Support for democracy and the rule of law is a direct means to address the central challenges of the Anthropocene era: to mitigate and adapt to climate change, to protect biodiversity and ecosystems, to reduce inequalities in basic capabilities and to foster gender equality.
A second democratic wave begun in the 1990s, when most African states were subject to structural adjustment programs and forced to repay debts owed to international financial institutions. In order to compete with China, Europe wishes to refocus its activities in Africa. Europe must scale up an investment package for vaccine manufacturing capacity, agree to share Intellectual Property with African manufacturers, and increase financing for African health systems.. Germany and the US are about to host key summits for vaccine equity and fighting the next pandemic, so this AU-EU summit can signal Europes collective intent towards greater generosity and collective health security. Europe and Africa must also support the creation of a pandemic preparedness facility. It shows the continent as adjoining landmasses or one big island. We cannot separate the rise of Islamist violence from the failure to finance freedom in the continent. First, Europe must ensure African economies can meet their liquidity challenges by meeting or exceeding Chinas offer to recycle at least 25% of their Special Drawing Rights - SDR162 billion of the SDR 650 billion issued. Consistent with the Paris agreement and President Macrons call, $100 billion of this should be allocated to Africa, including to vulnerable Middle-Income Countries. About 7 European countries and the UK have pledged to recycle SDRs or budget equivalents amounting to some $15bn in SDRs., More is needed, and the Brussels summit can help bring the number of pledges up. 94 percent of developed country SDRs are unutilized, while Africa uses 52 percent of its SDRs. In Senegal, SDRs have been used to shore up development of pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity., These SDRs can be recycled into a series of strategic places: the IMF Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT), - where countries in need must have rapid access to them; the new resilience and sustainability trust, a new liquidity and sustainability facility to help reduce interest rates for sustainable infrastructure; the African Development Bank and Afreximbank.. They reshape how states, corporations and people engage with each other. It originates from African societies themselves. In the process, it locks them into long-term structural dependence while reinforcing governance structures that work globally to ensure capital rights as global. Gender-based violence or violence against social outcasts (sexual, religious, or linguistic minorities) has only intensified.
The report presented a relatively detailed view of the state of democracy in Africa since 1990 (Les nouvelles relations Afrique-France: relever ensemble les dfis de demain Elysee.fr). Today, the continent is once again plagued by a resurgence of military coups, ethnic and religious strife and low-intensity resource wars. Europe and Africa should not lose this opportunity for a recovery and reset of our relationship and our economies. In theory, this support is part of the general objectives of the European Unions foreign policy (article 21 of the Treaty of Lisbon). The early 2000s witnessed yet another turning point. All in all, it is estimated that around 10% of public development aid to African countries is dedicated to this. The European Union has not adequately understood that democracy is one of the conditions for the continents long-term stability. The same goes for interventions aiming to improve the management of public finances, supporting decentralization, developing legal services, modernizing the court system, insuring media diversity, the defense of human rights or gender equality. What is now at stake is democracy itself, understood as the ecological life futures of the Earth itself. Today, there is a dangerous and dynamic divergence in our recovery rates vaccines rates are pulling us apart, the differential in access to fiscal stimulus widening the recovery gap; and the quantitative easing now underway in the US and Europe coupled with inflation pressures are crippling our economies. This figure makes Africa the second largest continent on Earth after Asia. This has become a major factor in the continents destabilization. Numerous international actors have understood that in global politics as much as in geopolitical terms, Africas share of rare resources and markets will grow in the 21st century. How do we partner to fight climate change and promote democracy? How do we partner to ensure health systems are delivering health security for all regions citizens? How Many Countries Are Recognized By The United States. The most critical will be improving domestic resource mobilization, combatting Illicit financial flows and opening the civic space for more inclusive dialogues. As an ascending superpower, China too believes in the necessity to design institutions that safeguard the rights of property over borders. Mechanisms such as the European Endowment for Democracy (EED) have substantial resources (nearly 100 million in 2021), though, sticking with an arbitrary, colonial and obsolete geographical reading of the continent, they exclude sub-Saharan Africa from their scope of intervention and their grants are exclusively reserved for Europes immediate neighbors. It seeks to demonstrate that authoritarian rule can be as effective a development model as liberal democracy. Yet, only a tiny fraction of this investment is devoted to Africa. Hope because the summit is about Financing for Recovery, and adequate sustainable finance for recovery is exactly what is needed. Our global goals, the 2030 agenda and the Paris Agreements coupled with our continental aspirations reflected in Agenda 2063 provide the basis for a collective, robust and successful partnership. Fourth, the fight against COVID-19 persists but today more African children are dying of Malaria so the health response must be comprehensive. Continued, Executive summary It is a well-established reality that, throughout Europe, local and regional institutions are more trusted than national governments. Le Groupe dtudes gopolitiques is the publisher of this review, Professor of History and Political Science at the Witwatersrand University of South Africa and Director of Research at the Witwatersrand Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) in Johannesburg. Furthermore, if they had the opportunity, it is entirely possible that many of them would be willing to trade minimum socio-economic rights for political and civic ones. In spite of their alleged differences of approach, China and Europe share one thing in common. In the immediate aftermath of decolonization, the democratic ideal had receded. It should therefore be part of any political dialogue whether bilateral or multilateral with African regimes and African civil societies. Their impact on democratic governance is largely insignificant. Arnos Peters came up with a map, The Peters Projection Map, that sought to show the world in an accurate equal area manner. Human security, political stability, and regional peace are compromised wherever an environment of brutality is allowed to take root and flourish, with the inevitable consequence of producing one crisis after another. In the ongoing competition between democratic and authoritarian regimes, many wonder whether the latter such as China are not more effective at reducing poverty, building functioning health care and education systems, guaranteeing safety and security, and promoting relatively inclusive economic growth than the so-called democratic regimes. In cases where these intentions have been translated into concrete interventions, they often lack clarity, coherence, impact, and, above all, coordination with the most creative local dynamics. One R. Buckminster Fuller also came up with his representation of the earth and its continents . In Central or Northern Africa, gatherings of opposition parties are banned or violently dispersed. This is his trial to fit the globe to a flat map. The recently announced Global Gateway project is a welcome initiative. African countries have unanimously signed on to the Paris agreement of reaching net zero by 2050., To do this Africa needs a global carbon price consistent with the Paris goals, and more honest conversation about supporting a mechanism for loss and damage so climate vulnerable nations can be compensated for the current impacts of current and historic carbon emissions..
In the absence of this support, it is difficult to broaden the range of choices available to societies and communities, to increase the human capacity to deal with uncertainty, systemic risks and the challenges related to development and human security in Africa.
The EU has created an External Action Service in 2009. It has been premised on the belief that continued economic growth and technological innovation will lead to the expansion of the free market, to jobs and prosperity including for the poor.
All this is increasing global inequality, and as we are already witnessing fuelling conflict as citizens demand more from their leaders. Africas size, on the other hand, is 30,370,000 square kilometers (11,730,000 square miles). The French orientation and programming law on development policy and international solidarity of August 4, 2021, explicitly mentions the defense of fundamental freedoms, the promotion of democratic values and rule of law, and support for good governance mechanisms. It begun during the anti-colonial era, when the quest for autonomy and self-determination went hand in hand with the aspiration for social and racial equality within the framework of the rule of law. This competition no longer pits communist or socialist regimes against capitalist regimes, or the free market against the command economy. In particular, the European Union has instruments to support administrative reforms. He called his projection the Dymaxion map. Africa represents, in this regard, a unique laboratory.Truth be told, the track record of the democratization wave that engulfed the continent since the 1990s is mediocre. This area accounts for about 2% of the earths surface area and 6.8% of the total land area of the planet.
