Africa: the EU-US security-economy nexus

Africa has come to rank high on the US and EU agendas. While the EU hosted its fourth ­EU-Africa meeting on 2-3 April, US President Barack Obama hosted the first ‘US-Africa Leaders Summit’ on 4-6 August. Meanwhile, French President François Hollande visited the Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, and Chad. His tour has come only days after France announced its decision to replace ‘Operation Serval’, undertaken in response to the military offensive of radical Islamists in Mali in early 2013, with a wider counter-terrorism operation codenamed ‘Barkhane’. Other EU member states also redefined their engagement with Africa: Germany, to name one, sought closer military cooperation with France in the Central African Republic and elaborated a new Africa strategy.
Both the US and the EU have subscribed to a two-pronged approach encompassing a focus on security and economic cooperation. Hence, despite tangible operational differences between them, they converged on a specific understanding of both security and economic aspects. While security was largely framed as countering violent extremism, economic cooperation has primarily come to be seen through trade and foreign direct investment lenses. Was essential, however, that this security-economy ‘nexus’ does not impaired efforts regarding governance and state-building.