Africa Is the Future, But Who Holds the Pen?

From Brussels to Luanda: The AU-EU Summit 2025 Is a Chance to Rewrite the Rules

“Partnership”, like “justice”, means little if it’s only spoken by those holding power.

Few weeks ago, I found myself sitting across from EU officials in Brussels- flags, polished suits, diplomatic speeches, the whole enchilada! I listened and engaged keenly on great talking points about climate ambitions and fair partnerships. I was there as part of the Shaping Futures Academy, an immersive programme that brought together early and mid-career professionals from Africa and Europe to engage critically on themes like sustainability, Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JET-Ps), and social justice. From the conversations, I obtained a front-row view of the narratives the EU uses to describe its relations with Africa. But beyond the plenaries, it was often during metro rides, or side conversations with speakers or other participants, that the real questions surfaced:

What does “partnership” really mean when power is so unevenly distributed? And when Africa is constantly referred to as “the future”, who gets to own, shape, and benefit from that future?

As we move toward the upcoming 7th EU-African Union Summit in Luanda in 2025, these questions are even more pertinent. It’s time to assess whether the ideal of “fair” partnership holds up against the evidence. The summit marks 25 years of AU-EU relations! 25 years is a good moment for celebration, but an even better moment for honest reckoning.

While the EU–AU Global Gateway (a €150 billion investment package) is often touted as a symbol of commitment, this piece focuses specifically on the climate agenda. Why? Because in the name of sustainability and green growth, some of the deepest asymmetries in the partnership are being reinforced, not resolved. And, in the spirit of honest reckoning, the uncomfortable truth is this: the Africa-EU relationship, especially in climate and economic domains, continues to be shaped by extractive logic, colonial residues, and environmental injustice.

Colonial Continuities in the Green Transition

The EU has positioned itself as a leader in the green industrial revolution. Under frameworks like the European Green Deal and the Critical Raw Materials Act (2024), Europe is making ambitious moves to decarbonise by shifting to electric vehicles, green hydrogen, and circular technologies. The EU highlights over 30 strategic materials, including cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements, that are essential for technologies like electric vehicles, solar panels, and wind turbines.

But consider where these materials come from and where the value is captured:

• The DRC supplies over 70% of the world’s cobalt, crucial for batteries in electric vehicles and smartphones. Yet there are zero battery cathode production plants in the DRC. The cobalt is shipped to China, processed there, and embedded in technology exported to Europe and sometimes even brought back to Africa at high cost.

  
  

• Guinea, with the world’s largest bauxite reserves (used for aluminium), exports more than 95% of it unprocessed, mainly to China and the EU. The region lacks the energy infrastructure for aluminium smelting, and no European support is in place to build it.

  
  

• South Africa, the largest producer of platinum group metals (PGMs), which are essential in green hydrogen technologies, does have some domestic processing, but the value chain remains foreign-owned. The EU and its firms control the lucrative downstream uses in fuel cells and automotive manufacturing, while emissions and local ecological burdens stay in Africa.

Despite Africa’s vast mineral wealth, Africa remains structurally locked into low-value export roles. Local beneficiation (the process of transforming raw materials into higher-value products) remains extremely limited. Instead, these resources are exported raw, processed abroad, and returned to Africa in the form of high-value technologies that cost far more than what Africa earned from selling the base minerals. The EU, for its part, has shown little interest in changing this.

“Africa remains trapped at the bottom of the value chain- digging the minerals but not designing the machines”

This structural imbalance reflects the continued disinterest of European climate-industrial policy in fostering real African industrial capacity.

Well… so long as Africa stays locked into raw material supply roles, the promise of “mutual benefit” remains hollow.

Clean Europe, Dirty Margins: Africa in the Shadow of the Green Deal

During our time in Brussels, the term “clean deal” was increasingly used to describe Europe’s climate ambitions by EU officials (rather than the traditional green deal language). It’s the latest iteration of Europe’s climate ambition branding. But what became clear and, honestly, quite uncomfortable, is that this cleanliness often stops at Europe’s borders. When Brussels markets something as sustainable, it mostly involves outsourcing the resulting pollution, risk, and cost to Africa through carbon tariffs, waste exports, and the outsourcing of carbon-heavy manufacturing.

