PREVIEW
Touring Africa, Brussels officials are offering help on counter terrorism and intelligence sharing
Ghana will become the first African state to conclude a defence and co-operation pact with the European Union on 23 March when the bloc’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas, meets her counterpart Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa in Accra.
It is likely to be the first of many. Speaking at the EU’s annual ambassadors’ conference on Monday, Kallas said that ‘a growing number of countries around the globe are seeking to diversify their partnerships to manage the heightened risk’ (Dispatches, 12/1/26, El Sisi draws in Brussels cash for security and migration control deals).
‘There are many other interested countries knocking at our door,’ said Kallas. While most of the EU’s ten other defence pacts focus on joint naval and military missions, the arrangements with African states are oriented more on counter-terrorism and intelligence sharing, with maritime co-operation through the prism of migration control via Frontex, the EU’s border control agency (AC Vol 66 No 8, ‘Panicked by the far right’, Brussels spends billions on migration control in West Africa). Critics say that the cooperation deals are largely symbolic, pointing to the limited detail on what they will change in practice.
In early March, two EU commissioners attended the inauguration of a new maritime maintenance centre in Senegal where new patrol boats and motorised vessels were handed over to the national police and gendarmerie.
Among the interested parties in Africa are Senegal, Cameroon, Gambia and Nigeria, with Kallas set to visit her counterpart Yusuf Tuggar on 23 March. The EU Commission is close to concluding an agreement with Senegal that will build on what the Commission describes as ‘strengthened security cooperation in recent years’.
Cameroon, meanwhile, is hoping that Kallas will give the green light for €50m in EU cash to strengthen maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea when she arrives in Yaoundé on 26 March, along with EU foreign and trade ministers for the World Trade Organization’s annual ministerial summit.
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