Road and rail top Michel’s shopping list for Africans

By David Cronin

Date: 06/10/05

The European Commission will next week set out plans for how an additional €10 billion per year in EU aid to Africa should be spent.

Poor road and rail connections and Africa's tiny share of world trade are among the factors blamed for the continent's impoverishment in a paper to be approved by the commissioners on 12 October.

The blueprint is designed to lay the groundwork for a new EU strategy towards Africa, which would then be endorsed by the Union's governments by the end of the year.

It is the third in a series of initiatives sponsored by Louis Michel, the commissioner for development and humanitarian affairs. It follows the agreement by EU leaders in June that the 15 oldest EU member states should allocate 0.7% of their gross national income to development assistance by 2015 and recommendations made by Michel in July on avoiding duplication in Europe's aid efforts.

About half of the €20bn increase in the EU's annual volume of aid resulting from the June decision is expected to go to Africa.

A source close to Michel said the main idea behind next week's proposal was "that we cannot have development in Africa unless we act more efficiently in several areas".

The Commission paper will advocate that:

• The EU funds trans-African road and rail networks, partly modelled on the trans-European networks, in a bid to attract investment;
• aid should be used to help Africa dramatically increase its share of world trade, which now stands at 2%;
• efforts against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and to improve health and educational facilities and access to water should be strengthened;
• an exchange programme for African and European projects called Erasmus-Nyerere (after Tanzania's independence leader Julius Nyerere) should be founded;
• satellite technology should be used to help address environmental degradation in Africa, and;
• EU scientific research should be tailored to help increase access to vital medicines as well as to increase energy generation by renewable sources.

The blueprint also emphasises the need for the EU to support peace and security initiatives in Africa. It says that fresh funding will be required to replenish the €250 million African Peace Facility, especially now that more than €90m of that sum has been spent on peacekeeping in Sudan.

Some aid agencies have expressed annoyance that the Peace Facility has been funded out of money reserved for traditional development projects, focused on poverty alleviation.

But it is not expected that next week's paper will specify whether future funding of that nature should come from development aid coffers or from the budget for the EU's foreign and security policy.

Article anticipates the adoption by the European Commission of a Communication on a new strategy towards Africa on 12 October 2005. The strategy, which identifies poor road and rail connections and Africa's tiny share of world trade as factors contributing to the continent's impoverishment was expected to be endorsed by the Council by the end of 2005.

European Commission: DG Development: EU & African Union https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/node/311

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