Leaders aim to put ‘forgotten continent’ top of the agenda

Date: 29/07/1999

By Gareth Harding

EUROPEAN and African leaders are to meet for the first time next spring to strengthen political ties between the two blocs and draw attention to the plight of the world's poorest continent.

The Union already holds regular high-level meetings with Asian and Latin American countries and has annual summits with major industrial powers such as Japan, the US, Canada and Australia.

But Africa remains the "forgotten continent", according to Rabia Balewa of development group Abantu. "Africa disappears from the agenda unless there is a disaster. There is a tendency to always view the continent in negative terms, even when there is something positive happening there," she said.

EU officials working in the field echo this concern. "Africa gets less and less attention," said one. "There is a widespread view that it is nothing more than a bunch of countries fighting each other."

In order to counter this misconception and boost ties between the two continents, EU governments agreed two years ago to hold a high-level meeting after heavy lobbying from Portugal. But the plan later ran into opposition from larger member states. "There is a danger that when you hold a summit you are forced to plan a follow-up and at the end of the process you are left without any concrete progress," said one national official.

However, on a recent visit to Egypt, Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama set a time and place for the summit with his counterparts at the Organisation for African Unity.

The meeting is due to take place in early April during Portugual's term in charge of EU business. But most of the spadework for the summit will have to be done during the Finnish presidency, which lasts until December.

Helsinki hopes to make rapid progress on laying down a set of guidelines for political cooperation with Africa and officials say that President Martti Ahtisaari's commitment to the region means that the issue will be dealt with at the highest level. Prior to becoming Finnish president, Ahtisaari was the United Nation's special envoy to Namibia.

Planning for the summit is still at an early stage, but there are already squabbles between the two sides over the scope of the meeting and which countries will participate.

The EU wants all African countries to be included, but the OAU only has a mandate to speak for its members, which include most but not all of the continent's nations.

African states also want economic issues such as external debt and tariffs to be put on the agenda, while the Union would prefer to focus on purely political issues such as strengthening dialogue and reinforcing human rights and democracy in Africa.

Development groups fear that without concrete commitments, the summit will be little more than a photo opportunity for EU and African leaders. There are also concerns that the meeting will merely revisit topics already being dealt with in talks between the Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific states on overhauling the fifth Lomé Convention.

However, the EU is keen to draw together the different strands of its Africa policy into a coherent whole. The 15-member bloc is currently involved in the peace process in Central Africa, recently signed free trade deals with Egypt and South Africa, and regularly issues statements on the various crises afflicting the region. "Now it is time to have an overall view," said Gama recently.

But both sides acknowledge that drawing up a common strategy for 50 countries which have little in common apart from belonging to the same continent will be far from easy.

European and African leaders are to meet for the first time next spring to strengthen political ties between the two blocs and draw attention to the plight of the world's poorest continent.