EU-China-Africa Trilateral Development Cooperation

Authors: Bernt Berger / Uwe Wissenbach

Date: Nov 2007

Published by German Development Institute

After China has, due to its engagement in all world-regions, become an influential interna-

tional actor that needs to be taken seriously, regional policy-making by the old dominant in-

ternational players can no longer be an unidirectional or bilateral matter of course. This is

especially evident in relations with Africa. Rather China (among other players) needs to be

engaged, consulted and involved in common agenda setting in order to make policy effective

and avoid conflicting approaches. However, as much as Europeans cannot continue as they

did before, China, as the new kid on the block, cannot go it alone either without risking open-

ing another China-threat front and antagonising its paramount Western partners. If Africa al-

lows its new consensus on good governance (African Peer Review Mechanism, APRM) and

unity to be unravelled by new Chinese policy alternatives, which have so far proven attractive

mostly to narrow elite and business interests, China in the future may also have to foot an

increasing aid bill that traditional partners will be increasingly reluctant to shoulder if their

interests are harmed. Especially with regard to developing countries, competing interests, dif-

fering concepts in development cooperation and complex development needs on the ground

increasingly produce policy choices which are proving more far-reaching than the inward-

looking aid policy debates of the past. Development policy has become a strategic question,

and not only in the sense of the European Security Strategy (ESS) of 2003 which brought it

into the European Union ́s (EU) toolbox to enhance Europe’s global security interests1. How-

ever, what is most important is that resolving North-South differences cannot proceed without

allowing developing countries an equal voice; likewise on the African continent. Generally

speaking, beyond the task of pragmatic rapprochement and cooperation, the challenge is to

combine national diplomatic and commercial interests with the shared and global needs for

sustainable development and good governance standards.

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