Does Africa matter to Europe?

European and African leaders will gather this weekend to assess their relationship at the long-delayed EU-Africa summit in Lisbon. 

There is little question that Europe matters to Africa.  The EU remains the region's dominant trade partner, a hangover from the colonial era that is reflected in the urgency surrounding the negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements to replace the system of trade preferences African, Caribbean and Pacific countries currently enjoyed under the Cotonou Accord.  Some countries -- including those in West Africa as well as South Africa -- are holding out against an end-year WTO deadline for a new trade framework, but the EU is not lifting its pressure for EPAs to be signed.

However -- beyond the expected pledges of cooperation and promotion of development goals that will come from the summit -- issues of migration and security define the EU's relationship with Africa.

The EU launched an advertising campaign in West Africa last month, stressing the rigours and hardships that await economic migrants in Europe, and urging Africans to remain in their home countries. Sea patrols have also increased over the last year, in an effort to keep migrants from crossing the Mediterranean, or from risking the arduous journey from the West African coast -- most often Senegal or Mauritania -- to the Canary Islands.

An EU 'protection force' is due to be deployed in eastern parts of Chad and the Central African Republic -- along the border of the Sudanese region of Darfur -- as part of an effort to improve security in this complex conflict, and ease the delivery of humanitarian assistance.  However, resurgent conflict in Chad has contributed to delays, in part because of reluctance to supply helicopters and other equipment for the force.  Moreover, the EU has similar forces deployed in Lebanon and Kosovo, and European capitals are acutely aware of the high tensions in both of those environments.  Potentially overstretched, Brussels could face a crisis if all three situations were to deteriorate dramatically at the same time.

Besides the traditional immigration and security issues, another concern has started to trouble Europe, namely the rise of China's influence in Africa. China offers lost of desperately needed FDI, but unlike the EU does not request superior and costly democratic, human rights or environmental standards in return. Given Africa's abundance of untapped natural and human resources, Europe needs to wake up to China's power and start acting now, if it does not want to find itself on the losing end.

The summit will skirt the more sensitive issues in EU-African relations.  Nonetheless, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is unlikely to pass on the chance to use the summit as a forum to criticise the United Kingdom, whose Prime Minister Gordon Brown is boycotting the summit in protest against Mugabe's presence.