Beyond Lomé III: Prospects for Symmetrical EurAfrican Relations

Abstract

The African states constitute more than four-fifths of the total members of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group associated with the European Economic Community (EEC), and dominate, in a more significant manner, in the subculture of the ACP class classified as ‘least developed’. Specifically, only 13 African member-states, namely, Angola, Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Zaire and Zimbabwe, fall outside the periphery of the ‘least developed and landlocked’ class within the ACP. This is because these 13 African states are either endowed with huge reserves of petroleum (Nigeria, Gabon and Cameroon), possess other valuable export products (Angola, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Ghana and Zimbabwe) and/or operate relatively diversified and stable economies (Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal). The other least developed and landlocked ACP countries are basically ‘fictitious states’ who exist in the ‘minimal sense’¹ because they are maximally and helplessly insulated from the world market forces or/and because of the prevailing reckless personal rule of the leadership in these countries. Because of their deplorable, though varying, poverty levels, the Lomé Conventions accorded these states ‘special treatment’, thereby recognising the need for them to catch up with their more privileged counterparts.