From Mass Migrations to Sustainable Development. Re-thinking the EU-Africa Partnership as a Win-Win Co-Development Strategy

Abstract

This contribution focuses on two fundamental features of the African continent that will affect both sides of the Mediterranean in the 21st Century. On the one hand, the huge migration potential of Africa. On the other, the speed of economic change of a continent increasingly regarded as ‘the next China’. The challenge facing both the European Union and Africa is to ensure that African growth and demography will be sustainable. The paper argues that Europe will be the part of the world the most directly affected by developments in Africa, be they the worst random shocks or the most virtuous economic trends. It therefore calls for an ambitious renewed EU-Africa economic partnership, similar in scope to the Chinese cooperation model in Africa but without imitating it, to avoid a migratory haemorrhage and make African development sustainable to the benefit of both sides of the Mediterranean.