The Failure of the EU's Strategic Partnerships in Africa: What’s Behind the Lost Ground to China and Russia?

“We will stand on principle or we will not stand at all.”
- Margaret Thatcher

Introduction
The European Union has long considered Africa a strategic partner. It is evident from several agreements and frameworks through which the EU is conducting its diplomatic, political, and economic relationship with African countries, such as the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES) and the Global Gateway Initiative. 

However, in recent years, the EU seems to be playing a second fiddle in Africa in the face of an autocratic onslaught, with China's expansive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Russia's opportunistic but effective interventions on the security and military side. 

First, this paper outlines some of the main weaknesses of the EU's approach, compares the Union’s economic commitments relative to those of China and Russia, and discusses the differences in their effectiveness and the possible reasons behind that. It concludes by posing a question about whether a shift towards prioritising human rights and sustainability could alter the EU's declining trajectory across the African continent.

EU's Strategy Towards Africa: A Fragmented Vision
The EU frames its African engagement through a lens of economic and political partnership, with a particular focus on development cooperation and the distribution of European normative values. 

Ferreira-Pereira and Smith argue that EU strategic partnerships aim to combine bilateral economic and financial interests with values which aim to support human rights, sustainability, and the positive development of democratic societies (Ferreira-Pereira & Smith 2021).

However, Brender critiques the EU's approach as lacking coherence and burdened with heavy unnecessary bureaucracy, mixing "values and interests precariously"(Brender 2024). He thinks that current frameworks have failed to translate into geopolitical influence as much as initially expected, because African autocrats dislike having to agree to the EU’s conditions on human rights and democracy. He believes that while human rights should remain part of the EU’s economic deals with Africa and the rest of the Global South, at least on paper, conditions on democracy should be excluded in order to present a more competitive front to Brussels’ Chinese competition. 

Comparing Financial Commitments: EU vs China and Russia
Despite some differences in financial and economic assessments, most seem to agree that, currently, the EU invests more in Africa than China and Russia combined.

According to the European Commission, the EU is Africa’s largest economic partner by far, with the pledged €150 billion under its Global Gateway Africa-Europe Investment Package (2022-2027) (European Commission 2022). It comprises private sector leverage projections, as well as direct EU budgetary allocations. At around $5 billion a year, Russia's economic engagement with the Continent is fairly modest in monetary terms, but being focused on security and military support for the ruling autocracies, it is very important for these regimes to retain power, if not crucial. 

Earlier this year, President Xi Jinping announced that China will provide $51 billion in financial support to Africa over the next three years, which shall include $210 billion in credit lines and $70 billion in direct investment (RFI 2024).

Table: EU vs China: investment comparison for Africa (annual)

Autocracy Inc. on the march
Despite a smaller share in the overall investment, the EU has been slowly squeezed out of Africa into relative irrelevance by autocracies. Recent academic research shows that China and Russia play complementary roles in reinforcing authoritarian regimes in Africa. China’s influence focuses primarily on economic statecraft, technological assistance, and ideological training, combined with its long-standing policy of non-interference in domestic governance. 

By deploying infrastructure lending, concessional loans, and surveillance technologies, China enables ruling parties in Africa to entrench themselves without implementing liberal reforms.

For example, ever since China financed the Addis Ababa - Djibouti railway with concessional loans, the counterpart EU-supported projects lagged significantly. As a result, the country’s government increasingly prioritised Chinese-led energy and transport investments over slower EU alternatives.

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is now the flagship of its African engagement. Since 2000, Chinese-African trade has surged from $10 billion to over $250 billion by 2022, while cumulative Chinese investments in Africa surpass $150 billion. According to Murphy, China's spending prioritises infrastructure (ports, railways, power plants) with minimal conditionality, appealing to autocratic regimes (Murphy 2022). Additionally, debt-financed projects embed long-term dependency (Braveboy-Wagner 2024a).

In geopolitical terms, China's return on investment is significant:

• Gaining access to critical raw materials (cobalt, lithium)

• Securing diplomatic support at the UN (over 25 African votes)

• Establishing military bases (Djibouti)

Russia lacks China's financial power but compensates through security services, disinformation campaigns, and resource deals. For example, over the past 5 years in Mali, Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group stepped in as French interests were forced out by the authorities. This followed Wagner’s success in the Central African Republic (CAR), where Russian PMCs filled the vacuum left after the withdrawal of the French troops, providing military training and securing lucrative mining rights. All this has served to erode the EU influence in Africa (Mohamedou 2024).

