Rachel DUBALE

Research Officer at the Africa-Europe Foundation

In 2025, AU-EU diplomacy is busier than ever: handshakes, summits and multi-billion-euro pledges multiply as the 7th AU-EU summit approaches. Yet as these gatherings increase, debates grow louder and with them, the risk of drifting further from impact on the ground. 

There are countless things the Covid-19 pandemic made us (re)appreciate here in Europe. Everyday gestures that once felt trivial suddenly appeared grand: gathering with loved ones, seeing faces in full rather than half-covered by masks, or even simply shaking hands – that small, human act we had so casually taken for granted.

Watching the leaders of the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU) meet, I cannot help but feel that few years have offered as many chances to literally and symbolically shake hands as 2025. From the third AU-EU Ministerial in May, where foreign affairs ministers from both continents met to take stock of progress since the 6th Summit of African and European heads of state and government, to the upcoming one in Luanda, Angola – marking 25 years of the Africa-Europe partnership – the calendar is packed with encounters that, on paper, would have seemed almost unimaginable a decade ago.

One of the most remarkable convenings in recent years was the sixth AU-EU summit, originally scheduled for 2020 but delayed by the pandemic, which finally took place in Brussels in February 2022. It was one of those meetings that seemed almost cursed by circumstance: postponed, re-planned and overshadowed by a global health crisis that had strained trust between the two continents, leaving vaccine inequities and fostering a lingering sense of geopolitical neglect. One might joke that, had diplomacy not existed, a few leaders might have been tempted to point fingers rather than shake hands. Still, the summit took place, and that mattered because diplomacy, like trust, only exists if it is continually renewed. Every meeting remains a small but necessary occasion to restore it.

And yet, confidence in these encounters and their outcomes remains fragile in both Brussels and Addis Ababa. Of course, both continents share an intricate and delicate story, where every EU action in Africa carries complex implications. Yet, three years after the 6th AU-EU Summit, a clear risk is emerging: much of the discussion is slipping into debate for debate’s sake, eroding trust in the relevance of these convenings and the credibility of their outcomes. One thing is clear today: not only meetings and pledges, but debate alone, however spirited, does not guarantee results that reach communities on the ground.

So…what? 

Among all the declarations and joint communiqués, one announcement has continued to dominate discussions. At the sixth AU-EU Summit, the European Union unveiled smart, clean and secure investments worth €300 billion by 2027, half of which – around €150 billion – would be channelled into Africa, supporting green and digital transitions, sustainable growth, decent job creation, health systems, education and training.

Since then, the AU-EU bubble has buzzed with talk of Global Gateway, often in a binary, almost Manichean way. The optimists hail it as a grand investment platform, but the question remains how much of those €300 billion is genuinely new, and how much is merely repackaged. The sceptics view it as a geopolitical instrument – a European response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Africa. The official narrative, meanwhile, presents it as a new form of partnership grounded in value-based cooperation, strategy and mutual accountability, with local value and local value addition at its core.

Reality, of course, is rarely binary. But let us focus on one of the most debated notions within Global Gateway: local value and, by extension, value addition, concepts that are per se difficult to turn into tangible recommendations, both in my own experience navigating their implications on the ground and for large initiatives like Global Gateway, where billions in pledges must ultimately deliver concrete benefits to communities.

To illustrate this point, back in May, I was talking to my cousin in Ethiopia about the AU-EU Ministerial and mentioned that the Ethiopian Foreign Minister might be near where I was working in Brussels. Her voice, a little robotic and interrupted by a shaky connection, came back: “Listen, can you ask him why the electricity has been so unreliable lately? I have not been able to cook injera for days”. Would an exchange like this one ever happen so easily between a minister and a citizen? Rarely. Yet it captures an essential truth: what is said and decided in those formal rooms has the power to shape everyday realities, and that should not be dismissed, as too often happens today.

Just as high-level convenings and personalities are held accountable, initiatives like Global Gateway are subject to the same scrutiny. Take, for instance, the Team Europe Africa-Europe Green Energy Initiative, which aims to deploy 50 GW of renewable electricity and provide 100 million Africans with access to power by 2030. Meeting that ambitious target is a significant goal, but the real test lies in the details: who builds and maintains the infrastructure and whether local communities gain skills or employment from the process.

This tension between grand projects and tangible local benefits is also evident in other Global Gateway initiatives across Africa. Take the Lobito Corridor, a major transport and infrastructure project connecting the mining regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Katanga province to the Angolan port of Lobito, with Zambia also linked along the route. Often hailed as a model of regional connectivity, it also revives familiar debates about the dynamics of extractivism, with critics worrying that it could function primarily as a conduit for raw materials leaving Africa rather than as an engine of local development.

In a nutshell, does this mean that nothing – from grand summits to multi-billion-euro initiatives – will ever be enough? Not quite. However, it is true that debates around Africa-Europe cooperation risk drifting in that direction, where every effort is seen as falling short and the easiest option seems to be to wrap oneself in a blanket of guilt and lose sight of practical approaches. Perhaps a more helpful perspective is to restart the debate from scratch and to go back to the ABCs of Africa-Europe cooperation and accept the reality: Africa needs Europe, or as the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said more concretely a few years ago, “Africa needs investments”, just as Europe needs Africa, and Global Gateway is here to stay. Only if policymakers keep these realities in mind will it be possible to ensure that these meetings and forums, and the debates they generate within the AU-EU space, translate into tangible and practical outcomes on the ground.

The Global Gateway forum and the way forward 

One of the most recent tests of whether the AU-EU partnership is keeping its promises was the Global Gateway Forum held on 9-10 October in Brussels. The two-day event offered a clear headline: while €300 billion had been pledged for 2027, more than that, €306 billion has already been mobilised, with projections to reach €400 billion, largely through private-sector leverage. The announcement raised a few eyebrows. How is that possible? The lack of accessible, detailed data, still one of the EU’s weak spots, was quickly highlighted, with questions around which projects have actually been launched, where funds are being deployed and how outcomes are measured.

Easier solutions to these challenges are hard to provide in the short term, but the gap also reveals a clear opportunity: Brussels could demonstrate its comparative advantage through transparency, traceability and accountability, as AU stakeholders have repeatedly requested, making information publicly accessible, showing exactly how investments reach local communities and backing mechanism to monitor progress in real time. Taken together, these measures could help make summits and debates in the AU-EU space far more informed, practical and outcome-oriented.

Thus, as AU and EU leaders convene next November in Luanda, all that remains is for us to clasp our own hands in a small gesture of hope, praying that what has been written here will resonate.

Photo credits: European Union, 2025