it is not a strategy for the whole of Europe. There are no links with the African debate on the Joint Strategy, so the strategy is at risk of being ineffective. Under this topic, you can find activities on: Africa-EU strategy monitoring CEEAC conflict prevention project Women affected by conflict Read more...

---

Support for AU Institutions on relations with the EU

---

The AU institutions do not know enough about the European Union (which is the European Commission and the EU Member States) and its policies on Africa. Their ability to acquire further knowledge is limited. This reduces the African Union's ability to exploit the full potential of the relationship with the EU. Under this topic, you can find activities on: Support to AU on EU affairs AU ITP phase 3 Read more...

---

Related publications

---

What next for the Joint Africa-EU Strategy? Perspectives on revitalising an innovative framework The Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES) was conceived as an innovative and far-reaching new partnership, in Lisbon in December 2007, with the aim of transforming the relationship between the two continents. After 2 ½ years of existence, the JAES is currently subjected to an in-depth reflection amongst the official stakeholders about its architecture and the contents of the next Action Plan. This review process could result in proposals for “significant changes” to be discussed at the next Africa-EU Ministerial Troika on the 27th of April 2010, which will come to some decisions to present to the Third EU-Africa Heads of State Summit scheduled for November 2010. ECDPM, as an independent non-partisan foundation that has followed the JAES since its inception, has sought to contribute to this process in the form of a paper scoping on what could be next for the Joint Africa-EU Strategy. The paper seeks to refresh readers on the original commitments made in the JAES and to provide analysis on underlying successes and challenges, including upstream (political) bottlenecks. It also presents 3 possible reform scenarios for the future of the JAES as well as perspectives on how they might be achieved. Beyond Structures? Reflections on the Implementation of the Joint Africa-EU Strategy - February 2009 One year after the adoption of the strategy in Lisbon, the time has now come to independently reflect on how the ambitious ideals and measures set out in the strategy and action plan have been put into practice.[2] To this end, this paper contains a description of the JAES, the background to its development, a description of the activities undertaken during the past year, an analysis of the development of its key elements, and a commentary on key challenges for 2009. [3] It is designed to inform, but is not definitive, and its intention is to provoke discussion and reflection amongst key stakeholders and other interested parties. To see full list of programme publications, click here.

---

Europafrica.net website

---

On behalf of the African Union and the European Union, ECDPM launched the website www.europafrica.net It focuses on sharing information on the official negotiations, on related events and positions of civil society representatives as well as provide some analysis on the progress of the implementation. Contributions and position papers are published and shared with the officials and all interested actors. Issue 34 (May 2010) of the Europafrica bulletin is now available: It provides you with an up-date on the implementation and monitoring process of the Joint EU-Africa Strategy. It includes information about various events held on the topic, as well as a summary of recent contributions on the implementation. It also gives you news on the institutional negotiations and their timeline.