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Russian arms exports to Africa have increased by 30% between 2015 and 2023, making Russia Africa's largest arms supplier (SIPRI 2024). Wagner Group's operations in Mali, CAR, and Sudan show how Russia can lend its military power to autocracies in exchange for mineral rights and diplomatic alignment.

Politically, Russia's emphasis on anti-colonial rhetoric positions it as a counterbalance to Western influence. In UN votes, African countries increasingly abstain or side with Russia, reflecting effective narrative warfare rather than massive spending (Puddington 2021).

Reasons for Failure: Investment, economic liberalisation, and democratisation
For a long time, Western democracies relied on the Liberal economic interdependency theory, believing that by trading with and investing in autocracies, they could improve the lives of the local populations and thus prevent conflict. These beliefs are unfounded.

Milner and Mukherjee (2009) conducted extensive research to establish a more direct relationship between foreign investment (both direct and portfolio) and democratisation. Although it is generally anticipated that democratic transitions and increased levels of democracy will foster trade and financial openness, Milner and Mukherjee (2009) discovered that while these democratic changes can indeed positively impact trade and capital account openness, the opposite is not true”.

Providing funding with unenforceable human rights-related conditions, this paper would argue that the EU in fact has been equipping the oppression in Africa, effectively offering authoritarian regimes the resources they need to tighten their grip on the Continent, and thus weaken the Union's normative credibility (Human Rights Watch 2024).

The Afrobarometer Flagship Report (2024) noted that by 2023, the number of African countries rated “free” or “partly free” fell to about 30, partly due to the situation deteriorating following the recent coups in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Gabon, and Sudan (Afrobarometer 2024).

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation (2023) reports that nearly 70% of Africans live in countries with declining security and democratic rights for ordinary people since 2012. 

In addition, an MDPI paper for Agenda 2063, published earlier this year, found a growing desire from Africans for democracy while autocracies have continued to tighten the screws on civil liberties and human rights (Gebrihet & Eidsvik 2024).  “The study observed that, based on the average democratic performance over the decade, measured at 45% using V-Dem indices and 44% using IIAG percentage, Africa needs to score more than twice the current performance every year to align with the democratic aspirations of AA2063”

Table 2: Africans want democracy but autocrats strengthen their grip

Would Human Rights and Sustainability-Centric Strategy Succeed?
It is here, this essay would argue, that lies a key to Europe’s future in Africa. No social contract, no trade or diplomatic relationship can survive without the support of the people. And it is clear that ordinary Africans do not want to live under oppression.

Embedding enforceable human rights and sustainability conditionality could differentiate the EU's strategy and rebuild credibility. 

For example, the EU could exclude regimes classified as "not free" by Freedom House, or those markets with particularly high corruption according to Transparency International. Redirecting investments towards civil society, green industrialisation, and concessional financing could support more legitimate partners.

Naturally, this will need to be done thoughtfully, as the local regimes are likely to frame the EU’s help for ordinary people as another example of neo-colonialism, as Braveboy-Wagner explored in his work. Therefore, human rights-based approaches must be firmly offered as an opportunity to empower ordinary Africans, not to control them, supported by genuine technology transfers and joint governance structures (ECDPM 2024).

Conclusion
The EU's strategic partnerships in Africa have failed to secure geopolitical influence commensurate with the considerable financial resources Europe provides. Compared to China's infrastructure-heavy investments and Russia's opportunistic militarism, the EU's fragmented, values-inconsistent, and extractivist approach yields poor returns.

A radical reorientation placing human rights and sustainability at the centre of the EU’s policymaking should gain the trust and support of ordinary Africans. However, success requires moving beyond superficial conditionality towards co-designed, inclusive development, and preferring going directly to local communities rather than risk losing part of the funds through central government corruption.

Without such change, the EU risks becoming geopolitically irrelevant in Africa, completely outmanoeuvred by autocracies, with European taxpayers effectively funding the political forces hostile to the European Common Values, a true democratic way of life.

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