In order to be a key element in democratization, election monitoring must be included in long-term, systemic efforts to improve the quality of institutions. The report emphasized the various changes the African continent is undergoing (demographic changes, accelerated urbanization and digitalization, reimagining borders and mobility), as well as the risks and challenges that are related to ecological sustainability). Often rigged, elections sometimes lead to significant loss of human life, and, in many cases, clear a path for constitutional crises, punctuated by military coups and countless insurgencies.
And yet, the drive towards multipolarization notwithstanding, a fierce competition between different models of planetary governance is unfolding. Is a New Deal Between Europe and Africa Possible?
Financing freedom or supporting democratic innovation and the rule of law is not part of their strategic goal in the continent. Finally, investing in the real sector must remain a priority.
The emergence nearly everywhere of new forms of organization, expression, and mobilization among the young generations testifies to the vitality of social movements and the vigorous innovations underway in the field of creative activity. This model has never truly believed that democracy and capitalism could be synonymous. Indeed, for a long period of our modern history, capitalism reproduced itself by fostering increasing inequalities, by keeping those without property and countless victims of racial, social or gender inequalities out of the political system. It is not sustainable, In fact, it is inhumane.
In a time of incertainty about the future of democracy and the Rule of Law Continued. The comparison of size between the continents ofEurope and Africa has been a debate for a long time due to misrepresentations in maps.
In fact, it has always aimed at insulating capitalism from the threat of democracy. It encouraged France to look into this centurys future and imagine a new relationship with African states rooted in a dynamic balance between self- and mutual interests and the quest for meaning that is driving current generations. In short, given the pressure on the living world and in response to increasing vulnerabilities, democracy will increasingly be understood, in the future, in terms of the capacity to design or redesign infrastructures and institutions that align with our new understandings of life futures on Earth. It remains to be seen if these infrastructures and technologies will be responsive to planetary pressures or whether they will support greater solidarity between Africa and Europe.
This is the case with China.
The map representation was done on a globe, and transferring a spherical three-dimensional image to a one-dimensional surface was not easy. To this end, it wants to stimulate investments (especially in the private sector), to contribute to the green transition and the digital transformation, the development of major infrastructure, and possibly job creation (European Commission & European External Action Service, Joint Communication to the European Parliament. Voir https://www.v-dem.net/en/data/data-version-10/). The actions of major regional Funds, such as the European Endowment for Democracy have been limited to neighboring European countries such as those in the Balkans. In their attempt to design new global strategies with Africa, they have put in place investment programs in domains as varied as ports, highways, energy systems, railways, fiber optic cables, telecommunications networks etc These programs are destined to give them comparative advantage in the New Scramble for a continent whose immense wealth is still relatively untapped.
Third, agreement to work with African countries on a credible, transparent and just transition agenda to be delivered by the African COP in Egypt. Far from affirming the legitimacy of regimes in power, elections have become the trigger for unrest. Ms. Songwe is theUnited Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Commission for Africa (UNECA). As competition between two global hegemons, the United States and China, intensifies, a novel contest is pitting apparently different visions of planetary development against each other. Improving the enabling environment for private sector participation and especially encouraging youth entrepreneurship building on initiatives such as Compact with Africa remain important. Europe is the sixth largest continent, measuring about 4 million square miles or 10,180,000 square kilometers. Having objectively contributed to the consolidation of an environment of brutality, a number of states are facing multi-dimensional crises and sometimes bloody conflicts. At the same time, new infrastructures and technologies are emerging. For example, in the transport sector alone over $400 billion is required in investments to realize the full benefits of the CFTA., Joint initiatives by Team Africa and Team Europe, in energy, transport and digitization could help accelerate these investments, create jobs, transfer technology and improve livelihoods for all particularly for the youth and SMEs..
As a consequence, their future cooperation with the African continent will have significant implications for their own political, economic, cultural, and even military position in the world.
This is the case for capacity building support.
These African institutions are leading the charge for green growth and regional trade and strengthening them builds more trust and equality into the partnership between the AU and EU.
