AU, EU Summit: Debt Conundrum Remains Continent’s Achilles Heel

Kim Heller

Too often, global summits are celebrated as moments that catalyse and create fundamental transformation and structural reconfiguration. By now, Africa should have wised up to the reality that spectacular summits tend to yield short-term visibility rather than sustainable economic viability.

The recent Group of Twenty (G20) Summit in Johannesburg was widely praised. This week's African Union (AU)-European Union (EU) Summit in Luanda has likewise been described as highly successful.

However, these gatherings are unlikely to enhance the Continent's influence in the global matrix of economic power, influence, and decision-making. African sovereignty is not the business of international summits. It is the sole enterprise of Africa. Global superpowers have no interest in boosting African self-sufficiency. They seek stability.

The recent G20 Summit in Johannesburg was punted as a historical turning point. While African leaders did manage to centre-stage debt reform, climate adaptation, technology transfer, and industrialisation, the Summit's Declaration lacked firm commitments or financing guarantees. The African voice may have been loudly hailed for a moment, but this is unlikely to impact the global economic and financing architecture.

The 7th AU-EU Summit in Luanda, held a day after the G20, under the theme "Promoting Peace and Prosperity through Effective Multilateralism," marked 25 years of AU–EU relations and 50 years of Angola's independence.

Its Joint Declaration harmonised with the AU's Agenda 2063, the EU's global growth strategies, and the UN's 2030 Agenda. The Declaration lauded multilateralism and committed support for United Nations Security Council reform. There were some significant wins.

The EU reaffirmed its €150-billion Global Gateway package, pledging green energy corridors that are set to generate 50GW of renewable power by 2030. There was a commitment to boost the African Medicines Agency and vaccine production on the Continent.

This will strengthen pandemic preparedness. Duty-free access for 90 per cent of exports, along with trade and infrastructure commitments, entrenches Europe as Africa's prime partner. A greater commitment to peace and security in Africa was demonstrated through substantial peace mission activities and financial contributions over the last three years. Bilateral commitments were based on collaboration rather than significant reforms or structural power shifts. This is the typical blueprint of global economic summits.

As expected, the issue of debt, the knee on the neck of post-independent Africa, received considerable attention at the AU-EU Summit, as it should have. Angola's President, João Lourenço, was crystal clear in stating that debt is not only a severe economic hindrance in Africa but also an instrument used by the West to control the Continent.

It is alarming that Africa spends over 30% of its government revenue servicing debt. The Continent also loses over $100 billion every year to illegal financial flows. These chains of extraction are unlikely to ever be dismantled in global summits. African leaders lobbied for lowered capital costs, governance reform of the Bretton Woods institutions, and for special drawing rights to be directed through African financial institutions.

While the EU spoke of "innovative financing" and "enhanced collaboration", there was no commitment to debt cancellation, or to African-led and controlled financing platforms, or to action plans that would structurally transform the global financial order. Europe continues to determine the nature and scope of engagement, the terms, and the financing of African development. Africa is yet to be the key designer of their own destiny.

Economic systems built on colonial power and plunder are structurally incapable of fostering the sustainable economic sovereignty of former colonies. Pan-Africanist activist and trade unionist Vusi Mahlangu wrote this week in a social media post that the recent G20 gathering was not a breakthrough for the Global South, but a bourgeois jamboree dressed in the language of 'progress' and 'multipolarity'.

Africa should stop celebrating small developmental and diplomatic wins, which obscure the reality that foreign economic control and influence in Africa remain undisturbed. Africa needs to develop an African-owned, led, and controlled economic ecology. This would include a pan-African credit-rating agency and value chains across key industry sectors, such as minerals, manufacturing, agriculture, and energy.

Africa will only rise when it refuses to be an ever-grateful beggar in a system that is not orchestrated for African prosperity. It must be the chief architect of its own new order. Loud applause and standing ovations at Summits are meaningless if economic viability remains at half-mast.The AU-EU partnership may be steady, but it is hardly likely to become more equitable or balanced. The terms continue to be set by Europe, not Africa.

The heavy and sinister shadow of debt repayments over post-independent Africa enslaves the Continent in economic chains, putting paid to dreams of economic prosperity and sovereignty. African sovereignty does not serve Europe's interests. For as long as its development financing is in Europe's hands, so is its destiny. Africa cannot claim sovereignty.

Over the last few weeks, the world's attention may have been on Africa as these two historic summits were staged. However, tomorrow is another day.

Africa will long be forgotten by the very same foreign leaders who participated in or praised the G20 and AU-EU Summits. They will be booking fancy hotels in the next country for the next conference or summit sensation. This is the problem with stage-crafted performance politics.

The act of securing economic power and sovereignty is no Broadway show. Africa is claiming easy victories. As dusk falls, Africa settles into the darkness of powerlessness. Its final act is still being scripted in Europe and other faraway lands.

* Kim Heller is a political analyst and author of No White Lies: Black Politics and White Power in South Africa.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.