Merit a strong partnership with Africa

European reflections following the trip of the Prime Minister of Senegal Ousmane Sonko to China (June 25-27, 2025). The opinions also apply to all other African countries. Currently, China is leading the dance throughout Africa.

The Chinese Prime Minister promises to encourage Chinese companies to invest massively in Senegal

Senegal

Xi Jinping receives Ousmane Sonko: a new course for Sino-Senegalese cooperation "A collaboration based on respect for each other's values, and not on attempts to impose one's own values on others." (Le Soleil, Senegal 27/6/2025).
Ousmane Sonko in Davos: "Africa is the growth space of the 21st century". The continent is the only place in the world where “everything is yet to be built” - "It is an important market, with growing demand for industrial products and sophisticated services. Africa will represent 25% of the world's population in 2050." (Le Soleil, Senegal 26/6/2025).
China, a new frontier of sovereign Senegal (opinion: Professor Mamadou Fall, UCAD. “Africa's alignment with Western countries has maintained the triple burden of low export prices, unsustainable debt and structural adjustment programs that have reduced social spending and eroded the purchasing power of the majority of the population." (Le Soleil, Senegal 27/6/2025).

"Merit" a strong partnership with Africa

Evolution of income per capita in the world (dark blue) and in Africa (light blue)."While globally the income per capita has increased by 75% over the last 30 years, in Africa it has only risen by 25%."

"The average GDP per capita in Africa is only 12% of that of the European Union, with a gap of 15 years in average life expectancy. We expect these differences to decrease only marginally over the next two decades."

Institute for Security Studies South Africa (July 2024)

Source of graph: MO* magazine 4/9/2024 "Africa a continent to take into account"

Preamble

Sixty years of Western development cooperation (and three trillion euros) has failed to reduce the growing asymmetry of well-being between the African citizen and the citizen of the rest of the world.
The African citizen has the right to enjoy the same level of well-being as his fellow citizens in the rest of the world.
The definitively globalized economy is dominated by ultra-complex international industrial value chains.
All over the world, at any time, all progress has been made by trial and error thanks to the exchange of ideas between different cultures. No country, no continent has been able to develop in autarky.
The challenge for Africa: to offer decent employment to the twenty million young people who enter the labor market there each year.
At a time of a hyperkinetic and unpredictable American partner, Europe is looking for new partners, both commercial and geostrategic. Why turn to South America and India when just 14 km away and a short cultural distance away is the great African neighbor?
Africa, which in 2045 will have a demographic dividend of 25% of the world's population (compared to only 8% in Europe), the largest free trade market in the world, 60% of the world's arable land, 50% of the world's solar electricity potential, 35% of the world's green hydrogen production potential at €2/kg (compared to 1% in Europe), climate-strategic raw materials in abundance, as well as the largest green lung in the world.
In a new multipolar world, Africa can choose partnerships with the West, the East, or the Global South. Each partner will have the opportunity to merit a partnership with Africa.

Suggestions on how Europe can "merit" a strong and lasting partnership with Africa.

By 2025-2026, the EU succeeds in motivating 1,000 well-established industrial SMEs to enter into win-win partnerships with counterparts in Africa (no start-ups, no nano companies). The European partners ensure an initial transfer of advanced industrial value chains and sophisticated technologies to Africa. The African partner contributes with its infrastructure (workshop, staff), its clientele and its knowledge of the market, administrations and cultures. Such a partnership between established SMEs requires little or no financial resources. The profits made are distributed equitably between the two partners.

A critical mass of effective partnerships between SMEs acts as a flywheel for FDI foreign direct investment from multinationals. Together, a thousand SME partnerships and a few dozen FDIs lay the foundations for modern agri-food and manufacturing industrialization in Africa and the annual creation of millions of jobs in a formal economy.

They learn, by trial and error, from each other. The critical mass of a mixing of cultures stimulates serendipity: innovation, new products and truly promising services.

The obstacles

In Europe. The afro pessimism deeply rooted in everyone's subconscious (citizens, entrepreneurs, academics, politicians): "Africa would still not be ready for competitive agri-food and manufacturing industrialization".
In Africa. The fear of the perpetuation of domination by the European partner, the former colonizer.

The remedies

In diplomatic but unequivocal language, all AU ambassadors inform the EU that a definitive multipolar world means that Africa cannot be tied to a single partner. It is up to each partner to "merit" a strong partnership with Africa that will allow Africa to industrialize and create sovereignly twenty million decent jobs per year.
The EU and all its foreign ministers from all EU countries organize debates for "everyone" around the themes "Africa is not what you think" - "Can Africa save the planet?" Targeted objectives: (1) bring about a change of mindset in the general public of the EU, among entrepreneurs and among politicians; (2) a thousand well-established EU SMEs form win-win and balanced partnerships with African counterparts.
The EU finances, for 12 months in 2025-2026 in each African country, a small team of young 'masters' in business management, future facilitators of international industrial value chains. They will study ('documentary research') why and how other developing countries have succeeded and adapt these successes to the African reality.