Our youthful creativity, dynamism and problem solving will be essential to a host of challenges Europe is facing today and will increasingly face in the future.. The CFTA has created huge investment opportunities. Since then, social polarization has become more accentuated by the fact that, in many countries, important political and constitutional reforms have simply been abandoned (V-Dem, Varieties of Democracy.
Needless to say, Africa is one of the principal theaters for this confrontation.
With the shift to a market economy, social movements began to put emphasis on recalibrating relations between the state and society on the basis of the three key principles of participation, representation, and accountability.
The Mercator projection is a cylindrical projection that is arrived at mathematically. Finally, support for democracy is the best way to attend to Europes long-term political and security interests in Africa. This is the case, too, with the European Union. It will also depend on the quality of the support that international forces will give to the democratic project on the continent.
Towards a comprehensive strategy with Africa, Brussels, 2020)..
At the same time, they have been careful not to get dragged into a direct conflict with Russia. At the basis of the report submitted to President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the New Africa-France Summit, held in Montpellier in October of 2020, was a key hypothesis: the problems we face today are inherently of planetary scale and scope. Africa takes up about 6% of the earths total surface area and accounts for about 20% of the earths land area. Apprehension, because too many summits have happened with too little impact in the last few years, and too few leaders north or south of the Mediterranean have grasped the huge challenges but also even larger opportunities that lie before us now in this extraordinary historic moment.
Extremist alternatives flourish amidst democratic disenchantment. In-depth analysis and updates from Groupe d'tudes gopolitiques delivered to your inbox every week.
All maps, graphics, flags, photos and original descriptions 2022 worldatlas.com. In many countries, however, we have witnessed a sometimes significant erosion of civil and political freedoms. In comparison, this area is just a little bigger than the United States. This map was very helpful to navigators but misguiding in other uses.
While nowadays contesting Chinas vision of the world order, this model seeks not to expand the voice of those without a voice, but to scale up economic governance so that it is no longer subject to revision at the level of the nation state. Protests over poverty and corruption are routinely and brutally suppressed. Hardly any African expertise is harnessed in such ventures, most of which almost always end up entrenching epistemological colonialism.
As such, it favours an endless expansion of neoliberal financial institutions in every single realm of everyday life. European creditors could also be more creative with debt for climate adaptation swaps by including this option in the Common Debt Framework. Second, urgently create a joint working group with African Finance ministers to review and revise the Common Debt Framework and reinstate the DSSI. Almost a year after it was announced and over two years into the crisis many countries in need of orderly debt work-outs do not have access to robust, and speedy instruments.. At that time, the idea that democracy should be based on equal rights beginning with the right of people to govern themselves was commonplace. Here, indeed, are tested some of the ultimate limit conditions of the habitability of the planet.
The Brussels meeting provides a platform where Europe can partner with Africa to accelerate the implementation of this agenda to build a prosperous Africa. Is a New Deal Between Europe and Africa Possible?, This factor enables navigators to plan a straight line course easily.
As African and European leaders gather for a crucial EU AU summit in Brussels, Africans are gripped by both a sense of hopeful anticipation - and a sense of fatigued apprehension. His projection has been compared to that of Bernard J.S. The immediate cause is the total failure of Lasso. The spaces between the lines increase as they go farther from the equator. African governments in return must continue to improve its governance systems. Indeed, a pro-democracy mandate is embodied in Article 1 of institutions such as the EBRD. For Africa digitization is a crucial pillar to accelerate development and African countries look forward to having a level playing field with access to the best global technologies for their ambitions. Of course, we must take national specificities into account as well as varying contexts. National Funds, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, or the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy have hardly fared better.
