The EU, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South America: What Role for Geo-strategic Partnerships?

The European Union (EU) has voiced an ambition of strengthening its geo-political partnerships with Africa and Latin America. In view of this ambition, this chapter explores the EU’s possibilities to renew and reinvent its partnerships with Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South America (SA). The former partnership has mainly been characterised by a North-to-South aid relationship and a politicised human rights and migration component and contested free-trade negotiations. South America has traditionally been considered a less important region for the EU. With Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and the EU’s green ambitions, this has changed. Europe is looking for new security allies and diversifying its energy partnerships in the view of the 2022 energy crisis, where renewable energy from South America is a candidate. But will it live up to the ambition of creating a more modern and equal partnership? And what would it look like? Many challenges remain. This chapter analyses the opportunities and challenges for a more modern and equal geo-strategic partnership with the SA and SSA regions.