We focus on two of such examples:

1. The first is the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)

The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), currently in its transitional phase, is the EU’s flagship tool to price carbon on imports of goods like cement, aluminium, steel, and fertilisers. It’s meant to prevent “carbon leakage” (the relocation of polluting industries to countries with weaker climate policies). But in practice, it risks penalising African economies, where industries:

• Rely on legacy infrastructure,

• Lack access to green finance,

• And have contributed minimally to historical emissions.

When full implementation begins in 2026, importers will pay tariffs based on embedded emissions, thus, raising the cost of African exports without offering adequate support for decarbonisation (African Climate Foundation and LSE, 2023).

2. The second example is on Electronic Waste Dumping

While the EU proudly champions circular economy policies at home, ranging from e-waste recycling targets to extended producer responsibility, it continues to offload its electronic waste onto West Africa, under a thin veneer of legality. The Environmental Justice Foundation and multiple UN reports have found that thousands of tons of old, non-functional electronics are exported annually under the false label of “second-hand goods.”

In Ghana, the port of Tema sees up to 215,000 tons of e-waste imported each year. Most of it originates from the EU, particularly Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands (UNEP, 2020). Similar dynamics play out in Nigeria, where Lagos’ Alaba market has become a hub for used electronics and the informal dismantling of obsolete devices. These items often arrive uninspected, thanks to lax customs enforcement and most often, cannot be properly repaired, often dumped in open-air scrap yards. You will also hardly find any infrastructure for safe recycling or toxic material handling.

Growing up in Ghana, Agbogbloshie has always been known to me as a notorious e-waste site in Accra. As you walk through the market, you will see children and young men manually breaking down monitors, TVs, and computers using rudimentary tools. They burn PVC wire insulation to extract copper, releasing lead, cadmium, dioxins, and other carcinogens.

Research conducted on soil and water samples in the surrounding areas of Agbogbloshie have also shown heavy metal concentrations hundreds of times higher than safe levels (Pure Earth, 2019). Despite this, the EU continues to:

• Allow exporters to classify shipments as “used electronics”, sidestepping the Basel Convention's ban on hazardous waste dumping.

  
  

• Focus circular economy efforts within EU borders, while externalising environmental and health risks to communities thousands of miles away.

Once again, pollution is outsourced, and costs are localised environmentally, socially and economically. While Europe reports sustainability gains, Africa absorbs the damage in polluted ecosystems and rising health burdens.

EU Money on the Table? Nothing like free lunch

The EU frequently celebrates its aid to Africa as a symbol of solidarity. And at first glance, Europe’s financial aid to Africa might seem like the redeeming piece in all this but, the facts tell a different story:

• EU aid to Sub-Saharan Africa has declined by 11% between 2016–2022 (OECD DAC, 2023).

  
  

• Much of this aid is now conditional, often tied to migration controls, border securitisation, or access to natural resources.

  
  

• In contrast, Africa loses over $88 billion annually through illicit financial flows, much of it routed through European financial centres and trade mispricing (UNCTAD, 2020).

  
  

“True justice means Europe must stop treating Africa as a site of obligation and start seeing it as a partner in redressing history”.

Why not redirect aid frameworks toward climate reparations? These would:

• Recognise historical emissions and extraction.

• Prioritise grants over loans.

• Address loss and damage with no-strings-attached funding.

Now, lets take a closer look at one of such hailed financial contributions from the EU to Africa…

JET-Ps and the Illusion of a Just Transition

The Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JET-Ps) are a relatively new climate finance model designed to help developing, coal-dependent countries shift toward cleaner energy systems while ensuring the transition is socially and economically inclusive. Spearheaded by wealthy nations like Germany, France, the UK, and the EU, JET-Ps aim to mobilise billions in public and private finance to support decarbonisation, job creation, and energy access.

