KELLY ALEXANDER | Africa and Europe seek new partnership amid shifting alliances

African countries are used to the fact that false promises and fickle friends abound. We’ve seen this with the US, and in the broader architecture of “solidarity” that overpromises and underdelivers.

When the Brics bloc emerged as a counterweight to Western dominance, the excitement in South Africa, as a new member, was real. Here, finally, was a bloc that spoke the language of multipolarity, South-South co-operation and a different type of global order that gave us a voice. But too often we’re left wondering where our so-called friends and allies are.

Mark Rutte was back in Washington with “Daddy” last week. The Nato secretary-general is doing the rounds in the US capital trying to convince President Donald Trump and Americans as a whole not to abandon the alliance that it was central in creating.

Nato and the EU have learnt they can no longer count on their most important partner. The former Dutch prime minister is hoping that a friendly, diplomatic conversation can paper over a structural rupture by negotiating with the epitome of an indelicate leader. Good luck!

Europe is realising who its real friends and allies are. The US under Trump has made clear that the transatlantic relationship is transactional and to be tolerated, at best. The principles of the “very disappointing” Nato are misunderstood by the incumbent US president, which is a problematic baseline.

And, in case we think this is purely an American problem, remember that US vice-president JD Vance made a point of visiting Budapest last week to cheer on Viktor Orbán before the Sunday elections. Orbán has spent most of a decade holding the EU hostage — blocking sanctions, vetoing aid packages and limiting rights in his “illiberal democracy”. He has been Europe’s most disruptive internal actor. Washington is drifting away from Europe and celebrating an imagined downfall of the EU.

Europe and Africa find themselves in the same boat. Both are discovering that assumed partners pursue their own interests, despite the language of friendship, leaving us empty-handed. In my earlier writing on this subject, I described Africa as the minor child of divorced parents, pulled between Washington and Beijing, Brussels and Moscow, with limited autonomy. With Trump, Europe is beginning to understand that feeling.

This is an opening Africa should take seriously. These changes create the conditions for a rebalancing that African leadership has long called for, and African leaders should be reaching out to the EU. The terms of engagement between Africa and Europe have historically been set north of the Mediterranean. The current turbulence creates space for deeper engagement and renegotiation.

Canada’s Mark Carney spoke of a world reorganising around middle powers. These states are not the dominant players globally, but together they have the economic weight, institutional capacity and political will to shape the future. A growing number of African economies fall into this group. A deepened partnership between the EU and African countries would rest on growing complementarity.

Africa brings serious assets to that partnership. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is creating the largest free-trade zone globally, representing a market of 1.4-billion people that European businesses need access to. We’re familiar with Africa’s critical minerals and know African demographics are the envy of Europe.

This is why the current moment demands a continental posture, with African governments using the AU architecture. AfCFTA is building the economic foundation for stronger collaboration, and what is needed is enhanced political will to speak and negotiate as a bloc, across the continent and its regions.

Europe, for its part, would benefit enormously from a stable, prosperous partnership with Africa, jointly developing the sort of multilateral order that both continents have a stake in preserving. The rules-based international system that Europe is scrambling to defend also serves African interests in trade, dispute resolution and the basic principle that large powers do not simply take what they want from smaller ones.

There is clarity in this moment when the alignment of interests between Africa and Europe is so apparent. Europe needs partners it can truly count on, and Africa needs partnerships built on equality, not dependency.

Rutte will return from Washington, hopefully with a successful meeting in his pocket. The Maga movement will continue to support Orbán and his ilk. It’s up to African countries to present themselves as competent, stable and coherent partners able to help the EU regain its confidence and leverage its middle power status.

• Dr Alexander is a member of faculty at the Gordon Institute of Business Science and president of Meridian17.