For most of the second half of the 20th century, one-party systems and military regimes had become the dominant models of continental governance. Equally well-established is the fact that, in Southern and Eastern Europe, the European Union is more trusted than national governments. Such efforts require direct investments in intermediary organizations such as the media, civic associations or unions, in civic education, and the strengthening of transcontinental and transnational relations between African and European civil societies. Thesixth European Union - African Union summitis scheduled to take place in Brussels on 17 and 18 February 2022. The African UnionGreen Recovery Action Plancombined with theAfrican Continental Free Trade Areaprovide the framework for this recovery and reset plan. Here, too, is where the old views on so-called aide publique au developpement (official development assistance) and on sustainability clash the most dramatically with the new ecological imperative, that is, the duty to maintain social metabolism within the confines of our planetary limits.
Faced with the emergence of various pandemics, the effects of global warming, and loss of biodiversity, many people now recognize the existence of a fundamental continuity between natural environments, ecological zones, and the human and animal worlds.
This aspect brings about the difference between the actual size and map representation of Europe, Africa, and other regions on the map.
The Brussels summit is a trust building summit after a rocky two years where multilateralism gave way to nationalism.
Yet, Chinas neo-imperialist policy is ultimately luring poor African nations into unsustainable debt for infrastructure projects. Firstly, the demand for democracy in Africa is endogenous. Sometimes, the activities of these various organizations go hand in hand with, or run parallel to, research that is conducted in specialized centers within Western universities or by think tanks. We need trillions more invested in a new mutually beneficial growth story, a new and inclusive green-jobs-rich growth vision. For African countries the investment need is proportionally more because financing for our recoveries has so far been virtually non-existent, our youth have huge aspirations, and our starting point is from a far lower investment and per capita income point. The United States accounts, by far, for most of the worlds knowledge and know-how in this field.
Nearly everywhere, dominant party regimes have captured and privatized chunks of the State. Europe and Africa should commit to deepening trade partnerships including through support for the AfCFTA and the development sustainable resilient value-adding supply chains. First, it will depend on how well the resources of social creativity and imagination generated through these social and cultural practices are harnessed in order to expand forms of self-organization and pool the efforts needed to rebuild the continent. Members of the Atlantic alliance have increasingly supported Kiyv since the beginning of the war, now sending heavy weapons. These figures show that Europe is actually about three times smaller than Africa. With regard specifically to the democratic project, three of the reports conclusions are worth summarizing. It examines the many issues confronting the people of Africa, its leaders and its international partners: economic reform, debt, education, health, women's advancement, conflict and civil strife, democratization, aid, investment, trade, regional integration, rural development and many other topics.
This kind of plotting distorts the size of areas on the map, with regions further away from the equator appearing to be bigger than they are whereas areas closer to the equator appear smaller than they are.
Democratic demand in Africa is not imposed from the outside. It was thought that democracys resilience would depend on the quality and the strength of institutions the only bodies able to counter the upsurge of autocratic regimes once decolonization was achieved. In light of the vast societal transition underway on the African continent, bridging the gap between the cultural creativity of societies and communities and the poor quality of public and institutional life is therefore urgent. Democracy as a horizon of commun life is now reassessed in reference to the interdependencies of non-human and more-than-human agents and broader economic, political and ecological forces and environments. Moreover, it is enshrined in regional norms and codified as such in a number of key texts from African institutions themselves (African Union, 2012, African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance. At best, this has led to a plethora of small, often opaque and incoherent, initiatives with no meaningful impact.
Recent political changes in African political regimes are a clear step backwards in the progress made since multi-party politics were introduced. https://www.v-dem.net/en/data/data-version-10/. These are of varying size, however. The Chinese model is often presented as an alternative to the planetary governance driven by Western financial and trade regimes. Other initiatives concern supporting electoral processes and election monitoring missions. Because these funds are divided among different buckets, including the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), the European Development Fund (EDF), and the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI), it is not easy to track the funding which is actually dedicated to democracy. How do you analyze the indigenous demonstrations that took place in Ecuador over 18 days? The EU should also back African leaders call for 50 percent of climate finance to be for adaptation and offer credit enhancement facilities or partial guarantees to improve the rate of African green and blue bond issuances. In addition, in order to ensure that African nations are not stifled in their development, gas for cooking and base load energy must be a funded part of a just transition.