The first JET-P was launched in South Africa at COP26 in 2021, with a commitment of $8.5 billion, followed by a Senegal JET-P in 2023. Both JET-Ps have been celebrated as flagship examples of international climate solidarity. These partnerships are framed as collaborative and equitable, promising to balance climate ambition with development goals and justice for workers and communities affected by energy system changes. But beneath the surface, deep asymmetries remain.

South Africa’s JET-P

• Total value: $8.5 billion.

• Only 2.6% was grant-based; the rest are loans or private investments.

• Civil society, unions, and communities were excluded from design processes.

• Implementation timelines and priorities were donor-driven, not local.

Senegal’s JET-P

• Much of the pledged finance remains undelivered.

• The EU simultaneously signed new gas deals with Senegal, undermining the green focus.

“If transitions are designed in boardrooms in Brussels and Berlin, they will not be just.”

It is said that the JET-Ps risk becoming the new structural adjustment packages: externally dictated, debt-based, and growth-limiting.

7th AU-EU Summit 2025

Having said all this, as the EU and the AU celebrate 25 years of partnership, climaxing this celebration in the 7th AU-AEU Summit, what should be on the table?

We believe if the EU truly seeks a fair partnership, it must act beyond symbolism. We look forward to seeing some bold, concrete commitments from the EU such as:

• Climate Reparations Fund: Shift from aid to compensation and prioritise grants and debt relief.

  
  

• Reform CBAM: Provide transition finance for African industries impacted by carbon tariffs.

  
  

• Support African Industrialisation: Fund value addition. Don’t just extract, but refine and manufacture (cleanly) in Africa.

  
  

• Guarantee Community Participation: Embed democratic consultation in all climate deals.

  
  

• Acknowledge and Redress Colonial Legacy: France and Belgium, among others, must initiate reparative economic policies.

And just yesterday, Wednesday, 23^rd of July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a historic ruling that adds legal weight to these demands. The Court affirmed that States have binding obligations under international law to protect the climate for both present and future generations. The opinion, requested by the UN General Assembly, reinforces what African voices have long demanded: climate action is no longer a matter of goodwill. It is now a legal and moral duty, and one for which global cooperation is essential. We hope this raises both the stakes and the standards for what is agreed in Luanda.

At the same time, Africa cannot afford to be a passive player. It holds tremendous strategic assets:

• 70% of cobalt, 50%+ of manganese, 30%+ of bauxite.

• The world’s youngest population. By 2050, 1 in 4 global workers will be African.

• 60% of the world’s best solar potential.

Yet, its global institutional voice remains marginal. Below are some strategic levers we hope the AU will be pulling to ensure a fair partnership agreement with the EU moving forward:

• Build a Pan-African Mineral Strategy to negotiate collectively.

• Push for AU representation in global climate and financial governance (e.g. IMF, G20). Being a permanent member of the G20 has been a good start.

• Leverage demand for critical minerals to negotiate tech transfer, fair trade terms, and patents co-ownership.

“Africa must stop being the future that others want and start shaping the future on its own terms.”

Conclusion

Some of the issues mentioned here were raised in the halls of Brussels, either directly or between the lines. However, the responses we received were mostly polite and non-committal. Perhaps that’s what made them unsettling. This piece is to nudge us to move beyond polished talking points. We hope it sparks the honest, sometimes uncomfortable, but long-overdue conversations that real partnership demands.

Fairness can’t just be declared in Brussels or Berlin. It has to be built together with African citizens, communities, and leaders at the table, not on the sidelines.

If the AU-EU Summit truly wants to mark a turning point, it must go beyond symbolism and speak with honesty. Because climate justice, economic justice, and historical justice are one and the same.

I hope both the African Union and the European Union will be bold enough to rewrite the rules, and brave enough to do it together.

By the way, in keeping with EU Parliament’s name ordering protocol (which I learnt is done in alphabetical order to avoid any show of power or any unfairness), let’s call it the AU-EU Summit. Shall we?

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Governance and Development Advisory, Leiden University, the Shaping Futures Academy, or any institutions mentioned. This piece is written in a personal capacity to contribute to critical dialogue on the AU–EU partnership and climate justice.